Path of Exile 2 Dawn of the Hunt endgame mechanics explained

Path of Exile 2 basically exists as two different games: the campaign, and the Atlas of Worlds. Once you get to the Atlas, you'll start progressing through 15 tiers of waystones until you get to the very toughest monsters. Along the way you'll start to encounter all sorts of new mechanics and challenges, most of which will add some sort of horrible danger in exchange for goodies.

Some of these mechanics have their own skill trees, and by engaging with them and defeating their pinnacle bosses, you can earn points to make them even more challenging and rewarding. Here I'll break down all the major endgame systems of Path of Exile 2, give you some tips on how to get those points faster, and provide some basic sense of how to make currency with each one.

Path of Exile 2 Breach

One of the absolute fan favorite mechanics from Path of Exile returning in the sequel, Breach features one or more glowing purple hands in your maps. Touch the hand and you'll open a Breach; an expanding circle in which tons of monsters spawn. Kill the monsters and touch Clasped Hands that appear and you'll be able to collect Breach Splinters.

Once you've gathered 300 splinters, you'll be able to turn them into a Breachstone and go battle against Xesht, We That Are One. Thankfully they've increased the drop rate on these splinters, so assuming you're making an effort to go farm them you shouldn't have too much trouble. Be sure to use Breach tablets in your towers if you want to farm this mechanic (this is true for all four of the main league mechanics, using tablets makes interacting with them much easier).

Defeat Xesht and you'll get two points for your Breach Atlas tree and a chance at some tasty loot, including the Hand of Wisdom and Action gloves, which even after being nerfed are pretty great. Here's where I recommend spending those points.

• Frantic Invasion: 40% increased quantity of splinters means more Breachstones and more points
• Rising Pyre: This node increases monster density in breaches by 25%. An absolute all star and one of the reasons to do Breach in the first place
• Grasping Hands: More Clasped Hands, more magic monsters, more splinters
• Crumbling Walls: Here you'll get access to some delicious chances at maps with tons of breaches in them. Especially if you're using tablets, getting multiple Breaches per map is awesome

Make sure you're using tablets with increased quantity of items found in your maps, if you can. This mechanic goes really well with any build that can clear out tons of monsters in a large area, and is particularly satisfying on anything running Herald of Ice.

Path of Exile 2 Expedition

The Expedition mechanic features ancient Kalguuran burial sites, which have all sorts of buried treasure and monsters dwelling just below the surface. So, like any good adventurer, we'll blow them all up with explosives!

Setting up explosives will unlock three things: expedition monsters, excavated chests, and remnants. Remnants offer bonuses in exchange for making the monsters more dangerous, and will form the main part of your strategy here—get the best remnant modifiers you can while not making the encounter so lethal that you die.

First, you'll be looking for remnants that increase your chance to get logbooks. These are items kinda like waystones that let you go into a special level that's basically one huge expedition. Logbooks also are the only way to find the Expedition boss Olroth, Origin of the Fall. In addition to logbooks, look for remnants that increase pack size, number of rare monsters, or quantity of items. All of these will also make it more likely to find the precious logbooks.

Once you find one, take it over to Dannig in your hideout to start the Expedition. You'll be looking for a big skull icon on the map—it's not always there, in my experience it'll be about one in four. String your explosives there and go challenge the big bad. Once you get some Expedition points, here's where to spend them.

• Disturbed Rest: A 30% increase to the number of runic monster markers means more monsters! We love more monsters
• Detailed Records: The second reason to take Disturbed Rest is that it leads to this node, which gives a 30% increase to the number of logbooks dropped by monsters and makes the logbooks better
• Timed Detonations: This node is kind of a stinker, as artifacts still aren't worth a ton of currency. It's required to get to the next one though, and if you like gambling you can use all those extra artifacts in the Recombinator
• Legendary Battles: More monsters! Are we noticing a trend? It also gives you more Exotic Coinage, which tends to be the artifact that holds its value the best

Good affixes for Expedition tablets as you're trying to get all your points are things like increased pack size, number of magic or rare monsters, increased quantity of items, and explosive range. The range of builds that can run Expedition is wide, but I particularly like it on close range builds. The grenadiers will absolutely blow you to bits if you're at range and aren't careful.

Path of Exile 2 Delirium

Still sane, exile? Maps with Delirium feature a mirror at the beginning of the level. Walk through that and the area will be filled with fog that spawns a bunch of shadowy monsters. The longer you stay in the fog and clear baddies out, the higher your reward gauge will get, eventually granting you Distilled Emotions and Simulacrum Splinters.

You can use Distilled Emotions to instill an amulet with an additional notable node from the passive tree, which can be incredibly powerful. They can also be used on your waystones to add Delirium to them, increasing the number of monsters and additional bonuses based on the emotion type.

