At the start of Path of Exile 2, you’ll be given a Lesser Life Flask and a Lesser Mana Flask. While these are perfectly fine for the starting areas and enemies, things start to ramp up in difficulty fairly quickly. To ensure you’re keeping pace with the difficulty curve in Path of Exile 2, you need to find better Life and Mana Flasks.
Fortunately, the game makes it easy to upgrade both of these items, allowing you to heal more and restore mana faster.
Upgrading healing and mana flasks in Path of Exile 2
There are a few different ways to equip stronger flasks in Path of Exile 2. Both ways revolve around simply replacing the flasks you have currently equipped, however.
As you play Path of Exile 2 and kill more enemies, one might drop a new Life or Mana Flask. Every new flask you find will have different qualities that are either weaker or stronger than your currently equipped flask. For example, a new Mana Flask might restore more mana upon use but have fewer charges before it runs out.
You’ll know you’ve acquired a better flask by looking at the adjective used at the start of its name. “Grand Life Flask” is usually a better option than “Greater Life Flask.” However, there are other things to consider than the flask’s name when choosing one to equip.
Higher rarity flasks will also come with additional modifiers, prefixes, and suffixes that change how they behave when used and even increase your stats. One flask might come with a modifier that boosts your recovery rate, while another could boost or decrease the flask’s overall charges.
You can also use Orbs of Augmentation to give new modifiers to magic items (blue highlighted items). If your flask isn’t a magic item, use an Orb of Transmutation to turn it into a magic item so it can be equipped with additional modifiers.
How to find new healing and mana flasks in Path of Exile 2
Unfortunately, there are few ways to actually acquire new flasks. You can purchase new flasks from some of the shop vendors in the various towns you’ll visit across Path of Exile 2’s three Acts in early access. Some of the first vendors you can access are Renly, Luna, and Finn in the Clearfell Encampment during Act 1.
However, these vendors usually overcharge for their items, and you’ll often find better flasks for free by simply killing enemies. The more enemies you kill, the higher your chances are to find a flask that’s better than you’re current one.
Most of the flasks you loot from enemy drops start off as “unidentified,” though. To identify them, go into your inventory and use a Scroll of Wisdom on the item you want to identify and use. That will allow you to see the item’s stats and modifiers. Scrolls of Wisdom can also be found as enemy drops and infinitely purchased at certain vendors (Luna in Clearfell). As you progress in Path of Exile 2, an NPC called The Hooded One will also be able to identify inventory items for free if you speak with them.
How flask stats work in Path of Exile 2
After you find a new flask that you want to use and it’s been identified, head into your inventory to swap it with your current one.
Some of the stats you want to prioritize when selecting a Life or Mana Flask are how many charges it holds and how much HP/Mana it restores. The number of charges is especially important, as that determines how many times you can use the flask before it’ll need to be recharged at a Well.
Most flasks hold anywhere from 70-80 charges, and the flask’s description will tell you how many charges it uses on each use. So if a flask uses 10 charges on one use and it holds 75 charges, then you can use the flask seven times before it runs out (10 x 7=70). Some flasks only use eight charges each use, giving you more total charges, but they’ll often restore less HP/Mana. It’s your job to figure out what you prefer: more charges or more restoration per use.
The modifiers also play a part in choosing a flask. While you can always add more modifiers, the ones you get from Orbs of Augmentation are random. If a flask has decent modifiers to start with, that’s generally one you want to use unless you happen to get a better random modifier on another flask.
You’ll better understand how you like your flasks to behave as you progress in Path of Exile 2. Just always be on the lookout for higher rarity flasks as you’re blazing your way through the three early access Acts and the endgame.
If you’re looking to take on Path of Exile 2 with a friend, make sure to read our guide on how cross-play works.