Trial of the Sekhemas and the Trial of Chaos ruins the game

I just had to create an account to vent my frustration as a "casual" gamer.

I play on Xbox and have 4 characters by now:

86 Pathfinder
82 Invoker
81 Infernalist
41 Stormweaver

I play solely for myself, I don't want anything to do with trades as I see that as "cheating" to buy a powerful character. I wan't to "beat the game" myself with my own help, so everything I have and my builds are my own findings.

My main atm is my Pathfinder, and I have just begun to run tier 15 maps. I play using gas arrow & poisonous arrow mainly with toxic growth as big damage vs rares and bosses.

I have ascended twice during the campaign with all my characters (Trial of the Sekhemas and the Trial of Chaos) - and none of those trials were any fun. In fact, I hated going through them, and only did to complete the quests.

I have later tried my third ascendency with level 67 Trial of the Sekhemas on both my Invoker and my Pathfinder. Twice or 3 times with my Invoker when I was level 80 - and I got one-shottet on the 2 giant statue bosses or I died on escape trial because on Xbox it's sometimes so hard to click the crystals if there are mobs nearby (as you need to push "A" on the crystal, but "A" is also one of your attacks, and if mobs are near the game will prefer to use your attack).

And just now, I tried with my Pathfinder, who does not kill as fast as my Invoker (who clears rooms with ease, but dies a lot more), but is a lot more safe to play as I kill from the distance.

I really want to progress my ascendency, but I have kept putting it off, because it's just such an annoying chore to go through all those rooms. Trial of the Sekhemas is like 8 rooms x 3 and if you die - you start all over again, which is soooooo annoying, when you waste an hour or so trying to safely clear and get through those rooms. I hate the escape runs because they are so frantic running against a timer and trying to click the crystals on Xbox, but most of all I hate the gauntlet rooms, which is like Tomb Raider nonsense of dodging fire streams and fireballs trying to figure out where the stupid lever is so you can open next doors. It's just not fun and doesn't feel like an ARPG.

But after having played to level 86, I now have so many of those trial coins for both Trial of the Sekhemas and the Trial of Chaos, that I often just sell them for 1 gold at the vendor.

But I tried again. Clearly, at level 86 one should be able to get through Trial of the Sekhemas (level 67). +19 levels and able to stack 4 poisons.

And level 67 Trial of the Sekhemas is a breeze (unless I get very unlucky and get bad debuffs on me, which I always do).

But still I died on the very last f*ing scorpion boss, because I knew nothing of it and its attacks. And I even had that +50% dagger damage boon, and had wiped everything until that room. I think, when I died the scorpion was down to 10%.

But I can not stress how frustating that was. +19 levels and still I f*ing failed. I haven't tried the trials in like 2 weeks, because they blow so much, and at this point, I'm probably just gonna ignore them all together on all my characters an live with the fact, that I will only ever get half of my ascendiency points.

The Trial of Chaos is higher level. I think 75, and I have tried that a few times too. But at room 4 I always get that stupid tornado bird, that either 1 shot slams me or just kills me before I can kill it. People say it's random, which boss you get, but the 3 times I've tried now with my Pathfinder, it's always that bird. And here we also got those soul core Tomb Raider puzzle nonsense stages.

I just can't with these trials. They are NO fun and I'm feel like they are game stoppers for many people.

The fact that I'm still playing is because I don't even see the ascendency points as "important". They are not game changers and don't make my characters much different. Sure, I wish I can get the next 2 points for my pathfinder, so I can get the "double poison" and hopefully be able to apply 8 poisons instead of 4 (that's how I hope it works) - which would make boss fights a lot easier for me, but as long as I can still progress and is now doing level 15 maps, I have no reason to even try those trials anymore.

Anyway, that was the rant.

Maybe I can complete the trials if I ever get to level 100, and hopefully by then have enough damage output to kill the bosses before they can touch me.

if you are running maps just get a pillar of the caged god and farm up a pair of HOWA and then go get your trials done its really not that hard.

Oh, I forgot to add my suggestion:

It would be nice, that you could get an opportunity to continue, either from where you died or the start of the 3rd trial (if you died to scorpion boss fx) by using another coin of same or higher level.

The restart and do 24 rooms again because you died on final boss is just f*ed

Sounds like a skill/build/gear issue

I’m playing HC SSF and after learning the mechanics of sekhamas/ trials they’re pretty much just a gear/stat check.

The nado bird might be slightly overturned I will say

My biggest problem with this is how the hell are you supposed to do these trials with builds like Thorns or Life leech ? They are destroying builds diversity with this.

Why is it so complicated to make that you unlock your ascendenciies only by levelling up ?

POE 2 is supposed to be an upgrade of POE 1, not the other way around.

Get movement speed/honor resist/better gear for Sekema. Don't try Sekema with a non-evasion build btw. Get better gear for Chaos. 2k hp, stun build-up, and acrobatics makes it a breeze. But you went poison, so no easy way to build-up for you.

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sirbow#3053 wrote:

My biggest problem with this is how the hell are you supposed to do these trials with builds like Thorns or Life leech ? They are destroying builds diversity with this.

Why is it so complicated to make that you unlock your ascendenciies only by levelling up ?

POE 2 is supposed to be an upgrade of POE 1, not the other way around.

You make another build, complete it with that, then switch back to your highly specific build.

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JohnPoE2#9984 wrote:

My main atm is my Pathfinder, and I have just begun to run tier 15 maps. I play using gas arrow & poisonous arrow mainly with toxic growth as big damage vs rares and bosses.

If you progressed your character to T15s but you can't complete the 3rd ascendancy there's something wrong with how you are approaching it. I would recommend reading how Honour works in Sekhemas and farm some relics.

While they are challenging on a fresh start, it's not that difficult.

First and second trial are very early and the game teaches the player to take them early. The reward for passing the trials are also very high at this point in terms of character progress and power.

The fourth trial appears if it was that level 80 thing, but in reality, it is more of a level 90 activity than anything for most builds. Especially when you approach the game at your own terms and not from an optimized build guide perspective.

The third chaos trial is less of a damage race to kill the boss. Instead you need to bait the boss to do their cheap one-shot, dodge that and then kill the boss while the one-shot is on cool down.

When it comes to fire, cold and lightning resist, there is a somewhat intuitive way to learn about it. The idea of having to gear 75% honor resist to achieve the same effect is totally counter intuitive and the idea to put 'gear' for it with relics is weird.

The game needs fixes for all these things, but more in the sense of informing the player with the right quests and tooltips.