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Endgame

This is the Atlas and it serves as the core of the endgame for Path of Exile 2.

Well, one thing that Path of Exile is known for is having a lot of distinct endgame content to choose between. Each endgame mechanic needs to have its own progression system, areas, bosses, rewards, and player power that can only be gained from that content.

We are going to be adding a lot more over time, but for Path of Exile 2, we decided to start with seven distinct systems you can progress through.

Waystone

It's infinite and expands in all directions. Now, we're not going to spoil the plot too much here, but corruption from The Beast has blighted the land, and your objective is to help fight it.

In the center of the Atlas you will find the Ziggurat, a temple in which the Vaal research the fundamentals of space and time.

Here we can open portals to nearby locations and begin cleansing corruption and finding resources.

In order to power the portal device, we will need waystones.

Each waystone has a tier which will determine the level of the monsters that you will face.

To go to an area, simply click one that is adjacent to an area you've already completed, insert the waystone and click traverse.

Portals will open, allowing you and your party to travel to the area you have selected.

All the areas in endgame feel distinct from locations in the campaign, and we've dialed the randomization up to 11.

The monster packs you will face in each map are totally random and the combination of them can lead to some very interesting combat situations.

There are over 400 monster types in Early Access, and they have a lot of varied and interesting abilities. Depending on which combination you face, you might find some serious challenges.

In order to cleanse the corruption from an area, you will need to defeat all the powerful, rare, and unique enemies in it.

Once you've done that, the area will be marked as completed and you'll be able to travel past it to progress deeper into the world.

If you die, then the map can no longer be run and you have to find another way around to get to the areas behind it.

Now waystones, like all items, can be crafted using your currency items.

Adding prefix mods will improve the rewards, while suffix mods will increase danger.

The more dangerous a map is, the more waystones will drop. Adding mods to your waystones is key to progressing to the higher tiers and for sustaining them, but it will require you to take on larger challenges.

There are a variety of factors you’ll have to consider when crafting your waystones. Some maps will have higher density, some lower.

Some have more magic and rare chests, or monsters. Some are more linear, others are more open.

Make sure you explore and think about what makes certain maps good if you want to maximize your returns.

  • T1 is Level 65
Precursor Artifacts (Shrine)

There are also all kinds of other random encounters you might run into as you play maps. One such encounter are Precursor Artifacts.

These are ancient, corrupting monuments that irradiate the monsters around them. The monsters that feed off corruption are drawn to their power.

If you defeat the monsters and cleanse the artifacts, you will get a powerful temporary buff.

Some of the buffs make you faster, others rain lightning or fire around you, and some even give you increased experience or help you find better items.

Strongboxes

You can also find strongboxes. These enigmatic chests guard piles of treasure, but are always a trap. Monsters lie in wait to attack you the moment that you open it, and the boxes often have mechanisms to unleash powerful spells or dangerous debuffs.

There are different types of strongboxes containing different items, and you can even use your currency items to craft them on the fly so you can optimize the contents.

But be careful of opening one that you can't handle.

Essences

Sometimes you'll discover monsters frozen in essences: solidified, crystalline corruption. These dangerous monsters can be broken free.

If you defeat them, the essence they drop can be used to upgrade normal items to magic items with a guaranteed mod from a category.

For example, we use this one on some boots to ensure a movement speed mod.

Rarely, essences will also drop that allow you to upgrade magics to rares, adding the guaranteed mod.

This is incredibly powerful since it allows you to get a second deterministic mod in your crafting projects.

Combining these with the currencies that are commonly found in Wraeclast for modifying items, and we can get a very nice pair of boots indeed.

Untainted Paradise

You might find unique maps like Untainted Paradise, an undisturbed island full of beasts that give extreme amounts of experience (600%+).

Nameless Seer

You may even find a lonely man just enjoying his retirement. He'll give you a unique item for free.

Hideout

In addition, you can find special areas that would make a good spot to set up camp. Clear these areas of their hostile inhabitants and you'll be able to claim them as your own hideout. You can decorate your hideout as you see fit and invite various NPCs to join you there, to create your own personal base of operations.

Tower

A great tool for exploration are towers. These mysterious precursor constructs are dotted around the Atlas.

Completing the tower will reveal a large area around it, allowing you to scout out your next challenge.

There are a lot of things to find, so keep looking. Some sections of the Atlas are influenced by corruption.

This adds extra modifiers to the maps in the region, increasing the difficulty and rewards.

Here, slaying monsters in close proximity to each other will cause vestiges of corruption within them to merge together, forming powerful and grotesque abominations.

Atlas Tree: Boss

Now, you may have noticed while looking at the Atlas that some areas have these icons above them. The icon indicates the area contains some kind of special encounter.

