What Changes Will The Curse Mechanic Bring In Path Of Exile 2?
Oct 25, 2024 Source: POECURRENCY
With Path of Exile 2 Early Access set to launch on November 15, many exiles are beginning to look at how this new sequel will differ from POE 1 and how they will affect the gameplay.
Here, we will talk about the changes to Curses mechanic in POE 2 to help you prepare before entering the game. Whether you are a new player interested in the upcoming POE 2, or an old player who has been familiar with every league since POE 1, this guide will make you gain something. Let’s get started!
How Does Curses Mechanic Work?
Curses are the ability to apply debuffs. These debuffs are usually composed of basic modifiers, such as Chaos-type Curse effects, which reduce the target’s Chaos Resistance, making it more vulnerable to that type of damage, or increase the damage taken under certain conditions or against a specific type of attack.
By default, a character is limited to a maximum of one curse, which means that they can only apply one Curse to each target. If you attempt to apply another Curse to an already Cursed target, the system will automatically remove the oldest Curse to make way for the new one. However, if you want to apply multiple Curse effects at once, you are not helpless, as Curse limit can be increased through Passive Skill Tree or modifiers on equipment.
Curse Skill Changes
Now, in Path of Exile 2, there are two very big functional changes to Curse skills besides the changes to Curse skills themselves.
Marks Will No Longer Be A Curse Skill
Let’s start with Marks. Mark skills are a type of Curse skill in Path of Exile 1, and they can essentially be thought of as single-target Curses with powerful effects.
But Mark skills also have their own unique mechanics in POE 1. For example, Mark skills are limited to one application per target, and you cannot have multiple Marks on the same target at the same time, even if Curse limit is increased to more than its default limit of 1. If you try to move that Mark to another target, Mark on the previous target will be automatically removed.
On top of that, Mark skills also have no duration, or rather, infinite duration, compared to standard Curse, which has a fixed duration by default.
However, the first major functional change is that Mark will no longer be a Curse skill in POE 2. This now means that using a Mark skill will no longer count towards a character’s Curse limit. So you won’t even have to invest any POE2 Currency to increase your Curse limit, and your character will be able to use both Curse skills and Mark skills at the same time.
But it seems that Mark skills themselves are also being changed for Path of Exile 2. In terms of their unique mechanics, they will now have a duration, and judging by Sniper’s Mark skill leaked so far, they may have more temporary effects that can cause a Mark to end early and provide a reward.
In this case, the next critical hit may have a higher critical damage bonus and provide Frenzy Charges to the character before Mark effect expires.
Curse Skills Have Activation Delays
Now, the second major functional change to Curse mechanic in POE 2 comes in the specific way that Curse skills activate on targets in the game. Curse abilities have an activation delay for a short time after casting before they actually take effect.
Some of you may remember Doomsday Keystone that existed for a while in Path of Exile 1. Doomsday was a Keystone Passive ability that modified Hex spells. When a Hex spell is cast, instead of applying a curse that increases Doom over time, the spell creates a Hexed Area that lasts for 1 second. Enemies in Hexed Area are cursed, and after 1 second Hexed Area disappears, applying maximum Doom to enemies standing in it.
Although Doom mechanic has gone with this Keystone, we don’t know if the activation delay will still be 1 second in POE 2. But it’s essentially a very similar concept, with the main difference being that in POE 2, outside of Curse ability description, the target is not cursed until the activation delay is over.
One of the only other things that mentions an activation delay is Whispers of Doom, which will be a Keystone for Path of Exile 2. This keystone increases the character’s maximum curse limit by 1, but doubles the activation delay for curses, so curses you cast on yourself take longer to actually take effect.
How To Improve The Activation Delay?
But how to avoid the drawbacks of this keystone by bypassing the activation delay?
Blasphemy Support is another returning mechanic. In PoE 2, it will be a persistent buff, and each Socketed Curse will retain Spirit to apply these curses as Aura around your character, which has great synergy with Whispers of Doom.
Another skill that has amazing synergy with Whispers of Doom is a Hand of Chayula, a utility attack skill that applies a Socketed Curse and Marks it upon hitting a target, with increased effect.
