A few tips for Sekhema Trial that I don't see people talk about much
So if you engaged with the Sanctum in POE1 at all, you know that the Sekhema Trial is, at its core, the same thing
I just never did well with it until I adopted a couple strategies for picking my route that I really don't see anyone mention
Avoid Afflictions whenever possible. This is not always possible, so...
Know which Afflictions are very bad for you and which have little-to-no impact. For example, if all your damage comes from minions, taking an Affliction to be cursed with Enfeeble is basically free.
Avoid Smoke and Mirror Afflictions at all costs.
All the Smoke Afflictions remove information from the trial map and you want as much information as you can get. Deceptive Mirror makes it so you do not always travel to the room you pick.
Oh yeah, these are all classified as Minor Afflictions so never, ever, ever take a deal to receive a random Minor Affliction.
Consider how many exits your room choice will give you, especially if you can't see what's after that.
Generally try to avoid a room with a single exit to a room you can't see. If it turns out it has a very bad Affliction, but you're locked in to going there, then, well, you're fucked.
Think about this a couple steps in advance. If Room 1 has 2 exits, but both of those rooms only exit to one possible room after that, it is essentially as bad as a room with a single exit.
Giving more consideration to how many path options you leave yourself will help you far more than you might think.
Scrying Crystal is the best Minor Boon you can get
This is the Boon that lets you see one more room ahead on the Trial Map
If you can get this Boon (without taking a bad Affliction!) you should do it
For Relic choices, just stack as much Honor Resist as you can
In Sanctum, the cap on this was 75%. I've heard it's now 95%. I've stacked up 103% and it was still showing that much on the little tooltip on the Trial Map that shows your relic effects. I haven't found anywhere in-game that states what the cap is, so who knows if there is a cap or what it is, but having that much Honor Resist made a MASSIVE difference.
You can Augment and Reforge your Relics
If all your Relics are shit, roll 'em. If it only has one mod, slam it.
4th Floor Boss Spoiler
There is one mechanic the boss does that you probably want to be spoiled on
! He will disappear and leave a glowing spot in the middle of the arena. You must move to that spot. Time will stop for a few moments and multiple glowing circles marked with hourglasses will appear. As soon as you can move, you must touch all of these before time runs out or it is instant death.
If you have any specific questions about the Trial of Sekhemas, feel free to ask, I'll try to answer
Comments
I'm also feeling unclear on what is the cap on honour resistance. I stacked 78 increased and +2 max. But it would suck if it turns out there is some negative modifier somewhere like in delve xd.
Also I would add, if everything else is equal, pay attention to the room type. For me Ritual > Escape >>> Chalice > Hourglass > Gauntlet, but this depends on your build largely.
Good tips! I really enjoy these challenges. The only problem is that they take a lot of time. I did them as a melee and range character.
Can confirm, avoiding random afflictions is key, random afflictions will brick your run eventually, there are just too many brick mods. No boon is worth taking a random minor affliction.
How do I get him to not spawn the balls in the 4 corners of the room I literally can’t move that fast lol
Thanks, I have a more noob question. I've ascended, what's the point of repeating the trial in act 2? Just to get more loot at the end?
A tip that i can give on top of yours if you just want to beat the trial and dont care about loot is just go to money rooms as much as possible, and buy boons at the end of floor. I stacked like 12 boons with some minor afflictions this way before i even got to 4th floor.
Max resistance is 75% and cannot get higher than 90
Fyi for spoilers there need to be no spaces between the tags.
Sometimes spades break the spoilers
>!This works!< (I escaped the tags with backslash)
>! This might not !<
Get 75% honor resist.
Get some extra movement speed.
Get slow debuff reduction OR a silver charm.
I have capped resist (75%), 26% movement speed, and 40% slow reduction as well as 40% defenses and 30% max honor and hp. This works very VERY well for me every 4 floor run.
Bonus points if your build abuses energy shield. That shit is op. You can easily have 10k+ honor if you have heaps of ES.
Also... Got super lucky on my warrior run, but... IF you can get to the merchant right before the boss AND IF he has it, there's a boon that says "you take no damage until you finish the next room". I didn't know how horribly underlevrled my warrior was until then. Took forever to kill the boss, but inwas literally invincible. 😂
I'm level 31 and i got to the Trials but i didn't start, should i just become Overleveled and then do it? Because i see so many people complain that it's too difficult, so I thought maybe i'm just gonna wait until im high level and then attempt it.
Yesterday i rolled no minimap on 3rd trial ,that's was a experience
The only issue I have with 3rd so far is the 3rd boss spending 50% of the time underground 40%leaping outta the ground and only 10% in a dmg phase
Best tip I’ve gotten so far was; you don’t have to do them if u don’t want to.
Wait, i thought afflictions also affect my minions? They don't? Nice
Another good tip would be: You really want to focus on Sacred Water in the first and second floor. To get as strong as possible.
Can you explain relics and how you get more or upgrade them like you mentioned at the end? I only played the trial once a few days ago and the whole system is completely nebulous to me.
Is there a way to farm the coins?