This icon indicates the area has a powerful boss. Because only one in four maps contain a map boss, we're able to make them much more powerful and much more rewarding than they were, in Path of Exile 1.

These bosses come from the campaign, but have had the difficulty increased with changes to AI and some of their abilities.

It's worth noting that because you can see where the bosses are, you can choose to take them on or avoid them.

If you do choose to hunt bosses, though, then you'll be rewarded with special points for the boss hunting section of the Atlas skill tree.

The points here will allow you to specialize in boss killing, giving you much greater rewards for defeating them.

For each different type of content in the endgame, we're adding specialized trees in order to make it so you don't feel the need to respec your points when you change between different types of content.

We'll be showing you seven of these by the end of this presentation, so there's still a lot more to come. Now, bosses are not the only icon you will see on the Atlas. Let's take a look at one of the endgame systems.

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Breach

If you've played Path of Exile 1, you might be familiar with Breach. For Path of Exile 2, we've created sequels to several Path of Exile 1 leagues.

While the mechanic is familiar, the monsters, bosses, rewards, and progression all new.

A Breach is a tear in the fabric of reality. Opening it will allow you to see the demons and otherworldly monstrosities that lie in wait in this other plane of existence.

By engaging with a Breach, you'll create a bridge between their world and Wraeclast.

In order to keep the Breach open, you will need to kill the demons that pour forth. The faster you can kill the monsters,

the more monsters you will fight and the more loot you will find. You can also find clasped hands, that will open and drop more items if you run over them.

These can be a good boost to the rewards of the Breach, so keep an eye out.

Breach Tablets

One of the rewards you might find while fighting monsters from Breach are tablets. Tablets are special items that can be used with precursor towers to add more encounters to the Atlas. Breaches will drop Breach tablets. Clicking on a completed tower will allow you to consume the tablet to add more Breaches to the area within the range of the tower. This makes all content in the Atlas self-sustaining.

Want to do more Breaches? Find the tablets, add them to your towers, get more Breaches getting more tablets.

Soon your Atlas will be covered in other worldly domains. In addition, like all items in Path of Exile, you can craft them.

Use your currency to add more mods to your tablets, allowing you to upgrade all the Breaches in range.

Tablets can have up to two mods. These mods things like adding extra rare monsters, extra clasped hands, or even monster density of Breaches, allowing you to keep them open for longer. Often you will find multiple towers near to each other with overlapping areas of effect. This can allow you to really juice the mechanic by stacking the mods from multiple tablets.

In your fight to hold the Breach demons at bay, you may want to use the powers of their world against them.

Each endgame mechanic always has player power that can only be gained from that mechanic, and Breach is no different.

Catalysts

In Breach, you will find catalysts, items that can increase the quality of rings and amulets by improving specific mods.

You can also find Breach rings, a special base type that can have its quality improved by catalysts up to 50%. In this case, you could create a ring with around 170 life Breach rings can become some of the strongest rings in the game, giving you some good motivation to face the demon hordes. In addition, each endgame mechanic needs to have a pinnacle endgame encounter.

Breach Stone

While killing Breach monsters, you may find Breach Splinters. Collect enough of these and you'll be able to create a Breach Stone.

Realm Gate

Using a Vaal technology called the Realm Gate, you can use your Breach Stone to access their domain and bring the fight to them.

In this Twisted Domain, you will find nothing but a single massive Breach. Triggering it will reveal hordes of Breach inhabitants.

And should you be fast enough, you'll be able to fight their leader. Xesht, We Who Are One.

Now, this is just one of the pinnacle encounters of Path of Exile 2. We won't be showing you the rest of them, so you'll have to discover them for yourself.

But rest assured, this is some of the hardest content we've ever made. All these encounters have specific uniques that can only be found from them.

Atlas Tree: Breach

But that's not all. We still have the progression system. Defeating Xesht will give you points to allocate into the Breach section of the Atlas tree.

Allocating these points will make Breaches and the Breach domain even harder, but will give you more rewards.

The small nodes will increase the difficulty of the Twisted Domain, while the larger nodes will have more specific bonuses.

For example, this node adds more clasped hands to your Breaches and adds packs of magic monsters that can guard them.

Get some more points and you can allocate Waking Nightmare, which will double the number of splinters you get from clasped hands and inflict you with a mysterious debuff.

In order to earn more points, you will need to defeat Xesht at a higher difficulty, and some rewards from Xesht can only be found by increasing the difficulty of the Twisted Domain above certain thresholds. Defeating Xesht at difficulty four will be a challenge indeed, but there are many more threats in Wraeclast.

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Ritual

Ritual altars are sacrificial sites built by the mysterious King in the Mists.

