The long-awaited Path of Exile 2 Early Access adds a lot of new content that differs completely from the original, such as a long-time story background and a new combat mechanism. But these are not what players value most, they are more interested in the new boss battle.

Like the original, the bosses in POE 2 are also divided into mandatory bosses and optional bosses. You can win the main campaign by challenging those mandatory bosses, or you can get some extraordinary rewards through those optional bosses, and King in the Mists is one of them.

King in the Mists will appear in Act 1, so you need to fight this very difficult boss in the early stage of the game, not only because it is very aggressive but also because the terrain of the map where it is located is very narrow, and it is difficult for you to get out of it. So this guide will introduce you to how to find it in Freythorn and defeat it, so that you can spend the least time and energy on it but get the most abundant loot.

King In The Mists Location

The first thing you need to know is that in order to fight King in the Mists, you need to find and activate three Ritual Altars located around the edge of Freythorn. If you haven’t explored the map, you can run around the edge of the map and remember to pay attention to the checkpoints along the way. Ritual Altars are likely to be around them.

After you activate all three Ritual Altars, you will face a wave of monsters. They are not terrible and can be easily eliminated with some crowd control or group damage skills. Don’t forget to pick up POE2 Currency they drop on the ground.

After that, you will find the large open arena where you fight King in the Mists. In the middle, there will be an altar which will summon the powerful boss after you activate it.

It is important to note that if you find the arena before completing the activation tasks of the first three altars, you will find a black cloud blocking your way. The black cloud will disappear after you complete all the prerequisite tasks. In addition, all maps in POE 2 are reset and key landmarks are randomly placed, so the exploration direction is different at different times.

Fighting King In The Mists

It is worth noting that the fight with King in the Mists has two phases, so please equip your build with some POE 2 Items that can increase your endurance and survivability before challenging him. However, before this boss can fight you, you still need to defeat the wave of cultists that appear after the last Ritual Altar is activated.

Know yourself and know your enemy. So let’s take a look at what kind of attacks King in the Mists will make against you in the two phases, and what kind of counterattacks you can make.

Phase 1 - Human Form

Like many multi-phase bosses, King in the Mists appears in human form in the first phase - holding a wooden staff and wearing a hood. During this phase, its main attack strategy is to release curses continuously, afflictions and status effects into the arena, which can cause direct damage and continuous damage to you, so during this phase, you can do some fatal damage to it while constantly dodging. Here are the attacks that King in the Mists will do to you during this phase.

• Thorngrip: It will create a small cone in front of it, and from it will create vines that will deal moderate damage to you.
• Invasive Growth: Its staff will be slammed into the ground, creating a large area of ​​vines that also deal with moderate damage.
• Blood Pools: During this skill, you will see red blood pools appear around the arena. If you stand in them, you will take more and more damage over time.
• Affliction Totems: It will summon Affliction Totems on the ground, which will periodically pulse at you. If you are hit, you will take curses and physical damage.
• Ritual of Dance: During this skill, the boss will curse you. If you stop moving before the timer of this skill ends, you will be in a state of stasis for about three seconds.
• Ritual of Meditation: This skill will also curse you. But if you move before the timer ends, you will be in a state of stasis for about three seconds.

In fact, King in the Mists’ attacks on you are all very obvious summoning symbols, and its attack movements are a bit slow or even delayed, so you will have more time to dodge or cast some damaging skills. But the last two attack skills need your special attention, because they require different escape strategies.

Therefore, it is very important to identify the curse cast by Boss during the battle correctly. Currently, you will have two ways to identify it. The first is through the icon in the upper left corner of your game screen: Ritual of Dance is displayed as an icon with green, blue and purple, and there is a man dancing in the middle; while Ritual of Meditation is displayed as an icon with red, pink and purple, and there is also a man in the middle but no action.

The second way is to pay attention to the color of the curse circles that appear around your character when King in the Mists casts a curse: Ritual of Dance is purple, and Ritual of Meditation is red. In addition, the color intensity of this circle can also be used to indicate when the curse will fall. It is gray at the beginning and becomes very bright when it is close to the activation time. So if you find yourself surrounded by purple, keep moving. If it’s red, stand still.

If your early build isn’t enough to defeat King in the Mists on your own, you can also use POE 2’s new multiplayer feature to summon your friends to help you complete this boss’ battle. Or you can invest some more POE2 Currency in your skill tree to make yourself more tanky.

Phase 2 - Wildwood Form

When King in the Mists’ health is reduced to about 33% of its original health in the first phase, it will begin to transform and become invulnerable for a short period. After it shouts “The Wildwood’s power... is mine!”, it will recover all its health and barriers and become a tree-like creature similar to Leshen.

This means that this boss has entered the second phase of the battle. The attack methods in this phase are actually the same as the first phase, but with some new attacks. The following are the specific manifestations of the new additions.

• Purple Pustules: You will see some glowing Purple Pustules growing from the ground, which will explode when you get close to them. Then you will be affected by the stackable Shadow Surge, which will cause you to receive debuffs and physical damage continuously.
• Insect Swarm: At this time, the boss will keep waving his arms forward and summon a wave of insects that can move in a straight line. They can cause some damage to you if you are trapped in them.
• Insect Ball: This skill summons a group of dark, insect-like creatures that will follow your direction of movement and cause explosion damage when they hit you.

It should be noted here that the frequency of curses will appear more frequently in the second stage, so remember to use the correct dodging techniques. In addition, Purple Pustules is also an attack skill that you need to pay attention to, because the cumulative damage it produces may cause you to die in constant torture.

