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Dawn of the Hunt League, which launched a while ago in Path of Exile 2 Early Access, introduced a new reward mechanic called Unique Strongboxes. This mechanic was inherited from the original game, where it was originally just called Strongboxes.
So you can clearly see that the current Unique Strongboxes are special versions of Strongboxes, but they are also guarded by some larger group monsters. Although there are currently some treasure chests in POE 2 that can provide you with high-quality loot, Unique Strongboxes contain even more valuable items than some pinnacle bosses.
Given that the items awarded by Unique Strongboxes are so valuable, but the description of this mechanic in the game can be very confusing for all players, so this guide will give you an introduction to it, including the types of Unique Strongboxes and their specific potency, so that you can farm them specifically and use the rewards from them to enhance your own builds.
In POE 2 Dawn of the Hunt league, you will find four Unique Strongboxes:
Each of them offers you some rewards that cover all aspects of the game, such as rare currency, buffs to the monsters you challenge, and gear. It should be noted here that some Unique Strongboxes are guarded by higher-level monsters, so you need to prepare a strong enough build in advance to fight them.
The easiest way to do this is to interact with the checkpoints along the path frequently during exploration so that you can buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade the rarity of gear that will provide you with offensive and defensive ability buffs and re-roll affixes to ensure that you always have the best current build.
Next, we should take a closer look at the specific effects of each Unique Strongbox.
The fact that this Unique Strongbox costs POE 2 Gold to open is a deterrent for many players, but it will cause them to miss out on a lot of valuable rewards. The first time you encounter it and open it, you need to pay 200 Gold, and your gold cost will increase with each subsequent exploration.
When you interact with the second Ventor’s Contraption Researcher’s Strongbox, you will be given a turntable with the gold increase rate, from 950% to 1050%. But you can rest assured that there are only 4 of this type of treasure chest in POE 2, so you only need to spend gold four times (up to 255,875).
After you open it, you will be surprised to find that most of the rewards are provided to you in Ventor’s Gamble, such as Scroll of Wisdom, Orb of Augmentation, Level 20 Skill Gems, Perfect Jeweler’s Orbs and even dozens of POE 2 Divine Orbs.
It should be noted here that the rewards and the amount of gold coins spent in this Strongbox are completely random, so this does not mean that the more gold coins you spend, the better your rewards will be, but it is worth affirming that it will definitely cost less than gambling.
This Strongbox is guarded by a group of monsters called aberrations of chaos. They usually appear in the form of waves, about 30-40 waves, and you can only open it if you clear them all, which is basically the same as the operation of a regular safe.
Among them, there will be a Corrupted Unique item, in which the corruption will always exist in the form of Enchantment, which means that you cannot add affixes or slots to you. It is important to note that some exclusive unique items that only drop after you defeat the boss cannot be found here.
This is probably one of the easiest Strongboxes to find in the game, as you can clearly see a monster’s corpse on top of the strongbox. After you open it, the monster will revive 3-6 times and drop some loot corresponding to its level and stats after you defeat it.
Note that this monster gains some additional modifiers each time it resurrects, so your combat strategy will need to change accordingly to ensure that you can complete the challenge of its last resurrection in one go and get the best rewards from it.
Additionally, all the bonus items you can get are dropped from this monster, so if you want higher value and quality loot, it is recommended that you use Waystones that increase the amount or quality of loot on the map node containing Ogham’s Legacy Large Strongbox, but this monster will also become more difficult to deal with.
Also Read: What Should You Know About Tame Beast In Path Of Exile 2?
It is guarded by some Festival Beetles and the small monsters it summons, which look similar to the large beetles in Act 2 The Lost City. They will shoot red lightning in the area around them and deal high damage to players in melee range.
According to the discussion in the player community about opening this treasure chest, you may have an easier time choosing classes that support ranged combat, such as Mercenary, Witch, and the newly added Huntress.
After you kill them all and open the strongbox, you will see that there are 5-7 Jewels in it, which will increase the rarity of your gear by 50% when equipped. Also note that items such as Against the Darkness that can only be obtained from boss loot will not appear in the loot table of this strongbox.
If you want to increase their frequency of appearing on the map, you can focus on activating the nodes in the lower left corner of Atlas’ passive skill tree. In addition, if you encounter a Strongbox but are not sure what it is, you can use Scroll of Wisdom to identify it before activating it, so that you can farm the items in it more strategically.
The above are the types of Unique Strongboxes currently included in POE 2 Dawn of the Hunt league and their specific effects. I hope they can bring more surprises into your POE 2 exploration process and make it easier for you to get the rewards you want. I wish you a happy game!
Apr 14, 2025
I believe that when POE 2 patch 0.2.0 was first released, you must have been overwhelmed by the rich new content and didn’t know where to start to experience and familiarize yourself with it. Both the new class and the new endgame mechanism are attractive and complex.
