Path of the Ascended: Perfected 2.1

The Ascendancy & Equipment Progression Expansion

Perfected 2.1 is a major progression update, bringing six dedicated Ascendancy Trees, 72 ability Augments, new Core Keystones, and a complete overhaul of class equipment upgrades. It also includes Zenith balancing, quest and Codex improvements, new utility mods, interface updates, and a substantial round of fixes and cleanup.

Ascendancy & Skill Tree Expansion

Six Ascendancy Trees

• The six Ascendancy Hubs now sit near the Passive Tree's starting roots, making their progression easier to follow.
• Invest 50 Passive Points to become eligible to unlock a Hub, then spend 5 additional points to access it.
• Each Hub offers six specialisations, for 36 Ascendancies in total. Your initial Ascendancy choice is free. Committing to a path locks the other five Trees until you reset at the Waters of Lethe.
• The Hubs have new names, colours, lore and clearer tooltips: The Sovereign Arcanum, The Unbroken Bastion, The Bloodforged Vanguard, The Farshot Covenant, The Windstrider's Path, and The Dawnkeeper's Grace.

Ascendancy Levels & 72 Augments

Ascendancies now earn their own XP through combat, independently of the regular Passive Tree. The first three progression thresholds are 2,500, 5,000, and 10,000 Ascendancy XP.

As you advance, you unlock a choice of major stat bonus, a shared bonus, and a choice of two unique Augments for your signature ability. Across 36 Ascendancies, that's 72 new Augments introducing extra effects, targets and interactions. Each Ascendancy's two Augments are mutually exclusive, allowing different builds to specialise in different ways.

Three New Core Keystones

• Concentrated Wisdom: Spellcasting activates bonuses to Spell Power, Healing Power and Mana Regeneration.
• Tempered Might: Melee combat activates bonuses to Melee Damage, Armour and Stamina Regeneration.
• Honed Instinct: Ranged attacks and Combat Rolls activate bonuses to Ranged Damage, Roll Recharge and Movement Speed.

There are now 27 Keystones available, with a maximum of four allocated at once.

New Build Summary Addon

Use /buildsummary pota:class_tree to view your permanent attribute bonuses from allocated Passive Tree nodes, without mixing in temporary effects from equipment, potions or abilities.

Armour & Weapon Progression

Overworld Upgrade Smithing Template

Your carefully customised equipment can now grow with your character. Upgrade gear at a Smithing Table using the new Overworld Upgrade Smithing Template and the appropriate material, while preserving applicable Zenith affixes, socketed Gems, enchantments and other item data.

• Find templates in selected Tier 2 and Tier 3 Overworld structures; harder challenges offer better odds. Ordinary starter and village-house chests do not contain them.
• The final reward chest of a Battle Tower is guaranteed to contain a template, including the equivalent final chest in underground towers.
• Duplicate a discovered template using 7 Diamonds and Cobblestone, producing two templates.

76 Armour Upgrades

All 19 Tier 2 class armour sets can now be obtained by upgrading their Tier 1 counterparts with class-specific materials. This includes specialist Archer, Berserker, Wizard, Paladin, Rogue and Death Knight armour paths. Existing Tier 3 Netherite progression remains intact.

33 Weapon Upgrades

• Upgrade class melee weapons from Iron to Diamond, including Runeblades and other specialist weapons.
• Branch into specialist bows and crossbows, including the Mechanic Shortbow, Royal Longbow, Rapid Crossbow and Heavy Crossbow.
• Upgrade elemental Wands and Staves into Aqua, Terra and Wind specialisations.
• Progress through Holy and Diamond Holy equipment, or pursue Arcane, Fire and Frost Wizard paths.

The Initiate Runeblade now uses regular crafting. The Wizard Staff uses Amethyst instead of Quartz, and the Frost Staff upgrade uses a Snow Block.

LevelZ Smithing Requirements

The new upgrades use Smithing level requirements rather than direct-crafting requirements, aligned numerically with each item's existing equipment-use requirement. Equip restrictions and unrelated progression rules are preserved.

Zenith, Gems & Combat Balance

Zenith Affix Improvements

• Rebalanced weapon attribute affixes across one-handed and heavier weapons.
• Removed Knockback affixes from bows and crossbows while retaining suitable melee options.
• Corrected ranged affixes to provide flat Ranged Damage through ranged_weapon:damage.
• Improved selected affix names and descriptions.