Curse Debuff Changes
Now in terms of the effects that Curses actually apply in PoE 2, so far we only know of a few that have changed, and Despair and Temporal Chains seem to have the same effects as in PoE 1, although we haven’t seen specific numbers yet.
Meanwhile, for Vulnerability, it is still a way to increase physical damage, but it will now be more target-specific, as it will do so by reducing armor rather than causing the target to take more physical damage.
In short, the above is what we currently know about the changes in Curse mechanism in POE 2 and how we can deal with it. Of course, nothing is certain until the game is released. So let us look forward to the arrival of Path of Exile 2!
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How To Maximize Warrior In Path Of Exile 2 Early Access? - Build Details
In this Path of Exile 2 that emphasizes physical strike damage, Warrior, as the class with the strongest melee physical damage ability in the game, has become the choice of many players. They call Warrior a one-man army because it can challenge groups of enemies alone and can cleverly combine its brute force and super martial arts ability.
However, as the sequel to the most popular MMORPG before, POE 2 also continues the game rules in the original game that you need to use builds to make this class play the most effective. In the current game, the best build for Warrior is Boneshatter Titan build. So in this guide, we will select a set of best build options for this best build, and introduce you to some ideas needed when creating a build.
Boneshatter Titan Build Overview
In this build, you can use Warrior’s Titan Ascendancy to create a dominant psychical presence, which will turn your build into a battle tank that can move around at will - both with damage and survival capabilities.
The strategy for using this build is that you need to get close to those monsters or enemies and deal a lot of AOE damage to them, which will allow you to clear most enemies easily. As for those who survive, you can use subsequent skills to tear them into pieces, and then easily pick up POE 2 Currency from their corpses to enhance your own build.
Best Skill Gems
Unlike many souls games, POE 2 requires you to pick up some skill gems during exploration and place them in your gem slots before you can use this skill. In addition, each skill gem will have slots for 1-3 Support Gems, which can provide some beneficial buffs to this skill. In addition, you will find some Uncut Skill Gems during exploration, which can be converted into any skill gem that is beneficial to your build.
Here are some skill gems and exclusive support gems that you can choose in Boneshatter Titan build. Given that each player’s exploration style and progress are different, you don’t have to obtain or upgrade them in the specified order.
Not only that, the skill gems shown here are what they will look like when you reach the end of the story, so it doesn’t matter if you deviate a little in the game process, because as long as your basic build ideas are not wrong, it is completely possible to add some additional skills that suit your game style.
- Mace Strike: Ruthless & Overpower & Close Combat
- Boneshatter: Impact Shockwave & Magnified Effect & Armor Explosion
- Infernal Cry: Premeditation & Raging Cry
- Perfect Strike: Window of Opportunity & Fire Infusion & Execute
- Herald of Ash
- Leap Slam: Martial Tempo & Holy Descent
- Scavenged Plating: Persistence
- Hammer of the Gods: Concentrated Effect & Heavy Swing & Brutality
- Seismic Cry
- Beserk
Passive Skills
It should be noted here that the passive skill tree in POE 2 is very large, with 1,500 passive skill points that can provide buffs to your build waiting for you to unlock, and all skill points in this tree are applicable to all classes, and there is no exclusive statement. So there is no specific list of passive skill points in Boneshatter Titan build, but you can rely on the following unlock path to plot your game progress.
- Relentless
- Sturdy Metal
- Brutal
- Smash
- Rage
- Bloodletting
- Unforgiving
- Aftershocks
- Singular Purpose
- Shockwaves
- Internal Bleeding
- Split the Earth
- Skullcrusher
- Near at Hand
- Colossal Weapon
- Overwhelm
- Polished Iron
- Blade Catcher
- Heavy Armor
- Made to Last
These are the best passive skill nodes in Boneshatter Titan build, so you can work your way down the path to the next node after activating one. If it’s unclear what each skill point does for you, you can hover your mouse or controlled cursor over that node and it will show you.
Best Gear
Like your skill gems, the gear you use in the game, such as armor, weapons, and charms, is found in loot after you defeat some enemies or monsters. In short, when you first start exploring, you can only equip your build with simple items of lower rarity.
As time goes by and you get deeper into the game, you will become a connoisseur of loot, selectively equipping the loot you get, and knowing which items will be more beneficial to the Warrior. More importantly, once you are familiar with the rules of the game, you can increase the rarity of your own gear by spending some POE 2 Regal Orbs to facilitate more hard challenges.