Therefore, in order to ensure that you have enough POE 2 Currency in the game as a rich material basis for trying new classes or endgames, fighting new enemy types may be a better idea! At least according to the known information, the mechanism of these encounter enemies is not difficult to understand, and the loot they can provide is also precious. These enemies are Azmerian Wisps and Rogue Exiles.
In fact, strictly speaking, Azmerian Wisps cannot be regarded as an enemy you can fight directly with. They appear as small balls of light in the game. When you get close to them, they will start to run away. During this time, they will continue to attract nearby monsters. If the monsters touch Azmerian Wisps in a certain way, they will give the monsters a buff effect.
If Azmerian Wisps affect rare and unique monsters, they will also possess them, not only making the monsters more powerful, but also allowing the monsters to periodically summon spirit animals of the same type to attack you together.
The reason you are recommended to trigger Azmerian Wisps as much as possible to start related battles is that the monsters possessed by them will drop better loot than usual after death, including a small probability of amulets of the same type. However, these monsters will also be more difficult to deal with, so you’d better buy POE 2 Currency in advance to roll better affix effects for your gear.
Fortunately, you don’t need to farm specifically in a specific area to find these creatures. They will appear randomly in most maps throughout the campaign, and the relevant NPC Delwyn will also help you track them. If you want to increase the chance of Azmerian Wisps appearing so you can get more loot in a short period, here are some tips to help:
Sacred Wisps are actually special Azmerian Wisps that can apply more unique effects to the monsters they affect. For example, Sacred Wisp of the Cunning Fox can upgrade normal monsters to magic monsters, magic monsters to rare monsters, and rare monsters to unique bosses - of course, as the rarity of the monsters increases, the loot you can get from them will also be better.
As the name of the game Path of Exile indicates, you, as a player, are actually an “exile”. After surviving the execution, you are always committed to using your own strength to defeat the evil forces and protect the justice and peace you cherish. So, have you ever thought that there may be a group of people with the same origin as you in the game? (Of course, this does not refer to other real players)
Whether you have thought about it or not, the development team of POE 2 has grasped this point and launched new endgame enemies Rogue Exiles in Dawn of the Hunt! They are the same as you, and even have the same skills, unique items and builds, but the only and dangerous difference is that they belong to your enemy camp.
Path of Exile 2 has a total of 12 Rogue Exiles, each with its own exclusive skills and items. When you encounter them and start a skirmish, the bottom of their health bar will show the unique items they are equipped with. You can decide whether to fight or avoid them based on your items and builds. After all, if the opponent is too strong, a rash challenge may cause losses.
But if you choose to fight, you will find that Rogue Exiles uses a very advanced and flexible movement mechanism, and can even dodge and roll while attacking you, just like you usually do in a skirmish. Considering that POE 2’s own PVP gameplay is not outstanding, you can completely think that the current Rogue Exiles skirmish is a better POE 2 PVP mode.
Unlike Azmerian Wisps, Rogue Exiles only appear in the endgame, so if you want to challenge them, you need to complete Act 1-3 first, and then complete them again in Cruel mode. After that, Rogue Exiles will be randomly generated in each endgame map. There is currently no way to increase the probability of their appearance. All you can do is walk around every corner of the map. As for the loot after killing Rogue Exiles, first of all, fortunately they will drop for sure, but you can’t be sure whether you will get magic gear or rare unique items in the end.
After our introduction, you should already know how to find and deal with these new enemy types. If your character level is strong enough to deal with them, try it out!
Apr 12, 2025
While Path of Exile 2 launched its latest Dawn of the Hunt league in early access, it also released a major patch, which greatly weakened the capabilities of some classes in combat and exploration. Grinding Gear Games called it to ensure fairness and equity for players in the game.
But in fact, this cliff-like weakening made players very disgusted, and also caused this update to rapidly reduce the praise of POE 2 on game platforms such as Steam and PlayStation, and many players threatened to give up this sequel that has been tormenting players again.
Under this pressure, the developer announced two days ago that an update would be released to comprehensively enhance the existing classes, such as increasing the gain or effectiveness of some skills, and made some quality of life changes based on player feedback on POE 2, such as reducing the speed of monster group generation.
While there’s no guarantee that the feedback-driven changes will get the loot-driven game back to where it was when it was released late last year, they will improve some builds and gameplay that players are familiar with, and may win back some of the player base. If you want to give POE 2 another chance, the content of this update will be the most powerful reason to convince yourself.
Many of the changes to classes in this update of POE 2 are about the enhancement of the very popular Sorceress, which is one of the more Intelligence-focused classes in the game. But in this update, its power has been greatly improved, so that you will have a better overall sense of balance when making Sorceress builds.
In the subsequent game process, as long as you choose a better build for it, Sorceress can still maintain high survivability while dealing a lot of damage, because Frostbolt projectile spell can double the radius of damage here, which is very effective in clearing maps or farming important loot and POE 2 Currency.
In addition, the strength of the first classes Warrior and Ranger and the newly added Huntress has also been enhanced. For example, the damage to Ranger’s Lightning Rod skill has been increased by 30%; and Warrior’s Shield Wall can be detonated by Warcries.
