Path of Exile 2 Wiki: Complete Reference Guide

## What PoE2 Actually Changes PoE2 isn't an expansion slapped on top of the first game. New engine, new animations, and you move with WASD now. The gem system no longer cares about socket colors or links on your gear, which tbh is the single best change they made. I've put several hundred hours into early access and the dodge roll changes everything about boss fights. You cannot just stand there and tank hits anymore. And I mean literally cannot — there's no building enough defenses to ignore mechanics the way you could in PoE1. There are 12 classes planned but only 6 are playable right now. Warrior, Monk, Ranger, Mercenary, Witch, and Sorceress. Each gets two ascendancy choices in early access, with a third coming later. The other six — Druid, Huntress, Templar, Shadow, Marauder, Duelist — are locked behind patches we don't have dates for. So the class you pick determines your starting spot on the passive tree. But it doesn't lock you into anything. The tree itself is something like double the size of the PoE1 tree. Weapon-specific clusters swap automatically when you switch weapons, which is kinda wild the first time you see it work.

The Gem System Actually Explained Skill gems now have their own sockets. You don't farm for six-linked chest pieces anymore. An uncut skill gem drops at a certain tier and you carve it into whatever active skill you want, as long as you meet the attribute requirements. Support gems use the same system — uncut support gems let you pick from a menu. A level 20 skill gem can hold up to 5 support sockets. You open these with Jeweller's Orbs. Lesser gives you the 4th socket, Greater unlocks the 5th, and Perfect will eventually give 6 links whenever GGG adds it. Drop rates for Greater and Perfect are absurdly stingy right now. Most players I know are sitting at 4 supports well into red maps. Here's roughly how attribute requirements scale across gem tiers, based on what I've tracked: | Gem Tier | Level Req | Primary Attr | Support Sockets | Typical Drop Zone | |----------|-----------|-------------|-----------------|-------------------| | Tier 1-3 | 1-18 | 10-35 | 2 | Act 1 | | Tier 4-7 | 22-38 | 40-65 | 3 | Act 2-3 | | Tier 8-12 | 41-58 | 70-100 | 3-4 | Act 4-6 / Cruel | | Tier 13-16 | 60-75 | 105-140 | 4-5 | Early maps | | Tier 17-20 | 78-90 | 145-180 | 5 | Red maps / Bosses | Meta gems are a whole separate thing. Cast on Crit, Cast on Shock, Elemental Invocation — these reserve Spirit and trigger socketed spells when conditions are met. But each one slaps a brutal energy multiplier penalty on top. Cast on Critical Strike only generates about 20% of the normal energy per crit, which honestly feels terrible until you invest into it. I've found that stacking increased energy gain from the passive tree and jewels makes them functional. They won't hit the auto-bomber nonsense of late PoE1 though. I'm not sure GGG even wants them to.

Spirit and How Much You Actually Need Spirit comes from a few sources. A good sceptre gives about 100 base. Body armour rolls 40 to 60, amulets give 20 to 30, and some passive tree nodes add small amounts. You use it to activate auras, persistent buffs, and minions. Unlike PoE1 mana reservation, Spirit is a fixed pool. You get what you get, and if you go over the limit the skill just greys out. Sceptres have their own Spirit skills — variants of Discipline, Vitality, Clarity. Chest and amulet Spirit rolls depend on item level. ilvl 50+ chests can roll up to 60 Spirit, ilvl 80+ can hit 80. The problem is that chest Spirit is a prefix, competing with life and energy shield prefixes. Finding a high Spirit chest with decent defenses is genuinely difficult. So how much Spirit do you actually need? Depends on what you're playing, but here's what I've settled on across different builds. Minion builds need 200+ Spirit minimum. Skeletons plus Skeletal Clerics plus an aura plus a curse aura adds up fast. Prioritize a sceptre with +minion skills and high Spirit. Then a chest with Spirit over raw defense — you'll feel squishier but your minions will actually function. Meta gem builds want 100 to 150 Spirit depending on how many triggers you're stacking. A Cast on Shock setup with one triggered spell needs about 60 Spirit for the meta gem, then another 30 to 50 for a defensive aura. Pure aura builds are fine with 60 to 100 Spirit. One 30 Spirit aura like Herald of Thunder, plus Vitality or Clarity from your sceptre, still leaves room for Arctic Armour. And if you're playing a build that doesn't use Spirit at all? Just ignore it. Plenty of attack builds skip Spirit entirely and put those affix slots into damage or life. No point forcing it. A few things that helped me during leveling. Check vendors every time you level up — a sceptre with 80+ Spirit can show up as early as level 20 and I completely missed this on my first character. The Spiritualist passive cluster near the Templar start gives 20% increased Spirit and is reachable from Witch and Sorceress for about 6 passive points. Don't ignore Spirit on amulets either. A single roll at ilvl 35+ can give you 20 to 30 Spirit, which is one more aura or two more skeletons for basically free.

