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Path of Exile 2's Trials of Ascendancy let you unlock powerful Ascendancies and all 8 points through Sekhemas and Chaos runs, boosting your build's early damage, defense and endgame mapping power.

The new Trial system in Path of Exile 2 feels like a massive step up from the old Lab, and you notice it almost straight away when you start planning your build and even thinking about things like where to like buy game currency or items in EZNPC to smooth out rough spots. Instead of everyone being forced through the same trap-filled maze, you get three different flavours of Trials, and you just pick what fits your character. You beat one of them once, your Ascendancy tree pops open, and suddenly your Witch can become an Infernalist or your Marauder can turn into a Chieftain with those first two points already in your pocket.

First Ascendancy Steps

Most characters hit the first Trial milestone in Act 2. You grab a Djinn Barya key from Balbala's quest, then head into the Trial of the Sekhemas. It is not just a damage race; it is a proper gauntlet. You are running through multiple floors full of spike traps, death crystals that force you to slow down and disable them, and those hourglass waves that punish players who try to brute-force things. While you move through the place, you pick up boons that give small but meaningful boosts, and they often make the difference between barely scraping through and dying halfway up. When you finally reach a boss like Bahlak or Uxmal and manage to bring them down, that single clear unlocks your Ascendancy on that character, no matter how many times you failed earlier.

Trial Of Chaos For Trap Haters

If you are the kind of player who hates traps and twitchy movement skills, Act 3 usually looks a lot more appealing. In the Vaal Jungle, you find the Trial of Chaos, opened with a Chimeral Inscribed Ultimatum. This one plays out like a combat arena rather than a puzzle dungeon, with the Trialmaster throwing randomised challenges at you in waves. The monsters and bosses ramp up in danger every round, so tanky builds that might suffer in Sekhemas often feel right at home here. By the time you have cleared both the Sekhemas Trial in Act 2 and the Chaos arena in Act 3, you are normally sitting on four Ascendancy points and your build starts to feel like it actually exists instead of just being a rough outline.

Pushing For Points Five To Eight

The real grind kicks in once you go after points five to eight. You cannot just spam the early versions of the Trials any more. For points five and six, you either rerun the Sekhemas Trial with a level 60 or higher Djinn Barya key, which bumps it up to three full floors, or you push a level 75 or higher Chaos Trial all the way to round ten. For the last two points, you go even harder: level 75 plus keys for Sekhemas give you four floors, and the Chaos option means surviving the nastiest versions of those Ultimatums. On a fresh character it feels intense, but once you have done it on one build, your alts benefit, because you already know the patterns, the layouts, and how far your gear needs to be before you even bother using your keys.

Prep, Gear Choices And Survival

Going into these Trials unprepared is where most people burn out. For the Trial of Chaos, decent chaos resistance is not optional, it is mandatory if you do not want to be one-shot by something that barely registers on screen. In Sekhemas, having at least one mobility flask with charges gained when hit makes trap sections much less stressful, because you are not stuck waiting on cooldowns while spikes chew through your life. If your build is on the squishier side, it is usually smarter to farm some gear with spell suppression, block, or extra life before you start feeding high level keys into the Trials, and some players even swap in a more defensive setup just for these runs. Since rerunning the same Trial type is how you finish out your Ascendancy tree, it really pays to pick the version that matches your playstyle and then master it, whether that means learning every trap pattern in Sekhemas or turning your character into a wall that shrugs off wave after wave in the arena while you chase better POE 2 iteams.