General News

Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0 introduces the new Druid class, which features three transformation forms, each with its own unique skills and combat style. You can switch between these forms at any time during combat.

Of these three forms, the bear form excels at utilizing Rage resource to increase damage output and create synergistic effects between multiple skills. This form also possesses tank-like characteristics, allowing it to withstand damage.

Based on this, we will introduce a build that focuses on transforming into a bear and creating fissures to damage enemies in combat - Raging Fissure Bear Build.

Raging Fissure Bear Build Overview

The bear form of Druid is characterized by its slow speed but extremely high defense and survivability, making it suitable for melee combat. Although it's not as fast as the wolf or wyvern forms, with the right build, it can clear groups of enemies with AoE damage.

For example, Raging Fissure Bear Build is crafted based on one of the key bear form skills, Fury of the Mountain.

Fissure Warrior playstyle has always been quite powerful in PoE 2, but now the bear form combined with this skill can achieve similar, or even better, results.

This skill unlocks at Tier 5 and requires equipping Animal Talismans. You will transform into a bear and repeatedly pound the ground to create lava fissures.

These fissures convert 80 physical damage into fire damage, granting 3 Rage for each enemy hit and creating another fissure, with a maximum of 12 fissures active simultaneously.

Due to the accumulation of Rage, this makes your attacks much more powerful than normal attacks in bear form, as the multiple fissures allow you to create three branching fissures with each ground pound, and Rage generated by the fissures triggers totems.

Other Bear Form Skills

While Fury of the Mountain is the foundation, it needs to be used in conjunction with other bear form skills to meet your damage output needs. These mainly include:

• Maul: As the main attack method in bear form, it performs a powerful sweeping attack, accumulating Rage with each enemy hit.
• Furious Slam: Creates a shockwave by slamming the ground, and can consume Rage to increase the shockwave's power, leaving behind jagged ground. This ground can interact with other skills to deal additional damage.
• Rampage: This skill guides you forward, continuously slamming the ground, suitable for clearing groups of enemies and for quick movement. Consuming Rage can also extend its duration.
• Ferocious Roar: As a Warcry skill, it instantly generates Rage when there are enemies nearby and empowers subsequent attacks to break through enemy armor. It can also be triggered in human form by equipping a supporting gem.
• Walking Calamity: As the ultimate skill in bear form, it triggers when your Rage reaches its maximum, summoning a meteor shower that deals fire damage to enemies and restores Rage over its duration.

Overall, Raging Fissure Bear Build relies on slam and fissure damage. Therefore, in each battle, you should use Fury of the Mountain at least once or twice, then sequentially cast Maul and Furious Slam as a combo.

Properly Combining Human Form Skills

After transforming into a bear, you can still use your human form Druid skills, and they are an important part of crafting any Druid build. For Raging Fissure Bear Build, the essential human skill is Volcano.

The skill's damage itself isn't impressive, but after using Fury of the Mountain or Rampage, Volcano can help accumulate damage and ignite enemies, making them more susceptible to your sustained damage.

More importantly, if you later unlock Invigorating Hate passive node, it transforms Volcano into a healing skill, restoring your health by consuming Rage, 1% for every point of Rage consumed.

Considering that you will constantly accumulate Rage, either actively or passively, while using this build, this passive node will significantly enhance your survivability and self-healing capabilities as a bear, allowing you to survive even in boss battles.

How To Choose Your Ascendancy Class?

Druid has two Ascendancy Classes: Shaman and Oracle. Here, we recommend unlocking the former, because Shaman has two passive abilities that are very important for accumulating and using Rage: Druidic Champion and Furious Wellspring.

As we've emphasized multiple times in the previous sections, Raging Fissure Bear Build is a build that relies on Rage. Druidic Champion can increase your spell damage by accumulating Rage, and Furious Wellspring helps restore the consumed Rage.

It's worth noting that to fully utilize the advantage of increased spell damage, we recommend equipping Tornado skill gem.

This skill creates a tornado that continuously damages surrounding enemies. You can also utilize projectiles to collide with the tornado as it moves forward to deal even more damage.

If the tornado covers elemental ground, it will absorb nearby debuffs for 4 seconds and apply that effect to enemies within the tornado. This is also expected to work very well in conjunction with the wyvern form.

How To Choose Gear?

Since the skill switching and usage suggestions are already quite complex and comprehensive, this build doesn't have very high gear requirements, especially in the early stages of the league.

Of course, if you have the time to farm rarer gear, or any PoE 2 currency that allows you to modify gear affixes, we recommend choosing gear according to the following guidelines:

• Weapons: Prioritize Talismans with fixed damage and attack speed bonuses.
• Armor: While striving to stack defensive attributes, also consider your elemental weaknesses. Having energy shields would be even better.
• Other: Anything that increases damage output or elemental resistance is good.

That's all the information about Raging Fissure Bear Build that we have for you today. If the bear form is your preferred playstyle, then why not try Raging Fissure Bear Build using our guide? You're sure to gain something from it!

Druid, a new class introduced in Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0, boasts one of the most flexible and sustainable combat cycles in the game, encouraging players to be creative and experiment with new build layouts. However, as a new class, many players are not yet fully familiar with Druid, and blindly starting a league journey with an unfamiliar build carries considerable risk.

If you want to know if Druid is advantageous in the late game and worth trying, this guide might provide the answers. We're sharing some unique Druid build playstyles here, hoping to bring you more exciting new inspiration in POE 2!

Tornado Shaman Druid Build

First, we'll mention Tornado Shaman build. This Shaman utilizes Advancing Storm Support and Ground Surfaces debuffs to transform tornadoes into devastating whirlwinds.

Notably, tornadoes absorb any elemental Ground effects they encounter, enhancing the tornado's power and dealing extra damage. Since Druid's Wolf form can easily freeze enemies, this means we can use this support skill to create Chilled Ground, freezing enemies standing in it, reducing their movement speed for a default duration of 6 seconds.

Furthermore, we've also set up a curse skill to create Burning Ground, and equipped a unique pair of boots that generate Shocked Ground, fully utilizing these Ground debuffs.

