Both trials for ascending are awful to run and it's completely unclear what the requirements are for the 3rd and 4th ascension.

Everything about the trials is a hassle and aggravating. I hope they're completely reworked. The honor system especially needs to go.

I assume it will be clearer how to get ascendancy 3 and 4 after acts 4-6 release. Right now it's probably just the skeleton of something that will work.

The 3rd one is worst than the first. You have to complete the first trial and then do a whole nother "trial of will" on top of that. It's just as long as the first and if you fail you have to do both again. 

I'm just not going to ascendancy. Like how dumb and aggravating is it to do that to the players? I want to love this game but if this stays, it will brick all my future characters because I refuse to do this. I guess I'll try to continue on but losing all motivation to play this game.

so bad, I hate Sanctum and Ultu

How do you even get the second ascendancy in the temple of chaos? I've run it dozens of times and keep getting stomped by the boss. On-shot attacks everywhere and room-wide AoEs just make it impossible, let alone the brutal debuffs.

We're the tester in their EA. They will update it. We just have to keep screaming! *This is not a sarcastic comment. It is how I actually feel. Damn the trials.

This whole thing reeks clunk and prime for complete overhaul during or after early access. 

BRING BACK THE LAB as OPTION 3

I have gotten my third ascendancy in Sekhema Trial, can confirm it was the three floor version. I think 7 round Ultimatum is still bugged sometimes from what I’ve heard, bummer you ran into that. I assume 4 floor/10 round should fulfill fourth ascendancy. 

If you buy or farm a few honor resistance relics for the Sekhema trial, it makes things hit your honor way, way less. I assume it caps at 75 and I was at like 74 for my successful run. 

bro....ulti 8 rooms... Not 7. Lol

It’s currently confusing because it is missing the third way to ascend (the Karui one) that is in Act 4. I think the design goal is that you would try these ascension trials once to get the first 6 points. Then in endgame you do the one that you like the most for final points as an End game activity. But because the Karui is not in here yet we have to use the secondary system instead where we run the two step higher in difficulty at high level for the 5th and 6th points.

I at least crashed 3 times at the boss arena ultimatum. Hell I’m not going back there

I am totally confused about how to ascend. The second ascension has to be in ultimatum? And the third?

Sekehema trial is ez you can do everything but the boss hitless. Do some water runs buy relics and its the simplest shit ever. The loot is also realy good while your focusing on loot/relics.

YES, I HATE SANCTUM AND ULTIMATUM, BRING LAB BACK OMG

I thought it was neat, cleared the first one earlier today on the 2nd try.

I think the 1st trial needs some improvement but I think the second is just super bad. I think you can do the 1st but the ultimatum is just super hard.

I very much hope these Trials are just a Band Aid for Ascending and the real way is still in development and will be released with acts 4-6

Huhuhuhuhu . I cri

On console/controller at least with merc if an enemy is with screen you cant pick up anything/activate stuff so I failed one sanctuary because with only few seconds left couldn’t get crystal because of enemy

Given that ascendancies are the most integral and defining part of a build, there is no way this is going to stick in the full release - it's way too much of a hurdle for most players.

Yeah they clearly designed the system with 3 trials in mind and making it work for 2 is not fitting well with them.

Once they have three trials you will do the nice "easy" version of the trials in Act2/3/4 and get the three "main" ascendancy points. The Uber trial is meant to be a later goal and would then just require you to complete the "full" mode of any one of the three trials. For now they should just make the Tier 2 versions of both trials be able to unlock 1-3 of the ascendancies and then reserve the "full" encounters for ubers as normal.

I'm glad I played Blood Witch. Don't have to worry about doing these because I only need 1 point 😀

Agree on all that.

Btw, use relics with honor resistance, it's busted.

the third method will be lab again and izaro will yell at us "missed me fuckers?"

GGG should've revamped the whole system for ascendancy. Scattering them around multiple acts in random location isn't really ideal, probably should've had an act 1 NPC that handles all ascendancy related events so people know what to look for and the requirements in advance.

Lab was fine as it was but unfortunately everyone had to whine about it

I’m not ascending any of my characters. This is awful.

They simply need to tune it. Shit is way overtuned. Make it challenging at endgame and easier for trials 1-3

we're 3 days into the game, chill.

Yeah, in the chaos trials I took the thing makes a blood sphere appear above my head which you have to dodge. It went great, until I had to put a vaal crystal into a pedestal and it animation locked me for 3 seconds...

