Path Of Exile II: Endgame Ritual Guide

Rituals are one of the more simple events that you're going to face when running through Path of Exile II's Endgame Mapping Phase. Luckily, you will already have a bit of experience with this mechanic if you've been through Freythorn and encountered The King in the Mists.

Once you defeat Doryani for the second time, the new expansive map will open up to you. Each of these nodes that are dotted around the map has a chance to contain a specific event. These events are crucial if you want to truly experience all that PoE2 has to offer.

This guide will cover the ritual event, how to complete it, and the many rewards it has to offer.

What is a Ritual?

You can see which nodes have rituals by looking for the little red circle with the ram's skull inside. Once you enter this map, 3–4 rituals will be randomly scattered around the area.

You can locate the ritual area by looking for large white rings that surround an altar. Before you're able to activate the ritual, you must first defeat a group of enemies that spawns within the ring, and sacrifice their blood to the altar.

Once sated, the ritual will be able to be started by clicking on the altar. As soon as the ritual begins, shadows will enclose the area, meaning you'll have to complete the ritual or die trying.

Anything that you kill, to sacrifice to the altar, will be brought back to life, and it must be slain again while you dodge other mechanics that the altar throws your way. The more enemies you're able to defeat, the more rewards you will get at the end of the event.

Generally, this event works better on larger, more open maps like Steppe or Savannah, which have more densely packed monsters that can be sacrificed in bulk. Small maps like Augury and Crypt won't have much in the way of spawns, meaning you won't have many points to spend on the rewards at the end.

Precursor Tablets and Spawning Rituals

As with all main Mapping events, like Breach and Delirium, you can force-spawn these onto map nodes by finding a Lost Tower and activating the Precursor Beacon at the end. Once the beacon has been lit, click on the completed tower and insert a Precursor Tablet.

These tablets can be found on any Map that has Rituals in it, so make sure to make a beeline for them if you see one drop. In addition, tablets can have modifiers of their own on them, like increased experience or gold, for example. These extra modifiers will affect any nodes within the larger circular radius that surrounds the Lost Tower.

Realistically, before attempting a bunch of rituals, you're going to want to find a group of Lost Towers that surround a large selection of Map Nodes. The path around the outside of the Towers with low-level Waystones, and then insert Tablets of Irradiation and Ritual to get the most out of every node.

Once you've activated a good 4 or 5 towers in any area, each node will now have a good selection of buffs. And this is before you add on the buffs from the Waystones themselves.

Mapping this way guarantees huge maps with densely packed monsters and juicier rituals. It may take a while to set up, but the rewards are certainly worth it.

Ritual Mechanics

One thing that's very important when dealing with a ritual is to make sure you have a way of dealing with a lot of enemies in a tight area. AoE attacks or Herald skills are great for this kind of event, similar to what you might use for a breach.

While you're fighting off waves of spawning enemies, the altar will try and kill you too within specific mechanics of its own. There are 5 different attacks that the altar will use. This attack will be the same for every ritual on that specific map, but can change from node to node.

Contaminated: You will notice huge waves of blood cross from one side of the ritual area to the other. Multiple waves can spawn at a time, though since they travel in a straight line, these are very easy just to dodge. Also, they don't deal a huge amount of damage.

Infested: A huge tornado, similar to the ones from Act 2 of the campaign, will follow you around the ritual site. While the tornado isn't that quick, it can do a lot of damage if you stay in it for too long. Keep moving.

Sapping: Clouds of purple gas will spawn randomly around the area. This isn't very lethal as it will only slow you down. Simply roll out when you have a chance. You don't need to worry about this one much.

Smothered: You may have seen this mechanic before already from bosses or Rare mobs. Flowers will spawn around the outside of the circle and produce purple orbs. These orbs will track you and explode, dealing high chaos damage.

Tainted: Finally, you will notice this attack by the large purple boils that rise from the ground and explode when you pass over them. They can be difficult to see sometimes when there's so much happening on the screen. But just look out for anything purple and avoid it.

Ritual Rewards and Deferring

Once you've completed the 3 or 4 rituals that have spawned, you'll be expecting some nice rewards. And there are plenty here!

As you kill the monsters that spawn periodically, you'll receive something called Favor. This favor can be spent at the small shop window that opens when you click on the altar or the Ritual panel in the corner of your screen.

You will see a collection of PoE 2 items on the favor screen that range from gear to waystones, to currency like Regal and Exalted Orbs. If they are still greyed out, and you can't see what PoE 2 items are there, you haven't completed all the rituals yet. So go do that first.

In addition, there's a new type of reward on offer here. Omens are ritual-specific rewards that generally can be used to help you craft new items. These omens can increase the effects of your orbs, making the outcomes more predictable, and giving you better odds at crafting something more valuable.

If you see one of these, be sure to pick them up, as the more powerful ones can go for a lot of PoE2 currency on the Exchange at your hideout.

Now, if you don't happen to have enough favor after killing all the monsters on offer, you can choose to defer an item by paying a percentage of the cost to guarantee that it will appear the next time you run a ritual map. This is great if you ever see a big ticket item, or if you have spent 1000 favor to re-roll the rewards on offer.

An Audience with the King

If you ever see An Audience with the King, grab it over everything else. This is the item that allows you to fight the King in the Mists. In comparison to other Pinnacle Boss Keys like the Breachstone, this is much more expensive and much more valuable.

Of course, you won't be seeing this item very often, so if you do, it probably makes more sense to sell it and use the divines to upgrade your gear. Realistically, what will probably happen, is that you may never even see this item, and will have to buy it from the currency exchange to attempt the boss.

My Monk is level 93 and I've never seen one. Then again, maybe I haven't done enough Rituals.

If you truly believe you're ready to take on this encounter, then use the Audience on the Realmgate located at the center of your map atlas and give it a go!

Ritual Passive Skill Tree

Once you manage to brave the encounter with the King in the Mists and finally take him down, you will be granted 2 Ritual Atlas Points to spend in your new skill tree.

While you can allocate these points however you wish, certain passives will give you a better experience than others. For the best time while grinding out rituals, consider using your points in this order. Remember you can always refund them with Doryani if you want to try something new.

First of all, I would recommend picking up Onimous Portents. This will cause the Ritual to spawn monsters 25% faster, meaning more flavor and quicker clears. In addition, the mini-shop will have a 50% increased chance to stick omens. Having more Omens is always good. After all, you could snag an Omen of Whittling! That'll sell for a lot!

Next, and on the subject of PoE 2 currency, you'll want to pick up He Approaches for an increased chance to see An Audience with the King in the favored shop. What's more, monsters are more likely to be magic or rare when spawning from the altar. More favor, more money!

These next two can be taken in whichever order you think is most beneficial to you. I would suggest Tempting Offers first, which gives you an extra attempt when re-rolling rewards while making it 25% cheaper too!

And finally, you really can't go wrong with Spreading Darkness. Simply put, this makes it guaranteed that you always get 4 Ritual Altars on your maps, giving you more favor and more chance to see greater rewards. Though sometimes this can be a little bugged. Please fix GGG!

You can kill the King in the Mists 4 times for a maximum of 8 points for your skills tree. Naturally, every time you face him, the battle will get harder and harder, yet compared to something like Xesht or the Simulacrum waves, this fight isn't too challenging.

Well-prepared with a few Divines worth of gear, you shouldn't find this battle to be too much of a challenge.