When you are at the end-game door, build becomes highly important or you will get crushed like a walnut by the bosses. Here the Ascend system comes into play, allowing you to choose passive skills for your character. This guide will primarily focus on the Trial of Sekhemas, the bosses, and its deep system that you should know to finish the trial and come out on the other side victorious.
Trial Of Sekhemas
Monster Level: 22
Investing in ascendency points will make your character stronger. We will get Ascendency Points from completing Trials in the game. Currently, we have access to two trials, the third one is set to be released in the near future. To fully utilize the system behind the Trials, here we’ll touch on everything you should know about them.
- Steps to Unlock the Trial of Sekhemas
- Trial of Sekhemas Honor System
- Beating the Trials of Sekhemas Challenges
- Trial of Sekhemas Trading with Djinn
- How To Defeat Rattlecage, The Earthbreaker
And lastly, we will touch upon the reward system and reliability factor behind the Trial of Sekhemas.
How To Unlock The Trial of Sekhemas
Slay Balbala, The Traitor during Act II of the main questline in Path of Exile 2, to get the item to start The Trial of Sekhemas.
- Once you visit the Traitor’s Passage, here you must deviate from the original path and look for the Ancient Seal. It will be another door with plenty of seals attached on its surface, on the other side of the door awaits the Balbala the Traitor.
- The boss is sealed with three Ruinic Seals, remove the seals to free the boss. Then you need to defeat the boss to continue the quest. Once you defeat her she will join us as a friendly djinn and drop a coin titled “Balbala’s Barya“.
Note: Once you pick up Balbala’s Barya, it will start off the quest Ascent to Power, the first objective of the quest will be to speak to Zarka.
- Now head back to Ardura Caravan and speak to Zarka. Walk up to the Desert map to travel to the Trial of Sekhemas.
Once you are in the Trial of Sekhemas, head to the Relic Altar in the middle of the room. Now place the coin we picked from Balbala to start the trial. If you are playing the game with your friend, only the host will be able to access the Relic Altar in the middle.
Trial Of Sekhemas Honor System Explained
Losing Honor is an instant failure in Trials. The honor bar consists of your Health + Mana.
Before heading towards the dangers that await in the trial, it would be better to understand what exactly will you be facing in the trial. The honor system is the central highlight of the Trials of Sekhemas here. When you kick off the Trial, you will have a limited amount of Honor. You can track the amount of honor you have left at the bottom of the screen.
Note: On your first Trial run, if you do manage to fail, you can always talk to Balbala in the Relic Room to start it all over again. But in the future, you will not be able to ask for a second try.
The only way to lose your honor is by taking damage from enemies and traps. So what happens when that honor bar depletes to 0? Well, the trial will fail.
How To Restore Honor In Trial Of Sekhemas
There are few rooms with Tabanas, they will trade Sacred Water to restore your honor. You will also come across some relics that will give a significant boost to your Honor Resistance.
Sacred Water: Currency drop from any enemy you slay in the Trial of Sekhemas. You can use the Sacred Water to get Boons and Relics from Trial Merchants. It can be used to restore some honor.
When you think about restoring honor instead of buying trial-focused goods, you must make a sacrifice.
How To Beat The Trial Of Sekhemas
You must survive six trials to face the final boss and make it out alive. This section will list out all the challenges you must face in the Trial of Sekhemas. When taken into consideration, losing honor can result in instant failure, these trials will feel more difficult than they initially appear.
Gauntlet Trial Challange
The goal here is simple, you must find levers to open the door to get out of the room. Here you will encounter various traps and enemies. More of a patience game here, you must find the levers while at the same time fending off enemies and watching out for traps.
Chalice Trial Challange
The job is to kill every single enemy in the area to fill the Chalice. The only thing you should focus on here is not to get hit, since you are running on a limited amount of honor.
Ritual Trial Challange
Eliminate Ritual Casters in the area to find the portals in the room. Portal numbers can increase from one run to another. Each portal will have a Ritual Caster that you must defeat to finish the trial.
Escape Trial Challange
A time-based challenge, here you will have a limited time to hunt down the crystals and deactivate them. If you leave any crystals on after the time stops, they will constantly damage you. Every time you disable a crystal; you will gain additional time.
Hourglass Trial Challange
Activate the hourglass and kill the enemies in the area until the timer hits zero. Since it is about survival, killing faster is the best way to go about it, another thing we should point out is that if you manage to take down Rare monsters, then it will reduce the timer. Less time is better for this trial challenge.
Trial Of Sekhemas Trading System With Djinn
You can buy Boons and other useful items from Djinn in exchange for Sacred Water
The Sacred Water you will earn from killing enemies you can use to buy a random collection of items from the Djinn, which will come in very helpful before the final challenge of the Trial. All the items sold here will be random.
You might get to buy a boon that restores 30% of your honor on entering a boss room or a boon that lowers the action speed of the monsters. There is a randomness attached to the vendor’s supply, which makes each run of the Trial more fun and memorable.
How To Defeat Rattlecage, The Earthbreaker
Boss: Rattlecage the Earthbreaker
Rattlecage the Earthbreaker is the last boss waiting for you in the final room of Trial of Sekhemas. The boss is also part of the side quest and allows you to pick Ascension classes. The boss is pretty tough but slow, there are some attacks that can get you easily if you are not careful enough.
- Slam Attack: Right when the boss fight begins, do your best to roll out. The first AOE slam attacks right at the beginning of the fight and will catch the new players by surprise. Stay away from the boss, as after the slam comes an explosive large-scale destruction 3 times. You can kiss your honor bar goodbye if you get caught in that range.
- Lava Rain: Once you get the boss’s health down to 50%, prepare to see some lava rain. What makes this attack more challenging, is the fact there are no visual indicators that will prepare you for its arrival. So you will never know, where the rain will start storming down, the best thing to do is to roll constantly, so you will not get caught in it.
Other attacks include volcanoes appearing on the ground and lava on the ground to leave a burning status. Always be on the dodge, and watch out for the powerful move once the health is at half-bar.
Take some time, and attack only when you are confident. Defeating the Rattlecage will result in passing the Trial of Sekhemas.
Rewards For Completing The Trial Of Sekhemas
Once you complete the Trial, the next room has rewards and you will also get the option to Ascendancy classes from the Altar of Ascendancies.
- Gold, Bronze, and Silver Cache
- Hoarder, Armour, Arcanist’s, and Mysterious Cache.
- On your first completion, you will get 2 points on the Ascendancy class tree.
Other sets of rewards for finishing the Trials include Golden, Silver, and Bronze keys, which you can use to open up Cache. You will also earn Jewels for Jewel Sockets in the Passive Skill Tree and some Unique Relics.
Note: Make sure to use all the coins, you will not be able to carry it outside or use it in any future runs. They will never enter your inventory, on your future runs you will not start with any of the previously earned coins.
Replaying Trial of Sekhemas
Lastly, if you want to earn Ascendancy skill points then you have to go through the Trial of Sekhemas again. Every time you re-complete the Trial of Sekhemas, you will unlock a new room and make the Trial harder each time.
High Risk, High Reward
Every time you take down the final boss of the Trial, you will gain Relics, which you can use on your next run to make the game harder but you will get unique rewards and powerful items on the other side.
Some relics can give you double the Sacred water drop to reduce the incoming damage from bosses or deal more damage to bosses. The Trial progression system is what pushes players to redo these trials over and over again to hunt for specific gear and loot.