Everything to know about Path of exile 2 early access
25 November 2024
Path of Exile 2(POE2) will enter early access at 11am on December 6th 2024(PST) on PC, Xbox Series and PlayStation5. While early access will not be available on MacOS at the start of early access, Grinding Gear Games(GGG) have said that they will be adding support for it in the near future.
We have a separate post that details everything you need to know about how to join early access. You can read it here.
Even in early access poe2 is an enormous game. It will have 3 Acts, comprising of 50 bosses and around 400 monster types. Trials of Ascendency and a massive endgame comprising of 4 major mechanics each with their own pinnacle boss encounter and 3 minor mechanics.
There will be 6 classes available during the early access.
The warrior will be a melee class that will be a little slow to move but will hit much harder. Its mechanics includes a large amount of slams, war cries, fire skills and huge armor to shrug off small attacks. The warrior will also have access to totems which either have a ability of their own or you can also assign a skill of your choosing to the ancestral warrior totems. All in all a class where you tank everything and kill your opponent.
As the name suggests the ranger will be a ranged class that is agile and primarily uses a bow. The primary focus while playing this class will be to shoot arrows while jumping and moving around. All in all a class with bow and great mobility.
The sorceress is your classic magic caster. The playstyle revolves around casting a flurry of elemental magic from a distance. The place where it deviates from the classic magic caster is you can imbue one element attack with another element. If you are a sorcerer main and you know who you are, then this class is for you.
The mercenary is a class that wields crossbow that can be loaded with different ammo types. The mechanics of this class is to simply play like a shooter. You will be able to customize your skills to make your crossbow behave lie a shotgun, sniper riffles, grenade launchers or even assault riffles.
All in all if you like shooter and have never played POE1, I would recommend you to start with this class.
The monk will be a fast melee character. The mechanics will revolve around building up and keeping momentum. The monk will primarily use Quarterstaff and follow 3 schools of martial arts being lightning, ice and wind.
The witch is a summoner class. The mechanics for witch involve calling forth hordes of minions to fight for her. She not only has access to specialty minions but her repertoire also consist of noxious spells, curses and sacrificial magic. If you love necromancer in D4, this class if for you.
You will be leveling your character from level 1 to 100. According to GGG's estimate it will take a new player around 25 hours to complete Act 1 - Act 3, and the character will be around level 45. Then you will be playing the Act1 - Act3 again but with higher difficulty known as the cruel mode though I think that the progression will be a little faster since you will already have gone through the acts once. This will take your character to around level 65 where you will enter the endgame.
You will also be undergoing ascension trials to upgrade your class during the campaign. There are two ways available to ascend in the early access:
Ascension unlocks powerful abilities for your characters and are unique to the class you choose. You acquire these points by completing trials of ascension. While the release version of the game will 3 ascendency option for each class, the early trial will have 2 options per class. The classes can ascend with following options:
Ultimate Command
Grants skill Time Freeze which as the name suggest stops time.
Footprints in the Sand
Grants skill Temporal Rift which teleports you back to a previous location resetting your life and mana back to what it was.
Unbound Encore
Grants skill Time Snap which resets all your cooldowns and allows you to cast all your spells again.
Tempest Caller
Grants skill Time Freeze which as the name suggest stops time.
Strike Twice
Targets can be affected by two of your shocks at the same time but with 50% less shock duration
Shaper of Storms
All Damages from hits contribute to shock chance
Answered call
Grants skill Ancestral Spirits which summons ancestral spirit linked to each of your totems.
Jade Heritage
Grants skill Encased in Jade which gains a stack of jade every second allowing you to encase your body in a protective layer allowing you to absorb all damage until it breaks
Warcaller's Bellow
Corpses in your presence explode when you Warcry, dealing 25% of their life as physical damage
Greatwolf's Howl
Ignore Warcry cooldowns
Earthbreaker
20% chance for slam skills you use yourself to cause aftershocks
Crushing Impacts
Your hits are Crushing Blows which allows you to stun your enemies easily.