King In The Mists’ Loot

After you have gone through all the hardships to complete your battle with King in the Mists, you will obtain Gembloom Skull, which can be used to increase Spirit by 30 points permanently. In addition, you can also obtain some Ritual Rewards and Tributes when you defeat enemies around the altar.

If you are using Sorceress Class, you can also obtain an Uncut Spirit Gem from this boss battle, which can be used to obtain Raging Spirits skill, which will be a leap forward for Sorceress build.

That’s it for you. Here are some tips and tricks for defeating King in the Mists from Act 1 in Path of Exile 2. Hopefully, with the help of this guide, you can defeat them as quickly and safely as possible, and get those very valuable rewards. Have fun!

After nearly ten years of development, Path of Exile 2 Early Access has officially met with players last week! This new game, which has made a lot of improvements to the original, has added a lot of new game content, such as a new story background, new mechanisms, new campaigns, etc. However, POE 2 has made some subtractions from the original content: currency.

The number of currencies in POE 2 is much less than that of the original, which will be overwhelming for old players familiar with the original and new exiles. But don’t worry, this guide will give you a detailed introduction to the currency system in this new game, so that you can make and trade smoothly in the game.

What Is The Use Of Currency In The Game?

Unlike the original game, which can be used to trade with NPCs or other players, the currency in POE 2 is mainly used to make and modify your Gear, and ultimately increase the power level of your character. But this does not mean that the trading method has been eliminated in the game. You can use Gold to complete the above two transactions in the sequel. If you take your unwanted POE 2 Items to the auction house to sell, other players will still offer you currency in return, which is worth your attention.

There are three types of currency in POE 2, and each POE2 Currency in each type has its own unique function. Let’s explain them in detail.

Basic Crafting Currencies

First, we will introduce basic currencies, which can be found in various places as you explore the game world, such as monster drops, loot chests and breakables. They are also divided into different rarities, such as Normal, Magic and Rare, just like ordinary items. Here are their names and specific uses.

• Scroll Of Wisdom: When you get an item but don’t know it, you can use this currency to help you reveal its affixes and effects.
• Orb Of Transmutation: It can upgrade a Normal item to a Magic item and add an affix to it.
• Orb Of Augmentation: It can only add an affix to Magic items.
• Orb Of Annulment: It can remove any affix from a Magic or Rare item.
• Regal Orb: It can turn Magic items into Rare items and add an affix to them.
• Exalted Orb: It can add a random affix to a Rare item.
• Divine Orb: It can re-roll a modifier into your gear and the new modifier will be applied to this item.
• Artificer’s Orb: It can add a slot to your weapon or armor so that you can improve them.
• Orb Of Alchemy: It can turn one of your Normal items into a Rare item with 4 affixes.
• Orb Of Chance: It can turn one of your Normal items into a random Magic, Rare or Unique item.
• Chaos Orb: It is the most common currency in the game, because it can replace a random affix on your Magic or Rare item with a new affix.
• Armourer’s Scrap: It can increase the quality of your armor by 4%, making you more survivable.
• Blacksmith’s Whetstone: It can increase the quality of your Martial weapons by 4%, making you more damaging.
• Arcanist’s Etcher: It can increase the quality of your Caster weapons by 4%, making you more damaging.
• Gemcutter’s Prism: It can increase the quality of all your current Skill Gems by 5%
• Vaal Orb: This is a very special currency in the game. It can be applied to any item and has different effects on items, such as adding a random enchantment, adding an extra slot, increasing all attributes, or re-rolling a new affix.
• Jeweler’s Orb: It can add a different level of slot for Skill Gems with different slots. Skill Gems with two slots will get a Lesser slot, Skill Gems with three slots will get a Greater slot, and Skill Gems with four slots will get a Perfect slot.

Advanced And Pseudo-Currency

These advanced currencies don’t appear everywhere in the game, but later in the game. Usually, you can only get them after completing the endgame. Some of them appear early, but require you to interact with certain mechanics to get them. Here are their names and specific effects.

• Essence: You get this by fighting Essence monsters. It turns a Normal item into a Rare item and adds a specific affix to it.
• Greater Essence: Much like the previous currency, you will pick up this currency next to the corpses of Greater Essence monsters. It turns a Magic item into a Rare item and adds a specific affix to it.
• Omen: You get this in Ritual mechanic of the current league, and it will grant it specific abilities based on your inventory.
• Catalyst: You find this in Breach mechanic of the league, and it will increase the quality of your ring or amulet by a certain amount, and the specific value will be adjusted according to the item itself.
• Distilled Emotions: You’ll find this in Delirium mechanic, and it adds significant passive abilities to your amulets.

It’s important to note that Mirror of Kalandra, which can copy the most perfect items in the original game, has not been explicitly mentioned to appear in the sequel. But it’s true that it will be the rarest, most sought-after, most iconic, and most valuable item in the game. We can look forward to it.

Currency Shards

During some of your explorations, you may not find full POE2 Currency, but rather currency fragments. However, it should be noted that the number of shards you get from clearing a map is small, and you can also get more shards by disassembling or recycling certain gear.

When you collect ten shards of the same currency, you can combine them into a currency item. You can then use the combined full currency to enhance your build or character accordingly. Here is a list of combinations.

• Transmutation Shard - Orb of Transmutation
• Chance Shard - Orb of Chance
• Regal Shard - Regal Orb
• Artificer’s Shard - Artificer’s Orb
• Exalted Shard - Exalted Orb
• Chaos Shard - Chaos Orb

The above are all the currencies currently available in Path of Exile 2 and their uses. I hope you can experience a completely different gaming experience in this new game and get very generous rewards in it. I wish you a happy game!