Use your favourite features in-game with our Desktop App

PoE 2 Build

XTheFarmerX 4.5 Hour ED/C + BS Campaign Guide

0.4 TLotD

Witch

Creator

By xthefarmerx

Updated on May 12, 2026

May 12, 2026

Build Overview

This is the strategy I used to go from level 1 to finish campaign in 4.5 Hours and get to T15 maps in 6:22. This is almost entirely inspired by JiLuo who is the best witch racer in China. Although he lives in China, he streams Most days from 8am to 5pm EST.

General Tips:

Experience - As long as you are within 3 + (your level/16) levels of the zone. So if you're level 32 you can be 3 + (32/16 = 2) = 5 levels of the zone. We generally always want to be within this range otherwise we start eating XP penaties. At most you want to be 1 level outside this range so at lvl 32 at most 6 levels under the zone. This is because the XP penalty at 1 outside the range is only 10% but this can snowball quick, so only eat this penatly if you're close to a really good leveling zone like Dreadnought or Azak Bog, etc.

There is a little bit of nuance to the build and a decent amount of small tips and tricks you can do in the campaign to maximize you're efficiency, which I go through in each section for each act.

However, there are some incredibly important mechanics that make or break this build:

1. Bonestorm + Living Lightning

Living lightning is a support gem that summons lightning minions that hit enemies if you deal lightning damage with the main skill. This is op for @because it essentially impales monsters with splinters which can be removed with living lightning minion hits to essentially deal double damage.

THIS MEANS WE NEED TO HAVE SOME FORM OF GAIN AS LIGHTNING DAMAGE IN OUR WAND/STAFF OTHERWISE WE WILL NOT PROC LIVING LIGHTING. WE GET THIS MOST CONSISTENTLY FROM JUST SOCKETING ANY TIER OF STORM RUNE

2. Bonestorm movement

A huge down side to Bonestorm is that you have like 90% reduced MS while channeling it, however if you tap it once and then after like a .3 second delay start channeling it, you don't lose any of the MS penalty allowing you to kite/dodge boss/rare mob attacks easily

3. Weapon Set Shenanigans:

This part is straight forward, however since we're using ED + Contagion for our white/blue mob clear and bonestorm for single target it makes sense to go to slightly different parts of the tree to access both phys and chaos stats and likewise for our weapon. Luckily we can utilized the 2 weapon set slots to do this seamlessly.

Besides that the build is pretty much ED then contagion on packs then bonestorm for bosses/rares

Build Variants

Act 1

Act 2

Act 3

Act 4

Interludes

Maps (respec)

In act 1 we pretty much suffer like most caster builds until Level 6 when we get Essence Drain. In case you don't know, the way essence drain works is that it's a Chaos DoT that does a pretty solid amount of damage. Then after we have ED on the mob, we put Contagion onto the mob and if the mob dies with ED still on it, then it spreads to other mobs in the area giving us some exceptional clear.

Pre six we take our first skill gem that we get from killing the miller and put that into Contagion, then we get another skill gem guaranteed from the abandoned campsite in the first zone after leaving town on entangle. These two together are insane clear and will be most of our AoE dmg until ED.

GEAR:

This is going to be the same for every act. You're going to want to check vendors for staff/wand upgrades. We want All Spell Skill>Physical Spell Skills/Chaos Spell Skills. For prefixes we want Spell damage > lightning gain > cold/fire gain. Gain is ONLY good for Bonestorm and does virtually nothing for Essence Drain and Contagion

First Town Entrance:

When you first get to town make sure you talk to Renly to get your level 1 skill gem, but also shop for a white Changeling Talisman for wolf form. The Nettle Talisman works as well you just need to take 1 Strength node on tree This doesn't make the sprint faster or anything, but the dodge roll animation is so much cleaner and you dodge roll faster than normal sprint.