If you encounter this symbol on the Atlas, then you know that an area contains Ritual altars.

Ritual altars demand tribute. Every monster you slaughter in the circle will feed the altar.

After the sacrifice, touch it to begin the Ritual. The monsters you just killed will be resurrected by the King in the Mists’ dark magic, and you must fight to survive.

The tribute you have offered to the altar can be spent to buy powerful items, but they can be expensive. To gain more tribute, you will want to find more altars.

Each successive Ritual you do within an area will spawn the monsters revived by the previous ones, in addition to the ones you sacrifice next to it.

By the end of an area, you'll be fighting a truly imposing number of foes, but will have a significant amount of tribute to spend.

Omens

One of the rewards you can buy with tribute are Omens. These are special items that allow for meta crafting: crafting items that affect other crafting items.

Have an item with good prefixes but bad suffixes? This Omen will help you remove the mods you don't want while keeping the ones you do.

There are a bunch more of these with different effects, but we'll leave those for you to discover. Now don't forget that Ritual will also drop tablets, which can be used to specialize into getting more Rituals.

If you want to get to the pinnacle boss of Ritual, then you'll probably want to use them. They can also be crafted to grant mods, making your Rituals more rewarding.

The pinnacle encounter of Ritual is the King in the Mists, feared by the Azmeri people.

He is said to have brought eternal darkness to the Wildwood. We won't show the encounter, but just like Breach, there are a range of unique items you can get for defeating him and you will gain points in the Ritual section of the Atlas tree.

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Delirium

Some maps have been touched by insanity. A mysterious entity has taken special interest in you.

Step through the looking glass and you will find your nightmares coming to life. When you touch the mirror, the mists of Delirium will spread out across the area, infecting your mind.

You must stay within the mist to maintain the nightmare, which is as profitable as it is terrifying. Everything you kill will increase the rewards that drop.

However, the deeper into the mist you travel, the stronger the monsters are. Be careful not to overstay your welcome.

Rare and unique enemies will become vessels for terrifying demons who will manifest out of them to unleash powerful attacks on you.

Distilled Emotions (Oil)

The mist also offers a strange crafting material: Distilled Emotions. By combining these emotions, you are able to instill your amulet with a notable from the passive skill tree. This is like gaining an extra passive point for free attached to your gear.

They are also particularly great because you don't have to traverse the tree to get to them, allowing you to get off class bonuses that would normally be much harder to get.

Distilled Emotions can also be used to instill your endgame maps, applying “Delirious” to them and adding additional difficulty and rewards, allowing you to further juice your endgame maps.

Delirium Tablets

The tablets you can find for Delirium can be used to further improve them: increase pack size, make the fog dissipate slower, or improve your progress towards the pinnacle encounter of Delirium.

Simulacrum splinters

Speaking of which, every now and then you will find Simulacrum splinters. The mysterious entity will create strange encounters based on warped versions of your own memories.

Monsters in Simulacrums come in waves that get progressively more difficult.

You'll receive loot at the end of each wave, and you'll have to make the decision to leave now or continue on, facing up against even tougher foes from the mist.

The bosses you will face as you get deeper into the Simulacrum are truly terrifying. Still sane, Exile? If you can complete a Simulacrum, you'll gain points for the Delirium section of the Atlas skill tree.

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Expedition

Next up, we have Expedition. Occasionally, while clearing corruption, you will encounter these Kalguuran settlers.

The Kalguurans have discovered ancient burial sites with lost Verisium artifacts, and they want you to help them dig them up. With explosives! The Kalguurans have marked locations where the relics can be found.

Place explosives as best you can to dig up as many as possible. There's just one problem.

Corruption has brought the corpses of their ancestors to life. So you might have to do a little bit of cleanup before you can reclaim the artifacts.

You can also find remnants, the destruction of which will further anger the restless dead. Each one you blow up will make subsequent monsters more powerful, but also more rewarding. Dannig, Rog, Tujen, and Gwennen, will exchange the artifacts for useful items and runic magic.

You can also find tablets to increase the number of Expeditions and the rewards. This one increases the radius of the explosives, while this one increases the number of remnants you will find.

Expedition Logbook

Eventually, you might discover a Logbook. These are special maps full of buried treasure and relics. Essentially one giant dig site.

Here you can create an extremely long chain of explosives and go through a very high number of remnants, but be very careful. Many remnants have mods that can really brick your build, so you'll probably want to avoid those ones.

If you add too many remnants, you could easily make the encounter harder than you can handle. There are all sorts of interesting things buried under the ground in Logbooks.

You might find dripping caves or hidden pirate caches, but the most powerful encounter is Olroth, the ancient undead commander of the Knights of the Sun.

