How the ranked ladder actually works, how to unlock it, and the one mechanic most guides gloss over: why grinding Normal difficulty eventually stops earning you rank at all.
In SHort
Path of Glory is Mistfall Hunter’s ranked progression system, unlocked once your character hits Level 6. Unlike most extraction games, it doesn’t put you in a separate ranked queue – you simply toggle it on before a match and keep playing in the same matchmaking pool as everyone else.
You climb through seven tiers, from Duskborn up to Zenith, by extracting successfully, completing objectives, killing enemies, and hauling out valuable loot. Fail an extraction and you lose points instead. The twist worth knowing before you commit to grinding: Normal difficulty stops awarding rank points entirely once you reach Fateweaver I – from there on, climbing means stepping up to harder content.
The Long Version
What Path of Glory Actually Is
Path of Glory replaced the beta’s separate Hunt Ranking, Gylden Hunt, and Demon Hunt leaderboards with a single, unified ranked ladder at launch. The design choice that sets it apart from most competitive extraction games is that there’s no dedicated ranked queue sitting apart from casual play. Instead, you individually choose whether to enable Path of Glory before you deploy into a standard match – the underlying matchmaking pool doesn’t change either way.
That means a ranked player chasing points and a casual player just farming loot can end up in the exact same instance, playing with completely different priorities. It’s a low-friction way to add competitive stakes without splitting the player base into two separate games.
Unlocking Path of Glory
Good news first: there’s no separate quest chain, no hidden requirement buried in a menu, and no need to grind out some obscure achievement to earn your shot at the ranked ladder. Path of Glory simply switches on the moment your character crosses Level 6. No announcement, no fanfare – just a toggle that quietly becomes available where it wasn’t before.
What makes Level 6 worth paying attention to isn’t the ranked unlock alone, though — it’s what else happens at exactly the same threshold. This is also the level where the camp upgrade system opens up, and that’s not a coincidence. Together, these two systems mark the point where the game stops treating you like someone still figuring out the controls and starts expecting you to make real, ongoing decisions: what to invest your materials into, which camp facilities matter to your playstyle, and now, whether you’re ready to put your extractions under competitive pressure. Reaching Level 6 is less “you hit a number” and more “the training wheels come off across the board, all at once.”
That timing is worth sitting with for a second before you rush to flip the ranked switch on. A few things worth having in place first:
- A class you’re actually comfortable with, not just one you picked on day one and haven’t revisited. Ranked pressure has a way of magnifying every weakness in a build or playstyle you haven’t fully committed to.
- Basic map familiarity – extraction routes, common ambush points, where fights tend to concentrate. Path of Glory doesn’t care whether you’re still learning the map; a failed extraction costs the same points either way.
- A rough sense of your own risk tolerance. Some players climb fastest by playing conservatively and extracting often; others prefer to hunt aggressively and accept more variance. Neither is wrong, but you want to know which one you are before the ladder starts keeping score.
None of this is gatekeeping for its own sake – it’s simply that Path of Glory doesn’t offer a gentler on-ramp than the tier system itself provides (and even that, as covered above, only stays gentle for the first couple of tiers). Jumping in underleveled and under-practiced doesn’t get you a handicap or an easier bracket; it just means your first several ranked runs are more likely to end in the one thing the system actually punishes a failed extraction before you’ve had the chance to find your footing. Spend a little time getting comfortable first, and the toggle will still be waiting exactly where you left it.
The 7 Ranked Tiers
Path of Glory runs on a traditional tiered ladder, and unlike a lot of ranked systems that throw you into rank one and expect you to figure out the rest, Mistfall Hunter’s structure is refreshingly linear: seven tiers, one clear direction, and a visible reason to keep pushing at every stage. You start at the bottom not because you’re bad at the game, but because Duskborn is designed as the on-ramp, a place to get your first real taste of competitive stakes without the ladder punishing you for still learning the ropes.