So instead of looking for specific gear specifically, it is better to learn more about what kind of buffs are most needed for specific slots in the build, so that you can prioritize their properties and statistics when you get some loot or reward items, to find the best gear for Boneshatter Titan build more quickly.
For weapons, Warrior’s proud Physical Damage is your top priority. In addition, skills that focus on melee combat also need to get some gains so that your Strength can play the best effect. Because Warrior needs to engage in close combat, weapons that can increase Stun Duration will also be your best choice, which will give you a greater advantage in melee combat.
For defensive gear such as Helm, Armor and Gloves, POE 2 Items that can increase defense, armor, resistance and health can be placed in this build. But it is worth noting that the choice of Boots is also mainly focused on the above attributes, because Warrior does not have too high requirements for mobility and movement speed, and the required conditions can be met in skill gems and passive skills.
Although you can find slots for three Charms in the build, the gains of the key attributes of these three are the same: Physical Damage, Melee Skills, Duration and Strength, which are also required for weapon equipment.
With gear that can provide exclusive key attributes, your Boneshatter Titan build will become more powerful than ever before, and you can even challenge the most difficult game content. In general, Warrior build ideas are relatively simple in the game, because you only need to focus on a few attributes.
The above are some of the build sets you can choose for Boneshatter Titan build in POE 2 Early Access. Once again, the build method in this game does not have to be copied in a rigid manner, because each player’s game style and exploration steps are different. I hope you can establish your own unique game style in this new sequel and get the best game experience from it!
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How To Fight Traitor Balbala Which Is A Key Boss In Path Of Exile 2 Early Access? - Location & Moves
After nearly a decade of waiting, the boss fights in Path of Exile 2 Early Access have been recognized by players as the best in the isometric ARPG genre. Fortunately, there are plenty of boss fights to explore throughout the campaign in the current Early Access, with some required bosses with unique combat mechanics in almost every area, as well as some optional bosses that you need to find through the game’s various side quests.
Some of these bosses are very important to the progress of the entire game, such as Traitor Balbala in Act 2’s Traitor’s Passage, which rewards you with Balbala’s Barya for Ascension Trial. But this boss’s combat mechanics are a bit complicated, and you can learn how to find and defeat Balbala in this guide, which will make your exploration process smoother.
Balbala’s Location
As mentioned above, Balbala will appear in Act 2’s Traitor’s Passage. But you need to explore the total area first, and after you have explored Six Sisters area, you will find a door leading to Prison of the Disgraces. Interact with Ancient Seal on the door, then remove the three Runic Seals that are used to bind Balbala, and you will release him.
It is important to note that after you remove the last Runic Seal and release it, Balbala will immediately fight with you, so at the checkpoint closest to the interactive door, you need to restore your health and mana (or charge) to a healthy level. You can also spend some POE 2 Exalted Orbs to make the rarity of your current gear higher and add an affix to make it easier to fight Balbala.
Balbala’s Moves
Pleases note that the arena you used to fight Balbala is relatively small, so you don’t have much room to avoid its attacks. If you team up with a friend or fight Balbala as a party, the arena can be quite claustrophobic, so you’ll need to be careful and keep track of your position.
Also note that Balbala’s method of movement is unusual, as he teleports to your area and then swings at you with his daggers, dealing damage. You’ll need to keep moving to avoid his teleport attacks. Here are some attacks Balbala will use on you during the fight and strategies for how to deal with them.
Summon Spirit
Balbala will drop a coin into the arena, and after a few seconds Spirit of Balbala will spawn from the coin. After you knock its health down to zero, it will regenerate into a coin and then resurrect a few seconds later. Although this enemy has low health, it will keep resurrecting and dying repeatedly, so you should defeat it as quickly as possible to avoid being knocked out.
You can also prevent Spirit of Balbala from reviving by walking through the coin that is hovering in the rune. But when you do this, Balbala will immediately teleport to a location near you and slam the rune, which will deal very high damage to you and cause you to take fire damage. So be sure to use dodge when trying to stop the soul from resurrecting, and roll over the coins as much as possible to avoid being hit.
