Forbidden Rites event for Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.5 is now live, and Ritual has become a key part of the event's gameplay. Players can find a fixed Ritual altar in each zone, and during the campaign phase, these Rituals often offer powerful rare items.
By design, Ritual was intended to be a rewarding activity for long-term farming within Forbidden Rites event; however, the mechanic is currently plagued by a series of serious issues.

After several days of testing, we found that these problems not only impact POE 2 gameplay experience but also directly increase Tribute costs, making high-value Rituals in Patch 0.5.5 increasingly less worthwhile to farm.
Ritual Interface QoL
First, let's look at POE 2 QoL changes to Ritual interface. Previously, after completing the first Ritual in a map, you could immediately open Ritual menu to view current rewards and defer items that had already appeared. Patch 0.5.5 has altered this QoL mechanic.
Now, you must complete all six Rituals on the map before you can view the full list of Ritual rewards. Furthermore, even after completing every Ritual, you cannot simply open the menu from the interface at any time; instead, you must physically walk up to a Ritual altar to view them.
This has a significant impact on standard farming in Path of Exile 2. For instance, if you encountered a Mageblood or another high-value item during the first few Rituals, you used to be able to open Ritual interface immediately, defer the item, and then continue clearing the map.
In POE2 Forbidden Rites event, however, you are forced to complete the remaining Rituals before you can address the rewards. This change has left many players confused: why was Ritual interface, which previously worked so well, modified? The design was praised for its convenience in the last league, yet now it imposes unnecessary operational friction.
Tribute Information
Another issue arising from UI changes in Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.5 is that viewing tribute and Favor has become more cumbersome. Previously, you could open Ritual interface at any time to check your current tribute and favor totals and estimate the final tribute yield based on the remaining number of Rituals.
In POE 2 Forbidden Rites event, tribute is displayed only during Ritual combat itself and disappears once the battle ends. If you want to check your tribute count again, you must walk back to Ritual altar. For players farming Rituals - a process requiring frequent calculations of tribute expenditure - this clearly adds unnecessary friction to the gameplay.
Furthermore, there is currently a visual bug regarding POE2 Ritual tribute display. When interacting with items, you cannot see the correct tribute amount directly; instead, you must navigate to a different interface to check your current balance and then manually calculate the cost to defer the item.
If multiple high-value PoE2 currency appear simultaneously, the need to constantly cross-reference tribute totals and defer costs can impair your judgment and make the entire defer process tedious. I hope developers address this issue quickly via a hotfix.
Defer Mechanism
A more significant issue in Path of Exile 2 lies in defer mechanism. In Forbidden Rites, if an item appears and you choose to re-roll immediately instead of deferring it, defer cost may increase if the item reappears later.
For instance, an item in POE2 might initially cost 2,000 tribute to defer; after one defer, the cost might drop to 1,800. However, if you choose to re-roll during that round, the price could rise again when the item reappears.
Previously, you could re-roll first and decide whether to defer when the item showed up again. Now, however, failing to defer immediately might result in a higher tribute cost later.
This mechanism is particularly troublesome when multiple high-value Omens or rare POE 2 items appear in a single Ritual; if you want to keep the items you truly need, you are often forced to defer as many as possible.
This places further strain on your tribute resources. Deferring everything rapidly depletes your tribute, while choosing to re-roll risks increasing the cost of non-deferred items - or even wasting a re-roll opportunity.

When multiple high-value items appear in the same Ritual, these costs are further compounded. For instance, a Head of the King encounter in Path of Exile 2 offers 14 re-rolls and can feature two Purple Omen items simultaneously.
Assuming each deferral for an Omen costs roughly 1,500 tribute, preserving both Omens while exhausting all re-rolls could require a total expenditure of around 56,000 tribute.
While Head of the King should ideally be a high-value farming option because of its superior POE 2 currency and rewards, those better rewards come with a steep tribute cost. The situation becomes particularly problematic after losing 6 to 8 re-rolls during the process; what should be a highly efficient, high-tier Ritual encounter instead becomes unreliable.
An even more frustrating scenario arises when you are holding out for a Headhunter to appear, only to be forced to abandon a high-value item that has already shown up because you lack the necessary tribute.
Until these issues are fixed or adjusted, the farming value of Rituals in Path of Exile 2 is clearly declining. While high-value rewards still exist, the exorbitant tribute costs and the loss of re-rolls make dedicated Ritual farming in Patch 0.5.5 increasingly inefficient.
What Rituals truly needs now is a comprehensive mechanical overhaul; elements that are clearly bugs should be addressed immediately via hotfixes. For mechanics that POE 2 developers intentionally adjusted, the actual costs involved need to be re-evaluated.
If the deferral mechanism in Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.5.5 is indeed working as intended, the tribute costs should at least be lowered, or the system should be modified to avoid imposing additional deferral penalties when an item reappears after a re-roll.













