Guide:PoE2 overview for PoE1 players

It has been suggested that Differences from Path of Exile 1 be merged into this guide.

Proposed since January 16, 2025 • Discuss

This is a guide on the subject of getting started in Path of Exile 2 from a Path of Exile player's perspective.

Last updated on ‎December 5, 2024.

This guide provides an overview of Path of Exile 2, as well as new features and changes from the first Path of Exile.

Account & Microtransactions

Both Path of Exile 1 and Path of Exile 2 use the same account system. Path of Exile 2 accounts can share characters and progression between other platforms and it supports cross-play.

Microtransaction purchases are shared between both games and can be used in both games as long as it's available in the other, the only exception being Guild Stash Tabs. However, microtransactions purchased from the PlayStation version cannot be used on other platforms and vice versa. Stash Tabs that were purchased from the PlayStation version will be remove-only on other platforms.

Not all microtransactions are available at the start but they will be activated during early access. ^{[citation needed]}

Classes

Path of Exile 2 has twelve base classes, with each single or hybrid attribute combinations being represented by two classes. The Scion is not playable in Path of Exile 2. Like the first game, each class leans towards a certain playstyle or build archetype, but they can freely use skills and weapons of other classes. Alternate classes share the same starting location in the skill tree, but have different notable passive skills near their starting location and different choice of Ascendancy classes.

The currently available classes and their associated gem categorizations are:

Strength: Warrior - Maces
Intelligence: Sorceress - Elemental spells
Intelligence: Witch - Occult (Minion & Chaos) spells
Dexterity: Ranger - Bows
Strength/Dexterity: Mercenary - Crossbows
Dexterity/Intelligence: Monk - Quarterstaves

The following classes will be available in the future:

Strength/Intelligence: Druid - Primal (Shapeshifting) spells
Dexterity: Huntress - Spears
Strength: Marauder - Axes
Strength/Intelligence: Templar - Flails
Strength/Dexterity: Duelist - Swords
Dexterity/Intelligence: Shadow - Daggers

Ascendancy Class

Each class has a choice of three Ascendancy classes to choose from (on full release). The player gains access to Ascendancy classes and gain points by completing an Ascension Trial. The player does not need to complete each type of trial to gain points; they can choose to complete the same type of trial on harder difficulties to earn points instead. These trials are also available in the endgame and have their own exclusive rewards as well.

Ascension Trials can be found in Acts 2, 3, and 4.

Trial of the Sekhemas (Act 2): Based on the Forbidden Sanctum.
Trial of Chaos (Act 3): Based on Ultimatum.
Unannounced third trial (Act 4)

Skills

In Path of Exile 2, gems are no longer socketed to your equipment. There is now a dedicated menu where you socket your skill, support and meta gems. The new system allows your to have as much as 9 skill gems with 5 support gems at a time and removes the need to find or craft gear with gem sockets and links.

Gem sockets do not need to be linked and do not have colour restrictions, meaning Orbs of Fusing and Chromatic Orbs are no longer in the game. The number of sockets on a gem can be deterministically increased with three different tiers of Jeweller's Orbs.

A skill does not need to come from a skill gem in order to have sockets. Default attack and skills from items and Ascendancy passives can have support gems socketed onto them. Item and Ascendancy skills gain sockets with item and character levels, respectively.

Tip

Skills granted by items and passives don't have a cost or reservation, even if their skill gem counterparts otherwise do.

Support gems now have a limit of one copy socketed across all your gem sockets. The maximum number of support gems of a colour you can have socketed is determined by your attributes (one per 5 attribute points for that colour).

There are also Meta gems, which can be socketed with both skill and support gems. Trigger gems now come in the form of Meta gems that trigger socketed active skills when activated. Most trigger gems build up Energy whenever you satisfy its trigger condition and automatically activate when it has enough Energy stored.

Gems drop as Uncut Gems, which can be turned into a different gem using the Gemcutting menu. Gems are no longer levelled with experience. To level a skill, you must find an Uncut Gem of a higher level and turn it into that skill gem. Support gems don't have levels.

Tip

Gems do not drop with quality, which makes gem quality a harder stat to obtain.

Skills are separated by weapon or spell category for active skills and classes for buff/reservation skills. Most weapon skills are now weapon-specific, giving each weapon class unique playstyles.

Skills can be assigned to be used in specific Weapon Sets. When enabled, whenever you use that skill, your character will switch to that weapon and use the skill. There is a small delay on switching weapons.

Combat

Combat has received a significant overhaul in PoE2, both in how the player controls and in enemy attacks and behaviour.