Dagger Toss
During this attack, Balbala will teleport several times and summon numerous yellow daggers around the arena, which will spin towards you and shoot rapidly. All you need to do is pay attention to the flight path, position, and timing of these daggers, and then dodge them before they can damage you, and you can spend some POE 2 Currency to make your build more flexible and maneuverable.
Poison Seep
In addition to the poison dagger, Balbala will also use the hole in the center of the arena to release a poison cloud that can also cause continuous poison damage to you until the entire arena is covered. At this time, Balbala is also hiding in this poison gas. To stop it from continuing to damage you, you need to go around the edge of the arena to find Balbala and hit it.
But as you find it, it will throw a grenade at you, which will cause extremely high damage after it explodes. Here you need to prepare a position in advance where you can hide to avoid the explosion damage.
Ascending Daggers
Finally, Balbala will throw three waves of yellow daggers at you, stabbing them into the ground. After a while, these yellow daggers will fly into the air and will damage the area of the arena directly below them. During this maneuver, you can avoid the daggers as they fly away to avoid the damage they cause you.
After you successfully defeat Balbala, you will be rewarded with Balbala’s Barya for Ascension, which you can use to interact with Zarka and start a new quest. The above are the specific methods and strategies for finding and defeating Balbala in POE 2 Early Access. I hope you can successfully get through this interesting Boss battle stage with the help of this guide. I wish you have fun in this brand new POE 2!
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How To Pass The Very Important Trial Of The Sekhemas In Path Of Exile 2 Early Access? - Key Steps
In the popular Path of Exile 2 Early Access, a new game mechanic called Ascendancy system was added. You can upgrade the 6 basic classes currently available to you by completing trials to one of the two corresponding Ascendancy classes, and each of them has a different play style.
The first thing you will encounter is the somewhat tricky Trial of the Sekhemas. In this trial, you will feel that the core game content has not changed much, but the game experience differs completely from the original and will be more difficult to handle. So in this guide, I will specifically introduce you to how to start and handle this Ascension Trial that makes your class stronger.
How To Start?
To start Trial of the Sekhemas, you need to defeat the boss called Balbala the Traitor in Traitors Pass, but don’t worry too much, it is not a very difficult boss to defeat. While most of its telegraphed attacks are performed while moving quickly, you can still find a gap between them to dodge.
The most notable thing here is that Balbala the Traitor will turn invisible during combat and then release a cloud of poisonous gas that will flood the arena, causing you to be poisoned over time and making you more vulnerable to damage. The only way to stop the gas from continuing to spawn is to use your large abilities to find it in the obscured arena and defeat it, or if your build isn’t strong enough to cast such abilities, you can quickly run around the arena and find Balbala the Traitor.
After defeating it, you can find Balbala’s Barya among its loot, which can be used to awaken a currently friendly NPC Balbala in Trial of the Sekhemas node, who will guide you through the current Trial and on the path to unlocking Ascendancy Class. Not only that, but you can also use some of POE 2 Currency awarded to you by Balbala the Traitor as a key to enhance your build, which will be very important in your subsequent trials.
How To Complete?
Trial of the Sekhemas can be a little tricky for new exiles who have never played these souls games, but I believe it will be easier for those players to understand after reading this guide. When the trial begins, you will be given a certain amount of Honour, and each time you are hit during the battle, the amount of Honour will decrease.
If you die in the trial or Honour is used up, your trial will be forced to end and restart. Currently, Honour can only be replenished by trading Sacred Water, the currency exclusive to the current trial, after you fight in some rooms, completing room rewards, and killing certain enemies. In addition, you can select a certain number of relics before the trial begins, which will provide some help for your trial.
After Trial of the Sekhemas begins, you need to go through at least 6 rooms to challenge the ultimate boss. Each room is a part of a group of trials and will provide you with different rewards: including keys to open treasure chests, Sacred Water, boon buffs, and some structures that can be used to restore Honour. After completing a room, a message will appear on your screen telling you which room to go to next and what rewards they offer. Please note that each room will inflict some debuffs on you, and this debuff will last for the entire trial. Here are the specific debuffs that each room can inflict on you.
- Chalice: This is where a lot of rare monsters spawn, and they will deal a lot of damage to you with attacks that are completely unfamiliar to you.
