Summary
There are many different things to do inPath of Exile 2to get more currency and items, and while most of them are related to the endgame section, there are a few notable exceptions.Path of Exile 2’s endgame is rich in content, as players can farm Waystones as they come, juice the Atlas with Tablets in order to have great Maps, collect Breach Fragments and Simulacrum Splinters to attempt runs of the Twisted Realm or the Simulacrum, respectively, and even more. There are even other activities that don’t require the Atlas at all, and one of them is in need of a major shake-up.
Farming inPath of Exile 2may require some adjustments to builds, the Atlas Passive Tree Skills, or making sure Waystones are optimized in terms of Affixes and possibly even using Distilled Emotions on them. The process is almost entirely customizable, and depending on how strong a given build is and how much currency players can invest in the endgame, the results can vary and improve exponentially. However, this logic doesn’t really apply to two activities - Trials of the Sekhemas and Trials of Chaos. The latter is often preferred and even has consistently good loot, but the former is lacking in multiple ways.
Why PoE 2’s Trial of the Sekhemas Needs Big Changes
The main problem withPath of Exile 2’s Trial of the Sekhemasis that it not only acts as a roguelike mode with its layout, room selection mechanics, and traps, but it also uses Honour as an accompanying resource for Life, Mana, and Energy Shield. Normally, reaching 0 Life means the character is dead, but one can potentially lose a Trial of the Sekhemas run by staying alive the whole time, and that’s if Honour gets to 0. Since any form of damage will reduce players' Honour, it can be quite annoying to run this activity at all levels of play.
On top of that, Trial of the Sekhemas includes multiple Afflictions. Many of these can severely hinder progression in the activity or make it outright impossible for some builds. For example, anyPath of Exile 2buildthat focuses on Armour, Evasion, or Energy Shield can run into the corresponding Affliction that makes that specific defense 0. These are considered Minor Afflictions too, whereas they would be much more balanced if they reduced that defense by 25% or 33% and were able to stack. In fact, any room that gives players a random Minor Affliction should be avoided because there is a chance their defenses will tank, and the run might fail.
How Path of Exile 2’s Trial of Chaos Could Inspire Changes For Trial of the Sekhemas
Another example of Minor Affliction is one that reduces the damage players deal by 40%, which would be much fairer if it instead applied the effects ofPoE 2’s Enfeeble Curse. Generally speaking, all Afflictions and Boons are massively skewed, to the point that they can dramatically shift the course of a given run even if they are Minor Afflictions or Minor Boons. Rebalancing these would greatly improve thereplayability of Trial of the Sekhemas, which only a handful of players use for farming.
By comparison,Trial of Chaos inPath of Exile 2can be a fair activity even when players run into its worst modifiers. This is because not only do players choose which negative modifier to take among three different ones, but some of the worst ones are still manageable at one or two stacks. Trial of the Sekhemas should use a similar stack-based approach for its Afflictions and Boons, maybe even removing the distinction between Minor and Major.
This change alone could be great forfarming Trial of the Sekhemas, as it would remain a punitivePath of Exile 2activity, but with more player agency and less reliance on RNG, where some runs are doomed from the get-go and others are incredibly smooth. Making the activity more consistent might be exactly what it needs, but fans will have to wait and see if GGG does it or not.
