PoE2 Oriath: Act 5 Returns With 18 Bosses to Finish

Twenty-four distinct new areas, 18 new unique bosses, more than 20 Champion Rare encounters: that is what Grinding Gear Games puts into the last two acts of Path of Exile 2, according to its Steam announcement of November 6, one of the ExileCon 2026 announcements. The campaign runs six acts for the Full Release (version 1.0) on December 11, and act 5 sends you back to a place that Path of Exile 1 players know well: Oriath.

PoE2 Oriath: Back to a City in Ruins

According to the official French page for the Full Release, the story takes you back to Oriath, “ravaged by countless catastrophes” (translated from the French official page). Your goal: wipe out the Twilight Order and the Beast. Oriath is the island from which exiles are banished at the start of Path of Exile 1, and the setting of its acts 6 to 10. Beyond those two enemies and that setting, GGG has not detailed the plot.

The setting itself is more precise. The two acts hold 24 distinct areas, “from squalid slums to opulent estates, by way of the Temple District and the Grand Arena.” The Grand Arena ties in with a detail already known: the Duelist of 1.0 learned the sword in the arenas of Oriath.

According to Maxroll, the only outlet to report it, act 5 has you working to open a great gate so that the army of Wraeclast can storm the city. GGG has not confirmed this in its own texts.

The Shadow demo showed another piece of Oriath. PCGamesN describes it going through the Den of Pleasure, a place where Oriath’s high society indulges its darkest desires. Its boss, Armando the Showman, falls to the Eclipse skill. The same article also mentions an encounter with the Blight (the fungal corruption well known to Path of Exile 1 players), with no further detail.

24 Areas, 18 Bosses: What the Numbers Say

The official numbers fit in three lines, and the press adds nuance without contradicting them. The table at the end of the section sums up what GGG wrote and what is missing.

Maxroll reports that the game director ranks these bosses among the most extravagant the team has made, with several phases and many abilities. The site adds that some of the Champion Rare encounters could almost pass for boss fights on their own. In PCGamesN’s report, Jonathan Rogers stresses the same point: many of the most fun fights will pit you against big monsters that are not bosses, so it is better to explore each region thoroughly.

Item	What is announced	Source
Areas in acts 5 and 6	24 distinct areas	GGG (Steam and French page)
Unique bosses	18 new ones, multi-phase fights	GGG
Champion Rare encounters	More than 20	GGG
Campaign length	No figure in hours	Not published

Act 5 Is Huge, Act 6 Is Shorter

The proportions come from a roundtable published on November 7. Asked by PCGamesN, Jonathan Rogers describes act 5 in one sentence: “Act Five is more physically huge.” For act 6, he talks about an act that is “a bit smaller, a bit more focused on just the rush towards the end,” rich in bosses but without much sprawl.

The same interview settles the fate of the three current “interlude” acts: GGG folds them in elsewhere in the campaign and the endgame, wherever it sees fit. Rogers does not think that finishing acts 5 and 6 takes much more time than the three current interludes, according to the same interview. The journalist gives no schedule and no detail on these interludes, and it is the only source that covers them. Readers already playing 0.5.5 know that the campaign was reworked in May with Return of the Ancients: this reorganization of the interludes comes on top of that work.

What the Campaign Cost GGG, and What Is Still Unknown

In the same roundtable, Jonathan Rogers admits that the campaign has been hard going: “The campaign has been something that we have struggled with needing to develop concurrently with all the live-service stuff.” He calls it a very tough task for the studio to manage, and says he expects “a huge relief of not having this extra project.” Acts 5 and 6 therefore close a project that GGG has been running since Early Access, alongside the leagues.

Several answers are still missing on acts 5 and 6. GGG has not said how many hours the six acts will take, or what act 6 contains beyond its boss count. Nobody knows either whether leveling gets longer by the same amount, or how the campaign will go for a newcomer arriving with the switch to free-to-play, for whom the beginner’s guide remains the starting point. The release time on December 11 is not published, and the patch notes are not out: according to Maxroll, they would arrive about a week before launch.