- Escape: Here, you are forbidden from using all death crystals and must continue running around the room until the trial is completed and the time runs out.
- Ritual: In this trial room, there is a spellcaster who will constantly summon new enemies to attack you.
- Gauntlet: You need to avoid traps and enemies at the same time here, and the lever used to exit requires repeated attempts.
- Hourglass: Here, you must not completely defeat the enemies in the room, but must coexist with them until runs out.
After you complete these rooms, you will see an arena leading to your battle with the ultimate boss, Earthbreaker Rattlecage. While this boss’s attacks aren’t overly complex, the two resources you need to protect during the fight can be exhausting - health and mana (or charges). In your early fights with Rattlecage, all three of its attacks are variations of the slams used by other bosses, and one ranged attack to watch out for is that it summons a mini volcano that deals continuous damage to you, which you can avoid by using your build’s strong mobility or dodging.
Once Rattlecage’s health drops below 33%, its attack type changes to an explosive burst that occurs three times, increasing. At this stage, your defensive abilities become crucial, but since this boss isn’t a two-stage, just a variant, there’s not a lot of free time to adjust your build. So you can only use POE 2 Exalted Orb to make your defensive gear higher in rarity and add an affix to enhance survivability before the challenge.
The above is the exploration method and strategy for the very important Trial of the Sekhemas in POE 2 Early Access. Given the different exploration styles and classes used by each player, there are many ways to explore this trial. I hope you can explore this new Ascendancy system faster and more smoothly with the background introduced in this guide. I wish you a happy game!
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Come Choose The Best Equipment And Skill For Witch In Path Of Exile 2 Early Access!
Path of Exile 2, a sequel that players have been waiting for a long time, has made great changes to most of the classes in the original game, including Witch. As the outstanding single-player exploration class in POE 2 Early Access, it mainly relies on its minions to deal with continuous damage and curses. In addition, as you continue to deepen the game content, Witch will also benefit from the new dodgeball mechanic, making it more mobile.
Thanks to the power of this class itself, choosing some suitable items for its construction is a top priority in the game. So this guide will give you a specific introduction to Witch build based on the 3 aspects of the game’s regular construction that are most concerned about: equipment, skill gems, and passive skill.
Best Equipment
Although POE 2 has made all classes more flexible, the characteristics of each class are still very distinct. For example, Witch needs to use enough energy shields and a large maximum health value to ensure a stable output of damage. It is important to note that the items you have in the early game are not high-level, so before you get into some difficult challenges or battles, you can use POE 2 Regal Orb to upgrade them and add a new affix to make them more effective.
Energy shields are a new type of health in the current game. You can think of it as an auxiliary health bar with a super fast recharge speed, which is used to prevent the real health from being too damaged. So when choosing equipment for the Witch build, you can focus on those POE 2 Items with energy shields or that can enhance them, such as some robes, sandals, or lighter equipment.
For the weapons used by Witch, the specific type will depend entirely on your play style, which is very free. But here is a suggestion for you that Scepters may be a must-have weapon as the only way to summon minions. You can also remove this weapon according to your needs, but your build will be missing some core.
At the same time, you can also use Wands and Scepters together, so that your build will be more aggressive. If you are an Exile who focuses on defensive capabilities, you can also use Scepters and various lighter or more concentrated shields, which will greatly enhance the mana and energy shields of this Class.
Best Skill Gems
Since the release of POE 2 Early Access, there are two main Witch builds that players prefer: Burning Minions and Chaos Damage. We also look forward to more interesting and powerful Witch builds in subsequent official versions. For Burning Minions build, the skill gems you can choose for it are Skeleton Arsonists, Pain Offering, Flame Wall, Flammability, and Detonate Dead.
Among them, Flammability can quickly reduce the resistance of enemies in the target area to fire damage, which makes Skeleton Arsonists and Flame Wall more likely to cause more damage to the enemy. At the same time, Pain Offering will rapidly increase the number of minions around the enemy, especially when used on Skeleton Warriors summoned by Scepters. The effect will be more obvious. Detonate Dead is a skill that makes earning your POE 2 Currency bonus simple, as it detonates all the corpses of your remaining minions and deals with explosion damage to enemies.