For Shaman Ascendancy passive, we chose Wisdom of the Maji node, which unlocks new affixes for runes and idols, gaining additional bound affix bonuses. Additionally, it synergizes well with the new Idol item: Idol of Maxarius, increasing our storm cap for maximum damage.

Flame Breath Wyvern Druid Build

If you don't like the tornado playstyle, Wyvern's Flame Breath might offer you ideal damage and the most spectacular visual effects.

Flame Breath, as the ultimate skill of Wyvern form, is incredibly powerful, especially for ignite builds. This is because it has a unique mechanism: each attack stacks the ignite effect, and the ignite damage increases rapidly over time. 

Flame Breath boasts a base attack speed of 800% and a Magnitude of Ignite of 750%, making it a devastating DoT (Damage over Time) skill. Once Ignite is fully stacked, it can deal hundreds of times your attack damage per second.

However, Flame Breath is a Rage-dependent skill, so we need sufficient Rage to sustain flight and unleash our fury.

To accelerate Rage generation, we utilize the new Persistent Buff Skill Support Gem, Eternal Rage. When linked to a skill, it significantly increases Rage regeneration, allowing Druid players to continuously cast devastating skills such as shapeshifting and channeling.

We also use Primal Hunger Passive, which restores one Rage per second for every four Rage consumed in the past 4 seconds, while also increasing our maximum Rage by 100%.

Additionally, don't forget to unlock all Ignite and Rage nodes in the skill tree's Jewel area. With all of this, we can simply take to the skies, ready to unleash flames and destroy all enemies.

Plants Spellcaster Druid Build

The next build setup revolves around Oracle Ascendancy, utilizing plant power as the primary means of output, and using spell totems to generate automated plant explosion effects.

The core of this build is Wildsurge Incantation keystone, which allows all storm and plant spells to deal higher damage and consume fewer resources, but at the cost of significantly shorter spell duration. However, since we are automating the process, duration isn't a major issue.

In addition, the new unique item Voll's Protector is an indispensable key element in this plant-based build, ensuring we always have enough energy charges to summon totems. Once we generate the initial charges, the totems can sustain themselves.

If we place Entangle skill on a spell totem, we can also create roots to trap enemies in place. Combined with Accelerated Growth and Thrashing Vines, this can create a true plant-based catastrophe, allowing you to escape even the toughest monsters and bosses.

Wolf Druid Build

If you're not interested in plant power and prefer to destroy enemies with a pack of minion friends, then this Wolf Druid build is a good starting point. To support a large army of wolf minions, you can choose Lord of the Wilds keystone, allowing you to equip a scepter while using Animal Talismans. This will empower your minions and provide you with a powerful pack of eight wolves. As they leap across the map, they deal enough damage to shred enemies and attract even more wolves to join the pack.

Additionally, Lunar Assault helps clear and freeze enemies, and empowers your wolves, resulting in higher damage.

This build also utilizes rage in several ways. It uses Commanding Rage to allow your rage stacks to affect your wolf pack's damage. Rage also extends the duration of Lunar Blessing, a skill that provides more frost damage to the entire party and creates devastating moonlight beams with each attack.

In short, these are all Druid endgame builds worth trying right now, with even more details waiting for you to explore. As you can see, Druid class in PoE 2 0.4.0 offers many options, whether you're sweeping across the map with storms, raining down deadly fire from the heavens, unleashing the destructive power of plants, or rampaging across the continent of Wraeclast with your loyal wolf companions, there's a build to suit your primal combat style.

You can seamlessly switch between various playstyles such as tanking, burst damage, or ranged attacks, complemented by powerful elemental skills, allowing for deep customization and creating builds that could potentially disrupt the game balance, making it a highly anticipated and exciting build!

The latest patch for Path of Exile 2, The Last of the Druids, has begun. Do you prefer a familiar class, or are you eager to experience Druid? If you choose the latter, you'll eventually have to choose between Shaman and Oracle again.

Both are Druid Ascendancy classes, but you can only choose one at a time, and you can't change to experience the other one afterward unless you create a new character to continue playing.

To ensure you can progress more smoothly in the game with an Ascendancy class that suits you better, this patch will provide a detailed introduction to the features and gameplay of Shaman.

Shaman Overview

This Ascendancy class further expands upon Druid's ability to deal spell and elemental damage. By combining unique skill sets, it gains more charges and buffs, increasing damage output and skill rotation efficiency.

More specifically, Shaman can accumulate Rage during combat as a power source, then unleash it to amplify elemental damage, sometimes even creating powerful combos to quickly clear hordes of enemies within melee range.

How To Unlock Shaman?

Like other Ascendancy classes, unlocking Shaman requires completing Trial of the Sekhemas in Act 2 and Trial of Chaos in Act 3 to obtain enough points to unlock his unique ability. The specific process is as follows:

Act 2:

• 1. After arriving in hub town, find Traitor's Passage area and enter Trial of the Sekhemas.
• 2. Defeat the boss Balbala the Traitor to obtain a special token.
• 3. Place the token on Relic Altar at the trial entrance to officially begin the trial.
• 4. Upon completion, Ascendancy class mechanic will be unlocked, allowing you to choose one and immediately gain two Ascendancy points 1&2.

Act 3:

• 1. Enter Vaal Jungle and find Temple of Chaos.
• 2. Defeat the boss Xyclucian, the Chimera, to obtain the key item Chimeral Inscribed Ultimatum.
• 3. Use this item to unlock and enter Trial of Chaos. Successfully completing it will grant Ascendancy points 3&4.

While you can also unlock Ascendancy class by defeating the boss in Trial of Chaos, we recommend completing it as early as possible in Act 2. Both trials will also provide additional rewards, including gear, gems, and random types of PoE 2 currency.

It is rumored that a third trial will be added in Act 4, but details about the plan have only been revealed so far. For now, focus on the two existing trials.

