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Discover the Trial of Sekhemas guide in Path of Exile 2 and how to defeat the Rattlecage, the Earthbreaker.
Path of Exile 2 has received an initial release on December 6, 2024. There is a total of 12 distinct Classes, each granting its own uniqueness in the game. Ascending in Path of Exile 2 is a major milestone that unlocks powerful new abilities. To achieve this, you must first complete one of the game’s two Trials. The first challenge, the Trial of Sekhemas in Act 2, will reward the player with two Ascendancy Skill Points. You can use these points after you choose your Ascendancy Class. Ascension Trails act as gateways to unlocking and upgrading Ascendancy Classes. Trail of Sekhemas grants you Sacred Water, Keys, and multiple chests. In this guide, we’ll discuss the basics of the Trail of Sekhemas and how to complete each challenge efficiently.
Trial of The Sekhemas Overview in POE 2
Defeat the Balbala the Traitor to get the token to start the Trail of the Sekhemas. This monster is level 19 and you can find it in the Traitor’s Passage, a main story zone within Act 2. If you haven’t been here yet, just keep that name in the back of your head. If you aren’t like completely overcharged for everything that you’re fighting, this can be a difficult fight. After you defeat the boss, you get a coin and you’re told to go to the Trial of the Sekhema’s location on the map in Act 2. Do so and put the coin to begin your first Trial run.
Once you use the coin, you will get a menu to put in relics. These add modifiers to run, things like reduced enemy damage or increased maximum Honour. You can get more of these inside the Trial as well. However, they don’t take your normal inventory or stash space.
Completing the first room
The first room is completely random but there are several different activity types within the Trial of Shekhemas. Some activities require you to survive for a timer which reduces when you kill rare enemies. You will also be placed in a cave full of traps and tasks you to find the exit without taking much damage in some activities. The entire activity has one core unique function to it that you want to be aware of from the start. Success and failure are not defined purely by your health bar and the ability to survive because there’s an Honour stat within this mode a bar called Honour. The meter will go down whenever you’re hit by an attack. The only way to make it go back up afterward is with the room rewards or axes of various kinds.
Once you complete the first room, you’ll be shown the Trial map and here you can decide your path forward. You’ll be told the activity type for the rooms that you are choosing between and rewards for each of the options too. Sometimes, there can be negative affixes that are dangerous because they are what you’re going to get. We recommend you pick up the minimum number of negative affixes, maximize your Honour at all times, and play it just super safe because this is what lets you unlock your ascendancy to begin with.
How to unlock the Trial of The Sekhemas in POE 2?
Defeat the Balbala, the Traitor in the Traitor’s Passage in Act 2 to unlock the Trial of the Sehkemas in Path of Exile 2. This side boss will drop Balbala’s Barya coin after defeating it which can be used as the key to enter the Trial. Move back to the Ardura Caravan and use the Desert Map to travel to the Trial of the Sehkemas at the top of the map. Move inside the vicinity to find Balbala waiting for you to begin the Trial.
Trial Basics
Before entering the Trial, Balbala will give you Relic. These are a form of character progression tied exclusively to the Trial of Sekhemas. They can be very powerful, offering you bonuses like Life or damage resistance for your Honour. Since you obtain them randomly within the Trial, you don’t need to use the one that Balbala gives you. There is one big way in which the Trial of Sekhemas varies from normal gameplay.
In normal gameplay, you have health and maybe some Energy Shield but in this Trial you also have Honour. You lose Honour when you take damage but unlike health, you don’t have an Honour flask. Your other methods of recovery like Regeneration and Leech also don’t work on Honour. The only way to recover it is through special shrines that you find throughout the run. Your recovery is limited and you should avoid taking damage.
For your first Trial, if you do end up taking a bunch of damage you die and fail. Don’t worry about it as you can run the Trial again by speaking to Balbala.
A Step By Step Guide to Trial of the Sekhemas in POE 2
Here are all the steps that you need to follow to complete Trial of the Sekhemas in Path of Exile 2.
- Ritual Trial
- Chalice Trial
- Hourglass Trial
- Escape Trial
- Gantlet Trial
Ritual Trial
Ritual Trial is all about closing the portals and killing easy monsters that are just beside them. This is fairly easy although you must move around and try to find them. No challenging enemy is available and portals are quite reliably found throughout the map.
Chalice Trial
Awards a large Sacred Water fountain. Afflicts you with leading waterskin on entry. Lose 20 Sacred Water when you take damage from an enemy hit. This one is a little bit trickier and it depends on how your class functions. For me, as a Ranger, it’s not too hard because you can kite them quite well. You have to find the two rare monsters that spawn generally once you click the thing at the beginning. It will show the direction that spawning usually is in the southwest direction.
Hourglass Trial
Awards a large Sacred Water fountain. You need to survive for 1 minute. A quick tip that I have for the Hourglass Trial is to stay in the corner, so you don’t draw aggro from every single monster that has spawned. The key exception is that once the ram monster spawns go to the opposite side, try to deaggro against the thing, and just kill any spawn that appears. The objective is to take no Honour damage, so you can approach the boss with the best possible chance.
Escape Trial
Awards a Sacred Water fountain. Here you have to tap the crystals in the room. This is tricky for some players and sometimes if you don’t go fast enough, you can time out and instantly die because you don’t disable the death crystal within the time. When you click the first crystal, look at where the light is pointing to which is at the top of the crystal. Move in that direction to find the next crystal. Once you have that down just avoid all monsters and run to the next crystal. This Trial is the fastest out of them, make sure to dodge rolling.