Since there are so many fire resistance shreds in Burning Minions build, you can make this build’s elemental damage stronger and have no worries. Simple fire skills like Solar Orb or Fireball can be used to increase damage, and the damage output of the minions will not be reduced.
Although Chaos Damage’s damage capacity has been reduced a bit in the sequel, it still remains one of the best Witch builds. However, using this as your main damage type will have a negative impact on Witch’s damage over time. Fortunately, you can make up for this with some properties in Contagion, Profane Ritual, Despair, and Dark Effigy.
Contagion is a very simple spell in POE 2 that causes enemies to suffer some light damage over time. However, if an enemy dies in the process, the damage carried by Contagion will be spread to nearby enemies at a higher capacity until all enemies are gone. And Profane Ritual will also turn those dead enemies into circles that can deal Chaos Damage to other enemies over time, so that Dark Effigy, as a turret or totem that can be placed at will, will make it easier to target all enemies that are debuffed by Chaos Damage.
When you reach the late game content of POE 2, you can continue to develop your Chaos Damage build around Despair curse, as it will greatly reduce the enemy’s resistance to this damage type, indirectly making those continuous damage more effective. Or you can use all the above skills with Essence Drain, which can have an initial impact and continuous damage, which will make your build more deterrent.
Best Passive Skills
While the skill tree in POE 2 is very large and complex, the skill tree path used by Witch is relatively simple. For builds that focus on minions, especially Burning Minions just introduced, you need to focus on getting more minion damage, health, critical hit attributes, elemental resistance, attack speed, and resurrection speed from passive skills. This way, your minions will have very strong natural forces and can clear most enemies in battle without you having to do it yourself.
For builds that need to cause Chaos Damage, the path to unlock and upgrade passive skill points will no longer be fixed, because at this time, all attributes except physical damage in the Witch build need to be further enhanced to promote the overall development of the build. Here you can focus on the two attributes of Chaos Damage and status duration gain. But in this build, you also need to pay attention to your minions. You can increase their resistance and health, so that your pressure as a rear commander will also be reduced.
The above are the equipment and some skills selected for the Witch build in POE 2. I hope you can use them to make this powerful class easier and smoother in your single-player exploration. I wish you have fun in this brand new sequel, and look forward to the appearance of the subsequent official of POE 2!
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How To Give New Life To Items You Earn In Path Of Exile 2 Early Access? - With Reforging Bench
As you explore the critically acclaimed Path of Exile 2 Early Access, you’ll often receive gear from rewards that just aren’t meant for your character. You can sell it, disassemble it with Salvage Bench or an NPC merchant, or if you have multiple characters on the same account, you can stash these currently useless items to characters that can use them, making them more useful.
But when a piece of gear comes along that works for your character, but is a little less effective than what’s currently in your build, what do you do with it? You can sell it, disassemble it, or disassemble it as usual, but that’s a bit of a waste. So this guide will show you another way to deal with these items: using Reforging Bench to make them better. Without further ado, let’s get started!
How To Unlock Reforging Bench?
Here we need to remind you that in the current POE 2 Early Access, you can only unlock this method of reforging items after reaching Act 3, so if you are just starting to explore this new game, you can use other methods to enhance your item attributes, such as using some POE 2 Regal Orbs to upgrade your Magic items to Rare items and add an affix.
When you enter Act 3, you will receive a quest called Legacy of the Vaal, which will require you to go to Drowned City and complete some interactive quests assigned to you. After you complete the overall quest, you need to return to Ziggurat Encampment, and then there is an NPC called Oswald to the northwest of your standing position.
After interacting with him, it will give you another Treasures of Utzaal quest, which is a prerequisite for unlocking Reforging Bench. In this quest, you are required to clear Molten Vault and defeat Mektul. Here, we need to remind you that your character level can only complete this challenge if it reaches level 40 or above.
In Drowned City, you can follow the markers in the quest log to a dungeon called Molten Vault. There will be a group of enemies that focus on dealing fire damage to you, so this is one of the best dungeons for honing your build to resist fire damage and freeze magic. It is also one of the best places to farm your experience points and POE 2 Currency because of the large number of enemies.