Shaman's Unique Abilities

In Path of Exile 2, all basic class skills are used as skill gems (as was the case in the first game), resulting in cross-class skill equipping. However, Ascendancy class passive skills are unique to each class.

Sacred Flow

The passive effect of this skill is that it increases your Spirit by 40 for every empty Charm slot. Therefore, if your builds rely on Spirit consumption, you can selectively equip gear and utilize empty slots to keep your builds running.

Wisdom Of The Maji

Unlocking this node provides additional bonuses to your runes, such as increased damage or critical strike chance. This makes your overall strength even greater after equipping runes to gear.

Druidic Champion And Furious Wellspring

These two skills are discussed together because their effects are strongly correlated.

Every 2 Rage points you accumulate, Druidic Champion increases your spell damage by 1%, while Furious Wellspring restores 6% of your Rage per second while it naturally decays.

Combining these means that Rage is replenished as it is consumed, and the replenishment exceeds the consumption, allowing you to easily craft a Shaman build centered around Rage.

Bringer Of The Apocalypse

This skill, after you've dealt sufficient elemental damage through other attacks, will continue to inflict damage from different natural elements, such as fire or lightning, on enemies, culminating in a final burst to completely eliminate any remaining foes.

How To Choose Gear As A Shaman?

Based on Wisdom of the Maji skill effect, you should first add as many gears as possible that can be inlaid with runes to maximize their bonuses, ideally those with affixes that increase critical hit damage.

Secondly, you can add weapons that utilize Spirit or Rage mechanics, allowing other skills to also function. Of course, don't forget you don't need to fill all your gear slots.

How To Play It In Conjunction With Druid?

While Druid and Shaman skills belong to two separate systems, they are closely intertwined in practice. In human form, Druid primarily deals damage through nature spells, while Shaman skills amplify these damage effects.

If you want to diversify your gameplay, you can transform into an animal. For example, in bear form, you can ram enemies into a volcano created by Volcano skill, inflicting more fire damage; in wyvern form, you can launch aerial attacks.

What Are The Advantages Compared To Oracle?

Of course, each Ascendancy class is unique; none is inherently better than another. The key is how you utilize them.

Shaman excels at providing direct damage bonuses, attacking enemies with instant bursts of elemental damage, while Oracle's gameplay requires prediction and strategic planning in the early stages of combat, but ultimately yields reliable benefits.

Therefore, if you're an impatient player who enjoys a fast-paced, high-intensity playstyle, Shaman is a better fit.

That concludes our introduction to Druid Ascendancy class, Shaman. Based on the information we've provided, you can craft your own Shaman builds to conquer the challenges of the new league! Good luck!

Path of Exile 2's class and skill combinations are incredibly complex, resulting in numerous playstyles. Unfortunately, summoner builds have consistently lacked a place among the top-tier builds.

While it's unclear whether the new Druid class can change this, each league has a dedicated group of players researching minion builds. Below, we'll examine the performance of minion builds in Patch 0.3.0 and the adjustments in Patch 0.4.0 to see which ones will perform best in Fate of the Vaal league.

Tier S

Spectre Builds

Since skills in Path of Exile 2 aren't tied to classes, you can choose either Spectre Infernalist build or Spectre Shaman build.

Of all summoning skills, Spectre performed best in Patch 0.3.0, allowing you to enslave Spectres to fight for you. The strongest Spectre was Frozen Mandibles. Unfortunately, it was removed in Patch 0.4. As compensation, the developers stated they will buff some summon variants.

Therefore, as long as Spectre builds aren't significantly nerfed, you can use Powered Zealot Spectre to clear monsters and single enemies, or Death Knight Spectres to deal with single enemies.

Ascendancy Recommends

If you're only focusing on the early game, Spectre Shaman has a greater advantage because its Sacred Flow talent can provide a large amount of Spirit by sacrificing charm slots. Thanks to the changes in Act 2 quest Valley of Titans, Shaman can obtain a belt that grants +2 charm slots at lower levels, allowing for a large amount of Spirit early on.

Later in the game, you can respec to Oracle, as Oracle talent tree contains many summon-related nodes, providing strong late-game defense or damage.

Alternatively, you can choose the classic Infernalist build from patch 0.3.0, or Ritualist and Lich using Evergrasping Ring. Shaman and Infernalist may perform similarly with a moderate PoE 2 currency investment, but Lich and Oracle are likely the strongest with top-tier gear.

Tame Beast Builds

This build requires you to control Tamed Beast by switching weapons and using Infernal Legion auxiliary gem to deal area-of-effect fire damage.

Patch 0.4.0 did not significantly nerf its damage, and while the reduction in high-density maps may diminish its value for clearing, Tamed Beast builds remain consistently strong in single-target damage and overall performance, its strength proportional to your PoE 2 currency investment.

Ascendancy Recommends

The energy shield nerf in patch 0.4.0 may make Titan Tamed Beast better, but you can also choose to start as Shaman and transition to Oracle later, again due to the summon life and defense nodes included in the talents, and the higher your summons‘ HP, the higher their damage.

Tier A

Skeleton Archer Ritualist Build

This build requires Ritualist to equip Evergrasping Rings, granting summons additional Chaos that also affects enemies within range. It typically requires Chaos Inoculation to mitigate the additional Chaos damage taken.

This build performs exceptionally well with high investment, but it's not a comfortable early-game choice. Upgrading with summons is not recommended without transitional gear; other skills are usually needed for early game progression, followed by a gear swap to reach full potential later.

In Patch 0.4.0, any summoner build relying heavily on Spirits was affected by reduced reservation efficiency and weakened Relics. However, this build, primarily reliant on the ring's damage boost, was relatively less affected.

Tier B

Skeletal Reaver Builds

Skeletal Reavers gain attack speed and damage by stacking rage. Patch 0.4.0 fixed this skill's description; now, its attack speed bonus only applies when they are enrage-enhanced.

The challenge was ensuring Skeletal Reavers survived after enrage was active. Tecrod's Revenge support gem enhancement solved this problem. It allows summons to survive longer after their health reaches 0, increasing this time from 10 seconds to 20 seconds. Dialla's Desire support gem can improve skill quality, further increasing rage effects, which might potentially lead to higher damage.