The worst part of the Trials for me is actually the trap rooms. I've lost so many runs from those stupid things.
Can I ask, do I have to do this a second time in cruel to get another two points? I did it last night but I think it was the lower difficulty one on the map again, it was far too easy and I didn't get any more points. Then the same again for that trial later in act 3?
Isn't slamming ex? These can only be blue right ?
Why did I not think it was possible de re-craft the relics... I'm dumb.
Yeah, there is definitely a meta to know there.
BTW, is 100 physical damage in each room a bad thing or not? in theory it should be mitigated by honor res
but since I basically want no damage at all ..
You have some way too restrictive tips like "Avoid Smoke and Mirror Afflictions at all costs." Yeah I much rather not know if it's gauntlet or hourglass trial than to take 40% less damage or no energy shield but your tip says to always take the less damage instead if those are the options. Yeah nah. Also towards the end of the trial then it doesn't matter at all if you take them but I am supposed to avoid them at all costs so I guess I'll take "you have no evasion" instead.
You need to have max res to be able to stack higher. It absolutely does not baseline at 95% max res.
I haven’t really messed around yet but do the relic items not get consumed when you run the trial? I’ve been afraid to use them on a run because I’ve been getting one shot
Wait, how to augment and reforge our relics? and if shit slam it mean throw away?
Do the anti slow charms work for the third floor boss's sand debuffs?
Great tips, thank you. Have any tips for the scorpion fight? Because I melted the first two bosses and entered that fight with 90% of my Honour, but lost it all pretty quickly while trying to DPS.
Ughhh I don’t like the trials but need to get my second set of points! Thanks for the tips!
I went knowing it would be hard. Died to the boss when it was around 25% health. I then farmed the trails for about 2 hours. I got some pretty good drops and orbs. I finally beat the boss with 11 honor left 🥴 it was intense.
You can also get a mod on relics that let you see a room or even multiple ahead. Even one rleic like that will go a long way.
My usual setup with relics: a lot of honor resistance, max honor %, see more rooms.
I managed to complete the 4 trials yesterday on my monk.
My strat: avoid afflictions at all cost, stack sacred water, and buy all boons at the vendor.
My relics I had reveal 2 additional rooms (which seemed a little bugged, but extremely helpful), honor resistance/increased defenses, and I got an amazing boss takes 30% increased dmg.
I would end up with about 4 afflictions and 15-20 boons at the last boss.
Also a tip for spark stormweaver, slot in electrocute on spark. Makes a world of difference here. I swapped it out for destruction at the last boss for more damage.
Blink is what helped me the most. I don't use it normally but when i saw Ghazzy demo it the other day skipping the second boss i gave it a go. It was a game changer especially on Gauntlets where i could just blink through closed doors/gates and skip going for levers.
So I literally tried this for first time last night.
I got the relic but I couldn’t equip it? Also, managed to clear all 8 stages fairly easily, I just got hit by random object on the boss battle, it took too long to die (10+ mins) and ended up running out of honour when we had at like 10% hp.
I think I might’ve screwed myself with the 50% more hp on monsters but still…
Any tips/help would be appreciated. 1st time playing PoE.
the 4th boss is a lot tankier than the other 3 boss and I mean a LOT.
A tip for the last boss: reducing potency of slows makes the touch orbs very easy
Escape rooms are easiest. Just run through.
Any tips for the third boss?
Nice thank you!
I got my 4th ascendancy from the trial of chaos, but I have a lot of Djinn coins and I wanna fight all bosses in poe2.
Do you think farming the trial of sekhemas is worth it?
Crazy how cannot see any room is a minor affliction while revealing all map is a major boon
I was ice sorceress and could make it to the boss but couldn't kill him using my skills. I figured out if I used a living bomb fire staff, I could kill him a lot faster and kite him easier by using staff skill.
It really is a terrible part of this game though
Any damage tips for the 4th floor boss? For reference I’m killing the scorpion boss in 2-3 seconds and barely dent the 4th boss (typical monk tempest flurry variant)
Tip for others though, you can exit and restart the fight with no penalty by exiting to character select. He just ran me out of mana the first time so I exited and swapped some passives and gems to try again.
With max honor resist he hits like a wet noodle as well though, but wore me down and after literally 15 minutes finally ran out of honor with him about 30%.
I'm,just not gonna engage until they remove the honor system
honor res + merchant choices are the two best mods. Get merchant choices to ~10, and then buy 50% merchant prices, and then your ring is going to pop off as you just buy every single boon the merchant offers afterward.
merchants are bis. that's my tip
Get resist relics! And maximum honour. Ez pz! Even as a warrior.
Can someone tell. Me what the scorpion does?
Do monsters get more life every floor or something? I seemed to do a lot less damage on the third floor even though I had no afflictions that decreased my damage or increased monster life.
I believe the honor bar itself mentions the resist cap is 75%. Ive also had int he 90's display on the little summary of buffs from relics, but I don't believe it actually is going that high.
Could you explain the strategy for the sand mother everytime I get there my honour gets wiped out so quick and the burrowing is annoying af, been running about 50% honour resistance