Overview
Path of Exile 2 has 7 farmable Endgame Mechanics:
- Delirium
- Citadels + Arbiter
- Trial of Sekhema
- Trial of Chaos
- Ritual
- Expedition
- Breach
The third of the seven Mechanics is the Trial of Sekhema, which, upon successful completion, allows players to unlock their ascendancy.
The Trial of the Sekhema
Found in Act 2 after collecting your first Djinn Coin, the Trial of the Sekhemas offers the player a unique challenge with plenty of rewards. The Trial consists of four floors. While a lower-level Coin will only grant access to challenge the first floor. Higher level coins found in the Endgame will allow the player to challenge the other Floors for additional Ascendancy points and better rewards.
The Trial of the Sekhema has no Atlas Passive Tree and is not directly connected to Path of Exile 2 Endgame, the Djinn Coins can be found in any high-level zone including the Trial of Chaos.
Offering a Coin at the Relic Altar will grant access to one attempt at the Trial.
Honour
Unlike any other part of the game, taking Damage in the Trial of the Sekhemas will have lasting consequences. The Trial introduces the Honour Mechanic. A Hitpool that does not recover in between zones. There are ways to recover honour that will be mentioned later in this article.
When the Honour Pool reaches 0 the Trial is failed and the player will be sent back to the entrance.
Sacred Water
The Trail of the Sekhemas also introduces a special Currency only valid during the current Run of the Trial. Sacred Water is used at Altars for Boons and Honour Recovery or can be traded for Relics or Boons at the Merchant.
Chest & Keys
Most rewards of the trial are locked behind chests at the end of each floor, with each subsequent floor chests being better than the previous one.
The chests state what item group can be found inside them. While not going over all the types here are the top ones to look out for:
- Spectrum
- Royal
- Time-Lost Royal
- Small Relic
- Medium Relic
To open those chests the player needs to find keys, which can be either gained by completing some rooms or finding on the floor.
There are 3 types of chests and keys, bronze, silver, and golden. The golden chests contain the best loot.
Relics
To reduce the difficulty of the trial, the player can find or buy relics during an attempt. [Or buy relics via the tradeside]. Those relics can be placed inside the relic altar upon starting a run. Initially, some spots on the relic altar are locked and need to be unlocked by completing a deeper floor of the trial. Each floor unlocks 3 Spots
There are 3 Groups of Relics and 7 Variants.
- 1x2 and 2x1
- 1x3 and 3x1
- 1x4, 4x1 and 2x2
Each relic Group can roll different Modifiers that will benefit the player in some way or another. These Benefits can range from dealing more damage, over receiving less honour damage to gaining more relics, or even a chance to find additional Keys.
Rooms
Each floor consists of a series of Rooms. While the player can see any traversed rooms, the current room, and 2 rooms ahead by default, some boons and afflictions can affect that.
Room Type
Each room has one of the following 6 types
- Gauntlet
- Escape
- Hourglass
- Chalice
- Ritual
- Boss
Each floor has one guaranteed Boss Room at the end of the floor, with each floor boss being more difficult than the last one.
The other five types are randomly assigned to all other rooms on the floor.
The Gauntlet Room is a series of Traps and/or Puzzles and the player only needs to find the exit to clear the room
The Escape Room has a series of Crystals the player needs to interact with. When clicking on the first crystal, a timer starts, and each subsequent crystal adds time to the timer. If the timer runs to 0, the trial fails.
The last three rooms all need the player to kill enemies.
In the Hourglass room the player needs to survive an onslaught of enemies and killing rare enemies will reduce the timer.
The Chalice Room contains three rare enemies the player has to find and kill to proceed.
The ritual room contains either one big or several small rituals that start spawning monsters to attack the player once he gets within reach.
Rewards
The rooms do not only contain a challenge but each room also has a reward for the player.
These Rewards can be the following
- Sacred Water
- A large amount of Sacred Water
- Honour
- Honour + Boon
- Honour + Affliction
- Key
- Chest
- Pledge
- Merchant
While most room rewards are pretty simple the pledges are a bit more complex. Upon finishing a Room with the Pledge Reward the player can offer five Sacred Water at the Altar and gets offered 3 Pledges. They can only take one though! Each pledge comes with an upside and a downside. The Upside can be the gain of a Boon, the removal of an Affliction, or a Pact which specially alters the run. While the downside can be the gain of an affliction, the removal of a boon, or the Downside of the Pact
Boons & Afflictions
The Run of the Trial can not just be altered by the Relics, but also by Boons and Afflictions. Those boons and afflictions are differentiated into minor and major ones. The major ones are harder to gain, but give way bigger benefits or downsides.
Afflictions can be gained from attempting a trial room with a purple border, an accursed Shrine, a Pledge, or other Afflictions.
Boons can be gained from blessed Shrines, a Pledge, the Merchant, or from major Boons
Merchant
During a Trial Ru,n the player might encounter Balbala after completing a Room. Balbala offers the player an assortment of Boons and/or Relics in exchange for Sacred Water. If the player already has a lot of boons, they will see more relics. If they have little to none, they will see a big assortment of boons.
Ascendancy
Upon completing the first floor the player can unlock their ascendancy and grants the first 2 Ascendancy Points.
Completing the 2nd floor unlocks Ascendancy Points 3 & 4.
The third Floor Completion will grant Ascendancy Points 5 & 6 and
the final Floor, which can only be accessed by Level 74 or higher Coins, can grant Points 7 & 8 upon killing the final Boss.
It is important to note that the player does not have to be the instance owner to gain their ascendancy points. They can join another player's trial final room and leech their ascendancy unlock.
How to farm Trial of the Sekhemas
The Trial of the Sekhemas has 4 currency generating sources
- Ascendancy Carries
- Jewels / Time-Lost Jewels
- Uniques
- Relics
Ascendancy Carries
As mentioned above, an ascendancy unlock can be leeched of other players when they kill their floor boss. All the player has to do is to be in the instance and click on the Ascendancy Altar in the room after the boss.
This service of carrying other players can be sold via the trade chat ingame or designated discords like Path of Exchange or the Forbidden Trove for Currency.
Jewels / Time-Lost Jewels
During the Run, some Jewels can be found, but most of the jewels gained during the Trail are in the final room on the fourth floor inside Royal and Time-Lost Royal Chests. The value of the jewels can range between a few exalted orbs to several divines depending on what modifiers they roll. It is best to identify all, check for specific modifiers that are known to be valuable, and dump the rest into a fixed price tab starting at a high price and gradually lowering it over time till everything is sold or below a price unwilling to sell.
Uniques
The final floor boss will always drop a guaranteed unique Relic, which can be run and if completed successfully will drop a specific unique only acquirable in runs with the unique relic. The value of the unique scaling with the difficulty of the run. The most valuable unique in the game, the 'temporalis', is one of the uniques that can only be acquired from the unique relic Trial of the Sekhemas run.
The unique relics can be either found by killing the last floor boss or bought on the trade website.
Relics
Not only do the unique relics possess value, but some sought-after Relics can be found or bought from the Merchant during a run.
To increase the odds of finding good relics it is recommended to use either 'Relic Drop Chance' or 'Vendor Offer' Relics.
If you want to learn more about specific Relic Setups to run the Trial of the Sekhema with, feel free to check out the embedded video above.