As you fight deeper, you will find Forgemaster Mektul at the end of the dungeon, which will deal with a lot of fire damage to you. But fortunately, its attack speed and movement speed are very slow, and the cooldown of its attack moves is also very long. So during the battle, you can focus one finger on dodging, and use the rest of your fingers to release all your attack skills during its downtime so that you can kill it as soon as possible.
It should be noted here that this battle will have a four-minute countdown. Once the countdown ends, but Mektul is not killed by you, the arena will be filled with lava and completely engulf you. So, the advice for you in your build is to focus on some skills or items that can output cold damage, so that you can easily kill it after you understand its attack methods.
After you successfully kill Mektul, you will get the Hammer of Kamasa, which can be used to open a teleportation gate back to town and meet Oswald again and interact with him. After talking, the Reforging Bench that can re-roll the attributes of your loot is unlocked. In addition, it will also reward you with an Uncut Skill Gem, which can be converted into any skill that is applicable to your build.
How To Use Reforging Bench?
After you unlock it, you’ll find a Reforging Bench in every town you can explore. In fact, you can also place one in your hideout, which makes your crafting process even more convenient. To use it, walk up to the bench like you would any other crafting station, and you’ll start interacting with it.
Next, we’ll take a look at how Reforging Bench works and what it requires. You can place three POE 2 Items of the same type and rarity on this bench, and they will combine into a single piece of gear of the same type but with completely different properties. So the items you can get from Reforging Bench will depend entirely on what you put in. For example, the same weapon will not be reforged into a Soul Core. Currently, the items you can place here are the following.
- Gear (weapons, armor or accessories)
- Unique
- Catalyst
- Essence
- Soul Core
- Precursor Tablets
- Distilled Emotion
- Runes
- Relics
- same level Waystones
Here you need to be reminded that although most of the items obtained in Reforging Bench are random and may be better or worse than the original items, Waystones and Distilled Emotions will more often reward you with higher-level items. In addition, you cannot place those corrupted items on Reforging Bench here, which is prohibited.
When the reforged items appear in front of you, you cannot see all their functions at once, but need to use Hooded One or a Scroll of Wisdom to help you identify them. If you don’t have three items of the same level in your inventory, try to use items of similar level as much as possible, because the level of the items that will appear on Reforging Bench is based on the lowest level item you place, so you try to avoid spending too many high-level items here.
That’s all you need to know about unlocking and using Reforging Bench in the current POE 2 Early Access. Since many of the items rewarded to you by this mechanic are random, you can only know its specific effectiveness by experimenting with it yourself. I wish you good play and a happy gaming experience in this brand new sequel!
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What To Look Out For When Challenging Zalmarath Which Is The Last Boss In Act 2 Of POE 2? - Location & Attacks
The current Path of Exile 2 Early Access, which has been in development for nearly a decade, has three acts of game content for you to explore, and each act has a completely different game experience. In Act 2, you will explore a vast desert area and need to find and reassemble the fragments of Horn of the Vastiri in three different missions.
Of these three missions, A Crown of Stone is arguably the most noteworthy. Not only will it lead you to the scenic Valley of Titans and Titan Grotto, but you can also challenge the very profitable boss called Colossus Zalmarath here.
At this powerful ultimate boss, you can learn some combat strategies that can be used when facing this boss who mainly uses physical damage, and more importantly, you can find the very important Flame Ruby from its loot. So this guide will introduce you to the location of Zalmarath and what kind of combat moves you will face in the battle.
Colossus Zalmarath’s Location
As mentioned above, Colossus Zalmarath is the last boss in your quest A Crown of Stone, so it is located at the end of Titan Grotto, and you need to go through Valley of the Titans to get there.
As you travel through Valley of the Titans, you need to find and activate three Ancient Seals, which will unlock the path to Titan Grotto. Since the entire area is very large, you should use as many Checkpoints and Waypoints as possible to mark your progress while exploring.
Otherwise, if you die while challenging the ultimate boss, you will need to explore again, and at the same time, POE 2 Currency and experience points you previously earned will be lost. When you see Dais of Reckoning at the end of Titan Grotto, it means that you are about to enter the arena between you and Zalmarath. Here you can check whether the damage and survivability of your build are at their best.
How To Defeat Zalmarath?
