After more than a decade of being the enthusiasts' champion, Grinding Gear Games has planted its flag for Path of Exile 2 to become just as approachable as rivals like Diablo 4, if not more so. The biggest caveat for trying PoE has always been how immediately intimidating its sheer size and scope is, from passive skill trees with thousands of nodes, to complex crafting systems spread across a sprawling endgame of different activities. The PoE 2 0.5 update, Return of the Ancients, is a seismic shift that introduces the biggest single change since the ARPG first began its journey back in 2013.