Crafting Is Brutal and That's Kind of the Point PoE2 crafting is way less deterministic than PoE1. There's no crafting bench with guaranteed mods. You use orbs one at a time and the result is final — scouring orbs don't exist anymore. The basic loop goes like this. Transmute a white base into magic with one mod. Augment to add a second mod. Regal to make it rare with three mods. Then Exalted Orb to slam up to six mods total. Every single step is a gamble. Chaos Orbs remove one random mod and add one random mod. tbh they feel awful on most items because you almost always lose the one good mod you had. Omens change things at higher levels. An Omen of Whittling drops from Ritual at ilvl 70+ and guarantees your next orb removes the lowest-tier modifier. Omen of Snaking makes a Chaos Orb remove a suffix and add a prefix, or the other way around. These are expensive — an Omen of Whittling runs 40 to 60 Exalted Orbs as I'm writing this. But here's what I've actually done to gear three characters to red maps without slamming a single Exalt on gear. Identify every rare on the ground that matches your base type. Check vendors constantly for decent blues you can regal. And once you beat the Act 3 boss and unlock the currency exchange, buy mid-tier rares from other players for 1 to 3 Exalted Orbs each. It's not glamorous but it works.

Ascendancy Trials and What Kills Your Runs Your first ascendancy points come from the Trial of the Sekhemas in Act 2. It's a roguelike dungeon with four floors, each ending in a boss. Between floors you navigate rooms with different modifiers and afflictions. You have an Honour bar that works like a second health pool — lose all of it and the run is over. The Sanctum relic system from PoE1 carries over but it's more forgiving this time. Relics drop during the trial and give boons like monsters having reduced action speed or increased Honour restored on room completion. You can bring one unique relic and several magic relics into each run. The rooms that will end your run. Random Affliction on Room Completion rooms are brutal if you roll Cannot Restore Honour or Lose 5% Honour on Room Entry. Always path around affliction rooms unless you have a boon that negates the next affliction. The Act 2 version expects a level 22 to 25 character with around 1,500 to 2,000 Honour. The level 60+ version for your third ascendancy wants 8,000+ Honour and serious relic investment. I failed that one three times before I took the hint and farmed relics first. Second ascendancy comes from the Trial of Chaos in Act 3. Shorter run but mechanically more punishing. You pick a modifier each round that stacks, so by round 7 you might be fighting double-buffed rares while taking 10% life as chaos damage per second. Bring a poison-immune charm or high chaos resistance. It's not optional, I learned that the hard way...

Endgame Atlas and Making Maps Worth Running After finishing the Cruel difficulty campaign you enter the Atlas of Worlds. The map device takes Waystones — PoE1 map equivalents — from tier 1 through 15. Each Waystone has a waystone drop chance modifier that determines whether you sustain your map pool. If you're running out of maps, check that your Waystones have at least 150% waystone drop chance. Tablets slot into towers on the Atlas and add league mechanics to nearby maps. Breach, Delirium, Ritual, Expedition — each tablet type affects 5 to 10 maps around the tower. Precursor Tablets also add monster pack size and item quantity. The strategy I've landed on is pathing toward clusters of 3 to 4 towers, slotting them all with overlapping tablets, then running the juiced maps in the overlap. A triple-tower cluster with Breach plus Delirium plus pack size tablets turns a tier 8 map into something that drops more loot than a tier 12 with zero investment. Boss maps, marked with a skull icon, grant Atlas passive points. Two points per boss kill, up to 8 points per boss across four difficulties. Each boss tree specializes in one league mechanic. The Breach boss tree gives things like breaches opening and closing faster plus increased quantity on breach monsters, which multiply with your tablet modifiers. The Pinnacle bosses — Arbiter of Ash, King in the Mists, and the rest — need specific invitations that drop from high-tier league mechanic encounters. These fights give you one portal. Die once and it's gone. Their drop tables include unique jewels that enable completely different builds. Controlled Metamorphosis, for example, lets you allocate passive nodes in a huge radius around it without pathing to them. I haven't gotten one to drop yet but the builds people are making with it look insane.

Which League Mechanics Are Worth Your Time If you're farming currency, not all mechanics are equal. This is what I've found works right now, ranked from best to worst. Breach is the best raw currency per map. Splinters sell in bulk and Breach rings with double catalyst quality go for 5 to 10 Exalts each. Run every Breach tablet you find, don't overthink it. Ritual is inconsistent but spikes hard when it hits. Omen drops are the lottery — a single Omen of Whittling can fund your entire build. Always defer Omens and high-value currency at the Tribute window. Delirium accumulates Simulacrum splinters steadily and the passive nodes give increased quantity across all content. Worth speccing into if you're running a lot of maps. Expedition vendors are an RNG layer on top of another RNG layer. Tujen's haggling is the only consistent money here — reroll currency and stacked decks add up over time. Gwennen gambling is basically a currency sink and I wouldn't bother. Essences are fine for targeted crafting but the market isn't mature enough yet to sell them reliably. I'm stockpiling mine and waiting. And honestly, the most reliable income in PoE2 right now is just running high-tier Waystones with as much increased rarity as you can fit without dying. The difference between 50% and 150% increased rarity is roughly double the raw currency drops. Stack rarity on rings and amulet. If your build can survive it, swap in a Goldrim for mapping too. It's not flashy but it's consistent.