The splinters you'll gather can be combined into a Simulacrum once you have 300, and this lets you go challenge 15 waves of monsters. Defeat them and you'll battle against Omniphobia and Kosis for your skill points.

• Get Out of my Head!: Waystones with emotions applied are a good thing, as long as you can handle them, but mostly we're trying to get to…
• Would You Like to See my Face?: This node gives a whopping 50% increase to splinters dropped by monsters, which is amazing. Do note that it makes them harder
• The Mirrors… the Mirrors!: Fracturing Mirrors found in the Delirium fog spawn additional rare monsters and splinters, which is a good thing
• Isn't it Tempting?: Another node that adds monster damage (it adds up!), this one also gives us a 30% chance to generate an additional reward type, which is more shots at very expensive rare Distilled Emotions

Delirium tablets should mostly be more monsters and quantity of items. As for builds, just about anything works with Delirium as long as you don't need monster corpses to function. These guys don't leave corpses (I think they're supposed to be imaginary? Like my loot?), so any build that requires them is going to be hooped. I'm looking at you, Herald of Ice.

Path of Exile 2 Ritual

By far my favorite of the big four league-style mechanics, Ritual features Ritual Altars in your maps. Any monsters you kill within the radius of the circle will be resurrected when you click the altar, and you'll have to fight them again. You want to kill as many monsters as possible to gain tribute, which can be spent after you clear out the altars.

The loot from Ritual is pretty great, and includes currency, weapons, armor, and Omens. You can right click these special items in your inventory to gain certain effects: some affect crafting, some mitigate xp loss on death, all sorts of stuff. Some of them are the closest thing we have to endgame crafting options, and they can get very costly.

You'll also have a chance to find an Audience with the King, which will let you go fight the King in the Mists. Defeat him and you'll get a shot at an Ingenuity belt, and more points for your Ritual tree.

• From the Mists: Additional packs of monsters means more tribute, which gives us a better shot at having enough to afford invitations. Once I get my third and fourth point, however, I respec this to the following two nodes, taking this again as my fifth and sixth points
• Ominous Portents: An additional chance for rewards to be Omens is great, but mostly we're here to unlock the next node
• He Approaches: A 30% increased chance at an Audience with the King is excellent, and you should never not have this node clicked if you have at least four points
• Tempting Offers: A lot of folks like the four Rituals node, and I think it's a fine choice. Being able to reroll favours more often and more cheaply lets me fish for the good stuff though, so I like this as my final choice

For Ritual tablets I like picking anything that gives us more monsters or cheaper rerolls. The strategy here is to get as much tribute as we can so we can fish for the good stuff (Audiences, expensive Omens, divine orbs, etc). Ritual favors tanky builds, as the areas you fight the monsters in are quite small, so it's hard to avoid everything.

Path of Exile 2 The Arbiter of Ash

The "final boss" of Path of Exile 2's initial release, the Arbiter is a boss to end all bosses. Multiple phases, telegraphed oneshots, a really cool boss arena; fighting this guy is awesome. I'm really glad they've changed things to allow us to fight him multiple times with one attempt, since it's very challenging to gather up the materials to go fight him.

To challenge the Arbiter you'll need three Crisis Fragments. These can be acquired at Citadels, which are special maps with act bosses from the campaign at the end. The Iron Citadel has the Act 1 boss Geonor, Copper Citadel has the Act 2 boss Jamanra, and the Stone Citadel has Doryani and his machine hiding at the end.

Gather all three Crisis Fragments and you can toodle on over to the Burning Citadel and fight the Arbiter. Beating him is outside the scope of this guide, but watch a couple mechanics videos, have a strong build, and get in there. It's a blast. I'm not going to go in to how to spend the points on the Arbiter tree here because honestly, if you can beat Arbiter at +4 you already know what you need to know. Godspeed.

Bonus Round: Azmeri Wisps

It being 0.2, I would be remiss not to mention these little guys. They don't have a skill tree, but they're a fun little system that floats around interacting with the other ones in cool ways.

You'll find the wisps as floating little balls of light. Get close enough and they'll start floating away, infusing nearby monsters with animal spirits and searching for a rare to inhabit. Once they do, the rare will get extra powers and drop a whole bunch more loot.

I love these things. I specced into them on my Atlas tree immediately, and it's been a blast. They pull me into all sorts of trouble, occasionally inhabit map bosses, and make me feel like Mufasa in the Lion King when a stampede of phantom antelope grind me to dust. The Shining Trail node at the outside edge of the tree is particularly fun, as it gives your rare monsters that are possessed by wisps a 25% chance to spit the wisp out again, leading you on another merry chase.