The Trial of the Sekhemas is the wall that stops most players from finishing their Ascendancy in Path of Exile 2 — not because the monsters are hard, but because one system decides everything: Honour. The short answer: your run ends the moment your Honour hits 0, your starting Honour pool equals your maximum Life + Energy Shield (plus Mana if you run Mind over Matter), and every hit chips it away — so the whole trial is won by not getting hit and stacking Honour-defence Boons over damage ones. Take defensive/recovery Boons first, economy Boons second, and offence last; cap your Honour Resistance (75%, up to 90% with the right relics); and only accept an Affliction when you genuinely can't be punished for it. This guide breaks down exactly which Boons to prioritise, how Honour and Sacred Water actually work, and the fastest way to clear the run for your final two Ascendancy points — verified against the PoE2 Wiki, poe-vault and Maxroll for the current 0.5 Return of the Ancients / Runes of Aldur patch.
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Key Takeaways
- Honour is the only stat that matters. Your run ends at 0 Honour. Starting Honour = max Life + max Energy Shield (+ max Mana with Mind over Matter). Damage taken drains it — so mitigation and not being hit beat raw DPS.
- Honour Resistance is your #1 relic stat. It reduces Honour lost per hit and caps at 75%, raisable to 90% through relic affixes. Getting near cap is the single biggest survivability jump.
- Boon priority: Defence/Recovery → Economy → Offence. Boons last the whole run. Restore/reduce-Honour-loss Boons carry you; Sacred Water multipliers snowball; damage Boons are a luxury.
- Afflictions are traps. Persistent penalties (major = bright purple border, minor = smaller). Only take one when the reward is huge and the downside can't hurt your build.
- Sacred Water is per-run currency. It drops from monsters, chests, fountains and bosses, and is spent at the Merchant between floors on Boons, relics and Honour restoration. It does not carry between runs.
- The final boss is Zarokh, the Temporal. Reaching and beating him on the full 4-floor version is what awards your 3rd and 4th Ascendancy points.
What Is the Trial of the Sekhemas in PoE2?
The Trial of the Sekhemas is one of the two Ascendancy trials in Path of Exile 2 (the other is the Trial of Chaos). It's a roguelite-style run through the Sekhema's temple: you clear a series of rooms, pick a door reward after each, and try to survive to the boss with your Honour intact. Mechanically it's the successor to Path of Exile 1's Forbidden Sanctum — if you played Sanctum, the "don't take a scratch" feeling will be instantly familiar.
You unlock more Ascendancy points by clearing longer, higher-floor versions of the trial. The short version gives your first points; the full run is 4 floors of 8 rooms each — 32 rooms end to end, finishing with Zarokh, the Temporal, and that's what hands over your final two Ascendancy points. For the full points-per-trial breakdown, see our Trial of the Sekhemas Ascendancy points guide.
The reason it filters players is that your normal defences barely apply. It doesn't matter that you have 4,000 ES if a single unlucky pack shreds your Honour bar in two rooms. The trial rewards discipline and preparation — relics slotted before you enter, a clean route through each room, and smart Boon picks — not the build that melts pinnacle bosses.
How Does Honour Work — and Why Do You Keep Losing It?
Honour is a second health bar that only exists inside the trial. Every time you take damage, you lose Honour proportional to the hit. Run out and you're ejected with nothing.
"Your starting Honour maximum is the sum of your maximum Life and Energy Shield (and maximum Mana, if you have the Mind over Matter keystone). This maximum can be raised through various Boon and Relic effects."
— Trial of the Sekhemas guide, Path of Exile 2 Wiki / poe-vault.com
Two numbers decide how long that bar lasts:
- Maximum Honour — the size of the pool. Scales off your Life + ES, and can be increased by relics and Boons. A bigger pool buys you mistakes.
- Honour Resistance — how little Honour each hit costs you. This works like an elemental resistance: it has a base cap of 75%, and specific relic affixes can push the cap to 90%. Every point closer to cap is a direct, multiplicative reduction in Honour damage.
