Path of Exile II, the sequel to Grinding Gear Games’ infamously complex action RPG has been released into early access, promising unparalleled character build customization and a near-infinite number of skill combinations. Despite its early access status, the game features a full endgame complete with challenging bosses and lucrative rewards.
Accessing some of the more powerful skill effects in the game requires a special resource newly introduced to Path of Exile II called Spirit. Learn all about how Spirit works and where to get more below.
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What is Spirit?
Spirit is a special resource located around the player’s mana orb used to activate passive character effects like auras, self-reviving minions, meta gems, and more. Unlike mana, Spirit is not a resource that is spent and recovers over time. Instead, Spirit is reserved by skills that grant a persistent effect, preventing the reserved Spirit from being used by another skill until the effect is manually disabled by the player. A player’s maximum Spirit effectively limits the number of passive effects that can be active at a single time. For example, if a player has 100 maximum Spirit and activates the Skeletal Warrior skill, 60 Spirit will be reserved to create a skeletal minion that revives on death, leaving 40 Spirit left for use on any other passive effects. The 60 Spirit reserved by the Skeletal Warrior will remain reserved until the player manually deactivates the minion, even if the minion dies in combat, as its self-reviving capability is considered part of the effect.
Like the mana cost of regular skills, the Spirit cost of passive effects can be modified by
socketed Support Gems
, altering or augmenting the effect while multiplying the Spirit cost, indicated by the “Cost Multiplier” or “Additional Reservation” text in the Support Gem description.
How to Get Spirit
While sources of Spirit are somewhat scarce, players can increase their maximum Spirit in three main ways. Killing specific bosses in the Acts will drop permanent Spirit upgrades, certain pieces of equipment can grant players additional spirit while equipped, and, in rare cases, a character’s Ascendancy Class can even grant them additional spirit for a unique cost.
Spirit in the Acts
Each Act in the campaign features a boss that rewards players with a gemmed skull, permanently increasing the player’s maximum Spirit by 30. During early access, these rewards will be dropped even during the player’s second time through the Acts on Cruel difficulty, giving players that find all of them 180 Spirit.
Spirit-increasing Equipment
Certain gear can increase the player’s maximum spirit while equipped. All sceptres passively increase the player’s maximum Spirit by 100 when equipped, making them powerful sources of the relatively scarce resource. Additionally, some sceptres grant players passive effects that do not reserve any Spirit, such as a free minion or aura effect. Similarly, Sun Amulets grant a small amount of spirit, though at a much smaller range of 10 to 15. Additionally, certain magic and rare items can randomly roll prefix modifiers to increase the Spirit granted from the item by a percentage. Players looking to maximize their Spirit will want to craft primarily on sceptres, before moving on to amulets if needing more.
Spirit-increasing Ascendancy Classes
While rare, as of early access, there are two Ascendancy Classes featuring Spirit-increasing nodes: the witch’s Infernalist and the monk’s Invoker.
The Infernalist Ascendancy offers the Beidat’s Will node, reserving 25% of the player’s life, but granting players 1 maximum Spirit for every 25 maximum life they have. While the 25% life reservation can be a steep cost to pay, the prerequisite node, Altered Flesh, can help offset this induced fragility by converting a portion of cold, lightning, and physical damage received into fire and chaos damage. Additionally, Infernalists will likely want to invest into maximum life or life recovery regardless of the Beidat’s Will node to offset the self-damage inflicted by their Demon Form or Infernal Flame mechanics.
The Invoker Ascendancy offers the Lead Me Through Grace… node, preventing players from gaining Spirit from requipment, but granting 1 Spirit for every 6 Evasion and 15 Energy Shield on their body armor. This can potentially be an exceptional source of Spirit for monks, particularly towards the end game where players will be able to craft incredibly powerful armor to fully maximize the Spirit granted from this node. In addition, Lead Me Through Grace… naturally synergizes with its next node, and Protect me from Harm, which reduces the player’s evasion rating, but allows Evasion to provide Physical Damage Reduction, a very rare but equally useful defensive stat.
- Franchise
- Path of Exile
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer , Online Co-Op
- ESRB
- M For Mature 17+ // Blood and Gore, Nudity, Violence
- Early Access Release
- December 6, 2024