Next, we will introduce you to some changes you will feel in this update and what impact they will have on your exploration based on the announcement released by GGG.
Among the changes that Sorceress has, most of them are about skill enhancements. For example, Arc now causes a lightning explosion when you hit an enemy that has been affected by the shock status effect, instead of causing it to be affected by the shock status effect again. At the same time, this means that it no longer consumes the enemy’s shock status effect.
After this update, Eye of Winter will gain additional elemental damage when passing through other elemental spheres, such as Solar Orb, Orb of Storms or Frost Bomb, and the exposure time of Incinerate has been increased from 2 seconds to 8 seconds.
These are all enhancements to the fire element damage used by Sorceress, and the freezing element has also been greatly improved. In addition to the 50% increase in the explosion radius of Frostbolt, the cumulative freezing effect of Ice Nova has also been significantly improved, and the exposure time of Frost Bomb has also been increased from 5 seconds to 8 seconds.
Mana Tempest now works on all spells, splitting the improved spell across more targets instead of just chaining or branching. Mana remnants are also getting some changes, so you can now combine them with other elemental ailments, not just shock.
Although Huntress is a new class in the new Dawn of the Hunt league, it has also received some changes in this update, the most notable of which is that the spear that pierces the enemy when using Rapid Assault will cause 67% more damage when it explodes, and the range has been increased by 20%. On top of that, this skill will now always cause Bleeding damage.
Of course, this is just the basic stats that this skill can provide you. If you buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade the rarity and affixes of the spear you use, I think all the damage values or range radius here will become more deterrent. Combined with Parry’s ability to make enemies unable to avoid your attacks, your combat ability will be significantly improved.
Spearfield’s duration increased from 6 to 10 seconds, and now deals 30% more damage at level 20. You will no longer purge the bodies of Rares or Uniques enemies when using Herald of Blood, allowing you to use Ritual Sacrifice on them and gain more modifiers from them.
In the previous exploration of POE 2, players have always felt that Warrior only has brute force and strong survivability, and is not suitable for challenges with extremely high requirements for flexibility and combat ability. POE 2 patch 0.2.0 released some time ago temporarily fixed these defects and became the first choice of most players recently, but it was pushed into hell again in this update.
Temper Weapon skill owned by Ascendancy class Smith of Kitava, which you can now choose for Warrior, will add 3 empowerments for each attack with the weapon and increase the attack speed by 25%, but this cannot completely make you ignore the slight reduction in the damage ability of this skill.
In addition, Armor break effect applied to you by the monsters you challenge will no longer have the ability to provide you with an additional 20% physical damage modifier, and its duration has been reduced from 12 seconds to 4 seconds. This means that to ensure a strong output, you may need to spend more POE 2 Currency on gear that provides high physical damage buffs to your build.
Compared to the previous classes, Ranger has fewer changes, mainly focusing on skills that can cast lightning elemental damage, such as Stormcaller arrow’s ability to spread shock in a small area, and this radius increases by 50%.
At the same time, the arc attack radius of Lightning Arrow has been increased by 50% and the maximum shooting duration of Tornado Shots has been increased to 15 seconds. Based on this update, it is safe to assume that Ranger build focusing on Lightning Arrow and Lightning Rod skill set will definitely become the choice of many players in the future game progress.
In addition to these focused buffs to the classes, there are some other updates, such as a new support gem called Inhibitor, which prevents you from spending charges and increases the damage enemies take from this support skill by 4% for each charge you add.
Additionally, the duration of Delirium encounters has been extended by nearly 2.5 times, which may be stressful for some players. In terms of crafting within POE 2, you will find more Artificers Orbs in some locations during the completion of the campaign, as well as some attribute runes, so that you can solve some leveling requirements in early exploration.
In terms of quality of life, rare items will now be visible on your mini-map to help you farm them faster in the endgame, and Matlan Waterways have also received some improvements, with some waterways being merged together, reducing the average number of levers you encounter in them by 6.
The above is the specific information of the first major update launched by the current POE 2 Early Access after the release of the new Dawn of the Hunt League. In fact, these updates are the strongest evidence that GGG has listened carefully to the feedback of players about this major nerf and responded as quickly as possible, but it is unknown whether it can continue to stick to it. I wish you a happy game!
Apr 11, 2025
In the latest Dawn of The Hunt League released in Path of Exile 2 Early Access, the new Huntress class has become the center of discussion among players. This is a very powerful class that can use powerful projectile and melee skills to deal super damage, and has the opportunity to trigger effects, bleeding, and elemental ailments.
However, it is worth mentioning that Huntress is more difficult to get started with than the existing classes in POE 2, because the combination of buffs and attribute abilities you need to choose for it requires a lot of consideration, but the benefits it can bring you are worth spending some time and effort on it.
In order to maximize the maximum clearing and leveling effectiveness of this new Huntress class, this guide will introduce you to some skills that can be used in builds that can quickly clear maps or farm, as well as some usage tips during combat.