Ascendancy Recommends

This skill gem can be used by Titans, Ritualists, Shamans, and Liches, but its effectiveness depends on which class allows Skeletal Reavers to stack rage more efficiently.

Unearth Raise Zombie Builds

This build primarily relies on summoned enhanced zombies that consume Power Charge. Its damage bonus has changed from a fixed 100% to a dynamic value that scales with skill level, meaning high-level zombies have significant damage potential.

You can use Unearth to quickly generate summons for clearing maps. When single-target damage is needed, summon 10-12 enhanced zombies for burst damage. This build is completely unaffected by the reduction in reservation efficiency, but it heavily relies on Power Charge.

The best method is to use new Lineage support gems, which generate one Power Charge every 4 seconds. Additionally, Profane Ritual can consume corpses to generate critical strike orbs.

Sacrifice aura can treat permanently resurrectable summons as corpses, consume them with Profane Ritual, and then resurrect them with Skeletal Cleric, allowing you to continuously generate Power Charge.

Ascendancy Recommends

For this build, Ritualist is the best ascendancy choice because it doesn't rely on a lot of spirit and benefits from Evergrasping Rings and Uul-Netol's Embrace. The problem with this build is that it's relatively cumbersome to operate, and the summoned creatures are temporary and cannot exist indefinitely. Furthermore, using Raise Zombie is very mana-intensive, so you need to be mindful of your resource consumption.

The above minion builds are just basic concepts. You can research how to increase minion damage in new leagues, and perhaps you can even create a stronger build.

When starting a new patch or league in Path of Exile 2, choosing the right build is crucial if you want to progress quickly. Generally, powerful builds are recommended, but sometimes novelty and new changes must also be considered.

Taking the upcoming Fate of the Vaal league, launching on December 12th, as an example, you can play the new Druid class, so builds related to it are not to be missed. Furthermore, various changes to combat mechanics mean that old builds may gain new vitality.

Based on the above, we will recommend three builds worth crafting and playing first in the new patch.

The Wyvern Form-Focused Build

If you're keeping up with the latest PoE 2 news, you'll know from livestreams and announcements that Druid can transform into three forms: wolf, bear, and wyvern, by using new weapon Animal Talismans.

The wyvern is the last and most unique form announced. Transforming into a flying dragon and spewing flames with Flame Breath skill will undoubtedly feel incredibly cool.

While this is only one type of attack in wyvern form, it's the most important because its actual attack speed is very fast, with a base attack speed of up to 800%, and you can continuously channel it for 4 seconds to deal 750% fire damage.

If you want to extend the channeling time of Flame Breath, you can do so by consuming six Rage per second. Additionally, when using this skill, for every energy charge consumed, you gain a 50% lightning damage bonus and a 50% reduction in Rage consumption speed.

This means that only three Rage per second are needed to achieve all the effects mentioned above, and since the base Rage limit is 30 points, this means you can gain an additional 10 seconds of channeling time with the help of energy charges.

According to the developers' recommended playstyle, choose the wyvern form and its fire-breathing skills, along with Ascendancy class Shaman, and then buy PoE 2 currency to further enhance the appropriate gear, and you will become an invincible Druid.

The Modified Pathfinder

Pathfinder is one of Ascendancy classes of the base class Ranger, specializing in damaging enemies through mechanisms such as poisons and flask throwing.

If you find the overall movement speed of Druid Wyvern fire-breathing build too slow, then a Pathfinder-based build is worth trying: this Ascendancy class can reduce the movement speed penalty by 50% by unlocking specific nodes.

In addition, patch 0.4.0 also brought several Ascendancy passive skill options to Pathfinder, allowing you to leverage the strengths of other classes, including:

• Path of the Warrior: Allows you to allocate initial Warrior passive skill points.
• Path of the Sorceress: Allows you to allocate initial Sorceress passive skill points.

Each option rewards you with 4 passive skill points. Based on this, if you want to make your Pathfinder builds more elemental, you can choose Sorceress passive skills; if you value attack power more, you can start with Warrior.

In fact, although the nodes and passive skills between different Ascendancy classes are not interchangeable, theoretically, all active skills are universal across all classes due to the skill gem mechanism.

Therefore, after determining your passive skill style, you can incorporate Druid's wyvern fire skill, Flame Breath, into your Pathfinder builds, converting your damage type from physical damage to fire damage.

More importantly, Pathfinder also received some additional bonuses through Patch 0.4.0, with damage, global defenses, and cost efficiency all increased by 5%.

To this end, you can first allocate some energy shield talent nodes, and then a bunch of attribute nodes to gain a large amount of energy shield.

At this point, you will find that you can combine reduced movement speed penalties and energy shields to craft fast and sturdy Pathfinder builds. This is theoretically possible, but it is difficult in practice and requires time to explore.

Titan Bear Build

After combining Pathfinder and Druid wyvern, another cross-class build type worth trying is Titan bear.

Titan is Warrior's Ascendancy class, specializing in overwhelming physical power. As one of Druid's transformation forms, the bear has a certain tank style, capable of knocking down and stunning enemies, similar to Titan.

In the changes brought by Patch The Last of Druids, Titan gained a new Ascendancy talent node, Mountain Splitter. It allows every third slam skill you cast that doesn't create a fissure to generate an additional aftershock on each side of the initial area.

Correspondingly, the previous Surprising Strength node has been removed, and Crushing Impacts now deals 25% increased damage to heavily stunned enemies.

The skills available to Druid's bear form, such as Maul, Furious Slam, and more, mostly emphasize heavy hits and effects like Warcries, which synergize well with Titan skills.

For example, you can continuously slam the ground, generating a series of aftershocks, while simultaneously gaining 50% of the small passive node effects through Titan's class characteristics, as well as other AoE attack nodes.

Overall, the three builds introduced here are essentially based on the new Druid class. Thanks to skill gems, the addition of this new class to Path of Exile 2 also brings many build crafting possibilities to other classes.

