PoE 2 is letting players respawn in maps without consuming a Waystone

Surviving Path of Exile 2‘s grueling campaign doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready for the post-story, but the Dawn of the Hunt update will make mapping far more forgiving when it lands on April 4 by letting you keep your portals and get back in the fight.

Death is not the end of a map anymore. Once the patch launches, fallen players can respawn and continue from where they stopped, giving them up to six chances at a map. If you’re in a party, all Exiles can respawn as many times as the Waystone allows, making it easier to advance after Cruel difficulty. Higher-tier Waystones come with fewer extra lives, though, so don’t get too comfortable if you’re stacking affixes.

Waystones open up paths to different areas in PoE 2‘s Atlas. Using a Waystone consumes it to open six portals to a given location, but dying seals off any remaining portals and forces you to use another Waystone.

Maintaining your supply of Waystones is essential to making the most out of PoE 2‘s endgame, but it can be a roadblock for those who struggle with staying alive or who commit fatal mistakes. During the campaign, players can die and learn from their mistakes, which wasn’t present in the beginning of the endgame, game director Mark Roberts said on the Dawn of the Hunt broadcast.

While developers expect players to eventually learn to play carefully by the time they’ve mastered the endgame, the new system adds an extra window of forgiveness so Exiles can get their feet wet as they move from the campaign into the next type of content.

With this change, bosses in maps will also become pinnacle bosses. You must defeat them in one go, just like bosses in the story. Death doesn’t end the map, but you’ll be fresh and ready for a new fight when you respawn—and so will your enemy, with a newly filled health bar. Dawn of the Hunt will also remove XP penalties from pinnacle content, though those activities won’t grant XP either.

If you’ve been struggling to get past maps in PoE 2, Dawn of the Hunt might be a good time to get the squad together and pick the game back up when it goes live at 2pm CT on April 4. Continue from your old character in the established league or start from scratch with a new league—especially if you want to try out the new Huntress class.