One of the fixtures of the Path of Exile series is a vast and labyrinthine skill tree with literally hundreds of nodes you can unlock. This gives the player a great deal of flexibility when it comes to customizing their character at the expense of daunting complexity… but even that’s not enough, as in addition you can choose an Ascendancy Class by completing an aptly named Ascendancy Trial. This page will discuss how to complete the quest Ascent to Power and unlock your Ascendancy Class in Path of Exile 2.

Page Breakdown¶

Starting Ascent to Power¶

To start Ascent to Power, travel to The Halani Gates in Act 2 and finding your way barred, return to The Ardura Caravan and talk to Risu, then Sekhema Asala, who will point you towards Traitor’s Passage. You’ll do all this as part of the main questline in Act 2. Before you leave for this location, talk to Shambrin to start this quest, then head to the Traitor’s Passage. Once there, explore the caves until you encounter Balbala, the Traitor. Defeat this boss and she’ll drop Balbala’s Barya. Pick it up, return to The Ardura Caravan, talk to Zarka then examine the map to find that you can now travel to the Trial of the Sekhemas.

Complete the Trial of the Sekhemas¶

Sounds like a lot of work just to get the ball rolling, and while you’re not wrong, most of what you’ve done so far is just progressing the main story and killing an optional boss. Simply put, you’ve got the entire quest ahead of you still. Once you arrive, head forward until you reach a chamber where Balbala the Advisor now dwells, formerly a boss now imprisoned as the overseer of these trials. Talk to her and she’ll give you a relic, which bears explanation.

If you thought you were going to just waltz into some Ascendancy dungeon, clear it, kill the boss at the end, and walk away with a shiny new subclass… well, yeah, that’s the jist of it. There are a lot more moving parts, however, as is Path of Exile tradition. Instead of a single bloated Act 2 dungeon you need to clear, you’ll instead navigate through a series of rooms, each housing its own challenges and rewards, but before you get to that, you’ll need to sort out your relics.

Relics¶

Relics provide modifiers that influence gameplay during trials. Interact with the Relic Altar near Balbala and you’ll open up a small inventory screen where you can stow relics. Any relics place on the altar will bestow their effects on you for the duration of the trial. During your first run you’ll only have the one relic, but on subsequent runs you can obtain new relics and expand the inventory space of the Relic Altar, allowing you to use more relics in a run. Relic drops are part RNG, but also given as rewards for clearing different rooms, and clearing specific rooms will also unlock more Relic Altar inventory space.

Trial Rooms¶

After you place a relic (or relics) on the Relic Altar, go through the doorway that opens up to start the first Trial Room - this will likely be the Trial of Strength. Painting with a broad brush here for the sake of brevity, different Trial Rooms have varying objectives, including:

• Finding and disable a series of Death Crystals before time expires
• Surviving enemy waves until a timer runs out
• Filling a blood chalice with the blood of your (rare) enemies
• Survive a gauntlet of enemies and traps and reach the exit
• Defeat Ritual Casters and destroy the Portals they use to summon foes

To name a few. Completing a room will often earn you a boon - rewarding you with Relics, Keys, Sacred Water or Honor (more on these below) and/or impose a debuff, which you’ll carry for the rest of the run. Completing a Trial Room will unlock adjacent Trial Rooms as you move from left to right on a map, and you can pick any one of the successor Trial Rooms linked to the one you just completed - just check the map to see what Trial Rooms lead where and what rewards and penalties you’ll get for clearing each one. Reach the last trial and you’ll have to defeat a boss, [Rattlecage, the Earthbreaker], after which you’ll claim your rewards for completing the Trail of the Sekhemas.

Honor, Keys and Sacred Water¶

As you complete trials, you’ll get the standard drops from enemies, chests, urns and whatnot. In addition you’ll also earn items unique to these trials, namely Relics, Keys and Sacred Water. Relics are already covered, but Keys and Sacred Water both are used to unlock additional rewards via bronze, silver and gold chests at the end of a successful trials run. Bronze Keys open bronze chests, Silver Keys open silver chests and Gold Keys open gold chests, while Sacred Water can be turned in for… more keys! Sacred Water and Keys can come from drops or as rewards for clearing Trial Rooms.

As for Honor, surviving a trial isn’t good enough - you have to do so in style. Taking any damage will reduce your Honor, and if you run out of Honor you’ll fail the run. It doesn’t matter if the damage comes from a trap, DoT effect or directly from an enemy, nor does it matter if you heal or the damage only affects, say, your Energy Shield. Honor is effectively a rating of your competence, and it encourages you to play safe and smart (read: like a coward). Some Trial Rooms will partially restore your Honor as a boon when completed, otherwise there’s no way to restore it.

Rewards and Ascendancy¶

Complete the Trial of the Sekhemas with your life and Honor intact and you’ll reach a treasure room at the end, lined with two rows of chests of various rarities, their contents hinted at by their names. Use any acquired keys to open these chests for additional rewards and use the Keth Forge to turn Sacred Water into additional keys. You’ll also find the Ascendancy Altar in this room. Just interact with it and you can choose between two Ascendancy Classes for your character. Or you could just leave it alone, if you’re not willing to commit yet.

List of Ascendancy Classes¶

Complete the Trial of the Sekhemas to claim your Ascendancy Class, after which you can continue doing trial runs, if you wish. Just talk to Balbala at the entrance to the trials and clear it again, perhaps taking an alternate route and seeking novel challenges and rewards to claim greater prizes!