Gem & Attribute Corrections

• Earth Gems now correctly grant flat Ranged Damage on bows and crossbows: +0.5 (Flawed), +0.75 (Normal), and +1.0 (Flawless).
• Slipstream Gems now grant Healing Power alongside Water Spell Power on weapons, scaling with gem quality and weapon category.
• Corrected Ranged Damage attributes on four Passive Tree rewards and five Ranged Ascendancy rewards, preserving their existing scaling.

Gameplay & Equipment Fixes

• Retired six redundant Stone combat weapons: Stone Sword, Berserker Axe, Double Axe, Claymore, Great Hammer and Knuckle. Their crafting recipes and remaining references in mob equipment, quest rewards, bounty rewards, trades and affected loot have been cleaned up. Stone utility tools remain available.
• Added PotA Offhand Guard to prevent certain right-click spellcasting interactions with two-handed weapons from deleting offhand equipment.
• Frayed Backpacks now upgrade from a Baby Backpack surrounded by eight Leather.
• Raised the LevelZ Mining requirement for Gold Ores and Gold Blocks to level 20, matching Iron Pickaxe progression.

Quests, Codex & Interface

Kaelen's Journal

• Reviewed 204 quests across 20 chapters, adding 217 useful Codex references, fixing broken links and improving descriptions.
• Updated 33 equipment quest descriptions to explain the new smithing progression and corrected the remaining Codex references.
• Added an optional guided introduction that automatically tracks the first 10 survival quests for players who opt in, without replacing manually tracked quests.
• Reduced item-quest detection delay from 20 ticks to 10 ticks, so objectives register more quickly.
• Added animated 3D mob previews to supported combat objectives, including Repeatable Jobs and the Twelve-Fold Seal, through FTB Quests Entity Visualization.

Cleaner Quest Rewards

• Removed 497 repetitive quest chat messages, retaining 24 important story, discovery and tutorial messages.
• Updated 588 Game Stage rewards to grant stages silently and automatically, without cluttering chat with command notifications. Other command rewards remain intact.

Induran Codex

Expanded the original in-game Codex with accessible explanations of equipment upgrading, Ascendancy Augments, procedurally generated enemy variants, HUD indicators, spellcasting and storage utilities. Kaelen's Journal still guides objectives, while EMI handles individual recipes.

HUD & User Interface

• Expanded Ascendancy and Keystone HUD feedback, including the three new Core Keystones, active effects, charges and cooldowns.
• Enemy health bars now display above enemies for improved readability, especially at range.
• Hidden 927 obsolete EMI Anvil Repairing recipe entries. Anvils still work for renaming equipment.
• Added Ashen + Inmis GUI, matching backpack screens to the Ashen 16x visual style.
• Re-enabled Mouse Tweaks wheel features and refreshed default keybinds.

Thanks to Aim_Boot for permission to adapt Ashen artwork, and to Draylar and the Inmis contributors.

New Mods & Updates

Actually QuickStack

Replaced Quick Stack to Nearby Chests with Actually QuickStack, featuring:

• Quick Stack: Send matching items to eligible nearby containers.
• Restock: Refill inventory items from nearby storage.
• Support for Inmis backpacks, selected modded containers, configurable storage whitelists, and optional audio/visual feedback.

Other Additions & Updates

• Realistic Bees: Smaller bees and more bees per hive.
• REMI and Streams Reflowing: Performance improvements and general fixes.
• Runic Attunement: Improved enchantment tooltips for Tablets and the Attunement Table, plus Jade support for Tablets in Chiseled Bookshelves.
• Weapon Enchantment Compat: Expanded Rune Axe enchantment compatibility.
• Serilum mods: Maintenance updates and Realistic Bees support.
• SlashLoot: Fixes for repeated chest-opening animations, sounds and persistence issues. Thanks to slashdaemon for the quick fixes!

Technical Improvements

• Consolidated 109 armour and weapon smithing recipes and template duplication in PAXI, while retaining KubeJS for custom items and gameplay scripting.
• Removed duplicate recipe registrations and superseded Tier 2 direct-crafting routes.
• Kept loot, progression, compatibility and world-generation datapacks organised separately, preserving existing reward balancing outside the targeted changes.
• Cleaned up obsolete stone weapon references across pack systems.

Feedback & Bug Reports

If you encounter an issue, please report it in the appropriate Discord bug-report channel. Include the equipment, Ascendancy or Augment involved and steps to reproduce the problem when possible.

Thanks for playing Path of the Ascended: Perfected 2.1!