After you smashPath of Exile II’s Doryani into the dirt for a second time and leave Cruel Mode well behind, you’ll notice a new and improved cutscene. Welcome to the Endgame.It only gets harder from here.
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If you’re having a hard time in Path of Exile II’s Cruel Mode, then this list is a must-read!
Once you enter the mapping stages of the game, there are a lot of new mechanics at play, all of which you will need to interact with to reach thePinnacle Bosseswho await your challenge.
This guide will cover Breaches, one of the 4 important Endgame mechanics, how to interact with them, and ultimately, how to crush them.
What is a Breach?
You may notice a little circle with a purple hand hovering above a map node when scrolling across the map. This indicates that within this area, there is a breach that you need to take down.
You don’t actually need to take on the breach to complete a map, just defeat all the rare enemies. But you should give it a try.
A breach within the map is indicated by alarge purple handreaching out from the ground. Passing over this hand will initiate the encounter and cause a large ring to spread out from the starting point.
At the edges of this ring, special Breach monsters will spawn and target you, wherever you stand. Note that these monsters, depending on the layout of the map, will spawn extremely quickly and try to swarm you.
If you don’t have a quick and effective way of taking many of them out, don’t travel to the circumference just yet, or you may be overwhelmed.
The key here is, that you want this encounter to last as long as possible, so you can kill more mobs and spawn more loot. But the encounter is on a timer.
You can circumvent this by killing as many monsters as possible and running over Clasped Hands that you find.The more you kill, the longer the event will last. But you have to move fast. If you’re skilled enough, the ring will even spread to the far edges of the map.
This event will end as soon as you see the ring retreating back towards the initiation point.Any monsters that were spawned will be removed as soon as the ring moves over them, so target the Rare spawns and don’t stand still. You should always be moving and fighting.
Try not to initiate the Breach until you’ve cleared the Map first. It’s helpful to know the lay of the land so you don’t run down into a dead-end corridor.
Lost Towers and Precursor Tablets
Of course, you may be looking at your map and thinking, “There aren’t many Breach icons.” Well, luckily for you, that’s not a problem.
If you want to clear more Breaches, then you can use something called aPrecursor Tabletin order to force-spawn more onto incomplete map nodes. These Precursor Tablets can be found as arandom loot drop from Breach monsters.
To use a Tablet, first find and clear a Lost Tower on the Map, and activate the Precursor Beacon at the end. Once this node has been completed, you can click on the tower and insert a Tablet.
Don’t forget to use your orbs of Transmutation and Augmentation to give Tablets more modifiers.
The Lost Tower will now have a large ring surrounding it, giving bonus modifiers, and more importantly, Breach encounters on certain maps inside the ring.
Try and activate a lot of Lost Towers that surround a large section of nodes with various Tablets to “Juice” a node with lots of modifiers. This will give fantastic rewards while significantly increasing the difficulty. This can be stacked on top of Rare Waystones, for a truly rewarding yet challenging node.
Builds and How to Clear
Breaches are known for their difficult and chaotic style of gameplay, forcing you to stay on your toes and use all your abilities to your advantage. If you simply sit still and attack, likely you will be swarmed, and your run finished.
You can make the most of these encounters by using build set-ups that take advantage oflarge AoE clearing moves and crowd control abilities.
Path of Exile 2: Best Witch Build Guide
Melt through your enemies with this Flame Witch build.
Consider grabbing yourself aPolcirkeln Ring while using Herald of Iceto chain-explode monsters into a shower of frozen pieces. This works perfectly due to the significant monster density encountered while within the confines of the Breach.
If you don’t have this specific ring, you can always use Herald of Ice and Herald of Thunder to achieve a similar effect. By giving Herald of Thunder support gems that benefit Herald of Ice and vice versa, the lightning will chill, and the ice will shock, causing them to combine and basically explode the entire screen.
Other builds can make use of other crowd-clearing moves, like the Archmage Spark Stormweaver, or perhaps the Corpsewade Pathfinder Ranger that blows up mobs in a cloud of toxic gas as they run towards you.Remember the more mobs you can kill at once, the longer the event and the more loot you will receive.
Breach Rewards
The first and most important thing to mention about the rewards is:Don’t pick them up until the event is over.
Not only will you waste time picking things up andsorting out your inventory if it gets full, but you will probably get swarmed by other enemies while you’re trying to focus on not losing those T15 waystones. Yes, this happened to me, and it won’t happen again. (Unless maybe you see a Divine Orb, definitely make a beeline for that.)
Once that Breach finally closes you may feel a little lost when staring at the huge pile of loot left on the ground, but don’t fear. There are certain drops you’re going to want to look out for.
Catalysts can be used to augment pieces of Jewellery past their normal means. For example, you may want to use aTul’s Catalyst on a Sapphire Ringin order to boost its Cold Resistance or Cold Damage. There are 12 different types of Catalysts and they can all be sold on the Currency Exchange for varying amounts.
Breach Rings are great to pick up also, as their quality can be upgraded to50%instead of the normal20%. Using catalysts you’re able to create some extremely powerful rings that offer many useful boosts, like rings that offer many types of elemental resistances.
Of course, always look out for the Precursor Tablets that I mentioned before.The more tablets you have, the more breaches you can spawn and therefore attempt.
Splinters and Stones
The final Breach reward deserves its own section due to its significance. Once you hitMap Tier 11+, as you kill Breach enemies and run over Clasped Hands, you will start earning Breach Splinters.
If you combine300of these you can obtain a Breachstone, an item that allows you to challenge Xesht, the Breach Pinnacle Boss. This is how you’re going to earn points for the Breach Passive Skill Tree.
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The easiest way to get valuable loot!
Use the Breachstone on the Realmgate located near the centre of your Endgame Map and you will be taken to the Twisted Domain. Similarly to the Breach mechanic, you will need to find your way through the domain and kill enough enemies to extend the Breach timer.
Eventually, if you survive for long enough, you will encounter Xesht, We Are That One.Study before you attempt this, as you only have one shot.Lose this fight and you will need to farm another Breachstone, which takes an annoyingly long time.
Breach Passive Skill Tree
Once you’ve defeated Xesht, you will gain your first 2Skill points for the Passive Tree. There are a rather varied number of rewards here, but for those discovering Breaches for the first time, there are some important ones that I recommend.
As usual, these points aren’t set in stone. Different people will play their breaches differently, and you should pick whichever path on the tree suits you and your build best.
Map Layout
What is most annoying about Breaches though, is that if you have a bad map spawn,you can throw everything I just said out of the window.
Even if you have a hugely juiced-out node, surrounded by 5 towers on a rare T15 Waystone, if the Map is Crypt, well… you may kiss your encounter goodbye. Maps likeCrypt, SeepageandAuguryfeature very small and tight maps that don’t allow for a large number of monsters to spawn from the Breach Area.
This is unfortunately one part of the PoE2 Endgame that you really can’t influence that much. You’ve just got to keep your fingers crossed for a nice open map likeSavannahorSteppe.
At the end of the day, just keep expanding your map and encountering new areas. All it takes is time and suddenly the Breaches will crumble at your touch.
