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Path of Exile 1 will launch the limited-time event Return of the Ancestors on June 25th. This is the most significant return of Trial of the Ancestors since Patch 3.22. For many veteran players, TOTA has always been one of the most distinctive league mechanics in Path of Exile 1 history.

With an event duration of only three weeks, the gameplay will be more compact, allowing you to experience a complete cycle of progression and challenge in a short time. However, the significance of Return of the Ancestors is clearly more than just a simple nostalgic event; it's more like a validation and data test of the mechanics for Path of Exile 2.

For new players who have never experienced TOTA, this may also be an important opportunity to understand the future PoE trial system. The specific operation of POE Return of the Ancestors may differ somewhat from before, but most of the currently known rules and strategies can still refer to the original TOTA gameplay system.

PoE 2 Related

PoE 2 may have three different Trial systems in the future: Trial of Sekhema, Trial of Chaos, and Trial of the Ancestors. Therefore, the official reopening of TOTA in PoE 1 is likely a test of the relevant mechanisms and player feedback.

In fact, this isn't the first time Path of Exile team has done this. Both the auction house feature and the previous adjustments to Breach mechanism were first tested in PoE 1 before being gradually implemented in PoE 2. Therefore, whether you're a PoE 1 player or someone following PoE 2, it's essential to understand the core gameplay of this return.

If Trial of the Ancestors truly becomes an important part of PoE 2 trial system, this event is likely the best opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the relevant mechanisms in advance.

TOTA Mechanics

Trial of the Ancestors is essentially a league mechanism combining auto-battle and tactical competition. You need to lead your troops against the enemy to destroy their totems and achieve victory.

The entire tournament revolves around a temporary currency called Favor. Favor is tied to different ancestor NPCs and can be used to exchange for troops, items, and field supplies. Each match offers two types of rewards: Favor and Path of Exile 1 Currency. It's recommended to choose Favor.

Troop Configuration

The greatest strategic depth in TOTA comes from troop arrangement. In TOTA, once an early advantage is gained, it can be steadily extended. Therefore, strategically using Favors to exchange for troops is far more important than exchanging for onetime field supplies.

Flanking units are typically responsible for destroying enemy totems, making them often the most crucial positions. PoE units with teleportation, stealth, or high mobility are particularly well-suited for this role, as they can quickly bypass the main battlefront and directly threaten the enemy back line.

Attack units are responsible for frontal assaults and clearing enemy forces, providing the primary firepower in the early stages of a Path of Exile TOTA battle. Guardian units will follow you, helping to block enemy attacks and delay their resurrection. As for defensive units, they primarily guard your base, and their role is relatively limited in most situations.

Battle Strategy

Many Path of Exile players new to TOTA mistakenly believe it's a simple battle, but in reality, killing enemies isn't the ultimate goal. Each warrior is bound to their own totem, which also serves as their respawn point. Only by completely destroying all enemy totems can you win the game.

However, destroying totems is no simple task. When you lead your troops in an attack, being hit by any direct attack or spell will leave you stunned for up to five seconds. This stun cannot be avoided by standard PoE stun immunity, so blindly rushing into the enemy base often comes at a heavy price.

If your Path of Exile character dies, you will not immediately respawn. You can only return to the battlefield once your allied totems have regained control, meaning you may not participate in combat for an extended period if the situation gets out of control.

In actual TOTA battles, you and the enemy leader are usually the most powerful presences on the field. Many experienced players don't rush into enemy totems but choose to observe the situation from the center of the map. Markers on mini-map show which allied totems are under attack; intercepting them is often more effective than a risky attack.

As tournaments progress, killed Path of Exile enemies will gradually gain longer respawn times. The ancient game is usually chaotic, but in the late game, as more and more enemies are temporarily banished, the situation gradually stabilizes, making this the best time to push and destroy towers.

Different ancestors have completely unique skill sets. Some ancestors are extremely threatening in ancient games and quite troublesome for many characters. Therefore, familiarizing yourself with the characteristics of each ancestor and avoiding opponents that are disadvantageous to you is a crucial skill for improving your win rate.

