Grinding Gear Games spoiled one of the Shadow’s ascendancy mechanics during the Path of Exile 2 developer Q&A at ExileCon 2026. The Infiltrator, one of the two ascendancies the new class launches with on December 11, can take a node that places a totem shaped like a machine of turning cogs. Traps thrown inside its large radius cannot go off when monsters walk near them. Instead, the totem pulses, and every pulse detonates every trap in range in the order it was placed. Several totems can be down at once. “It’s just this field of absolute explosions everywhere,” the developer said, adding that it was left out of the trailer because it dragged down the frame rate.
The answers also filled in how stealth works. Monsters have detection rings sized to the monster; step inside one and a vision cone starts to grow, and touching its red edge breaks stealth. In practice, the developers said, most players will dash in from outside the cones. Cooldowns freeze while in stealth, but entering stealth adds one charge to each equipped trap, so the trap loop feeds itself. Most skills break stealth, with exceptions such as a silent war cry.
Players who want only traps can skip daggers entirely: a Detonate skill sets traps off from stealth and spends Darkness to empower them, which the developers compared to a mine build. They also said the Shadow came together faster than any class GGG has made, with “the first thing we tried” working, and that a skill for blinking between shades was cut. Stealth for other classes is on the wish list, with a stealth archer Ranger named as one idea.