Whether you are interested in these three builds or want to try more uses of Druid form after the new league officially starts, it's all possible. We hope your exploration goes smoothly and you have fun!

Fate of the Vaal is a brand new challenge league mechanic in Path of Exile 2 0.4.0, allowing all exiles to re-explore the fallen Vaal civilization and introducing Atziri, Queen of the Vaal, as a new pinnacle boss.

In the 0.4.0 patch, we return to Queen Atziri's palace, now a ruin, but in the darkness, crucial machinery still operates. Here, we have the opportunity to uncover the secret to saving Vaal race - a gateway to the past, allowing you to travel through time again and again, altering the temple and uncovering its secrets.

Next, we will detail PoE 2 Fate of the Vaal league mechanics. Don't miss this if you want to gain a significant advantage at the start of the league!

Vaal Ruins

In Fate of the Vaal, you will find ancient Vaal civilization ruins scattered throughout Wraeclast. These ruins seem to attract nearby creatures and have a strange influence on them.

After defeating them, the remaining Vaal seem to gain some power, but not enough to fully activate. Therefore, you need to find more of these arcane devices and sacrifice the monsters you encounter there to fully activate one of them.

However, because these devices are ancient and sometimes corrupted, when you activate them, you may sometimes see distorted ancient Vaal, and sometimes even trigger more powerful enemies. Ultimately, you will discover its true purpose: a portal to a lost temple deep underground, leading you to what was once the dwelling of Atziri, Queen of the Vaal.

Vaal Temple

What treasures are hidden within the temple? You're sure to want to know the answer.

At the portal exit, there is a control console. After activating it, you can see a map of the temple. The rooms here are not interconnected, and the layout is complex. This is where you might understand the purpose of the scattered ruins and devices throughout Wraeclast.

Temple Rooms & Upgrades

The temple's energy comes from sacrifices, and this energy can be used to modify the temple's structure itself. Each time you open the temple, you will receive six rooms that you can place to build your own dungeon.

Lay paths connecting the different areas and place rooms filled with precious loot alongside the paths. Once you've finished placing them, open the temple and explore your creation. Each room contains different challenges and rewards.

Please note that once you choose to enter a room, the door will only open after you win the battle, so choose carefully.

The placement of the rooms is crucial, as it determines the maximum reward you can obtain. For example, for Commander, you can place it next to a garrison of troops, allowing him to command the troops. As Commander's abilities improve, the garrison level will also increase, making the monsters stronger, but the rewards will also be more generous.

Different rooms have different upgrade requirements. However, you don't need to remember all the interactions, because when you select a room, the system will show which locations can upgrade other rooms and the specific impact of the upgrade on the temple.

After running the temple, some rooms will become unstable, so you will need to rebuild the temple. Since six rooms are added each time you return, this means the temple will grow larger and larger.

The above are the basic functions of the temple, but there is much more to it.

Once Doryani learns that you are going to Vaal, he will ask you to go back in time to try to stop Atziri from destroying Vaal.

As we mentioned earlier, the device at the entrance of the temple is a portal to the past, allowing you to travel back to a specific point in time, before Atziri caused the destruction of Vaal.

Atziri's palace is located on the other side of the temple, so you will need to significantly expand the temple to find her. However, her room can only be unlocked through a room you currently cannot access. You will need to visit the temple's architect to have him lay the path for you.

Once you are able to travel to the past, a whole new set of rooms will open up to you, containing extremely generous rewards.

Corruption Crafting

As you expand your temple, you will encounter various enemies, loot, and mechanics, and you can also unlock more crafting options while upgrading rooms.

Typically, a level one Chamber of Corruption room can only corrupt one item. But if you place it next to a room controlled by a Thaumaturge, and then place a Sacrificial Chamber room to provide soul energy, you can upgrade its level. And it's all worth it, because once the room is upgraded to level three, you'll receive very generous rewards.

In the level three Corruption Chamber room, you'll find a mysterious item slot that allows you to corrupt items.

Normally, once an item is corrupted, it cannot be modified further, but this device allows you to corrupt the item again, adding new enchantments. However, be aware that there is a 50% chance that these items will be destroyed.

Crafting Currency

One more thing to add about these crafting mechanics: it doesn't force you to carry the items you want to craft in the game. If you don't have the items you want to craft in the temple room at the time, you can also choose to craft some PoE 2 currency items first, so you can craft them later or trade them on the market as needed.

Atziri Pinnacle Boss

Finally, in each challenge league, the developers introduce a new pinnacle boss to test the strength of the player's character. In Fate of the Vaal, players will have the opportunity to face Atziri at her peak.

After defeating this architect, you will gain the ability to place Royal Axis Chamber. Once connected to the temple, you can travel to this chamber and ultimately face Queen Atziri herself in a final battle. This will be a truly fierce fight.

Once you defeat Atziri boss, you will find another console that can be used to modify the temple. This console is special, allowing you to place new types of rooms with specific rewards. Some rooms drop specific unique items, special runes, and PoE 2 currency, as well as some other more niche crafting experiments.

In addition, you can also obtain a mysterious staff: Atziri's Rule. This staff increases the level of all your Corrupted Spell Skill Gems and allows you to exchange life for extra damage. It's worth noting that when using this staff, Mirrors of Refraction will constantly appear on the battlefield, and any projectiles fired at these mirrors will split into a Nova, dealing extra damage to enemies.

That's all for PoE 2 Patch 0.4.0 Fate of the Vaal league. This league mechanic is somewhat similar to the past time travel feature, where each player can explore past versions of the temple, challenge different room types, and earn unique rewards, allowing you to build your own path in both the past and the present.

Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0 is almost here. The livestream and announcement have also been released, meaning you can now learn about all the content and changes in this patch and have about a week to prepare for it!

Undoubtedly, the most anticipated feature, both before and after the livestream, is the new Druid class. Previously, we could only speculate based on short trailers, but now we can finally see the full picture!

