Path of Exile 2’s Forbidden Rites event opens tomorrow, September 4 at 1 PM PDT with patch 0.5.5 and a fresh economy. If you want one character that can blast the campaign on a budget and then turn into a screen-melting mapper, this is the path. League start on Mirror Tier / Paychak’s Essence Drain Bonestorm Witch. Finish maps, stack currency, then respec into GL1TCH3D’s Crash on Crit Infernalist, the setup that was throwing hundreds of Comets a second in 0.5 showcases.
Both guides are for the Witch class. Take Infernalist for the end game version. However, the starter works on any Witch ascendancy. Infernalist is the one that carries into the late game without a class swap and saves you some time.
The league start: Essence Drain, Contagion, Bonestorm
This is a chaos clear button with a physical channel for bosses. Packs die to Essence Drain plus Contagion. Single target is Chaos Bolt until level 14, then Bonestorm. It is fast, it is tanky enough on armor and energy shield, and it lives on plus skill levels.
Weapon sets matter. Set 1 is chaos: Essence Drain and Contagion. Set 2 is physical: Bonestorm and Ravenous Swarm. A wand or focus with generic plus to all spell skills or percent spell damage can sit on both sets. Chaos-only mods stay on set 1. Physical-only mods stay on set 2. This video will help guide you through most of it:
Gear hunt in this order:
- Weapon and focus: plus skill levels, then percent spell damage, cast speed, crit
- Amulet: plus skill levels, then life, resists, spell damage, cast speed
- Boots: movement speed, then resists, life, armor
- Rings: resists, life, cast speed
- Gloves, helmet, body, belt: resists, life, armor
Campaign body armors can be full plate, steel plate, or iron-clad vestments. Helmets can be elite or spired. Check every vendor for a plus-skill wand or staff. Do not dump currency until you see a plus-two weapon.
Levels 1 to 5
Start with a rattling scepter and Unearth. Grab Enfeeble from Rendley after Miller. Contagion is in the Clearfell chest. Packs: Enfeeble or Contagion, then Entangle to spread. Bosses: Chaos Bolt, keep Entangle up, Unearth corpses if they exist. First support is Unleash on Enfeeble. Swap Unleash onto Chaos Bolt for the Res King.
Levels 6 to 13
Essence Drain comes online. Hit a pack with Drain, slap Contagion, watch it jump. Boss rotation: optional Orb of Storms for shock, Essence Drain, two or three Chaos Bolts. After the Rotting Druid in Grim Tangle, put Chain on Essence Drain. Upgrade Drain before Contagion. Hunting Grounds rare can drop Swift Affliction for Drain. Spirit gem goes Ravenous Swarm plus Corrosion for armor break. Tomb of the Consort is where Zenith lands on Chaos Bolt.
Level 14 through maps
Bonestorm replaces Chaos Bolt for single target. Link Rapid Casting and Brutality first. Living Lightning replaces Brutality when you get the level 2 support in Vasteri Outskirts. Socket the Storm Rune you got from Rendley’s tools. Later: Considered Casting, then Zenith II, then Virulent Plague II after the greater jeweler in Kanu at the end of Act 4. Essence Drain wants Intense Agony when a lesser jeweler shows up in Sand Swat Marsh.
Bonestorm play: tap and hold before the bones form so you keep move speed. 0.5.0b patched the old slow. Cast speed changes the timing.
Spirit extras: Time of Need with Compressed Duration for life ticks. Blasphemy with Magnified Effect and Ritualistic Curse. Enfeeble or Temporal Chains if you need a defensive curse.
Power spikes sit at 6 (Drain), 14 (Bonestorm), 18 and 36 (plus-two and plus-three weapons), and 55 (extra spell levels on weapons). Talk to the vendor on those level-ups. A plus-one focus is fine all campaign. Plus-two is worth an exalt.
Infernalist Demon Form eats life. Flask it. Act 3 feels thin if your resists and body armor are lazy. This starter is built to carry into early T15s, then you stop and spend.
The swap: Crash on Crit Infernalist
Do not flip into the end game version of the build on a handful of chaos. GL1TCH3D’s planner flags it as not a low-budget setup. Think a few hundred divine at the start if not more later, unique shells, and a scepter that can hold the trigger full screen clear circus. Until then, keep mapping on Drain and Bonestorm.