As mentioned above, Huntress relies on the 3 basic elemental ailments that can be triggered to cause super high damage in battle, so you should prioritize and upgrade these skills that can be triggered.
In addition, you should also pay special attention to those skills that can cast Blinding and Bleeding effects, which are very important to the core mechanism of the entire build. The following are some Huntress leveling skills that can be recommended to you.
This is the basic skill of Round Shields equipped by Huntress class. It can deflect the enemy’s next attack and change the direction of attack to ensure its own survivability.
But be careful, if you keep holding this skill, your character will be dizzy, which may be detrimental to the casting of other skills with offensive capabilities.
As the name suggests, this skill is a skill that allows you to throw the spear weapon in the build. If Huntress has Frenzy charge, the thrown spear will have the ability to explode automatically.
Of course, the explosion damage it produces is related to the rarity and affixes of the spear you are equipped with, so you should buy POE 2 Currency as much as possible to upgrade and optimize the spear you are using before using this skill.
This skill gave many players a surprise when it first appeared in the livestream of the content about Dawn of The Hunt. It creates a rotating storm around Huntress, rendering enemies who enter the storm unable to discern their direction.
This Whirling Slash can be activated three times in a row. As long as your character does not move to the center of the storm, it will always exist to cause a larger storm with higher damage.
In addition, you can also add some elemental effects to this storm, such as fire, frost, or lightning, which will increase its own damage ability and cause corresponding elemental damage. So when casting this skill, it is best to combine it with the environment of the arena, enemy attack moves, projectiles and Twister Skill, which will give you a surprise.
After you cast this Twister skill, your Huntress swings her spear vigorously, creating a gust of wind that moves randomly and bounces off everything.
Upon hitting an enemy, it will blind them and take heavy damage, so you can cast it again in combat while inside a gust of wind, which will create two gusts of wind and deal double the damage.
Or you can cast it during a powered-up Whirling Slash, which will create more gusts of wind (up to five times). In this case, Twister can absorb some of the elemental damage from Whirling Slash, turning it into Ice, Fire, or Lightning Twisters.
Since Huntress is a class that can attack both ranged and melee, Disengage is a must-have for those who need to clear complex maps with multiple types of enemies.
Not only that, it also launches a potential attack on enemies affected by Deflect, and gains you a Frenzy charge to increase the damage of Spear Throw skill.
After casting this skill, your character dashes forward a distance, dealing super high damage and causing bleeding to enemies in a semicircle, which is very useful for clearing maps with a lot of single-target, but low-level enemies.
While this skill also causes Huntress to dash forward, it can kill enemies within range that have a damage threshold below a certain value, which is increased by skill level, equipped support gems, etc., and gain Frenzy Charge, which increases the damage capacity of some spear skills.
These basic skill gems will be your main focus during the leveling phase. If you can combine them properly and practice skill rotation, you can create a Huntress build that is most suitable for leveling.
For the support gems needed for these skills, the best choice is Skill Duration, which will effectively extend Twister and Elemental attack effects, such as the continuous fire damage effect of Explosive Spear. In addition, Elemental Damage support gem that can provide an additional 25% elemental damage is also worth your attention.
In fact, there are a lot of tips on using these skills in the introduction of skills. The most important one is to use those basic elemental skills to cause higher damage. For example, maximizing the elemental interaction of Twister and Whirling Slash will create an enormous range elemental effect and clear groups of enemies very efficiently.
What’s more, you should also invest as much POE 2 Currency as possible in Elemental Damage and Ailment Threshold, which will significantly increase your total damage output and the ability to clear groups of enemies.
In the face of more challenging boss encounters, you may need to modify your build slightly before the battle to enhance its survivability and defense capabilities. Or you can also use the kiting combat technique in the battle so that you can flexibly resist some of their damage and enter the endgame safely.
The above are some of the most suitable skill selections and usage tips for Huntress leveling in the current POE 2 Early Access Dawn of The Hunt League. I hope you can cut these skill gems with great effectiveness through Uncut Skills Gems as soon as possible, and use them to smoothly and happily pass this stage and enter the more challenging endgame content. I wish you a happy game!
Apr 10, 2025
With Path of Exile 2’s comprehensive balance adjustment of all game content in the recent league Dawn of the Hunt, the mode and leveling experience of players in the endgame have been greatly changed, and some of the previously popular endgame builds have been greatly weakened.
Although the main purpose of this adjustment is to break the current unbalanced environment in the endgame and to improve the feasibility of other builds, many players are still unacceptable to this cliff-like weakening, and they want this trend to be a gentle trend.
But this does not mean that many players have left the game because of this. On the contrary, they have begun to work hard to test out new builds that can help them quickly and efficiently pass the challenges of the endgame content and can quickly farm.
In order to reduce your time and energy cost in finding the best endgame build in POE 2, this guide will list several best builds that have been tested by many players in the endgame. You can make corresponding choices according to your favorite game style.
