Path of Exile 2: Forbidden Rites Campaign Rituals — 2 clusters of effigies per act, 1 per Interlude, and Tribute to spend

The 0.5.5 "Forbidden Rites" update for Path of Exile 2 has been running since Friday, September 4, 2026. We've published its release date, its duration, the overhaul of the Trial of Chaos and the redistribution of Soul Cores, but never the heart of the matter. Its central mechanic, the Ritual, is leaving the endgame and moving into every zone of the campaign.

Grinding Gear Games puts it in one sentence: "In each area of the campaign you'll find a Ritual encounter. Unlike their Endgame counterparts, these instead provide items useful for levelling, such as Currency for crafting your gear, alongside a bunch of equipment."

First trap, and it's a structural one: these patch notes only exist in English. Thread 4000864 served by fr.pathofexile.com dresses up the interface in French but leaves the text in English, word for word. Yet this isn't a rule at GGG, whose 0.5.0 notes are fully translated. The French terms quoted here come from those notes and from the client strings extracted by poe2db.tw/fr: none of them is a homemade translation.

A Ritual Altar, in the words of the French client

The loop has never been explained on our end, and the game describes it itself, in French. Ritual Altars "are sacrificial sites that absorb monsters killed within their circle. After a certain number of monsters have been killed, the Ritual can be activated". So you clear the zone around the altar before touching it: upon activation, "previously killed monsters are resurrected, forcing you to kill them again".

It's the second death that pays off: "Defeating them allows you to earn Tribute, a resource that can be exchanged for various items, called Favours, at the Ritual Altar." The list of Favours "can be refreshed, at a cost in Tribute", and a Favour that's too expensive can be deferred: "by paying part of their cost immediately, which allows them to reappear later".

GGG isn't entirely consistent either: its French 0.5.0 notes write "a Ritual Altar encounter" two lines before "the endgame reward screen of Ritual".

What 0.5.5 changes: the reward is no longer the endgame one

The difference is explicit, and it's the real contribution of the league for anyone leveling a character. At the end of the game, since 0.5.0, "all items in the Ritual endgame reward screen are now either Uniques or Omens" — verbatim from the French notes. In the campaign, 0.5.5 replaces this catalog with "items useful for levelling": currency items to work on your gear, and equipment plain and simple.

So this isn't a watered-down Atlas Ritual, but a source of early crafting, right at the moment when a fresh character has nothing. GGG, however, writes no rate or list: no one can quantify what "a bunch of equipment" actually covers.

Effigies placed on bosses, and waves that stack up

This is the most detailed part of the patch notes, and it changes how you read the world map: "Twice within each Act, and once within each Interlude, you'll find clusters of Ritual Effigies on the World Map." In these areas, GGG specifies, the effigies are no longer placed at random but "on top of that area's boss fight."

A note on vocabulary: the French client publishes no localized label for these effigies — the mechanic's page even leaves a line in English, "Completing all Ritual Altars will drop an Effigy Piece," in the middle of French text. We therefore keep the English term, "effigies" here being only a gloss. "Interlude," on the other hand, is indeed the word used in GGG's French patch notes.

What follows is an escalation: "Defeat these boss Rituals and the boss will then be carried forward and added to the next Ritual in the cluster in the next area." The defeated boss doesn't disappear: it follows you, within waves that GGG describes as "increasingly dangerous." At the end of the cluster, the publisher promises you can "spend your tribute on Unique Items" — the one place where the campaign meets the endgame.

How many clusters in total? GGG does not publish the number, and we refuse to calculate it: the French Steam page still announces "a brand new campaign in six acts," the promise of 1.0, while the 0.5.0 patch notes are only up to "act 4" and the "Interludes."

In a group: everyone gets their own Tribute, no one can reroll, and you have to listen to Aoife

Two lines from the "Ritual Changes" section are worth reading before a multiplayer session. The first: "Party members can now gain Ritual Tribute from completing Ritual encounters. They will have their own limited selection of rewards that they can spend Tribute on to obtain, or offer up their Tribute to the King in the Mists." Everyone leaves with their own Tribute and their own list.

The second half-closes it off: "The rewards offered to Party members cannot be rerolled." Refreshing the list in exchange for Tribute does not exist for party members: whatever roll they see is the one they get, period.

Finally, the detail that blocks a run without anyone understanding why: "In party play, all players within the area will need to hear Aoife's introduction in order for the Ritual encounter to be started." If one player has already run off toward the exit, the altar won't start. Aoife, introduced in 0.5.0, "wanders like a tormented spirit, bound to the Sylve," according to the French patch notes.

Royal Lenience, the Ritual Tablet, and the September 11 hotfix

On the Atlas side, 0.5.5 adds a notable passive whose name remains in English for lack of a published localized label: "Added a new Royal Lenience Notable Ritual Atlas Passive Skill, which grants Tribute already offered to the King may be used to Defer items, and Deferring Favours using Tribute already offered to the King costs 500% more Offered Tribute." Tribute sacrificed to the King becomes usable again to defer a Favour, at a multiplied cost. Same section: "Using more than one Ritual Tablet now adds an extra Altar to a Map if possible."

Finally, patch 0.5.5b, published on the GGG forum on Friday, September 11, 2026 (forum timestamp, no timezone specified), fixes an issue specific to the campaign's Ritual: "The player is now guided to complete the ritual after killing Ketzuli in the Temple of Kopec." In the English client, this refers to Ketzuli, High Priest of the Sun, at the Temple of Kopec: those who killed the boss without noticing the altar are now guided.

What to remember

The league brings 8 new challenges — a figure taken from GGG's French announcement on Steam dated August 27. The reward tiers, however, are only documented in English.

These four rewards "are only obtainable in this league"; the totem, however, remains in the hideout after the league closes. As for organization: three variants (Standard, Hardcore, Solo Self-Found), and a safety net for Hardcore — "if you die in Hardcore Forbidden Rites you can continue on in the Standard Forbidden Rites League". All the rest of the official vocabulary fits in our table; Forbidden Rites, Ritual Effigies, Royal Lenience and Aoife, meanwhile, remain in English.