Surprising Strength
40% more damage against Heavy Stunned Enemies.
Endless Munitions
Skills fire an additional projectile.
Gathering winds
Gain Tailwind on skill use but loose all tailwind when hit which means you will gain a small increase to movement speed with every attack buy loose them all when you get hit.
Eagle Eyes
You have no Accuracy penalty at distance which means you will not need to use your passive skill points towards accuracy
Bleeding Concoction
Grants skill Bleeding Concoction which consumes your flask charge to throw exploding bottles which makes your enemies bleed.
Fulminating Concoction
Grants skill Fulminating Concoction which consumes your flask charge to throw exploding bottles which shocks your enemies.
Contagious Contamination
The most damaging poison on enemies you kill is spread to other enemies within 1.5 meters
Overwhelming Toxicity
Doubles the number of Poisons you can inflict on enemies but reduces their duration by 35%
Running Assault
30% less movement speed penalty when using skills while moving
Relentless Pursuit
Makes you totally immune to being slowed by enemies.
Loyal Hellhound
Grants skill Summon Infernal Hound which sets enemies on fire and 20% of damage from hits is taken from your hellhound's life before you
Pyromantic Pact
Maximum Mana is replaced by Maximum infernal flame.
Gain infernal flame instead of spending mana for skill costs.
Take maximum life and energy shield as fire damage when infernal flame reaches maximum.
Loose all infernal flame on reaching maximum infernal flame.
10% of infernal flame lost per second if none was gained in the past 2 seconds
Bringer of Flame
While not on Low Infernal Flame(Above 30%), all Damage from you and your minions contributes to ignite chance and magnitude.
Demonic Possession
Grants skill Demon Form which transforms you into a demon.
In demon form you take increased amount of damage but your damage and cast speed is increased.
Sanguimancy
Grants skill Life Remnants which makes every monster you kill drop life, but all skills gain a base life cost equal to base mana cost.
Crimson Power
Gain Energy Shield from Equipped body armor as extra maximum life.
Vitality Siphon
10% of spell damage leeched as life
Gore spike
1% increased critical damage bonus per 20 life
...and Scatter Them to the Winds
Grants skill Elemental Expression which creates waves of elemental power each time you do a Melee Critical Hit
Faith is a choice
Grants skill Meditate which doubles your energy shield.
I am the Blizzard...
Gain 10% of damage as Extra Cold Damage and freezing enemies create chilled ground
I am the Thunder...
Gain 10% of damage as Extra Lightning Damage and 25% chance on Shocking Enemies to create Shocked Ground
...and I Shall Rage
Grants skill Unbound Avatar which grants you unbound fury each time you apply a status ailment to an enemy.
You can then consume unbound fury to transform into an avatar to deal increased damage and inflict more elemental ailments.
Embrace the Darkness
Removes all Spirit.
Base maximum darkness is 100.
For each life or energy shield lost to damage, reserve 1 Darkness instead if possible.
Darkness Reservation lasts for 10 seconds.
+5 to maximum darkness per level
Grasp of the void
Gain 1% of damage as extra chaos damage per 20 unreserved darkness.
Chayula's Gift
+10% to maximum chaos resistance and your chaos resistance is doubled.
Consuming Questions
You cannot recharge energy shield, but your mana leech effects also recover energy shield
Ravenous Doubts
Mana leech is instant
Waking Dream
Grants skill Into the breach which allows you to see the flame of Chayula which can then be taken to gain life, mana and damage.
Obsessive rituals
Grants skill Sorcery Ward which allows you defend against elemental hits buy you have 50% less armor and evasion rating.
Zealous Inquisition
10% chance for Enemies you kill to explode, dealing 100% of their maximum life as physical damage. Chance is doubled against undead and demons.
Judge, Jury, and Executioner
Decimating Strike which grants your first hit against and enemy a chance to deal 30% of their life in damage.
Witch bane
Enemies have maximum concentration equal to their maximum life.