This Warrior build is a great combination of Shockwave and Ancestral Warrior Totems that can deal huge and high range damage, making it perfect for fighting groups of enemies and farming loot and experience in some low-level maps.
In addition, most of the damage you deal when using this build comes from Rage accumulated by Mace Strike, so you only need to buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade the rarity and affixes of this one-handed weapon during the construction process, and you can gain super combat capabilities.
For the passive skills you can choose, Scavenged Plating and Time of Need are necessary. Hammer of the Gods can be used when you face some single enemies that can stun you, such as bosses, because you can provide some combat capabilities to your build while taking this kind of extra damage.
After you build Shockwave Totem Warrior, you will find that it is very easy to use in the later content of POE 2, because it does not require you to engage in very strong melee combat with the enemy, but relies on the range damage skills of Totems to clear the enemy at one time, so that you can quickly farm.
By the way, after the latest POE 2 Patch 0.2.0, Cultist Greathammer is actually a necessary condition for the effective use of the two combat skills Mace Strike and Armor Breaker, and Scavenged Plating plays other roles through this collaboration.
If you prefer to defeat groups or single enemies while moving, then the Explosive Shot Mercenary build will be one of your better choices. The core of this build is that you will trigger three Herald skills while using Explosive Shot, and cause enormous range elemental damage to monsters.
When you are facing a single target enemy, you can switch to using Shockburst Rounds to trigger Shock with Explosive Shot, which will make Shockburst Rounds consume the enemy’s remaining health more quickly.
But here you need to be reminded that in order to make this build have the best effect, The Three Dragons unique helm is necessary, which will make Explosive Shot accumulate shock effects instead of simply igniting.
However, the drop rate of this Unique in the campaign is very small. You can try to trade it with in-game vendors or other players by spending POE 2 Currency. In terms of Ascendancy class selection, Witchhunter is the first choice for this build because it can provide you with defense gains such as clearing strikes and magic wards.
Read More: Should You Start A New Character In Path Of Exile 2 Dawn Of The Hunt?
Generally speaking, the classes with super farming and clearing capabilities in the endgame are mainly ranged combat classes, so the Witch build that can summon minions is also one of the best endgame builds you can try.
In this build, you will mainly rely on the high crit rate provided by all gear to deal huge damage to single-target enemies, while also having a very high maximum health to make full use of some buffs provided by Blood Mage after passing the trial.
In combat, you will first use Bonestorm and Bone Cage against lower-level monsters. If their health is high, you can try to put Bone Blast in the skill rotation, which will cause higher damage to elite monsters.
This Life Remnants skill provided by Blood Mage ascendancy requires you to constantly clear groups of enemies to ensure that you always have corpses or debris in front of you to maintain your survivability.
Here is a reminder that it is not recommended to choose this ascendancy too early, and if you need to offset the life consumption of the skill brought by it, you should wait until you have 4 ascendancy points before choosing it.
Since most of the damage of Bonestorm Witch build comes from the base damage provided by the skill gems you choose, the synergy of support gems and high critical strike rate in gear, you should invest as much POE 2 Currency as possible in it during the build process to get more output damage.
The above are some of the most worthwhile endgame builds that can help you farm and clear the level quickly in Path of Exile 2 Dawn of the Hunt league. I hope you can find the most suitable build for you among them. We will also keep track of other useful builds and their skills and gear choices. I wish you a happy game!
Apr 09, 2025
Last week, Path of Exile 2 Early Access, which has been at the forefront of the storm since its release, released a major update Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt, which added a lot of new game content, such as the new Huntress class, new Ascendancies and a large amount of new endgame content, and most importantly, brought a new league to players.
While adding these new additions to the game, Grinding Gear Games also weakened some of the original classes, skills and gains in order to ensure fairness and justice in the game. The purpose is to bring the thrilling movie-like campaigns of POE 2 to a wider audience and promote the release of its own 1.0 full version.
In this case, some builds that are frequently used by players in the three months after the release will also be affected by the weakening. This guide will show you which builds will no longer be strong in the new leagues after this POE 2 Patch 0.2.0, and which previously unremarkable builds will become more prominent, so that you can make it easier in the future.
We will start with the general adjustments. Now you are more vulnerable to freeze and shock ailments in combat, but it takes longer to accumulate and stack when you inflict this damage type on the enemy. In addition, when you are hit by an enemy attack that causes heavy stuns, the duration you suffer will be tripled and cannot be blocked or dodged.
So, in most cases, you will definitely die if you are hit by such an attack. The only way to get out of this situation is to buy POE 2 Currency to enhance your mobility and defense before the battle to ensure that you can successfully pass this painful stage.
Not only that, the base duration of Endurance, Frenzy, and Power Charges has been reduced from 20 seconds to 15 seconds, which means that you will have a harder time stacking them during combat and casting higher damage capabilities.
Skills that provide buffs to allies around you also have a significant reduction in radius of presence, which you can see visually change by hovering over the relevant skills.