Based on this, we will now provide you with the most complete ultimate overview of Druid based on the livestream and announcement.

Patch 0.4.0 New Content Summary

First of all, in addition to Druid and its Ascendancy class, this patch also introduces the new Fate of the Vaal League to POE 2, meaning you will need to farm currency and passive tree points from scratch. Other new content mainly includes:

• More skill gems and support gems
• New Lineage Supports
• More new passive skills added to the passive tree
• New Unique Items
• New weapon type Talismans
• New Augment items with new modifiers
• Abyss from the previous league is retained as a core mechanic

In addition to the above, Patch 0.4.0 also brings many changes based on existing mechanics, as well as optimizations for game performance, aiming to present you with a better Path of Exile 2.

PoE 2 Druid Overview

As the second new class to appear in the entire Path of Exile 2 (the first being Huntress), Druid primarily uses elemental spell-casting as its main attack method and has three transformation forms: bear, wolf, and wyvern.

The first two forms have actually been circulating in the player community through leaked information for a long time, while the wyvern was speculated based on the silhouette in the trailer, and now it's finally here!

Source Of Power: Wrath Of Nature

Before introducing the three transformation forms, you first need to know Druid's main output method. In its regular human form, it can use skills with different attributes through Wrath of Nature, dealing damage to enemies through natural forces such as plants or lightning.

These skills mainly include:

• Volcano: Creates a small volcano on the ground that spews lava balls at enemies for a period of time.
• Entangle: Summons plant vines to entangle enemies, dealing damage and slowing them down.
• Thunderstorm: Summons a thunderstorm, causing rain and lightning in the area. Affected enemies are more susceptible to electrical or ice damage, and it also makes plants summoned by Entangle grow faster.

Spell Totem skill deserves a separate mention. It allows you to create a totem that automatically casts any of the three spells above for a limited time. However, regardless of which skill you want to use, you will need to earn skill gems yourself.

Wolf Form

The basis for Druid's transformation is the use of the new weapon, Animal Talismans, which grants you special powers, allowing you to transform into the desired animal form as needed. To transform back into a human, simply cast any spell.

The wolf form is characterized by its ability to quickly increase your agility and speed, freezing enemies first and then tearing them apart with sharp claws and teeth. If enemies appear in groups, you can also summon minions to help you.

For example, you can use Pounce skill to pounce on a target and apply a mark. Killing that enemy will summon a new werewolf to join you; the more enemies marked, the larger your pack becomes.

The wolf pack will then prioritize attacking marked enemies, and the more wolves there are, the higher the damage dealt.

Bear Form

This form is somewhat like a tank role, not only allowing you to knock down and stun enemies with immense strength, but also to attract enemy attacks to accumulate Rage, thereby increasing the final damage output.

Once you see the runes on your back glowing, it means you have accumulated enough Rage to use a more powerful berserker strike to destroy enemies. Combined with Volcano skill, nothing can stop you.

Wyvern Form

This form allows you to transform into a wyvern in close combat to tear apart enemies or deal lightning damage, or to circle in the sky, spewing fire at enemies from a distance to inflict damage.

Notably, after combat, you can accumulate energy by devouring enemy corpses, and then consume that energy to use Rend skill when new enemies are approaching a stunned state, enhancing your wings to unleash a gust of wind that knocks enemies off balance.

This not only deals a large amount of damage but also transforms this melee skill into a larger AoE attack. After the wings are fully charged, it creates a lightning explosion through a shockwave, dealing even more damage.

Ascendancy Class 1: Shaman

This Ascendancy class also harnesses the power of nature, combining animalistic talents and magical inclinations by accumulating and using Rage.

You can then allocate available passive skill points to increase your spell damage as your Rage increases, while ensuring continuous Rage generation to achieve this. Additionally, you can obtain Shaman-exclusive extra modifiers from runes and statues.

Ascendancy Class 2: Oracle

Oracle grants you precognitive abilities, allowing you to see visions of yourself using specific skills in the future during combat, and then decide whether to cast the skill as planned, potentially dealing more damage.

For example, when monsters are susceptible to freezing, stunning, or electrical attacks, as an Oracle you can foresee the enemy's future and then merge it with the current timeline, thus dealing double damage to the enemy.

The above is the key information you need to know about playing the new Druid class in Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0. We hope it's helpful. And remember that this patch will be released on December 12th, so don't miss it!

If, after the new league starts, you don't have time to farm resources and can't enjoy the new content to your heart's content, you can choose to buy PoE 2 currency on IGGM according to your budget. We are dedicated to providing cheap and safe PoE 2 goods and services!

A livestream about Path of Exile 2 0.4.0 update The Last of the Druids is about to begin, where the official team will share a wealth of exciting new content details and game settings. Although this livestream is only about a week after the official release of POE 2 0.4.0 update, there's no doubt that this news will ignite the passion of players.

Even more exciting is the generous reward prepared for viewers during this livestream. Players who watch the livestream for a certain amount of time will receive Twitch Drops reward, a cosmetic item that will make their character's adventure even more fun and vibrant.

If you want to use it in Path of Exile 2 0.4.0 update, below I will show you how to obtain this effect during this livestream.

Date And Rewards

This event lasts for one day, so if you want to get the reward for free, be sure not to miss it.

• Start Time: December 4, 2025, 11:00 AM PST
• End Time: December 5, 2025, 11:00 AM PST

The core reward of this Path of Exile 2 Twitch Drops is Verdant Wilds Dodge Roll Effect, a visually stunning cosmetic item that leaves a long green trail when used by the character. This vibrant nature-themed visual enhances the rolling animation in the game, making the adventure more lively.

If you really wanted this effect but missed this event, don't worry, there's another way to get it. While the release date of Verdant Wilds Dodge Roll Effect is still uncertain, the official announcement confirms it will appear in the in-game store, where you can redeem it.

While this method guarantees that players who want it will eventually be able to use it in their adventures, I'm sure you'd prefer to get it directly. After all, nobody wants to invest extra Path of Exile 2 Currency to get an item that could be obtained for free.