A major addition to the game is a dodge roll. The start of the roll animation will make most strikes and projectiles miss, but it can't avoid area abilities or big telegraphed attacks such as slams. It can be used to cancel out of almost any animation except another dodge roll. There is no cooldown or cost associated with dodge rolling.

Some shields come with the Raise Shield skill, which causes your character to hold up the shield to block all incoming attacks from the front. Blocking an attack depletes the stun gauge, which stuns you if it's depleted. Enemies will occasionally flash red before using particularly dangerous, telegraphed attacks that cannot be blocked.

Skills can turn mid-animation to adjust your aim and many have some mobility built into them. The majority of skills now have unique animations and can have adjusted animation based on its speed. You can move while using many ranged attacks and spells at reduced speed. Mana cost is spent over the skill's animation instead of it all being paid upfront.

Path of Exile 2 supports WASD movement, as well as the classic "left click-to-move" movement.

PoE2 has also reworked how crowd control effects work. Debuffs like Stun and Freeze now accumulate on enemies instead of being based on chance, critical properties and ailment threshold. When an enemy has its stun meter filled up, it receives a Heavy Stun, becoming unable to act for a longer period of time. There are also new crowd control effects like Electrocute and Pin.

Enemy attacks no longer have a distinction between attacks and spells. To ensure visual clarity, players won't have to guess what is a spell and what is an attack. As a result, all monster skills are affected by Evasion and Accuracy, and Spell Suppression no longer exists.

Minions can be commanded manually to move to location, target enemies, or open chests. Some minions have a command skill that can be activated by the player. Permanent minions will revive themselves automatically if no other allied minions have died recently. There are also mountable minions that allow you to use ranged attacks while moving at faster speeds, but will leave you stunned if you take too much damage.

Tip

Spectres can be stored into the Bind Spectre skill gem, removing the need for "Spectre banking."

Death

Dying (in non-Hardcore leagues) is more consequential than in PoE1. While there is no experience loss on death until at very high levels, dying and respawning will respawn monsters in the area and boot you back to the entrance or checkpoint. Dying to a boss during the campaign will reset the boss fight, requiring you to start the fight over. In endgame, dying in a map or boss fight will remove any additional content on the map when you retry it, including map bosses.

While in a party, dead party members can be revived by channelling over their body for a few seconds. Taking damage will interrupt the process.

Miscellaneous

Town Portals no longer require Portal Scrolls to open. There is a cast animation that plays while opening a portal, and taking a hit will interrupt it. Portals cannot be opened during boss fights.
The game can be paused while playing solo, and in parties if every player in the instance pauses. You can hover over status effects to read their tooltips while paused.
The game will pause itself when you disconnect. Upon reconnecting, you have the option of resuming from when you disconnected or respawn at a checkpoint.

Passives

The passive skill tree works largely the same as it did in the first game, but with some adjustments. Passive skills tend to be more general-purpose near the starting point and more specialized on the outer edges of the tree. There are no life clusters on the tree; increased maximum life is a far rarer stat than in the first game. Masteries are not present in the PoE2 passive tree.

Tip

Many classic keystones from PoE1 return with adjusted mechanics. Be sure to read their new tooltips.

Path of Exile 2 allows you to assign individual passive skill tree configurations to Weapon Sets. Whenever you switch weapons, your passive skill tree configuration will swap to that tree. Shapeshifting forms can also have their own separate passive trees. Only a limited amount of passive points can be allocated this way, which are generally granted as quest rewards.

The player can choose which attribute points to receive from the minor attribute nodes. They can be switched for half the gold cost of a skill refund.

The nodes near the starting locations for classes can change depending on your character's class. For example, as a Sorceress, the starting area will have more nodes tailored towards Sorceress skills, the Witch will have more Witch-oriented nodes in the same area, and other classes will find a mix of both Sorceress and Witch nodes in that area.

Jewel sockets are found along the travel nodes instead of their own sections. Cluster Jewels are not in the game.

Tip

Delirium drops Instilled Emotions that are use to Instil an enchantment onto an amulet that allocates a passive skill, replacing Blight oils and Anointment.

