Spirit is a Resource in Path of Exile 2, which you reserve to enable the effects of persistent Skills like Auras, Buffs, permanent Minions, and Meta Gems. While reserved, you cannot access the Spirit. Therefore, the stat acts as a limiter on how many of these permanent effects you can activate at a time. You increase your maximum Spirit as you progress through the campaign and defeat bosses or by equipping Sceptres.
NOTE: As of right now, not much is known about the mechanic or specifics on how to obtain it. You can pin the article to be notified of future updates once we know more leading up to the Early Access on November 15th!
In Path of Exile 1, you reserved your Life and Mana to activate these effects instead of Spirit. GGG changed this for PoE 2 to prevent players from optimizing their Mana around reservations.
Obtaining Spirit
Currently, the details on expanding your Spirit pool are few and far between. You get a little Spirit from killing bosses and progressing through the Acts. If you want to run additional Auras or use extra Minions, consider putting a Sceptre in your offhand.
Reservations dynamically adjust as you swap weapons. However, if different weapon sets grant you different amounts of Spirit you may find yourself unable to use all of your reservations. Always test your setup by swapping weapons someplace safe before taking your build into a boss battle just to be safe.
Using Spirit
There are a few uses for Spirit that have been confirmed so far:
- Buffs and Auras, replacing the Mana reservation.
- Permanent Minions, while temporary Minions have no Spirit requirement, permanent Minions do reserve some of this limited resource.
- Activating Meta Gems, which trigger another linked Skill when their requirements are met.
During the PoE2 demo at ExileCon 2023, we got our first look at this in action, with both Arctic Armor and Cast on Shock requiring 100 Spirit. So far all the Spirit reservations we've seen are fixed amounts ranging from 40 to 120, with most Auras being 100. This makes it advantageous to raise your maximum Spirit to fit extra Auras, Minions, or Meta Gems.
Buildcrafting Changes
These changes have a lot of implications for build crafting and archetype viability. For example, in Path of Exile 1 Minion builds tend to build around permanent Minions like Raise Spectre, Summon Skeletons, or Summon Zombies. But each permanent Minion you add in Path of Exile 2 adds additional pressure to your Spirit. This not only heavily incentivizes builds that focus on temporary Minions but also limits the number of Auras available to permanent Minion builds.
Meta Gems in Path of Exile 2 offer players a lot of flexibility to trigger skills offensively or defensively. Even in the original Path of Exile, skills like Cast when Damage Taken and Cast on Critical Strike have been crucial in defining the meta for much of the game's history. But now these powerful gems compete with your Auras, Minions, or Buffs. To use the earlier example, you can use Cast on Shock to gain extra damage, but that might mean disabling your Arctic Armor and thus lowering your defenses.
Summary
Spirit is a new mechanic in Path of Exile 2 which is reserved and acts as a limiter for other permanent effects. Therefore, you reserve Spirit to activate Auras, Buffs, permanent Minions, and Meta Gems. Your Spirit pool expands as you progress your character and certain items like Sceptres specialize in providing the resource.
Written by: Tenkiei
Reviewed by: Havoc616, Palsteron