Requirements And Claiming Process

Whether you're a new or returning player, as long as you have an account, you can participate in this event and receive rewards after meeting the requirements.

Here are some core requirements for claiming Verdant Wilds Dodge Roll Effect:

• First, you need to link your Twitch account to your game account. Unlinked accounts cannot have their viewing time tracked.
• Second, participants must accumulate 45 minutes of viewing time on any PoE 2 livestream channel with the reward drop mechanism enabled during the event period.
• Then, you can claim Verdant Wilds Dodge Roll Effect.

The account linking process is very simple. Players should log in to their PoE account, go to Twitch Settings page, and find Connect option under Other Connections.

Follow the on-screen instructions to authorize your Twitch account. After completion, you will be notified whether you have successfully linked your account to Twitch.

After watching for 45 minutes, users can claim the reward before the event ends by visiting Twitch Inventory and manually selecting Verdant Wilds Dodge Roll Effect. After redemption, the reward will immediately appear in POE 2 microtransactions list.

Player Feedback

Since the announcement, many players have shared their opinions on the reward across various platforms, with Twitch Drops event receiving mixed reviews and constructive feedback.

Many players have said that Verdant Wilds Dodge Roll Effect perfectly matches their aesthetic, and this exquisite design makes it worthwhile for players to use it in the game to achieve a better visual effect.

They also noted that the natural visual style of the effect perfectly complements the theme of the upcoming PoE 2 patch 0.4.0.

The shorter viewing time requirement, lowering the barrier to obtaining the reward, has also been welcomed by players. Compared with the previous minimum viewing time of one hour, the current requirement of only 45 minutes can be easily met.

Besides the reward itself, players are also eagerly anticipating the new content in the 0.4.0 update, especially the changes Druid class will bring to the game.

However, some players expressed disappointment.

They felt the rewards were too limited and fell short of expectations. Furthermore, they hoped the game developers would offer a wider selection in future Twitch Drops events, such as pets, equipment, and armor.

While player opinions on Twitch Drops rewards were mixed, the overall response was very positive. With the player community eagerly anticipating the event, Twitch Drops served as a model for attracting players and generating buzz before a major update.

It not only sparked discussion within the player community but also brought massive viewership to POE 2 patch 0.4.0 The Last of the Druids streams, significantly increasing player anticipation for the game.

Path of Exile 2, by combining exclusive cosmetic rewards with highly anticipated content, captivated players. Earning these rewards through Twitch Drops allowed both new and veteran players to stay informed about the latest game news, thus generating interest.

This approach will continue to solidify PoE 2's position as one of the most anticipated action role-playing games in recent years. While enhancing the enthusiasm of veteran players, it also attracts more new players to try the game.

Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0, Fate of the Vaal League, will launch on December 12th. To get ahead of the new league's content, you'll naturally need to create a new character and complete the campaign.

The entire campaign is essentially just a transition, and many players are eager to reach the endgame content. Below are some tips for quickly completing the campaign, allowing you to start farming faster.

Character Pick

If you start with a melee class but find it difficult at lower levels, you can create a Ranger character, defeat the first boss, and obtain a bow, quiver, and starting skill gems.

Store these items in Stash Tab, then switch back to your main character to retrieve and use them. This will make your start much smoother.

Initial Area Tips

After rescuing the wounded man and obtaining the class weapon, you can immediately pause the game and respawn at a checkpoint. This will reset the current area, but the weapon will re-drop, allowing for duplication. For example, if you are playing as a Warrior, you will immediately have two weapons.

In the initial area, do not try to kill all monsters. Run as fast as possible, ignoring lone enemies to save time.

Reach the checkpoint where Large Chest is located, open the chest to obtain a skill gem, but do not equip it. Respawn at the checkpoint again, return to the chest, and the skill gem will refresh. You can repeat this process to obtain multiple skill gems, equipping them when needed, and excess skill gems can be sold for gold.

How To Obtain Equipment?

After reaching Clearfell Encampment, you can find merchants to trade and change your equipment.

• Una: Sells Magical Items, Flasks, and Scrolls of Wisdom.
• Finn: Sells Physical Class Gear.

You can type "i" in the search box to quickly filter items. Maximum Life is the most important survival attribute during the campaign. Use double quotes for exact matching. For example, typing "m li" will filter only gear with the "maximum life" affix.

It is recommended to filter gear for Quality Items, bonus damage, increased physical damage, movement speed, and maximum life.

You can sell skill gems obtained through duplication here to exchange for a good set of magical gear at the shop to increase your health.

Leveling Tips

POE 2 has an experience gain penalty system based on the difference between player and enemy levels.

• Before level 40: The range of experience gained is ±4 levels.
• After level 40: The experience gain range is ±6 levels.

This means that grinding in low-level areas is inefficient. You should move to areas matching your level (or slightly higher) as quickly as possible to gain more experience. Efficiency is important, but getting stuck is usually due to insufficient damage, so choosing the right skills is crucial.

Contagion is suitable for any class in the early game, and it's very effective, at least in the first 10 levels or the first chapter. It's a curse skill, and i an enemy dies while affected, the curse spreads to nearby enemies, dealing additional damage, which greatly increases your efficiency in clearing regular monsters.

Quests

Many quests in the campaign have different rewards, but completing them all would be quite time-consuming, so you need to complete them selectively.

Quests like Mud Burrow reward a support gem, while quests like Abandoned Stash in Mysterious Campsite reward an uncut skill gem. You can skip these if you don't need them.

The skull icons marked with a cross on the map are mandatory to complete, as they reward permanent stats.

How To Improve Your Character?

If you feel you're struggling or your gear is lacking, repeatedly farm the bosses you can defeat, because bosses and elite enemies have a higher drop rate for better equipment. After several resets, you're likely to obtain powerful rare gear, which greatly boosts your early-game combat power.

You can create a new instance of a zone at the zone entrance using Shift+click or Ctrl+click. All monsters and bosses will spawn in the new instance. To avoid looting junk, it's recommended to set up or download a loot filter to only display valuable items.

