Path of Exile 2: Guide to Trial of the Sekhemas | Ascent to Power

You can get the “Ascent to Power” quest during Act 2 of the main campaign of Path of Exile 2, and it requires you to complete the Trial of the Sekhemas.

The Trial of the Sekhemas is essentially a roguelike game mode. You go through randomized challenges and then defeat a big bad boss at the end. Manage to complete the whole run in one go and you’ll earn a lot of loot. What’s even better, you’ll get to unlock and upgrade your character’s Ascendancy!

In this guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know to clear the Trial of the Sekhemas.

Guide to Trial of the Sekhemas | Ascent to Power

As we mentioned previously, the Trial of the Sekhemas becomes available during Act 2 of the main campaign in Path of Exile 2. It works similarly to a roguelike mode, as you have to go through a series of 8 nodes with randomized challenges. Reach the end 9th and final node and you’ll get to challenge the final boss of the Trial of the Sekhemas.

Note that you’ll need one Balbala’s Barya for each attempt at the Trial of the Sekhemas. You can get them as random drops from enemies and chests.

You’ll be able to get Relics as you progress through the Trial. You can pick these Relics at the Relic Altar at the start of each attempt. Each Relic has a unique effect, but they’re all meant to help make the Trial of the Sekhemas easier for you. Pick whichever one you like most!

Now, the main thing to keep in mind during this Trial is your Honour. This is a new bar that appears on the bottom part of the screen. Getting hit will reduce your Honour and you’ll automatically fail the Trial once you reach 0 Honour. Essentially, it works as a second Health bar of sorts.

You also can’t restore Honour with consumables. The only way to restore it is by completing nodes that say they restore your Honour.

Certain nodes will also reward you with keys that come in Bronze, Silver, and Gold rarities. You can use these keys to open chests after you successfully defeat the final boss of the Trial. Try to get as many keys as possible to maximize your rewards!

Lastly, you can also get Sacred Water by clearing certain nodes. You can trade them for boons with the Merchants right before the boss. Alternatively, you can trade any leftover Sacred Water for keys.

Types of Trials

There are currently 5 different Trials that might appear as nodes during each run of the Trial of the Sekhemas. Here’s a brief summary of each one:

• Chalice Trial – Fight against hordes of rare enemies to fill a chalice. Pretty straightforward, but fairly challenging.
• Escape Trial – Find and disable all of the Death Crystals in a room to escape within the time limit. Pay attention to the rays of light that shoot out of each Death Crystal once you disable them, as they lead to the next crystal.
• Gauntlet Trial – Navigate through a maze full of traps looking for levers. Use the levers to open doors and find a way to the exit. The maze has many traps, but few enemies. That makes it easy to avoid taking damage, but it does take a lot longer to clear than other nodes on average.
• Ritual Trial – Hunt down the Lich Summoners opening portals to stop them from calling enemies. As a nice tip, you can focus fire on Lich Summoners to kill them. This will also instantly kill all of their summons once their portal closes! That makes this possibly the easiest trial.
• Hourglass Trial – A timed survival challenge. Activate the hourglass and hordes of enemies will appear to attack you. Fend them off and survive until the time runs out to complete the trial. This is all about survival!

We recommend going for the Ritual Trial whenever possible, due to it being the easiest. Of course, that will depend on which random modifiers the node has and your personal preferences.

Either way, there’s only one big challenge left to talk about now… the final boss of the Trial of the Sekhemas!

Trial of the Sekhemas Final Boss: Rattlecage, the Earthbreaker

Rattlecage is a massive rock golem and your final challenge to clearing the Trial of the Sekhemas in Path of Exile 2. He moves pretty slowly, but he hits hard and has some tricky moves. Remember to keep an eye on both your Health and Honour and focus on avoiding attacks. Don’t be overly aggressive!

One of the main things to watch out for is his big fire slam attack. He usually starts the fight with this move. Some fire will travel over the ground after Rattlecage slams, summoning small volcanos at the end of their path.

These volcanos will spit fire out around them, which can easily damage you if you’re not paying attention. The boss will summon more as the fight progresses, too! Don’t ignore them or they will ruin your Honour.

Another tricky move is that sometimes Rattlecage will stand on all fours and start shaking. He will then emit a few area of effect shockwaves around himself, increasing in size with each one. Make sure to run away from him as soon as you see him get on all fours.

Later on in the fight, you should notice some swirls of wind start to form around the arena. Molten rocks will fall where these swirls are, so stay away from them.

Other than that, Rattlecage merely has a big of extremely slow slamming attacks which are easy to avoid. Your main challenge will be the falling rocks and volcanos, as they start covering a lot of the arena late into the fight. Plus, Rattlecage himself has a massive Health pool. It’s a battle of attrition!

Rewards and Ascendancy

Manage to defeat the hulking Rattlecage and a door will open, leading to you a room full of chests with rewards. As we mentioned earlier, you can open these chests up by using any keys you acquired during your run. More importantly, though, you can use the Altar of Ascendancies in the room to learn an Ascendancy.

As we covered in our beginner’s guide, Ascendancy is essentially a subclass of the class you chose at the start of the game. It helps you further define your playstyle and makes your character generally stronger.

You can now also start finding Djinn Baryas as random drops in the world. They will allow you to take on harder variants of the Trial of the Sekhemas. Of course, these harder variants also have better rewards, including Ascendancy Skill Points. This is the only way to make your Ascendancy even stronger!

But well, that’s all you need to know about the Trial of the Sekhemas in Path of Exile 2. It’s an extremely hard challenge, but it’s well worth conquering it for your Ascendancy. We wish you the best of luck with the trials!