Hidden Strategies

TOTA uses a double-elimination format. This means you have one chance to lose, so in some situations you can even intentionally lose to adjust your subsequent matchups. When the ultimate rewards are not ideal, you can use the double-elimination mechanism to refresh the reward pool. You can also intentionally lose early to Path of Exile clans you least want to face to avoid more hard battles later on.

Furthermore, the rare and highly sought-after items that appear in tournaments are often extremely valuable in the early stages of Path of Exile 1. Experienced players usually pay special attention to these rewards, as they can sometimes provide benefits far exceeding Path of Exile 1 Currency.

Whether you're a veteran player who participated in 3.22 league or a newcomer to TOTA, Return of the Ancestors will be one of the most worthwhile events in Path of Exile 1. Whether it's simply a classic return or a preliminary test of the new PoE 2 system, the answer may gradually emerge after the event concludes.

PoE will launch a three-week limited-time league event, Return of the Ancients, starting June 25, 2026.

This event will bring back the core gameplay of Trial of the Ancestors Tattoos, which is highly praised by players, and introduce a brand-new Ascendancy class system and Tattoos system. This event is not only a recreation of classic content, but also an important attempt to integrate old and new mechanics.

For PoE players, this event carries special anticipation. The development team has previously stated that adapting Trial of the Ancestors mechanic to the current game patch involves considerable technical work. Therefore, some players also see this event as an important window into the design direction of Patch 3.29.

Event Framework

Time and Mode

PoE Return of the Ancestors Event will officially begin at 3 PM PDT on June 25, 2026, and will continue until 3 PM PDT on July 16.

The event covers Standard, Hardcore, Solo Self-Found, and their expert variants, and includes a Ruthless mode option. Ascendancy classes used in Ruthless mode are consistent with those in non-Ruthless mode, providing equal opportunities for players with different preferences.

It's worth noting that PoE event mechanism requires participants to create entirely new characters; existing characters cannot directly enter the event server.

This setting ensures all players start on a level playing field in terms of resource accumulation and class development, consistent with the design logic of limited-time league events.

Core Mechanics

Silver Coin is the key item for entering Karui Afterlife Arena. Players can collect this currency in various areas of Wraeclast.

Using Silver Coin, players can form their own warrior teams to engage in tournaments against the chieftains of Karui tribes and win rewards. This cyclical structure may provide a reference for adjustments to the economic model in Patch 3.29.

The original Trial of the Ancestors Event's Tattoos will return along with a new batch of special Tattoos applicable to Ascendancy classes. These new Tattoos are event-exclusive and will not transfer to Standard after the event ends.

It's important to note that during Return of the Ancestors Event, Tattoos will not be available as rewards through Kingsmarch's shipping system.

This restriction means that players will primarily acquire Tattoos through League's own gameplay loop, rather than through external economic systems.

Mechanics and Ecosystem

Ascendancy Classes

PoE Patch 3.29 Return of the Ancestors Event completely replaced Ascendancy class system. All regular Ascendancy classes were replaced by 19 Phrecian Ascendancy classes, but Reliquarian Ascendancy classes were disabled because of the lack of a corresponding Phrecian update.

These balance adjustments to Ascendancy classes follow the settings from the previous Phrecian Event, and the developers have detailed the specific changes in the related announcements.

Although Ascendancy classes have been completely replaced, the passive skill points provided by Forbidden Tattoos still come from regular Ascendancy classes, not Patch Phrecians.

In Ruthless mode, these Tattoos will grant passive points from the regular Ascendancy classes of Ruthless update. The use of Tattoos is not restricted by the character's base class; for example, a Sorceress can use Ranger Ascendancy Tattoos.

New Item Rules

Return of the Ancestors Event introduced Forbidden Tattoo series, covering updates for seven classes. A batch of new items will also be implemented in the event.

Tattoos cannot be applied to Ascendancy talent points involving multiple choices, Bloodline Ascendancy talent points, or talent points that provide passive skill points.