Grim Tangle:

Our first support gem after killing the which goes to entangle and will be Unleash (we move this to Contagion later).
Additionally, the Grim Tangle Points of interests are shaped like a diamond with the only useless one that we skip being right on top of the Red Vale. So before we go to RV we get the Waypoint (the one with the hooded man hanging from the tree)

Red Vale:

Here we just unga bunga run around looking for the 3 pillars. If you don't have a talisman yet, you can open up the refined arms for one, or a staff/wand upgrade. On our way to fighting the mist king we must find and kill the league mechanic because 1. It gives us a ton of exp, but also 2. It gives us a guaranteed level 2 skill gem which we use to slot in frost bomb.

Frost bomb does solid damage and also applies exposure, so if we have found a solid staff with spell damage and more importantly a decent level ability - Gelid staff = Frost Bolt Ashen staff = Fire Bolt Voltaic Staff = Lightning Bolt then link unleash to one of these abilities and use that and frost bomb as your single target damage. If not Link unleash to chaos bolt and use that instead.

Importantly here until we get ED + a good staff/wand we'll be relying on the unearth skill summons to do a lot of single target DPS so make sure to cast that unearth on corpses for boss fights when available.

Cemetery:

After RV we run our way to the Cemetery and we make sure to Level to 6 here and plug in ED. If you have found a talisman and have an extra level 3 gem get Pounce as well since it's a great movement ability that lets you jump over some walls and most gaps.

We then go to Tomb of The consort first, because there is a sideboss (with a checkpoint) that drops a guaranteed support gem which we'll be using to make Zenith I on ED.

Then go kill Asina then Draven and fight the old man. Here he drops a guaranteed level 3 skill gem so if you haven't leveled Pounce yet then do it now.

Hunting Grounds:

Hug any wall and run around until you've found all 4 points of interest. There's 2 notable monsters will need to kill, Crowbill who drops a level 3 skill gem which we'll put into orb of storms and +2 passives book, and a plant monster which drops another guaranteed support gem which we'll turn into chain 1 and put into ED.

The other two Points of Interests are entrances to Freythorn and Ogham farmland. You can go either one but unless you're level 9+ you have to go Freythorn otherwise we eat an XP penalty.

Freythorn:

Here when we fight the KotM if we have a good staff with some spell damage and Fire/Frost/Lightning Bolt, we're gonna want to swap unleash and zenith supports here and then just put down frost bombs and orb of storms (to shock) on the boss and just spam our ability. If we just have a chaos bolt wand that's ok too just put unleash and there and throw 1 ED and 4 chaos bolts on rotation.

We take our first spirit gem and put it towards Ravenous Swarm and socket it with Corrosion for armor break when we get Bonestorm

Hunting Grounds:

Next we move into the hunting grounds. We need to find Luna's Lute which is always in the little abandoned village behind the blockage on the map that looks like this. You can actually use pounce to jump past the blockage if you hit the correct angle.

Ogham Village:

In Ogham we're just hugging a wall to find the executioner. If the smithing tools aren't near the checkpoint to the Executioner, then you can checkpoint back to the waypoint and just run opposite direction and find them like 4 screen lengths away there.
***WARNING*** Unless you natty drop a storm rune or find gain as lightning on a weapon this is necessary because we will NEED a storm rune later and this quest guarantees that

Ogham Ramparts:

You should always get the checkpoint near the hanged corpse and untie the corpse because it always drops a support gem (which we'll be using on contagion for magnified area) and also there's always a magic pack which we kill for exp there too. If we've been killing enough mobs we should be around level 13 by the end of this zone. If not, it's ok we can farm more exp in the manor

Ogham Manor:

There's only 3 objectives to this zone

1. Find Candlemass

2. Hit level 14

3. Kill Geonor.

Candlemass is always on the first floor either right before or after the bridge. You can just get the check point and comeback after getting level 14, or you can fight him now if you want.

The reason why we need 14 so badly is because at 14 we get access to Bonestorm which is our singletarget ability for the rest of the campaign and even into maps. We socket it with brutality and zenith 1.

On the Geonor fight we simply tap bonestorm then .3 seconds later tap it again so we get no movement speed penalty and charge it up like 3/4s of the way and unload them on Geonor. If you have a wand/staff with like 80% spell damage you can phase him in like 3 rotations.

Congrats we've beaten Act 1!