Breach is one of four current endgame league mechanics within the early access launch of Path of Exile 2, and can be interacted with by utilizing a waystone to enter any node on the atlas map where it's grasping purple hand symbol appears in the endgame. When incorporated into a player's endgame farming strategy this mechanic can lead to significant increases in both currency generation and experience gained.
PoE 2: Complete Guide to Breach
Breach Overview
Breach Mechanics
How to begin a Breach
Once you've entered a map containing a breach located somewhere within the area will be a large purple hand like structure jutting from the ground. Upon coming into contact with the hand the breach event will begin. A circle will begin extending outwards temporarily unleashing an invasion of monstrosities from another dimension within the ring. This includes extremely massive packs of white magic and even rare monsters all of which unique to the breach mechanic.
Within the breach the player in addition to fighting off the invasion will be able to receive additional rewards by running over Clasped Hands that spawn randomly within the circle. The Circle with continue to grow and release additional monsters into your map for a period of time that is greatly influenced and extended by the amount of breach monsters you slay during the encounter, so the more you take down and the faster you do so, the longer the breach is going to last, potentially extending all the way to the maps edges should you secure a long enough kill streak!
Breach Rewards
Breach Monsters have a very high chance to drop several unique currencies and items, chief among them are Breach Ring which can be crafted on to create some of the most powerful rings for the popular
Archmage builds in the game, this is because unlike normal rings Breach Rings can have their quality raised to 50% instead of 20% utilizing Catalysts, a currency dropped exclusively during breach content that can be utilized to improve the quality of any accessory specifically via stat groups instead of the standard improvements done to Armour or Weapons. But most of all Breaches drop Breach Splinters which when combining 300 of them merge to create Breach Stone.
Twisted Domain
Breach Stones when utilized at the Realm Gate on your Atlas Map allow you to enter the Twisted Domain where you'll be met with a breach encounter like the rest, during this breach you are forced to fight your way through a ruin while a timer ticks down, defeating enemies pauses this timer and defeating rares as well as activating clasped hands extends the timer.
Your objective is to make to to the end of the ruin without allowing the timer to expire otherwise the encounter will be failed. Upon reaching the end you'll come face to face with Xesht, We That Are One, the Pinnacle Boss of the Breach Mechanic.
Xesht We That Are One Encounter Guide
Starting with the Moveset!
Hand Smash: Xesht summons a slow moving hand that hovers above the player before crashing down indicated by a purple glowing region on the ground below you before doing so, being hit with this attack deals thousands of damage and can easily result in a 1 hit KO. As long as you're aware this attack has begun however it can easily be dodged by simply continuing to move or rolling before it crashes down.
Finger Guns: Xesht will pose his right hand in a shooting motion as waves of energy pool towards the hand with a danger sound announcing the attack. Xesht can track you while charging this ability so don't spam roll, simply strafe around to his back or move directly past him to easily avoid this attack.
Triple Finger Guns: Similar to the finger gun attack Xesht poses both hands in a firing motion towards you and slowly tracks you around the room before firing off three blasts of energy in rapid succession, these can be easily avoided by strafing or running behind Xesht and continuing to stay there during the attacks.
Fire Ball: Xesht conjures a ball of flame above his head before slowly firing it down upon your location. When you see the orange ball begin to channel above him, simply walk around the boss while continuing to deal damage as this one is likely the easiest of them all to avoid.
Burrow: Xesht goes untargetable burrowing into the ground before chasing the player. After attempting to chase after you he stops claps and slices the ground horizontally. As soon as the Burrow begins run away making circles around the inner ring of the arena then wait for the slices to appear before re-engaging.
Esh: Xesht summons a blue hand holding a ball of lightning. A ring grows outward from it's location ending in an explosion of lightning damage. You can either outrange this attack pretty easily, or dodge into the hand to avoid it.