The arena you fight Zalmarath in is actually quite small compared to other final bosses, and it will get smaller as the fight progresses. In this case, most of Zalmarath’s attacks will easily cover a large area of the arena, so having a clear sense of positioning is very important in this fight.
Zalmarath will mainly deal physical damage to you during the fight, with some fire and lightning damage as well. So when preparing for this challenge, you should spend as much POE 2 Regal Orbs on your armor as possible to make it higher in rarity and more defensive, which will greatly reduce all the damage cast by this powerful boss.
As the old saying goes, knowing yourself and the enemy is the key to success, and only by knowing all of Zalmarath’s attacks can you respond correctly. Here are Zalmarath’s specific attacks and the strategies you can use.
Sword Stab
Zalmarath will thrust his sword straight into the arena and then drag it back along the path it had just taken. You can clearly see him raise his sword to stab you, so you can avoid this attack by dodging or moving at the beginning of this move.
This attack is relatively easy to dodge compared to the ones that follow, but it will still cause you to take heavy damage if you are unlucky enough to get hit.
Lightning Bolt
During this attack, you will see Zalmarath move around the edge of the arena in a quarter circle, and then fire a wave of projectiles from his vicinity. At this time, you should turn to the opposite side of the arena where Zalmarath is standing and move in the same direction as him, which will block some projectiles.
Arm Sweep
At this point, Zalmarath will abandon his sword and use his arms to sweep across the arena. If you are caught, you will be dragged across the floor, causing heavy physical damage. As mentioned above, the arena is small, but the range of this attack is large. So if you can’t avoid Zalmarath’s arm, you can try to run in the opposite direction to avoid being hit by other damaging skills.
Falling Debris
In addition to the above physical damage, Zalmarath will also shoot lasers at the ceiling and cause some debris to fall into the arena. It should be noted that one debris is larger than the others and can even destroy the floor of the arena that supports it.
You can tell where the debris will fall by the spinning dust circles on the arena floor. Just avoid stepping on these dust circles to avoid these debris that can cause heavy damage to you.
Stone Wave
Here, Zalmarath will slam his arm and launch a wave of rocks that can cause damage to you. Similar to Sword Stab, you can tell the direction of its attack by its hand raising, which makes it easier to avoid this attack in time. However, it is worth noting that Zalmarath may use this attack twice in a short period, so you need to be prepared to dodge twice for a long time.
Laser
As mentioned above, the boss will shoot lasers at the ceiling, so it may also shoot lasers at you and cause unpredictable damage to the current arena area. Normally, the movement path of this attack move is downward and will not move randomly, but Zalmarath may also turn around to guide the laser sweep, which is worth noting.
Generally speaking, the laser fired by Zalmarath will start from close to the body and gradually move outward. This time will be very long, and you have plenty of time to dodge. The most important thing here is that when the laser starts to move, you need to predict its movement path as soon as possible and avoid it.
Vril Apparition
Of course, as the ultimate boss, Zalmarath will also summon some Vril Apparitions to help it complete this battle. They usually appear from a corner of the arena and swarm around you. Although the damage of a single Vril Apparition to you will not have much impact on you, you still need to use some AOE damage skills as soon as possible to eliminate these large groups of enemies, otherwise you may be tortured to death by a large amount of damage.
Fire Tendrils
For the ultimate attack, Zalmarath will slam his fist to create flaming tendrils that will move randomly and deal a lot of fire damage to you in the process. Since their movement paths are random, it is difficult to avoid them. You can only try to observe their movement direction and move to a safe position in the opposite direction.
The above are all the attacks you will experience during the battle with Zalmarath. It will repeat this series of attacks until you defeat it. It is worth suggesting that the longer you fight it, the more difficult it will be to dodge its attacks in the arena, because the range of the arena will continue to decrease.
Whether you are using a character that focuses on melee or a character that emphasizes long-range attacks, the best strategy in this battle is to get as close to Zalmarath as possible or stand behind it, which will greatly increase your chance of dodge and put you in a safe state to cast all your attack skills.
The most difficult to avoid is the laser attack with a very large range. You can also hide behind its sword at this time to resist some damage. In general, as long as you are familiar with all the attacks of Zalmarath and try more, it is very easy for you to defeat it and get Flame Ruby from it. I wish you a happy game!