A look at some of the changes made to POE 2’s massive passive skill tree: the twelve Jewel sockets that could provide you with some big buffs in the endgame have all been removed, making the more difficult game content more challenging.
Note that you can use the command /reclaimjewels in the chat interface with other players to retrieve all the gems you have equipped. Meanwhile, the previously popular Eldritch Battery Keystone, which converts energy shields into mana, will greatly increase your mana consumption during combat, making its usable value much lower.
The nerfs to the passive skill nodes of Falcon Technique, Master Fletching and Spaghettification will also have a big impact on the current player’s build, more or less reducing their own offensive and defensive capabilities.
In addition to the usual minor tweaks above, there are some changes that have a direct impact, such as Archmage being severely nerfed and the number of projectiles produced by Spark being greatly reduced, so builds that used to be efficient at clearing endgame maps with these two skill gems in previous game content may have a problem surviving in the new Dawn of the Hunt league.
Flame Wall, one of the players’ favorite auxiliary skill gems before, has now received a significant nerf in the additional damage caused by the projectiles fired when traversing high-level maps. Therefore, many players reasonably suspect that it may be more suitable for leveling builds after Patch 0.2.0, rather than endgame builds.
Decompose skill, which you can get from Corpsewade unique boots, now deals much less poison damage than before, and the range of damage is also reduced.
Additionally, the skills that summon Minions have been significantly impacted: they now deal more damage and have more health when facing higher-level enemies, which means they may not be viable enough to support you through endgame content.
Changes to skills like Cast on Minion Death will significantly hurt the combat power players get when using a Summon Raging Spirits build, as it generates less Spirit each time it is cast, and our skill casting speed and frequency will also be negatively affected.
What’s more, Scepters can now only increase all Levels of all Minion Skills by 4 levels, which is a lot less than the previous maximum. On top of that, the quality of these skills will no longer be multiplied by the amount of Spirit they can provide, which will make builds using minions much less capable of endgame expansion.
The above are some of the nerfs made to the existing game content in the current POE 2 Early Access Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt released some time ago. At the same time, we will keep tracking some skills, gems or builds worth trying after the patch is released.
Although the original intention of this change is to promote the fair and just game that players feel in it, judging from the comments on some player communities and social platforms, players want the adjustment to be as a smooth curve, which will give every player enough opportunities to explore Atlas in depth, rather than this cliff-like change. I wish you a happy game!
Apr 08, 2025
The biggest news in the gaming world recently is that the much-anticipated Path of Exile 2 Early Access has launched its first major update, Dawn of the Hunt, which brings a lot of new game content to players, such as the new class Huntress and a whole set of new skill gems built for it.
This latest addition, Huntress is based on agility and excels at using a spear and a small shield as its weapons. Its position on the passive skill tree of POE 2 is the same as the recently redesigned Ranger, but Huntress will play more of a role in initiating attacks and retreating at the end of the battle, as it can switch between melee and ranged attacks at will.
For players who want to build a spear-based Huntress, there are many new skills to consider. Huntress has multiple build specification options, even sticking with spear skills, elemental options such as Lightning Spear, melee bleed skills such as Slash, and many heavy stun-related skills that work with Huntress’s blocking mechanism. For those who don’t know what to choose first, these are the best spear skills added to Path of Exile 2’s Dawn of the Hunt.
If you’re trying to make a Huntress build based on the newly added spear skills, you might be overwhelmed by the variety of skills. To help you find the most powerful spear skills in the current patch faster, this guide will introduce you to the best spear skills in POE 2 at the moment, and you can choose to accord with your play style.
First up is the highest-damaging skill you can cast with a spear in POE 2, but it’s obtained by Level 13 Uncut Skill Gem, and you may have to put a lot of effort into farming skill gems at this level.
But when you equip it in your build and cast it, you’ll see the glory value below the enemy’s health constantly increase when you hit the enemy hard. But you will also see your mana decreasing, so remember to buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade the gear that can provide you with continuous mana before equipping it.
Since the Huntress is equipped with a block that can easily apply heavy attacks, this skill will give you a powerful nuclear bomb in the second half of the battle to end the boss you are facing.
Compared to Spear of Solaris, Thunderous Leap is easier to obtain because it only requires a Level 9 Uncut Skill Gem. But the pole-vaulting movement skill it gives you will save you a lot of time exploring the map.
Not only that, for players who want to focus their Huntress build on elemental damage, the high attack value and lightning damage conversion brought by Thunderous Leap are already very prominent, plus the exploration practicality it provides, it must be one of the most important skills in your early game content.
Bleeding is the ultimate damage ability for players, both in the original game and in the sequel that is currently in the limelight. And for Huntress builds, Bloodhunt at Level 7 will let you focus on this.
This attack is essentially a powerful thrust, but when it hits an enemy that is bleeding, it will cause a blood explosion, causing additional damage and increasing the enemy’s bleeding damage.
Of course, the damage caused by this skill will be more effective when facing groups of enemies, so you can use it as an important helper to farm POE 2 Currency and other loot on low-level maps in the subsequent game process.