As part of the adjustments, Scavenger Ascendancy class has added a new talent point called Tabula Rasa. This talent doesn't provide any attribute bonuses but allows players to apply Ascendancy Tattoos.

Player Considerations

Rewards and Progression

PoE has set up a basic reward milestone for players participating in Return of the Ancestors Event: after defeating Kitava in Act 10, each account will automatically receive a Return of Ancestors Mystery Box.

This reward can only be obtained once per account per Event; repeatedly defeating the same character or other characters will not trigger additional rewards.

Of course, players can continue completing the remaining Mirage Challenge League during this Event. This means that Event's progress system has a certain degree of compatibility with regular league content, and players will not have their existing challenge objectives interrupted by switching Events.

Platforms and Configuration

PoE Return of the Ancestors Event will be simultaneously launched on PC and console platforms to ensure that players on different platforms can participate. For community item filter creators, the official list including newly added items from Event has been released for reference.

PoE Return of the Ancestors Event is a significant attempt to blend classic league mechanics with a brand-new class system.

By reintroducing Trial of the Ancestors gameplay, bringing back Phrecian Ascendancy class, and expanding Tattoos system, this Event provides players with a gameplay experience distinct from regular leagues.

The design of Event-specific Tattoos and their interaction rules with the regular class system reflect the development team's consideration of balancing content reuse and mechanic innovation. Whether this mechanism can continue until Patch 3.29, and even become a core part of PoE, will depend on actual player feedback.

The mechanics and resource acquisition difficulty of Return of the Ancestors are significantly higher than regular gameplay. This will make it difficult for most players to understand this update content in a short period of time. Therefore, buy Path of Exile 1 Currency from EZG.com to quickly acquire the key resources needed for deck building and get into a high-yield gameplay rhythm faster.

The core value of this event lies in the depth of combination between its mechanics, including team building in Karu Arena, Ascendancy class replacement system, and the talent expansion space brought by Tattoos. Understanding the interrelationships between these systems will directly affect the player's overall experience and efficiency in the event.

In Path of Exile Patch 3.28, the price barriers of high-end rings and certain legendary items are significantly impacting the endgame experience for players. The cost of high-end crafting, often reaching well over a hundred Divine Orbs, has created a steep economic barrier for many skill-based builds trying to reach their final form.

This market phenomenon, driven by the monopoly of rare affixes, stems from difference of opinion between the acquisition methods of specific base items and affixes and the current mainstream gameplay.

This article will analyze the potential changes to the crafting ecosystem brought about by the new league on July 24th and its impact on players, starting with the unpredictable nature of the farming mechanism and considering past adjustments by the developers.

Item Farming Pain Points

Currently, in Path of Exile Patch 3.28, player interest in farming items with rare affixes is low, with the uncontrollable farming process being the core reason.

Uncontrollable Costs

Under the existing mechanism, there is no clear cost ceiling for farming specific crafting implicit affixes. Whether through targeted exchanges via the league mechanism or by stacking map affixes, Path of Exile 1 Currency or resources consumed in a single attempt are substantial.

When players calculate the return on investment, they find that accumulating currency to directly get finished products is often more efficient than farming them themselves. This inverted relationship directly stifles the original motivation for farming.

Uncontrollable Drop Rates

The weighting of rare affixes exacerbates the sense of powerlessness among PoE players. Taking rings as an example, specific damage-increasing or energy-recharging implicit affixes have a low percentage in the vast affix pool, and the randomness of the base type further dilutes the effective output.

When players spend weeks farming without seeing their target affix, this purely probability-driven mechanism is no longer seen as a challenge, but as a time sink.

Uncontrollable Outcomes

Even if a player is lucky enough to obtain a base with the ideal implicit affix, the subsequent crafting process remains lengthy. From rolling high-level life affixes to specific resistances, and the fluctuations in attack affix values, every step is fraught with uncertainty.

This combination of multiple randomnesses means that even a decent starting product has a very high probability of becoming useless before reaching its last form, significantly increasing players' trial-and-error costs and frustration.