Mechanics

Spirit is a new stat in Path of Exile 2. Spirit is used to reserve skills with persistent effects like buffs, auras, and trigger meta gems, and upkeep permanent minions.
Traps are now a weapon class with their own set of skills. Traps have stats that determines its Trap Trigger Delay and Detonation Type (e.g. Proximity (trap playstyle) or Manual (mine playstyle)).
Dual wielding is more restrictive than in the first game. Martial (attack-based) weapons can only be dual wielded with the same item type, and some weapons cannot be dual wielded at all. Non-martial weapons cannot be dual wielded. Dual wielding confers no inherent bonuses.
Projectiles are affected by gravity. Projectiles lose vertical height as they travel further, reducing off-screening from projectiles.
Chaos damage no longer bypasses energy shield, but deals double damage to it.
Ailments:
- Chance to apply certain ailments (i.e. Ignite, Shock) are now based on the damage dealt by the hit that applied it. Chance is calculated against the defender's ailment threshold. Magnitude affects the ailment's damage or effect.
- Critical strikes no longer always apply elemental ailments.
- Shock applies a static 20% increased damage effect on afflicted targets.
- Bleeding and Poison damage bypasses energy shield.
- Bleed damage is now based on damage dealt to life by the hit that applied it. Bleeding is no longer restricted to attacks only.
- Poison does not stack by default, but the maximum number of Poisons you can apply can be increased.

Stats

Attributes provide more life/accuracy/mana per point compared to PoE1 and affect how many support gems of their respective colour you can have socketed.
Accuracy/chance to hit now is dependent on enemy distance, with melee builds requiring less accuracy than ranged ones.
Energy shield recharge delay has been increased to 4 seconds (from 2) and recharge rate has been reduced to 12.5% per second (from 33.3% per second).
Evasion now applies to strikes and projectiles, but not area of effect skills, unless you have the Acrobatics keystone.
Critical strike damage is calculated differently: instead of a Critical Strike Multiplier, critical strike damage is determined by Critical Damage Bonus, which can have increased/decreased and more/less modifiers, as well as flat modifiers. The default Critical Damage Bonus is 100% (200% base damage).
Culling strike kills normal, magic, rare, and unique enemies at 30%, 20%, 10%, and 5% life respectively. The life threshold is now checked before the hit, not after.
Conversion now only scales by the final damage type, and does not remember converted damage types. (e.g. 100% Physical to Cold no longer scales with Physical).
Item rarity now affects currency drops.
Leech is simplified without having various caps, simply leeching a percentage of damage dealt, and instead enemies have leech reduction based on monster level. Leech effects now occur over 1 second.
Light radius modifiers extend the range of the minimap's fog of war.
Penetration will no longer penetrate resistances past 0%.
Recoup now occurs over 8 seconds.
Thorns is a new stat that replaces "Reflect # damage to Melee Attackers" stats. Thorns damage can be scaled.
Cold and Lightning have switched attribute attunement. Lightning skills now require DEX and cold skills INT instead.

Status effects

Charges do not grant inherent bonuses and instead are used to empower skills which spend them. Skills that spend charges cannot grant charges.
Marks are no longer considered to be curses. As a result, there is no longer a distinction between Hex and Mark curses, and Hex curses are now simply referred to as curses. Marks now also have a limited duration.
Curse skills place down a ground effect that applies the curse to enemies on the ground after an activation delay.

Items

Gold

Gold is a resource that drops throughout the game. Gold can be used to buy items from vendors, gamble for random rarity equipment, refund passive points, and list items in the Currency Exchange. Items can be sold for Gold or disenchanted for crafting currency shards. Gold cannot be traded with other players.

Equipment

The amount of items that drop from enemies have been significantly reduced from PoE1, but both the the fact items drop with better rolls on average and the changes to crafting make random drops more valuable.

Weapons are now distinctly split between three categories: Martial weapons, which are used for attacks; caster weapons, which enhance spells; and traps, which are now separate. Non-martial weapons come with an implicit that grants a skill instead of a default attack. Path of Exile 2 introduces five new weapon types: crossbows, spears, quarterstaves (reworked warstaves), flails, and traps.

Weapon bases are more varied, with some bases having abnormal stat distributions or exclusive implicit mods not found on other items.

Martial weapons and armour can have sockets, which can be slotted with Runes or Soul Cores to add stat-enhancing enchantments to them.

Path of Exile 2 has a new off-hand item called Foci, which grants caster modifiers.

Flasks

Players can have up to one life flask and one mana flask equipped at a time.

Utility flasks have been replaced with charms. Charms grant conditionally activated buffs that provide defensive bonuses such as immunity to a certain ailment or debuff. They gain charges the same way flasks do. Belts give one charm slot, and the number of slots can be increased up to a maximum of 3.

Tip

Charms are almost purely defensive. There are no charm equivalent of flasks like Quicksilver and Diamond.

Crafting

PoE2 has no "reroll" or rarity downgrade currencies like Orb of Alteration and Orb of Scouring, which makes normal or magic bases more valuable as drops for the purpose of crafting.

Currencies that were much rarer in PoE1, like Regal and Exalted Orbs, are much more common in PoE2.