Passive Tree

Path of Exile 2's talent tree is very complex. If you're unsure how to allocate your talent points, remember to only choose talents that increase damage before level 80.

Starting from your character's starting point, proceed along the main road formed by attribute points. Prioritize the nearest talent cluster that provides damage bonuses. On the way to the next damage talent cluster, max out all damage nodes along the way, skipping nodes that don't directly provide damage.

Before entering high-tier maps, you can completely ignore pure defensive nodes like armor and evasion, unless they also provide damage.

Item And Currency Management

In story chapters, weapon base stats see significant improvements around levels 11 and 28. Later in a chapter, even if you obtain a low-tier base weapon with good affixes, it's not recommended to invest in PoE 2 currency, as you'll quickly find bases with much higher base damage.

Magic items are usually more valuable when sold after being identified with a Scroll of Wisdom than when unidentified. Rare items should be disenchanted into Regal Shards at NPCs for crafting Regal Orbs. Only consider selling them if you already have enough Regal Orbs.

If you have equipment with sockets, you can disenchant it at the salvaging bench to obtain Artificer's Shard. This can be combined with Artificer's Orb, used to add rune sockets to equipment. When you feel the pace of combat slowing down and the pressure of survival increasing, it's time to invest in upgrading your equipment.

These are the basic tips for completing the campaign in patch 0.4.0. You can also use a leveling build to increase your speed.

Although Path of Exile 2 Patch 0.4.0 livestream scheduled for 11:00 AM on December 4th hasn't started yet, some information about the new patch has already leaked, sparking various speculations within the community.

To help you gain a more complete understanding of this update, we've compiled this early guide from multiple sources. But you still need to watch the livestream later to learn more and earn Twitch Drops!

When Can You Play Patch 0.4.0?

The official name of this patch is The Last of the Druids. It will be released on all PoE 2 available platforms on December 12th, 2025 at 11:00 AM PST. Simply update the game to start playing.

Since the release of Patch 0.2.0 on April 4th of this year, the game has consistently released a new patch every 3-4 months. While this interval is longer than PoE 1 release league, it at least proves that PoE 2 is becoming more stable as an Early Access game.

It's worth noting that even if you don't own Path of Exile 2, you can play all the game's content for free for three days after Patch 0.4.0 is released, including this patch! This is a great opportunity for players who are still undecided about the game.

New Base Class Druid

In fact, the name of this patch itself suggests that the new class Druid will be the core of this update. At launch, Path of Exile 2 only had 6 basic classes; Huntress was added with patch 0.2.0.

Afterwards, there was various speculation within the game community about more new classes, until now, when Druid has finally been added to Path of Exile 2 as the eighth class.

While details are still unknown, based on Druids in other games, it can be inferred that this will be a hybrid of strength and intelligence, capable of transforming into creatures like bears or werewolves for melee or elemental magic combat.

Each class in Path of Exile series has its own Ascendancies, usually 2-3, and it is expected that the number of Ascendancies for Druid in Path of Exile 2 will remain within this range. In addition, other existing base classes may also gain new Ascendancies.

Players and curiosity are insatiable, and fortunately, the development team is constantly working on it. They've even begun to hint that the next new class might be Duelist, who wields sword-type weapons - of course, this is just a preliminary idea.

Endgame Reset Again

As the most important and challenging aspect of the game, the endgame should always maintain high replayability and challenge. Therefore, Path of Exile 2 (and POE 1) almost always resets this with each new patch release.

Patch 0.4.0 is expected to further enhance the integration of the endgame progression system with narrative elements, making the endgame structure more closely linked to the overall game.

In fact, this move is already evident in the currently ongoing 0.3.0 version released in August. For example, the scene where Tangmazu, the Delirium, is released during Act 4 exploration - this is closely related to Delirium mechanic.

However, this means that powerful enemies that previously only existed in the story may become real opponents. If you encounter this situation, be sure to buy PoE 2 currency to re-roll your gear affixes so that boosting your character's combat power before starting.

Another important endgame component is Atlas Tree, which unlocks various talents and bonus nodes to improve your character's abilities or gain more loot buffs.

However, the current PoE 2 Atlas Tree is considered by players to lack depth and autonomy, so this may be adjusted and optimized in Patch 0.4.0.

More Ascension Trials

Ascendancy classes we've already mentioned won't be unlocked initially through character level progression; instead, they must be completed through relevant trials. Currently available trials include Trial of the Sekhemas and Trialmaster's Challenge.

In patch 0.3.0, Act 4 Eye of Hinekora area, you should have already noticed hints about the new Trial of the Ancestors. At that time, this content was not yet fully developed, but it is expected to be more complete and exciting in 0.4.0.

Abyss Mechanic Will Be Retained

This mechanic is the core of the current Rise of the Abyssal league, and the good news for those who enjoy it is that it will be permanently retained in Path of Exile 2!

In fact, this practice of retaining the core mechanics of the previous league has been a common practice in the first game, which is why PoE 1 was so complex and difficult for newcomers to learn.

However, considering the addition of new content, the operation of Abyss mechanic will inevitably undergo some minor changes and adjustments, but you should still be able to earn rewards by clearing Abyssal monsters.

What Will The Core Mechanic Be?

Regarding this most important topic, unfortunately, the developers are keeping it a secret, dedicated to maintaining the final mystery of Patch 0.4.0 until it is revealed to you during the live stream.

But based on the past few patch updates, you'll find that their core mechanics are essentially updates or reworks of the various league mechanics in the first game. Therefore, possible themed mechanics for Patch 0.4.0 include:

• Betrayal
• Beyond
• Bestiary
• Blight
• Delve
• Heist
• Harbinger
• Harvest
• Incursion
• Legion
• Settlers

Based on existing storylines and map exploration, players believe a remake of Delve is the most likely possibility, but more specifics will only be known after the livestream.

That concludes this introduction. We anticipate providing a more in-depth Patch 0.4.0 guide after the livestream on December 4th, but we hope this information has been helpful! Thank you for reading!