Alongside this tier ladder sits a second, entirely separate system worth understanding: the Server-Wide Points Leaderboard. Where your tier reflects your current standing and can technically be climbed and re-climbed each season, the leaderboard tracks something more permanent — your account’s total accumulated points over time, regardless of what tier you’re currently sitting in. It’s less “where are you right now” and more “how much have you actually put into this game,” which makes it a better long-term bragging-rights metric for veteran players than the tier system alone.
The Silent Killer
The Fateweaver Wall rank Climb
Most guides mention that Path of Glory has seven tiers and move on. What they don’t tell you — and what’s genuinely worth knowing before you sink hours into ranked runs — is that the ladder isn’t uniform difficulty the whole way up. There’s a hard structural gate baked into the system, and it sits right in the middle of the climb, at exactly the point where a lot of players start to feel like they’ve got this ranked thing figured out.
Once you reach Fateweaver I, Normal difficulty stops granting rank points entirely. If you want to keep climbing past that point, you have to move up to higher-difficulty content. It’s a deliberate gate: the game is fine with you comfortably reaching the midpoint of the ladder on familiar ground, but reaching the top tiers means proving yourself against genuinely harder fights, not just repeating the same safe extractions you’ve already mastered.
Practically, this means the wall deserves some advance planning rather than a surprise discovery mid-climb:
- Treat approaching Fateweaver as a checkpoint, not a finish line. If your gear, build, and confidence aren’t ready for higher-difficulty maps by the time you’re closing in on this tier, your climb will stall regardless of how many more Normal runs you queue into.
- Start testing harder difficulty before you strictly need to. There’s no rule saying you have to wait until you’ve hit the wall to try it getting a feel for the jump in enemy density, boss behavior, and player skill level ahead of time means you won’t be learning two things at once (a new tier and a new difficulty) under ranked pressure.
- Don’t panic if your first few harder-difficulty runs go worse than your comfortable Normal extractions did. That’s expected you’re facing genuinely tougher content, and the drop in your success rate is a normal part of the adjustment, not a sign you’ve hit your ceiling.
The players who get stuck circling Fateweaver aren’t usually worse at the game than the ones who push through they’ve often just kept doing what worked for the first half of the ladder, not realizing the rules quietly changed underneath them.
Ranked Points
How You Actually Earn (and Lose) Points
Consistency beats aggression here, a clean extraction with modest loot is worth more to your rank, long-term, than a spectacular run that ends in death.
| Action | Effect on Rank |
|---|---|
| Successful extraction | Awards points – the foundation of all ranked progress |
| Completed objectives / tasks | Awards points on top of your extraction |
| Enemy and monster kills | Awards points |
| Valuable loot secured | Awards points based on what you actually bring home |
| Failed extraction (death) | Deducts points – the only real penalty in the system |
There’s also a cap on how many points you can earn in a single match, which scales with your current tier. Early on, that cap keeps a single lucky run from catapulting you up several ranks overnight – you’re expected to climb through repeated, consistent extractions rather than one exceptional one.
Winning Strategy
PRO Tips for Fast Rank Climb
Prioritize extraction over greed
Since failed extractions are the only real point penalty, a modest but successful run beats a loot-heavy run that ends in death almost every time.
Don’t enable Path of Glory before you’re ready
Get comfortable with your class and basic map routes first — the ranked toggle adds pressure, not training wheels.
Plan for the Fateweaver wall in advance
If your gear and confidence aren’t ready for higher-difficulty content by the time you approach Fateweaver I, your climb will stall regardless of how many Normal runs you queue.
Treat the per-match point cap as a pacing tool, not a punishment
There’s no benefit to forcing a high-risk mega-run when the cap means you’ll gain the same rank from two clean, modest extractions.
Frequently Asked Questions
Path of Glory rewards the same thing the rest of Mistfall Hunter does – getting out alive, consistently, over chasing one perfect run.
Learn that early and the climb from Duskborn to Zenith takes care of itself.
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