How to Complete the Trial of the Sekhemas in Path of Exile 2

The Trial of the Sekhemas is the stepping stone to your character’s ascension in Path of Exile 2. Finishing it is crucial to most builds, as it enables a massive power spike. However, the Trial of the Sekhemas is extremely difficult, even with a decent build. You’ll have to learn several mechanics to help you get around the Trials, finish the boss, and complete the Trial of the Sekhemas without dying. Here’s how you can do it.

The Trial of the Sekhemas Completion Guide in Path of Exile 2

Preparing for the Trial of the Sekhemas Run

The Trial of the Sekhemas is grueling, especially for beginners and melee classes. The mechanics at play are reminiscent of the Forbidden Sanctum in Path of Exile, albeit a little more streamlined.

Your goal is to go through all seven stages featuring random encounters, with the last one being the Rattlecage the Earthbreaker boss fight to cap off the Trial of the Sekhemas.

It is also worth noting that the Trial of the Sekhemas starts when you beat Balbala the Traitor in the Traitor’s Passage. You’ll receive the Balbala’s Barya to start the Trial of the Sekhemas encounter, and you’ll get unlimited tries using the Balbala’s Barya since it is a quest item. Your future Trial of the Sekhemas runs will need more of these tokens, which will be consumed upon use.

To beat the Trial of the Sekhemas, you must go through all the stages without dying and keeping your Honour above 0+. If you die, you’ll have to restart. If you reach 0 Honour, you will also die.

Using Relics will be a key factor in making your runs less risky because even if your build has decent survivability, you’ll need to manage your Honour throughout the run. Here are some useful Relics stats to help you:

• Honour Resistance
• % Maximum Honour

Anything that can help you manage your Honour will be the best stat since everyone’s problem will be managing it throughout the run. The Honour system works like another “HP” bar for your character. Each time you take damage, you lose Honour. If the damage is significant, you lose more Honour. Each instance of damage, such as fire and poison debuffs, will chew at this number. Once it reaches 0, you’ll instantly lose. You manage your Honour more than your life bar because the enemies rarely hit hard compared to other bosses or areas.

Each run will take around 15-25 minutes, depending on how strong your build is.

Related: Complete Beginner’s Guide to Crafting in Path of Exile 2

Trial of the Sekhemas Stage Mechanics

The Trial of the Sekhemas has six stages you must go through with random encounters. These encounters either give you some Bronze, Silver, and Gold Keys to open at the end or give you debuffs, buffs, Sacred Water Fountains, Honour, or a Merchant encounter.

The preferred option for a completion run is always replenishing your Honour. If you see a Merchant encounter, you’ll also want to go to it if you have Sacred Water to spend. The Merchant offers Boons (buffs) and Honour replenishment in exchange for Sacred Water. Since each stage gives you Sacred Water, the merchant stage is always good.

Prioritize the stages as follows:

• Buffs and Honour stages
• Sacred Water Fountains without debuffs stages
• Merchant stages
• Key stages
• Debuff stages

The only stages you need to avoid are the debuff stages. They are quite annoying and can hurt your run. Apart from these stages, there are also mechanics for each one. They rotate around the following mechanics:

• Maze with traps where you have to pull levers to open gates until you reach the end
• Time Crystal, where you need to interact with all Time Crystals to reach the end
• Survival round (Hourglass round) where monsters keep spawning; you must survive and eliminate them within the timer.
• Portal stage where casters will continuously summon monsters through the portals until you eliminate them

Most are easy, but some players may have problems with the mazes because those traps can chew up your Honour. You want to aim at around 400+ Honour for the Rattlecage boss fight to secure the victory.

You can read our Rattelcage boss fight guide to learn more about the fight. It is easier than you think, especially considering the other bosses in Path of Exile 2 are extremely hard. You just need one “good” run where you have enough Honour going into the Rattlecage fight to finish the Trial of the Sekhemas.