Tul: Xesht summons a white hand covered in ice, The icy projectiles fire towards you dealing cold damage that can quickly freeze the player leading to chains of unfortunate events resulting in death. You can either stay far away to give yourself the spacing necessary to dodge the incoming ice, or otherwise stay close to the hand and rotate around it to avoid the incoming salvo. Keep in mind Xesht with sometimes combine Esh and Tul as one attack, so react accordingly and likely bring a Thawing Charm to this fight for safety.
Phase Change: After reaching 50% life, Xesht stops in place and begins conjuring a purple portal above his head, indicating his transition to the second phase of the fight. You can freely deal DPS during this transition but it does indicate he can now utilize his.
Arm Smash: Xesht during phase 2 can randomly summon large arms from large portals in the ground that smash the area directly infront of them upon spawning. This attack increases the number of portals spawned based on the Difficulty level of the encounter. Dodge these by continuing to move throughout the spawning process dodge rolling only if necessary, as doing so is likely to get you hit by the follow up attack.
Xesht's Stats
Maximum Life: 6,000,000+(6,000,000xDifficulty)
75% Fire, Cold, Lightning Resistance
Upon Defeating Xesht, you'll be rewarded with a variety of items but one guaranteed unique from his collection, the only one of value below difficulty 4 is the Hand of Wisdom and Action used in many meta builds and worth several divine orbs, and the Metamorph Diamonds which range from completely worthless to 20 or more Divine orbs depending on how well it rolls, you can also leave it unidentified and sell it for 2 divine orbs instead like a lottery ticket dropped when Xesht is defeated on T4 Difficulty. This also rewards you with Breach Atlas Points for each difficulty level you manage to defeat, the difficulty of the encounter scaling up each time you apply more points into the Breach Atlas.
Breach Atlas Recommendation
I recommend Crumbling Walls be your first not because
Frantic Invasion would not be better, but because as this is your first two points an earlier endgame character might struggle with the increased damage received from Frantic Invasion while Crumbling Walls has no negatives. If your character is already very powerful you can instead pick up Frantic Invasion First and
Rising Pyre second. however
Crumbling Walls adds a chance to hit it big with up to 11 breaches on one single map which is extremely beneficial when it hits.
Frantic Invasion Increases the amount of splinters obtained by 75% which isn't very significant outside of SSF due to how cheap they've gotten this deep in the league, but early in the league this passive will provide alot of snowball opportunity for your account.
Rising Pyre is an additive 40% density increase on the amount of breach monsters spawned by your breaches so it's typically less overall value then a multiplicative 40% would be do to diminishing returns, but this still really ramps up your rewards all the same.
Sustained Siege Is my choice for the final two points, slowing down the expanse of the breach allows you to cover a wider surface area before it has a chance to close which in turn means more kills and more loot from your breaches especially on bad maps where you need to pivot directions often to continue pushing dense packs of mobs.
Grasping Hands is otherwise a good choice if you're
Temporalis gaming and can clear the entire breach without losing out on monsters regardless, but for most players Siege will be strictly better then a few extra magic mobs and splinters.
How to Maximize Breach Rewards
Breach Monsters are able to drop Breach Precursor Tablets, which can be utilized to add Breach encounters to nodes near Lost Towers upon inserting them, These tablets when combined with other's like the recently added Overseer Tablets or simply Precursor Tablets can overlap an area with large amounts of item quantity & rarity bonuses, then by utilizing Waystones instilled with emotions from the Delirium Mechanic with strong prefix modifiers like Increased Pack Size, Number of Monster Packs, Item Quantity, Item Rarity or Experience Gain should you be more interested in leveling faster, can super charge your breaches to the brim with currencies monsters and showers of loot that take several maps worth of time just to pick through.
Why Focus Farm Breach?
Breach Stones when compared to other pinnacle keys are far cheaper currency wise making failure much less punishing then attempting other pinnacle encounters, this paired with the simplicity of the mechanic make it very welcoming to new players with solid builds for doing so. The currency generation is also mostly done through the currency exchange and raw currency drops making the need for pricing knowledge minimal.