Game just game out and so many people unhappy there aren’t 500 different videos with guides

Sanctum was fine for me but the drawbacks and enemies in the Ultimatum encounters are way overtuned for when you manage to get access to it. Came back 10 levels later and it was still a huge trial (heh) compared to the Sekhema Sanctum.

I think they're ultimately fine, they just need tuning.

The way it works is you can do sanctum normal difficulty, then second, and third difficulty for all 3 ascendencies. The problem arrives when you do one of each, because that counts as the “second” difficulty for each. Which means you can’t get the 3rd ascendancy without doing the 3rd tier of difficulty for whichever one you end up choosing. It weird how they did it, for now, and no the game doesn’t mention it, but they did mention it in an interview. I believe it was the ziggyd one after the stream, but not sure.

Oh, I thought we just have to redo the trials in the cruel acts

I actually really like the gameplay of Trail of Sekhemas, but the Afflictions feel too swingy to me. So many just brick runs and while I enjoy the core gameplay here it mostly feels like a slot machine to get playable afflictions.

Ultimatium is similar except I enjoy the gameplay less. Still has SUPER swingy modifiers though that just make the trial unplayable if you are unlucky though.

Also it feels like I can't really sustain doing these trials well, I have just not been getting drops in maps to actually keep doing them as much as I'd like to. I really want the entry tokens to be made tradable on the currency exchange, even if that means altering how the entry tokens work somewhat. We were able to do it with Labyrinth entry so we should also be able to do it here.

Why the fuck does getting hit reduce a currency meter needed to stay above a threshold or ggwp, okay meet us half way and make it hit from the actual BOSS only, this whole system is so scummy.

If you die and resurrect to do the trial again, do they become more difficult?

The monsters seems harder and harder and spawn more. I cant get as far as I used to.

If this is the case, why is this not explained right at the start before we waste our time?

The thing that is making me sour about this POE 2 beta, is that even though it is a beta and unfinished, our time is being wasted to not progress on things that could have easily been explained by the devs with a random note on the activity

In the video, the statement from the wiki site says as follows:

"These Ascendancy points can be obtained from any Ascension trial, as long as they meet the requirement, and it is possible to do repeat the same trial for all 8 points."

So even the wiki doesn't convey the info transparently, to me at least. Us being dumb people, I just want GGG to spell it out for us in-game so there won't be any unnecessary confusion around it.

I miss Izaro , he was a fun guy , this is not fun .

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Sanctum for ascendancy is bad enough. A 3 floor one is criminal. I don't know if it's something they'd change but I can't see myself ultimately coming back to this game if that doesn't change. I have other beef with the game, but that part is a truly awful experience.

Both trials were horribly unfun. I just got my 3rd ascendancy about an hour ago in Sekhama.

Going to be honest, with how much content creators were hyping up this game as the second coming of christ for ARPGs, it really has a lot of glaring flaws and lots of systems that are punishing for no reason other than to waste your time.

My feeling on Sekhema trial is that chip damage from random mobs shooting projectiles at you should not affect honor. They should just hit you like normal. But then many enemies (and of course bosses) should have huge, glowing attacks with lots of telegraph. These attacks would hit your honor if you don't dodge. Traps can also hit honor.

The worst part about the trial for me is dealing with the random chip damage slowly draining away honor. If I lose honor, I want to lose a big chunk at once and I want it to be really plain and obvious what happened.

This is the same complaint I've always had about Sanctum and is a big part of why I never ran it after the league ended. I think it's a bad, unfun mechanic as it is today and I'm really frustrated that it's such an integral part of PoE2

I've never had anything be more frustrating in my Poe career than spending 6-8 hours trying to get the THIRD ascendancy but dealing with rng bullshit roll of the dice overturned mechanics, lag and crashes

If there is one part of the game that needs a nerf, its this. This part is so BS and very tedious to do. Worst part it prevents your build unless you beat it.

I HATE lab but this new system is much worse.

the new way to get ascending makes me want lab back really badly... and i can assure u I HATE LAB with a severe BURNING passion

On ps5 they crash frequently. I lost 2 coins. Difficulty and mechanics were annoying as hell, but losing the coins upon crashes that have nothing to do with me, that wad unnacceptable. One coin I lost during the boss fight, while the boss was being obliterated lol I even overleveled just to be sure I do it - then game crashed lol That did it for me.

Yea, the setup of sanctum is marginally better than from poe1.

But it sucks because it completely ignores parts of ones build.

If after each completion health leech or regen etc chars would get like 0,1% or so of the amount they would have regenerated as honor after the completion of each section. That would at least reward the effort we put into that build direction

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