The Crafting Bench is not in the game, which also means there are no crafted modifiers.

The Salvage Bench allows you to destroy and item to gain quality-enhancing items or shards for currencies that add sockets to items if they have them. The Reforging Bench allows you to exchange three of the same kind of items for a new item with reforged mods or another currency tier.

Several crafting currencies have had their functionalities changed:

Currencies which deterministically upgrade an item's rarity now only add one modifier.
Chaos OrbsChaos OrbStack Size: 20Removes a random modifier and augments a rare item with a new random modifierRight click this item then left click a rare item to apply it.
Shift click to unstack. now remove a random modifier then add a new one.
Orbs of ChanceOrb of ChanceStack Size: 10Unpredictable either upgrades a Normal item to Unique rarity or destroys itRight click this item then left click a normal item to apply it. will either upgrade a normal item to a unique or destroy it, similar to Tainted Mythic Orbs.
Essences upgrade an item's rarity and add a mod of a specific category instead of a specific mods. Base Essences upgrade normal items, and Greater Essences upgrade items to rare.
Omens can be used in conjunction with crafting currencies, modifying crafting outcomes in various ways, such as restricting to only prefix or suffix mods, or applying a currency twice.

Campaign

Path of Exile 2 will feature a six-Act campaign on full release.

There are many bosses in the campaign that drop rewards that give a permanent stat boost to your character. Notably, boss rewards are the only way to gain permanent Spirit increases.

There is a -10% elemental resistance penalty applied after each Act.

Tip

Capping resistances is not as vital as it was in the first game, at least not until late endgame.

Endgame

Path of Exile 2 features a new endgame with a new storyline.

The Atlas

PoE2's endgame involves traversing across Wraeclast through an endlessly expanding Atlas. Unlike PoE1, the maps are on the Atlas itself. The player makes progress on the Atlas by completing maps connected to your starting point and completed maps. Maps are opened using Waystones on the Map Device, which can be crafted with affixes the same way as PoE1's maps. Completing a map requires defeating every Rare and Unique monster in the zone. Dying will cause the map to be failed, removing any additional content the map had when re-attempted.

Maps may randomly have additional encounters, indicated by icons above the map's atlas location. The icons will indicate if the map contains a boss or league mechanic. Unlike PoE1, not every map contains a boss. Some areas contain Corruption, making it more difficult. Unique maps, such as Untainted Paradise, and hideouts can be discovered on the Atlas.

There are also Precursor Towers scattered throughout the Atlas, which reveal nearby areas when completed. Various endgame mechanics can drop Tablets. They can be placed on a Tower to add more encounters of their respective mechanic and bonuses to surrounding areas.

League mechanics

Various league mechanics from PoE1 make a return in PoE2. Completing the pinnacle encounters for these mechanics will grant you skill points towards that league's Atlas passive sub-tree.

Essences and Shrines make a return.
Strongboxes make a return. Strongboxes now work like Ritual in that it traps the player in a small area around it before it can be opened.
Corrupted areas causes slain monster to Coalesce Corruption, a mechanic that functions like Beyond.
Breach drops catalysts used to add quality to accessories. Breach RingsBreach RingRequires Level 40Maximum Quality is 50% now have increased maximum quality as an implicit and are not corrupted by default.
Ritual drops omens used for meta-crafting.
Delirium drops Distilled Emotions which are used to add an enchantment to amulets that allocates a passive skill the same way as Blight Oils, or add a Delirious modifier to waystones.
Expedition makes a return. Artifacts can be taken to Rog, Gwennen, or Tujen to craft items.

Atlas passive skill tree

The Atlas passive skill tree consists of a main tree for general use, and sub-trees. The sub-trees grant specific bonuses towards boss encounters, league mechanics, and pinnacle content. Points towards the sub-trees are gained by completing the pinnacle content of their respective mechanic.

Pinnacle content

Several league mechanic have a pinnacle content associated with them. For example, Breach encounters drop Breach Splinters that can be formed into a Breachstone, which can be taken to the Realmgate to open a portal to fight Xesht, We Who Are One. Completing a pinnacle encounter will grant Atlas passive skill points for that league's sub-tree to improve its rewards and increase the difficulty of future pinnacle encounters. Completing the pinnacle content again on a higher difficulty will unlock more points on the sub-tree. Certain items require a sufficiently high difficulty level for it to drop.

The mysterious Burning Monolith resides on the Atlas. To gain access to Monolith, you must acquire three keys, each guarded by endgame versions of Act bosses. To acquire the keys, you must defeat the boss' lieutenants without failing then acquire the keys by defeating the boss.