The practical takeaway: stacking Honour Resistance on your relics is worth more than stacking max Honour. A 90% Honour Resistance character loses a tenth of the Honour per hit that an unresisted one does — that's the difference between face-tanking a whole floor and dying to chip damage. After that, avoid getting hit at all: move through packs, don't stand in ground effects, and treat every hit as expensive.
Best Boons in the Trial of the Sekhemas (Priority Order)
Boons are buffs you pick from door rewards and the Merchant. They last the entire run, so they compound — a good early Boon carries you all four floors. Every source agrees on the same tier order, and it's about sustaining Honour, not dealing damage:
| Boon type | What it does | Priority | Why |
|---|---|---|---|
| Defence / Honour | Reduces Honour lost, raises max Honour, adds Honour Resistance | ⭐ Highest | Directly extends your run; the trial is a survival race |
| Recovery | Restores Honour between/after rooms, or on a trigger | ⭐ Highest | Undoes mistakes; lets you play faster without bleeding out |
| Economy | Multiplies Sacred Water, discounts the Merchant | High | Snowballs into more Boons, relics and restoration later |
| Offence / Utility | Weakens monsters, movement speed, clear speed | Situational | Nice, but never at the cost of a defensive Boon |
Rules that hold every run:
- Take Honour-defence and recovery first, always. As one widely-cited community guide puts it: defensive and recovery Boons that reduce Honour loss or restore it "smooth out entire floors and let you play faster without bleeding out on chip damage."
- Economy Boons are the sleeper pick. More Sacred Water early means you can buy the exact defensive Boons and relics you need at the Merchant later. Sacred Water multipliers and Merchant discounts pay for themselves.
- Movement speed is underrated defence. More Move Speed means fewer hits taken and faster hourglass collection in the Zarokh fight — it's a defensive stat here, not an offensive one.
- Don't dilute. Grabbing a shiny offence Boon over a boring Honour one is how good characters die on floor 3.
The deity shrines (fountains)
Inside the trial you'll find shrines dedicated to different deities that offer a gamble. Per Maxroll's Sekhemas resource, the three you'll see behave differently:
- Honour Tabana — no additional effect (a straight, safe option).
- Honour Ahkeli — greatly restores Honour, but burdens you with an Affliction.
- Honour Orbala — grants a random Boon.
Use Ahkeli only if you're desperate and the Affliction won't matter for your build; otherwise Orbala for a free Boon or Tabana for the safe play.
What Are Afflictions — and When Should You Take One?
Afflictions are the mirror image of Boons: persistent penalties that stick for the rest of the run. They're handed out by marked rooms and optional Pledges (deals where you accept a downside for a bigger reward). They come in two grades — major Afflictions carry a bold, bright-purple border, minor ones are smaller — and they range from "reduces your max Honour" to "monsters deal more damage" or "you can't restore Honour."
The community rule is blunt, and correct: choose Afflictions only when you can afford them, and you almost never can. A single "50% less maximum Honour" affliction can end a run that was going perfectly. Take one only when:
- The reward is genuinely large (a top-tier relic, a big Sacred Water payout), and
- The specific downside is dead weight for your build — e.g. a "reduced Energy Shield" affliction on a pure-Life character, or a mana penalty on a build that doesn't use Honour-from-Mana.
Otherwise, walk past. There's no shame in a boring, clean run.
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Sacred Water and the Merchant: The Economy of a Run
Sacred Water is the trial's per-run currency. It drops from monsters, chests, fountains and bosses over the course of a run, and — this is the part new players miss — it only exists for that run. You can't hoard it between attempts, so there's no reason to leave it unspent.
You spend it at the Merchant, who appears between floors, on:
- New Boons (buy the defensive ones you didn't roll from doors),
- Relic upgrades and rerolls,
- Honour restoration (top your bar back up before a tough floor), and
- Rerolling / removing Afflictions.