What Might Patch 3.29 Address?

To address these problems, if Path of Exile development team decides to intervene, their logic will probably follow the core idea of binding rewards to content and optimizing the affix acquisition tier in Patch 3.29.

Rewards and Themes Combined

Reintegrating high-value crafting implicit affixes into the dedicated drop pool of crafting maps is a direction that the player community has been strongly advocating for.

Just as Fossil rewards significantly increased in frequency and gameplay engagement after returning to the mines, limiting crafting bases to drops within crafting maps provides a clear farming objective and controls the overall influx of such items at the source.

This isn't simply about increasing drop rates; it's about making farming traceable by defining dedicated production areas, rather than blindly relying on luck in the current map-wide random drop system.

Affix Adjustment Logic

To address an excessively long crafting chain, PoE development team may consider introducing affix locking or targeted stripping mechanisms in specific gameplay modes in Patch 3.29.

For example, providing limited implicit affix replacement options in League gameplay, or reducing the fluctuation range of high-level affixes through specific currencies.

This adjustment aims to reduce the extreme situation where players have to start over entirely in the late stages of crafting because of a single affix value not meeting requirements, ensuring that every currency investment contributes to effective progress rather than relying solely on luck.

Drop Optimization

Besides increasing the drop rate of base items, optimizing the quality of dropped items is equally crucial. In Patch 3.28, most of the crafting base items players farmed had low-value affixes, making them difficult to craft.

If the base affix level of dropped base items can be increased in the high-difficulty content of Patch 3.29, making them closer to the finished product, players can skip some early crafting steps and directly enter the high-level crafting stage.

This will not only reduce Path of Exile 1 Currency consumption but also lower the barrier for new players to access high-end crafting.

Player Benefits

If these adjustments are implemented, the player community's gameplay behavior in Path of Exile will undergo a significant transformation.

In the current Patch 3.28, players often face a dilemma when confronted with expensive endgame gear. For players with moderate investment, assembling a complete build often requires spending a significant amount of time comparing prices and making compromises in the trading market.

Many players are forced to abandon specific builds because of the high price of core gear, opting instead for more affordable but more predictable builds, which to some extent reduces the diversity of late-game builds.

Once the farming path becomes clearer and the crafting process more controllable, players will be more willing to participate in gear crafting themselves. Farming specific maps or gameplay will no longer be seen as simply labor to earn currency, but as a challenge with a clear objective.

The barrier to entry for late-game content will be eased because of the reduced difficulty of obtaining endgame gear, allowing players to experience the full strength of different builds more smoothly, thus extending the active playtime of a single league.

Path of Exile, in Patch 3.29, is expected to alleviate the current pressure to reach endgame gear by returning rare affixes to their own gameplay and optimizing the crafting process.

This move will reshape the interaction between players and the gear system, making farming more planned, ultimately improving the accessibility of endgame content and late-game league retention.

Path of Exile 3.29 league will launch at 1 PM PST on July 24th. Simultaneously, an official livestream will begin at 1 PM PST on July 16th. This livestream will provide players with detailed information about league and answer questions. Interested players should plan their time accordingly.

Path of Exile 3.29 still requires a ten-act campaign as a prerequisite for entering the final game. Recently, whether GGG should introduce a campaign skipping function has become a hot topic among players. Players generally hope for this feature, but the official team doesn't seem to have any plans for it at present.

This article will analyze whether PoE 3.29 should introduce a campaign skipping function. Let's take a look.

Reasons for Support

Reduce Repetitive Content for Experienced Players

Skilled players typically need 5-8 hours to complete the campaign, and even more skilled players need about 3 hours. Therefore, for players who manage multiple characters in each league (e.g., a beginner character, a main character, and a main character), this means they need to spend 15-24 hours experiencing repetitive content before actually starting the game. 

This approach lacks meaningful choices. Every league, every character, regardless of build, requires completing the same 10 acts, defeating the same bosses, and clicking the same waypoints.

Player Burnout

Many veteran players have reported feeling fatigued early in Path of Exile leagues, especially those with unconventional builds that perform poorly in acts, leading to low motivation to try new leagues.