Gantlet Trial
Awards a Shrine to restore Honour. This is the longest one out of all of them and it is a huge pain. This is the maze and your objective here is to find a level at some point to open a gate somewhere close to the entrance. Once that gate opens, the exit is more or less closed there as well. Make a small detour to find the lever in a couple of traps before going to the end. You will encounter two types of traps here, fire and spikes. When you see some animation of shaking in the ground that’s when the spikes are coming up. Interact with the lever and gates will open and close compelling you to find a route to the exit. Keep an eye out for any open gates while clearing this Trial.
Rattlecage, the Earthbreaker Boss
The boss mechanics start right the moment you summon him. Make sure you get away from him because he slams the ground many times. Summon him and immediately get back. The most important thing about this boss is trying to get away from his fire and he does spawn like small volcanoes that spit out fire from the side. This boss is slow but he does a lot of damage and at the same time, you only have a couple of hits that you have before you’re totally out.
The Honour might not be super high and that’s why I recommend if you come back later on you might have much more Honour to help sustain a much harder fight. Watch this boss animation as he only has a couple and the challenging part is just the volcanoes that come on the side, running around the map.
Here are the tips to defeat Rattlecage, the Earthbreaker.
- Try to bring the boss to one corner of the map and fight him there and then slowly run to the other side to have a lot of room to run.
- Once you hit him to roughly around 30% HP, he will be in an enriched mode and all the volcanoes will start popping out.
- Keep repeating this rotating mechanic around the circle in that small Kravis over there and you’ll find it very crucial.
- Don’t go into that Kravis area too early on then you will have a lot of room to escape from here.
- Try to avoid volcanoes as they’ll expel rocks that will break away at your Honour.
- The stalactite will drop in the area that you can predict from the pockets of wind, so make sure to run away.
- Melee users need to keep an eye on Rattlecage’s animations and take the boss away from the volcanoes and landing zones to maintain the Honour level.
- However, if you’re a ranged player, then you can utilize a rock cluster to avoid the attacks for the majority of the fight.
Tips and Tricks to Remember for Trial of The Sekhemas in POE 2
Here are all the tips and tricks you need to remember for the Trial of the Sekhemas guide in Path of Exile 2.
Adjust your skills or equipment if a specific Trial feels more challenging.
- Make sure your gear is up to date for your level.
- Maximize your chaos and elemental resistance, reducing damage from enemies and traps.
- For higher mobility, equip skills like Dash, Flame Dash, or Leap Slam as they are crucial to avoid traps.
- Observe trap patterns and cleat enemies in safe zones for the Gauntlet Trial.
- Focus on crowd control, and use the environment to create chokepoints for the Chalice Trial.
- Prioritize Ritual Casters to focus on eliminating enemies and keep your distance if you are a ranged player for Ritual Trial.
- Speed is essential for Escape Trial, so make sure to use Quicksilver Flasks and movement skills to locate and disable crystals.
- Use defensive skills like Molten Shell, Immortal Call, and position near the center to kill spawning enemies.
- Rattlecage has a mix of melee and ground slam attacks, so make sure to avoid his AoE damage.
- Avoid staying in one spot for too long when fighting boss in combat.
- Take note of the challenge mechanics, so if you fail you can improve with each attempt.
Rewards for completing the Trial of The Sekhemas in POE 2
After defeating Rattlecage, the Earthbreaker, you will enter a new room full of chests and altars. You can open the Chests if you have collected a huge number of keys. Use the bronze keys to open only bronze chests, silver keys to open silver chests, and gold keys for gold chests. You can find four bronze and silver chests and two gold chests within the room and each one has different rewards. Every time you complete a Trial there will be random chests and they include relics, gold, class items, and armor pieces.
Purchase the items from Balbala by utilizing the Sacred Water or get more keys from Keth Forge by exchanging them with Sacred Water. The biggest reward that you obtain for completing the Trial is the Ascendancy class. Interact with the alter to choose the Ascendancy class that grants you an extra skill tree with passive nodes on it.
Most players are wondering what’s the use of Sacred Water in Path of Exile 2. There are two uses, once is within the round itself and sometimes merchant notes will pop up as a reward. You can spend some Sacred Water usually to recover Honour or to remove certain debuffs. It costs between 200 to 400 to buy a buff in the merchant, so save up your Sacred Water between 200 and 400, especially for the first Trial. Any leftover Sacred Water can be converted over to key, so don’t waste it.
FAQs About the Trial of the Sekhemas guide in Path of Exile 2
1. How to Unlock Trial of The Sekhemas in POE 2?
Defeat the Balbala, the Traitor in the Traitor’s Passage in Act 2 to unlock the Trial of the Sehkemas in Path of Exile 2. This side boss will drop Balbala’s Barya coin after defeating it which can be used as the key to enter the Trial.
2. What are the challenges in the Trial of the Sekhemas in POE 2?
Trial of the Sekhemas offers several challenges that players must complete to ascend their characters. The challenges that this Trial offers are the Gauntlet Trial, Chalice Trial, Ritual Trial, Escape Trial, Hourglass Trial, and the final boss(Rattlecage, the Earthbreaker).
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