Break enemy concentration on hit equal to 100% of damage dealt.
Enemies regain 10% of concentration every second if they haven't lost concentration in past 5 seconds.
Breaking your enemies concentration prevents them form casting spells as often as they would usually do.
Integrated Efficiency
Grants 3 additional skill slots
Thaumaturgical Infusion
1% to maximum cold resistance per 3 Blue support gems socketed anywhere.
+1% to maximum fire resistance per 3 Red support gems socketed anywhere.
+1% to maximum Lightning resistance per 3 Green support gems socketed anywhere.
Adaptive Capability
Attribute requirements of gems can be satisfied by your highest attribute
Crystalline Potential
+12% quality of all skill gems
An infinitely expanding Atlas will be the core of the gameplay in POE2. You will be using waystones to open portals to nearby places and explore the atlas. The areas in the endgame are remixes of the areas you have traversed during the campaign, but they will feel distinct from the locations in the campaign. The monster randomization have been increased resulting in monster pack that you will face to be completely random. To complete a map you will have to defeat all the rare and unique monsters in the map.
There will be a lot of different mechanics to choose from when you reach the end game. There are three minor and four major mechanics available at the launch of early access. GGG have also said that they will also be adding more content in the form of leagues throughout the early access. The current available content are:
Precursor Artifacts
Precursor Artifacts(known as shrines in POE1) are ancient, corrupting monuments that irradiate the monsters around them. If you defeat the monsters and cleanse the artifacts, you will get a temporary but powerful buff like, making you faster, rain lightning or fire around you, increased experience or increased rarity of items.
Strongboxes
Strongboxes guard piles of treasure, but are always a trap. Monsters spawn around you the moment you open it along with unleashing powerful spells or de-buffs.
Essence
Essences are solidified, crystalline corruption. They trap a monster in them that can be broken free. When you defeat them, the monsters drop essences which can be used to upgrade normal items to magic items with a guaranteed modifier from a category. Some essences also allow you to upgrade magic items into rare items again with a guaranteed mod.
Breach
Breach is a tear in the fabric of reality. Opening a breach will allow you to see the monsters that lie in this other plane. In order to keep the breach open you will need to kill the monsters that pour from it. The faster you can kill the monsters, the more monsters you will find and more loot you will get from them. You will also find clasped hands in the breach which you can open by running over them. These can be good boost to the rewards from the breach.
Expedition
The Kalguurans have discovered ancient burial sites with lost Verisium artifacts, and wants you to help dig them up with explosives. They have marked the locations where the relics can be found. You will have a limited amount of explosives to cover as larger a area as you can to dig up the sites. When you detonate the explosives it will also spawn monster. You can also find remnants the destruction of which will spawn even more monsters. Each one you blow up will make the subsequent monsters more powerful, but also more rewarding. You will find expedition specific currency that you can then exchange for items.
Ritual
Ritual Altars demand tribute. Every monster defeated in the circle will feed the altar. After the sacrifice, touch the altar to begin the ritual. The monster you just killed will be resurrected again and you will fight to survive. There will also be an additional environmental hazard you will have to deal with this time. You will gain tribute by killing these monsters which can be used to buy powerful items from the altar. Each additional altar you activate in an area will also revive the monsters from the previous altar.
Delirium
Step through the looking glass to activate the delirium encounter. Everything you kill inside the delirium will increase the rewards that drop. However, the deeper into the mist you travel, the stronger the monsters become. Rare and unique enemies in delirium will become vessels for terrifying demons who will manifest out of them to unleash powerful attacks on you.
Atlas tree is basically a skill tree for the stuff you will find in the maps. It contains nodes that makes the endgame mechanics more dangerous while also increasing the rewards you receive from them. You can gain atlas passive points to invest in your atlas passive tree by defeating the pinnacle encounter of its corresponding mechanic. For example, if you like doing breaches, you will have to kill the pinnacle boss of the breach called Xesht. Defeating him will grant you with a breach passive point that you can use to make your breaches more profitable.