In contrast, many similar games have made skipping the campaign after unlocking any character a standard practice.

Arguments Against

Learning Curve and New Player Experience

10-act campaign serves as a gradual tutorial on mechanics (slot colors, support gems, resistance penalties, dungeons, ascendancy). Allowing campaign skipping could lead to accidental skips by new players, or require GGG to create a separate tutorial, a significant development burden.

Furthermore, the campaign builds the game's backstory and atmosphere, which is crucial for some players.

Fairness in Early Stages of League and Economy

Each league is fair to all players' first characters; all players, regardless of their initial resources, start from scratch. Skipping the campaign would benefit players who can level up their second character with gear/alternate items, potentially exacerbating the wealth gap within the game.

If experienced players can directly use their second character, the competition for map resources in the early stages of a league becomes meaningless.

Technical and Design Flaws

PoE quest marker system is not designed for skipping the campaign. Adding this feature would require rewriting 10 chapters, tracking the status of over 100 quests, and re-interacting with league mechanics. For example, if a player uses the skip function, will they automatically gain all quest passive skill points? If so, it's purely time-saving; if not, no one will choose to use the skip campaign.

Possible Compromises

Assuming GGG makes some concessions, here are some feasible solutions in PoE:

Account-wide unlock, complete one campaign per league, and subsequent characters can directly enter Atlas at level 65 with all skill points, but without gear. This solution is simple and easy to understand, fully respecting player's time. However, the first character still needs to complete the campaign, which might feel like players are forced to level up a sacrificial character for speed runs first.

A skip mechanism could be introduced, but it wouldn't be without cost. It would cost Currency, requiring 5-10 Path of Exile Divine Orbs to be paid to NPC at the start of league to skip the campaign on the second character.

Optimizing the leveling process for alt characters would save players time, allowing them to enter Atlas from level 60 after completing specific challenges on their second character.

Why is 3.29 League the Best Time?

Given the current rapid development of Path of Exile, certain conditions make the possibility of introducing a campaign skip mode in the 3.29 league higher than in previous leagues. Since 3.25 league, GGG's game update technology has improved, and introducing a new feature shouldn't be particularly difficult if developers are willing to invest some time.

As time goes on, ARPG players generally want more control over the game's progress. Currently, it seems that campaign skipping functionality will be a mainstream feature for this series in the future, and GGG should consider this issue as soon as possible. Don't wait until players' patience with PoE wanes and they leave before considering this issue.

This concludes our analysis of whether a campaign skipping feature should be introduced in PoE 3.29 league. From the perspective of veteran players, this feature is urgently needed, but GGG believes it may not be that necessary.

What are your thoughts on this? Are you for or against it? The ideal solution would be for subsequent characters to gain the opportunity to skip certain stages through the efforts of the first character.

Currently, completely skipping the campaign is unlikely to be achieved in the near future and will require some time. However, with increasing community demand and feedback from players regarding repetitive gameplay, we believe there will be changes in the future. Let's look forward to the arrival of Path of Exile 3.29 league!

Path of Exile has officially confirmed that Patch 3.29 will launch on July 24, 2026, with a live stream scheduled for July 16. Besides anticipating the new content and gameplay mechanics, many players hope this update will address and optimize some long-standing issues in the game.

Over the past few leagues, as content has expanded, Path of Exile has gradually revealed some shortcomings in terms of experience, rewards, and overall design. For many players, the appeal of Patch 3.29 lies not only in the new gameplay and rewards but also in whether the long-standing experience issues that have plagued the community have been improved - a crucial measure of quality.

Therefore, prior to 3.29, the community engaged in extensive discussions about various improvement suggestions and proposed many areas that the developers should focus on. If the developers can respond to some of these issues, it may improve the overall Path of Exile experience more than simply adding new gameplay.

Mod Highlighter Feature

Regarding map gameplay, the community supports the addition of a Mod Highlighter feature to Path of Exile 3.29. Some affixes in Expedition Remnants are already highlighted with special colors, such as Monsters are immune to Chaos Damage.