In the current POE 2, Barrage is a skill that is applicable to both spears and bows. Although its item description is very confusing, just think of it as a ranged skill enhancer.
The effect is that after casting Barrage, you can cast any ranged skill again to fire multiple projectiles, twice by default. If you have frenzy charges, you can repeat this multiple times.
Although the damage of these repeated projectiles from Level 5 Barrage is 50% less than the original attack, it is easier to accept if you think of it as free extra damage from these ranged attacks.
In addition to Thunderous Leap, players who want to focus on elemental damage with Huntress have another skill option - Storm Lance, which can stab charged spears into the ground. They periodically attack nearby enemies and explode after the duration expires, causing shock damage to the ground.
Similar to the previous skill gem, Storm Lance as a Level 5 skill gem will also make your early exploration of POE 2 easier, because it can continuously deal super-strong attack damage to the entire area and specific targeted enemies.
The above are the top five spear skills and their specific effectiveness in the current POE 2 Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt that can provide powerful combat or exploration capabilities for Huntress builds. I hope that with the help of these skills, you can more easily explore POE 2, which has undergone a major update, and stay ahead in the new league. I wish you a happy game!
Apr 07, 2025
It has been confirmed that Path of Exile 2 Early Access will release the latest Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt on April 4, which will bring a lot of new game content to players, and the most exciting one may be the addition of an Ascendancy class to the existing 3 classes.
It is worth introducing you to the new Warrior Ascendancy class, Smith of Kitava, which brings some truly fascinating abilities and functions to this character with super survivability and damage capabilities, such as you can create a custom powerful armor for yourself based on the position you choose this class, but the premise is that you already have a Normal body armor with a white description in your build.
This is very beneficial for players who want to use super survivability to challenge and succeed in a onetime challenge in a more difficult encounter. If you are one of these players, you will be very interested in this guide to the passive skills in Smith of Kitava Ascendancy, as this will determine what kind of play style you will explore in POE 2.
Compared to Warrior’s two existing Ascendancy classes, Warbringer and Titan, Smith of Kitava is overall more powerful because of his passive skills that can provide you with additional resistances based on the resistances you stack for him in your build.
For example, Coal Stoke can modify your build’s fire resistance on the one hand, and on the other hand provide you with 50% of its value of cold or lightning resistance. With Forged in Flame activated, your maximum resistance will also have the same buff.
So without worrying about defensive capabilities, you can buy POE 2 Currency as much as you want to upgrade gear that can provide you with super high damage capabilities, so as to create a build with excellent offensive and defensive capabilities.
In addition, Smith of Kitava Ascendancy also has the ability to summon weapons, cause huge fire damage explosions, and increase the damage of minions, which can only be seen with Raging Spirits Gem in the previous Warrior build.
From the current trailer of the passive skill tree of Smith of Kitava Ascendancy, its shape is unique and seems to be only biased to one side. As its name suggests, all of its passive skills can enhance weapons with its own craftsmanship and make an armor that increases all resistances, making it an excellent character for single-player exploration missions.
Currently, POE 2 has only released unlockable passive skill points on 4 branches. Here are their names and specific effects. You can activate them according to your play style. We will also continue to pay attention to any information released by the developers and update them in time.
Among the above passive skills, you may pay attention to the three additional skills granted by Fire Spell on Hit, Temper Weapon, and Manifest Weapon, which are also passive skills that you can activate when using Smith of Kitava.
Unfortunately, the specific effect of Fire Spell on Hit has not been announced yet. We can only know from its name that it should be a skill that can cast fire damage. As for Temper Weapon, it can make your attacks explode on impact, causing devastating AOE impact. Manifest Weapon can make an animated copy of your weapon to fight alongside you.
It is worth mentioning that after you choose this Ascendancy Class you will get a new skill for free, Smith’s Masterwork, which you can insert into your build at will. This skill will allow you to spend Ascendancy points on additional body armor passive skills, but it should be noted that you can only use Normal Body Armor when using this skill.
Below are some of the passive skill options you can equip Smith’s Masterwork with and some benefits it can provide to your armor. These skill nodes are not related to each other, so they cannot be considered a branch. You can choose the corresponding skill node based on your defense requirements.
The above is all the information we know about Smith of Kitava Ascendancy added in Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt, which was released on April 4th. There are still many specific character skills and functions in POE 2 that have not been announced. We can look forward to what new gaming experience GGG will bring to players in this major patch!
Apr 03, 2025
In a livestream hosted by GGG late last month about Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt update, the developers announced that five Ascendancies will be added on April 4th to allow players to create more builds and play styles. The most exciting for players who are used to hitting enemies with spells and dealing tremendous damage is the addition of a Lich Ascendancy Class with increased spell damage for Witch.
If you are very curious about this new playable character, this guide will introduce you to all the passive skills used by Lich from all the current trailers and developer statements, so that you can master the use of this class as soon as possible after the patch is released.
