Everything You Missed About PoE 2 Patch 0.5.0’s Two New Uniques – Redemption & Nightfall, Explained by PoEcurrency.com
Recently, GGG, the developer of Path of Exile 2, announced two brand-new Uniques to be added in Patch 0.5.0 Return of the Ancients: Redemption Trarthan Cannon (hereinafter referred to as Redemption) and Nightfall Fortress Tower Shield (hereinafter referred to as Nightfall).
This is very exciting because these two Uniques not only look cool, but are also very powerful. Next, PoEcurrency will give you a detailed introduction to these two new Uniques, helping you quickly understand everything about them.
If you’re interested, keep reading!
Redemption
First, let’s introduce the new Unique added in PoE 2 Patch 0.5.0 Return of the Ancients – Redemption. It’s a crossbow specifically designed for grenade enthusiasts. Why?
Disruptive Mechanics
First, Redemption has a highly disruptive core affix: “Cannot reload or fire ammunition.” This means that when equipped, all your attack actions are restricted to using grenade abilities.
So, when a crossbow can’t reload, a crucial question arises: what do you use to attack the enemy?
The answer excites all players: after equipping Redemption Trarthan Cannon, all your normal attacks become throwing grenades. And, like all normal attacks, throwing grenades consumes no Mana.
Furthermore, according to the trailer for Patch 0.5.0 Return of the Ancients released by GGG, the cooldown between each normal attack is extremely short, approximately only 0.3 seconds. This means that the throwing grenade’s normal attack can be fired almost continuously without interruption.
In addition, based on the trailer, the explosion radius and visual effects of this free grenade are excellent, seemingly possessing the capability for early game exploration and map clearing.
In PoEcurrency’s opinion, the mechanism of this free grenade is even more exciting than Uniques attribute itself, because it completely solves the pain point for grenade enthusiasts who often lack Mana and struggle to maintain sustained damage output.
Core Buffs
Like other Uniques in PoE 2, Redemption has two core buffs: Explosive Rhythm and Explosive Fervour, which work together to form a unique gameplay style.
Explosive Rhythm is a stacking buff. It grants one stack for every two grenade abilities used, up to a maximum of 10 stacks. Explosive Fervour, after accumulating 10 stacks of Explosive Rhythm, clears all stacks and transforms them into a powerful 10-second buff.
This buff is very comprehensive, including allowing you to throw an extra grenade with each grenade throw; all grenade abilities have no cooldown during this period; and grenades explode instantly upon contact with enemies or the ground, dealing significant damage.
In addition, during this buff period, players gain a 15% attack speed bonus for each different grenade ability used.
Therefore, PoEcurrency recommends using Redemption like this: First, continuously use grenade skills to stack Explosive Rhythm until you reach ten stacks, transforming it into Explosive Fervour. Then, while enjoying the super buff, constantly switch between different grenade skills to unleash a high-damage combo.
Disadvantages
Redemption isn’t perfect. To balance its stats, GGG sacrificed its critical strike chance and attack speed: the critical strike chance is 0%, and it only attacks 1.40 times per second.
However, these trade-offs can be effectively compensated for by the talent tree and affixes. If you lack the currency needed to repair affixes, you can also directly buy cheap PoE 2 currency from PoEcurrency.com; we offer the best service and the fairest prices.
Nightfall
Next is another unique addition to PoE 2 Patch 0.5.0 Return of the Ancients – Nightfall, a shield that combines mobility and damage. Specifically:
Basic Attributes
Nightfall belongs to Fortress Tower Shield base type, possessing a default block chance of approximately 26% and 909 armor points.
PoEcurrency speculates that Nightfall’s armor value, after adjusting affixes with PoE2 currency, might reach 1200 or even over 1300, which is truly impressive and reassuring.
However, it has a high strength requirement for the user – a base requirement of 249 points, which becomes even more stringent when using skills. This means it’s a shield more suitable for melee or tank classes; if your character’s strength is low, you cannot use it.
Core Skill
What PoE 2 players are most excited about regarding Nightfall is its core skill – Soaring Midnight. This skill has two phases: Shield Throw and Embrace The Fall.
Specifically, during Shield Throw phase, your character throws their shield forward, sending it hurtling like a boomerang and dealing physical damage based on the shield’s armor value to enemies in its path. The shield also has 3 piercing attacks by default, allowing it to pass through multiple enemies at once for area-of-effect damage.
While the shield is in flight, Soaring Midnight skill icon temporarily changes to Embrace The Fall. Pressing the skill button will initiate Embrace The Fall phase.
Then, your character is instantly teleported to the shield’s current location and slams into the ground, causing a large-scale explosion. This mechanic combines movement, area-of-effect damage, and single-target burst damage, creating a visually stunning effect.
Skill Cooldown Reset
For PoE 2 game balance, GGG has set a 4-second cooldown for Nightfall’s Soaring Midnight skill. However, the equipment design provides two ways to directly reset the cooldown and immediately reuse the skill:
First, if you don’t actively use Embrace The Fall after throwing Nightfall, but instead let the shield fly back to your hand naturally, the skill’s cooldown will be completely reset, allowing you to use it again immediately.
Second, the skill description explicitly states that if the explosion of Embrace The Fall destroys an Ice Crystal, the cooldown will also be reset. This means players can combine it with Frost Wall or other skills that can generate Ice Crystals, artificially creating Ice Crystals and then using the explosion of Embrace The Fall to destroy them, thus achieving infinite skill usage.
This concludes PoEcurrency’s detailed introduction to two new Uniques added in PoE 2 Patch 0.5.0 Return of the Ancients. We hope this information is helpful!