Because Sacred Water is use-it-or-lose-it, the smart play is to bank it for the Merchant before the boss floor, then dump it on Honour restoration and a final defensive Boon right before you fight Zarokh. Economy Boons taken early are what make this pool big enough to matter.
Relics: Win the Trial Before You Enter
Relics are slotted at a relic altar before the run starts, and they're the closest thing to "gear" the trial has. They give persistent, run-long bonuses, and the good ones almost always roll one thing: Honour Resistance (to push toward that 90% cap), plus increased max Honour and Sacred Water gain.
A balanced altar beats a stacked one. As the guides note, restoration relics and max-Honour relics "solve different problems, so a balanced altar is safer than stacking restoration on a character that loses most of its Honour in one hit." In practice: get Honour Resistance high first, then round out with restoration and Sacred Water. Relics drop reliably from the trial itself — roughly 3–4 per boss encounter — and specific relic-fragment items like the Vessel of Kulemak and Kulemak's Invitation feed into the higher-tier relic and vendor loop.
The Boss: Zarokh, the Temporal
Clearing the full trial means beating Zarokh, the Temporal. His signature mechanic is the Sands of Time / hourglass phase: he freezes the arena and you must collect hourglasses before an escalating slow locks you in place — miss them and it's an instant kill. This is exactly why movement speed and a clean, pre-planned route are defensive stats in this trial. Full mechanics, phase timings and reward table are in our dedicated Zarokh, the Temporal guide.
Is a Sekhemas Carry Worth It?
For a lot of players, honestly, yes. The Trial of the Sekhemas is uniquely un-fun to brute-force on an under-geared or squishy character — it doesn't respect your build's power, only your Honour discipline, so people burn hours and Sacred Water on failed runs for points they just want done. If you'd rather skip straight to a finished Ascendancy and get back to mapping, a carry or a gear/currency boost to survive the run yourself are both faster than grinding it blind.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Why do I keep losing all my Honour in the Trial of the Sekhemas? Because Honour drains from every hit you take, and your defences barely reduce it by default. Two fixes: stack Honour Resistance on your relics toward the 75–90% cap so each hit costs far less, and prioritise defensive/recovery Boons over damage ones. After that, it's positioning — treat the trial like Sanctum and simply avoid getting hit.
What is the best Boon to take first in the Sekhemas trial? A defensive or recovery Boon — anything that reduces Honour loss, raises maximum Honour, or restores Honour. Boons last the whole run, so an early defensive Boon compounds across all four floors. Take Sacred Water / economy Boons second, and offence Boons only when nothing defensive is on offer.
How is starting Honour calculated in PoE2? Your maximum Honour equals your maximum Life + maximum Energy Shield, plus maximum Mana if you have the Mind over Matter keystone. You can raise it further with relic and Boon effects, but the base pool scales directly off your defensive stats.
What does Honour Resistance cap at? Honour Resistance functions like an elemental resistance with a base cap of 75%. Specific relic affixes can raise the cap to 90%, which is the single most impactful survivability stat in the trial — a hit that would cost 100 Honour costs just 10 at 90%.
Should I ever take an Affliction? Rarely. Afflictions are persistent penalties for the rest of the run. Only accept one when the reward is large and the specific downside is irrelevant to your build (for example an Energy Shield penalty on a pure-Life character). Most of the time, walk past it.
Does Sacred Water carry over between runs? No. Sacred Water is per-run only — it resets when the run ends. Spend it all at the Merchant as you go, ideally banking a chunk for Honour restoration and a defensive Boon right before the Zarokh fight.
Sources: Path of Exile 2 Wiki (poe2wiki.net) and poe-vault.com (Honour, Honour Resistance, Boon/Affliction mechanics); Maxroll.gg Trial of the Sekhemas resource (deity shrines, Sacred Water); official 0.5 "Return of the Ancients" / Runes of Aldur patch context (pathofexile.com). Mechanics verified for patch 0.5 as of August 2026.