In POE 2, Lich Ascendancy will turn your character into a powerful undead with a lot of magical passive skills, such as Crystalline Phylactery, Eternal Life, and Rupture the Soul. And it will provide you with higher spell damage capabilities based on your mana.
Similar to Witch, Lich is also a class based on non-channeled spells, so when making and building it, you need to buy POE 2 Currency as much as possible and invest on gear that can provide more Energy Shield, so that you can use Curses to create higher damage capabilities.
According to some informed players, Lich will also have the ability to gain an additional Energy Shield in battle to apply an explosion to the enemy. If this can be achieved, it will have a significant advantage in dealing with group enemies, because it can both increase its own defense and successfully kill those groups of enemies.
From GGG’s livestream, Lich Ascendancy’s passive skill tree looks very much like a spider web, spreading from the top to the left and right. So here we will not list all the passive skill points you can unlock in a branching path, but divide them into left and right branches so that you can distinguish them better.
Here we need to remind you that Unholy Might is a buff effect that Lich can obtain, which can cast 30% of all the damage you can cast as additional chaos damage, which makes up for the lack of direct chaos damage in the current POE 2. The following are all the passive skill points that Lich has.
From the above passive skills, it can be concluded that before you choose Lich as your Ascendancy Class, you need to think about whether your mana and energy shield value can support you to complete all the campaigns and successfully challenge all the content in the endgame, because when your energy shield is insufficient, your mana will continue to deplete and it will be difficult to restore to a healthy level.
The above are some of the passive skill nodes of Lich Ascendancy that will be added to the current POE 2 Early Access Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt on April 4. At this stage, the beginning of this very strange passive skill tree has not revealed a bit, and we will continue to pay attention to it. Again, you need to really consider which passives are most important to their play style, and which passives will do the most damage to them so that you can have more fun with them.
Apr 02, 2025
Ever since the early access of Path of Exile 2, there have been numerous complaints about the endgame content, most notably that it lacks the depth of the original game. So on April 4, the developers will release the most significant patch since the release of POE 2, Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt, which aims to completely overhaul the endgame, introducing changes that are both substantive and meta-defining.
The changes we’ve seen so far include the introduction of some new endgame mechanics, the integration of campaign-related changes into the endgame, and major changes to existing mechanics in order to pursue deeper and more meaningful exploration. This guide will show you what new endgame mechanics will be available in patch 0.2.0 and how they work, so that you can explore further.
It’s worth mentioning here that in order to bridge the digital divide between the original and the sequel, there will be a lot of new endgame mechanics coming to POE 2 in Dawn of the Hunt, which indirectly prompted the developers to add 10 additional Atlas passive points for players to farm and grind.
The first new mechanic we need to introduce is Rogue Exiles, which look very similar to you will appear in maps with a lot of POE 2 Divine Orbs that you want to farm, as well as some super-powered Unique gloves.
According to the developers, there will be 12 Rogue Exiles when the patch is officially released, each with different item combinations and unique encounters. Rogue Exiles will use the same skills as you. For example, they can also do evasive rolling and can use very advanced pathing and enemy targeting mechanics. The gear used in the build is no exception, so this encounter is very challenging when they are equipped with Temporalis or Hands of Wisdom and Action.
For this kind of battle, you may want to equip as many gears as possible with higher damage or defense capabilities or buy POE 2 Currency to upgrade the rarity and roll affixes of the same gear to ensure that your combat capabilities are higher than these Rogue Exiles. After you successfully defeat them, the Uniques they are equipped with will become your loot.
Wildwood Wisps in POE have also been added to the sequel to a new name, now called Azmerian Wisps. These little wisps have a very huge impact. They have already appeared in Grelwood in Act 1 of the original game, and become one of the monsters that players must defeat in the endgame.
In POE 2, Azmerian Wisps appear randomly in zones and Waystones, and will infuse monsters in the current zone with additional powers, such as offensive and defensive abilities. When you get close to them, Wisps will fly faster to normal monsters and turn them into rare or unique monsters.
These possessed monsters have additional attacks, such as summoning spectral animals to finish the fight, so you need to be flexible enough in these encounters to get the increased quantity and quality of loot and experience points.
Here are the names and specific effects of the four Azmerian Wisps that have been confirmed to appear in the game. In addition, as part of the endgame content, Azmerian Wisps will also have their own Precursor Tablets and Atlas Passive nodes, which may not be fully known until the official release.
These are all the new endgame mechanics added to the current POE 2 Early Access Patch 0.2.0 Dawn of the Hunt, which is expected to be released on April 4. Of course, as mentioned earlier, this patch also makes very significant improvements to the mechanics that already exist in the game, such as Towers, Strongbox, and Essence.
These improvements and additions are all designed to get players who once gave up on this over-marketed sequel back to the game, and to give all players a better endgame experience. In general, everything GGG has done this time seems to be based on the player’s perspective and carefully listens to the player’s opinions and suggestions, so we are very much looking forward to what surprises it will bring us this spring.
Apr 01, 2025