However, these highlights are often just general hints and not necessarily relevant to your current build. EZG believes the highlighting system should allow players to customize and mark dangerous affixes that directly affect their build's performance. Similar functionality should not only be applied to Expedition Remnants but also extended to Maps, Altars, and other game content with numerous modifiers.

Such a system would help you quickly identify risks, avoiding frequent stops to read affix descriptions, resulting in a smoother overall gameplay experience.

Einhar

Beasts take time to be captured by Einhar, wasting a significant amount of time for players. Furthermore, many POE builds cannot absorb health from animals caught in Einhar's nets; builds like Flicker Strike will get stuck on these beasts.

Many players hope that POE developers will allow Einhar capture to be completed instantly, or implement an effective filtering system to help players avoid capturing these beasts while farming, so they don't waste time using teleport stones to move them away and then removing them from the animal encyclopedia.

Heist Quest Contracts

Heist quest contracts are outdated; almost no one does them anymore. However, they cannot be filtered out on POE maps, and their detection range is quite large, significantly affecting daily farming.

Some players suggest that POE 3.29 should introduce a feature to filter these contracts. More radical opinions suggest removing these quests altogether or issuing the complete quest chain upon first obtaining quest contracts.

Fossil Crafting

Fossil crafting is another long-standing player complaint. The process of adding Fossils one by one to resonators in PoE is extremely tedious, causing many players to avoid using the crafting system. EZG hopes that PoE 3.29 will introduce a feature to enable Fossils directly through the inventory interface, or completely rework the crafting process.

Server Optimization

Meanwhile, players on PoE's European servers have long experienced latency fluctuations, disconnections, and unstable connections. Although PoE officials have repeatedly explained that this is because of server attacks, players believe this problem has persisted for years and requires a more thorough solution.

Tincture

Many PoE players believe that the way Tinctures are used is fundamentally flawed in its design. The previous method, where activation only required one use for continuous effect, was more reasonable. The current mechanism, requiring frequent actions, not only increases the operational burden but also leads some PoE players to install scripts to automatically trigger Tinctures.

Furthermore, the elemental penetration benefits provided by some Tinctures are considered excessively high, severely impacting PoE's balance. This issue should be prioritized in Patch 3.29.

Synthesized Item

Many players believe that the current drop logic for Synthesized Items has significant problems. Theoretically, the most relevant content to Synthesized Items should be synthesized maps, but in reality, many high-value Synthesized Items often come from other sources, making the entire reward system seem unreasonable.

The community has suggested that Path of Exile 3.29 readjust the drop sources for Synthesized Items, making Distant Reality and Cortex the primary means of obtaining crafted gear. This adjustment would not only be more logical but also allow players to farm for the gear they need more effectively.

Pinnacle Boss Drops

Many players appreciate the design of placing core build unique items in Pinnacle Boss and Uber Pinnacle Boss drop pools, as this gives POE 3.29 endgame challenges clear and attractive reward objectives. Currently, some endgame boss unique items suffer from the problem that they are neither core build items nor stat-competitive with high-quality rare gear.

Therefore, the community hopes that POE 3.29 will increase the number of items dropped by certain bosses and Path of Exile 1 Currency. Only when boss drops are truly valuable can a more reasonable balance be achieved between the challenge and reward of endgame content.

Oni-Goroshi

Once a highly representative weapon of PoE, Oni-Goroshi is now considered having a severely outdated acquisition method. The long grinds on Hillock are both tedious and lack enjoyment. Players hope that PoE 3.29 will allow players to obtain this weapon through special maps and hidden boss encounters, making the acquisition process more in line with the design philosophy of Oni-Goroshi.

With Path of Exile Patch 3.29 approaching, this feedback from the community continues to accumulate. Although the official details of the new patch have not yet been announced, many players are looking forward not only to new mechanics and challenges, but also to seeing genuine improvements to these long-standing issues. These improvements will largely determine whether Patch 3.29 will ultimately be well-received by players.