Defeating him will grant you unique rewards, as well as points to spend in the Expedition section of the Atlas Tree. So those are the endgame systems on the Atlas, but we're not done yet.

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Trial of the Sekhemas

  • Unique Rewards: Jewels
  • Pinnacle Boss: Zaroth, the Eternal

The trials we talked about earlier have much more content when you get to the endgame too.

Just like the other endgame systems, they also have progression mechanics, unique rewards and player power that can only be gained from them. As you get higher level coins for the Trial of the Sekhemas, you'll unlock more floors to explore.

Each floor has its own challenging rooms and a floor boss that you will need to kill.

There are four floors in total, leading to another pinnacle boss at the end of the last floor, which can only be accessed at endgame.

Jewels

The Trial of the Sekhemas is where you will find jewels which you can socket into your tree. These are like passives that you can craft with your currency items.

They can be really powerful as they allow you to stack modifiers that may not easily be accessible on the tree normally.

This jewel gives lightning damage and shock chance, for example. There are quite a few jewel sockets on the tree, so it's possible to gain a lot of power here.

There are also other types of jewels that don't provide any bonuses themselves, but affect other passives surrounding them.

This jewel increases the effect of small nodes in radius by 25%. With careful placement in the tree, you could get a significant amount of power from it.

There are also unique jewels available with very interesting effects, but you'll have to find those for yourself. In order to push further into the trial and uncover the secrets of the Maraketh, you will want to take advantage of its progression system.

Relics

Relics are items that can be placed on the relic altar as you start the trial.

They give special bonuses that affects the trial, making it easier and increasing its rewards.

Of course, you can craft these with your currency items too, making them even stronger.

If you can complete the entire trial overcoming all four floors, the final boss will reward you with one of many unique relics.

These relics will be consumed when used on the next run, but can reward you with unique and powerful items. For example, this is The Last Flame. If you use it, you will only have one honor for the entire trial, so you will need to do a completely hitless run.

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Trial of Chaos

The Trial of Chaos also extends into endgame. As you gain Inscribed Ultimatums of higher and higher levels, The number of chambers that you can go through increases. In true Vaal style, this allows you to take even more risks for even more rewards.

At endgame, you can progress through up to ten chambers with three bosses in a single run.

Stacking ten tribulations on top of each other will make this a significant challenge, but it's worth it.

Vaal Orb

The Trialmaster will tempt you with items from the Vaal Empire, such as Vaal Orbs.

Vaal Orbs are powerful crafting items that corrupt your gear with random, mysterious outcomes. Corruption prevents an item from being modified further, so it has to be the last step of your craft. But it's also the most dangerous one.

For example, if you use one on your body armor, it might add a powerful new enchantment, or it might just reroll the entire item, bricking it completely.

Vaal Orbs also have the ability to add a socket, allowing you to bypass the normal restriction of how many sockets an item can have.

A body armor could get up to three sockets this way, allowing for a significant number of mods.

Vaal Orbs can even modify uniques, adding enchantments or sockets to uniques can make them incredibly powerful, but there's a good chance you'll break them as well.

Soul Cores

The Trialmaster will also occasionally offer you Soul Cores.

Originally formed by Chaos, the Vaal sought to replicate Soul Cores through human sacrifice rituals and blood magic to power their civilization.

Soul Cores are powerful socketable items with mods that cannot be obtained from regular runes.

Like all endgame content, there is of course a pinnacle boss. The final chamber will drop keys to this mysterious door.

Some say this is where the Trialmaster himself resides, and perhaps you're willing to take the risk and find out.

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The Burning Monolith

Had enough yet? Because there's still just one more thing. The most difficult content in Path of Exile 2.

While mapping, you may come across this fortress with a pillar of flame and ash rising from the center, there has emerged from underground, surrounded by an enormous maze riddled with danger.

Is the maze preventing something getting in or something getting out?

This fortress is of ancient origin, and its construction has similarities to the towers and tablets that you've been using on your journey through the end game. It is clear from the entrance that there are three keys required to enter.

Local factions of vying for access to the fortress in order to seize the power they believe will be inside.

Each of the factions leaders have managed to get their hands on one of the keys, so you'll need to defeat them.

Each faction is led by an Uber Act Boss. You can see one of them inhabiting this city, but in order to fight him, you'll first need to defeat their two lieutenants in the adjacent zones.

Be careful, if you fail against either of the lieutenants or to kill their leader, they will move on and you'll need to find them again. Kill all the Uber bosses and you will gain access to the fortress.

We aren't going to spoil it as we can't wait to see you guys attempt it for the first time. But is there a tree you get points in after killing it?

Of course there is. This is Path of Exile. There's always another tree. So these are your challenges for PoE2

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