The endgame ascendancy stays Infernalist. Pyromantic Pact turns max mana into Infernal Flame when you cast, then dumps fire into you when the bar fills. You survive that with huge armor, ward, and a chopped life pool. Bringer of Flame feeds ignite chance so Cast on Elemental Ailment keeps firing.
Spark is the button that crits and shocks. Those hits proc Cast on Critical and Cast on Elemental Ailment. Elemental Indication is a fourth trigger. Socket Comets, or Frost Darts if you want the screen to look worse. Spell Cascade doubles the Comet dump. Quality Echo on Comet adds extra casts. Showcase clips were in the 800-plus Comets-per-second range with Cascade and Echo stacked. That number needs density. Three breaches on a T16 city map. Empty maps feel dead.
Endgame kit, from the planner
- Shrine Sceptre: fracture T1 spirit percent or hybrid spirit, chaos the other, suffixes with alloys. Mana prefix is the third you want. Presence area of effect is nice, not required.
- Absent amulet with plus one Cast on Elemental Ailment. Pair Megalomaniac, Raven-Touched Shard, and the amulet with at least Dominion and Efficient Inscriptions. Zarokh’s Gift, Spiral into Mania, Infusion of Power are the extras worth chasing.
- Chest: Mageblood with Legacy of Granite and Legacy of Basalt for the armor stack. Diamond after that. Silver if you Blink, Quicksilver if you walk. Temporalis, Runefather’s Grasping Mail, or Runemastered Sacrificial Regalia can stand in.
- Gloves: Runeforged Blacksteel Gauntlets for runic ward. Massive Mitts work. Crit damage bonus can swap to pierce if the clear feels sticky.
- Boots: Shankgonne for deflection, or rare Runeforged Tasalian Greaves.
- One Unset Ring or Augmented Flesh so every gem fits. Cast speed and plus one to spells are the ring lines that matter.
- Runemastered Runic Fork, ward variant.
- Flesh Crucible with Eldritch Battery to delete energy shield. Second line ideally less maximum life.
- Warding Ruin of Hollowing to cut max life so Pyromantic Pact hurts less.
Defenses in the showcase were 30k-plus armor, a few thousand ward as the real pool, and a few hundred combined life and ES after the cuts. Fire resist turns the Infernal Flame tick into almost nothing. Ward evaporates in dense breaches. Plan remnants and recovery around that.
Infusion of Power only stays if Charge Regulation is also in. Drop both or keep both. Blink can take Uhtred’s Augury, Rapid Casting II, and Cooldown Recovery II if the cooldown is fat.
Two versions exist. Chaos Inoculation on 1 life with fat ward is the cheaper shell. Low-life armor stacker is the min-max, with Zerphi’s Last Breath, Execute, Pain Attunement, and Final Barrage once you are actually low life. Here is the video explaining the build:
How to play Forbidden Rites with this guide
Day one: Witch, Infernalist when you can, Drain and Contagion for packs, Bonestorm for rares and bosses, armor bases, plus-skill weapons. Campaign Rituals in 0.5.5 will spit extra juice. Spend tribute, do not brick the starter chasing unique names.
Week two: if the stash can buy a Shrine Sceptre craft, an Absent amulet, and a ward fork, respec. If it cannot, stay on Bonestorm. The CoC machine is a currency sink that lags the instance when it works. Consoles and low-end PCs will hate it. The starter will not.
Forbidden Rites is a one-month event next to the main 0.5 league. You do not need the comet fountain to finish challenges. You need it if you want the clip and the satisfaction of your screen flashbanging you for the entire map.
Here is the guide on Mobalytics by paychak1 if you need a more in depth version for the starter, and here is the guide for the end game COC Infernalist by GL1TCH3D for your shopping list. If you are looking for other builds that look interesting to you for Forbidden Rites, here is our previous article covering 10 builds that you might want to try!
Are you riding Essence Drain all event, or are you dumping the first big drop into Comets? Personally, this build is what I am planning on going for this Event start, so I figured I would help out my fellow exiles and share the wealth. Let us know your thoughts on the article in the comments below.