In Path of Exile 2 there are Spirit Gems that provide you with skills that have permanent effects. What Spirit Gems are available and what they can do, you can learn here on MeinMMO.
While in many role-playing games you select your skills and how they work using a skill tree, in Path of Exile 2 it happens through so-called Spirit Gems. In the game, you will find uncut Spirit Gems, with which you “cut” your skills. The cut gems, which then become specific Skill Gems, are incorporated in your skill overview.
What are Spirit Gems? Spirit Gems are Will Gems in Path of Exile 2 that give you certain permanent enhancements or improve their level. To activate the enhancements, you need Will, which appears as an attribute on equipment, among other things. Depending on how much Will you have available, the more Spirit Gems you can activate. Once activated, they trigger automatically without you having to press anything on your Skill Bar.
To obtain Spirit Gems, you need uncut Spirit Gems. You can receive them as rewards in the campaign and as drops from monsters. To store them, you can acquire special chest compartments in PoE 2.
Below we list all Spirit Gems along with their names in-game and their permanent effects. They are divided alphabetically and by level.
All Spirit Gems and Their Permanent Effects
To show you which Will Gems you can currently cut and use, navigate through the classes or select “All Gems” below so you don’t miss any. As long as you have sufficient points in certain attributes, you can also cut Gems from other classes. There are Spirit Gems of levels 4, 8, and 14:
All Spirit Gems of Level 4
- Grim Feast: While the skill is active, enemies and resurrected creatures that die in your presence have a chance to drop grim remnants. Picking up a grim remnant grants you energy shield, which can overfill your maximum energy shield.
- Withering Presence: While the skill is active, it periodically withers enemies in your presence.
- Arctic Armor: Summons an icy barrier that builds phases over time. While the barrier has phases, melee attacks that hit you remove a phase, creating an icy explosion that deals cold spell damage to the attacker.
- Spirit Dance: You periodically receive Spirit Veils. If you are hit while you have a Spirit Veil, it is immediately consumed and restores energy shield based on your evasion value.
- Pillaged Armor: Use fragments of armor you have looted from enemies to enhance your own. Completely breaking an enemy’s armor grants you a stack of Pillaged Armor for a duration, and you gain armor and thorns per stack.
- Herald of Ash: While the skill is active, enemies you kill with attacks and excess damage cause an explosion that ignites enemies around based on the excess damage dealt.
- Herald of Ice: While active, smashing an enemy with an attack hit creates an icy explosion that deals attack damage to enemies in the vicinity.
- Herald of Thunder: While the skill is active, killing shocked enemies with attack damage triggers lightning on subsequent attack hits, which deals attack damage to all enemies in the vicinity.
- War Banner: While this skill is active, killing enemies with attacks or standing in the vicinity of a unique enemy generates Heroism. Using this skill consumes your Heroism to place an inspiring banner with an aura that grants you and allies in the vicinity attack damage and accuracy as long as the banner lasts. The banner cannot gain Heroism while it is placed, and you cannot place a banner while you already have a banner placed.
- Magma Barrier: When you raise your shield, it is enhanced with magma for a short time; if you block during this time, magma splashes onto the attacker and grants you a resistance charge.
- Mana Remnants: Summons surging bolts to restore your mana. While the skill is active, shocked enemies you kill have a chance to generate a Mana Remnant, and critical hits against a shocked target generate a Mana Remnant every few seconds. Picking up a Mana Remnant grants you mana, which can overfill your maximum mana.
- Pestbringer: Stores all poison damage caused by you. Using the skill Pestbringer unleashes the stored poison.
- Withering Presence: While the skill is active, it periodically withers enemies in your presence.
- Wind Dancer: Grants a buff that increases your evasion per phase. If you are hit by a melee attack while you have the buff, all phases are consumed to damage and push back enemies around you.
All Spirit Gems of Level 8
- Barrier Summoning: While active, this summon gains energy when your energy shield is damaged by hits. When the summon is used once enough energy has been collected, the energy is consumed and embedded spells are triggered. These can be triggered multiple times if sufficient energy is available.
- Blasphemy: Transforms embedded curse spells into malevolent auras that apply their effects to all enemies in the vicinity.
- Elemental Summoning: While this skill is active, this summon gains energy when you freeze, shock, or ignite an enemy. When the summon is used once enough energy has been collected, it consumes energy to trigger embedded spells and can trigger them multiple times as long as it has enough energy.
- Herald of Pestilence: While active, the Herald transfers the poison from poisoned enemies you kill to other enemies in the vicinity and has a chance to also incapacitate them.
- Berserker Rage: While the skill is active, it grants you a rage charge if you freeze, electrocute, or immobilize an enemy. This can only occur once every few seconds.
- Shard Eater: While the skill is active, your crossbow reloads when you consume freeze, shock, ignite, or completely shattered armor on an enemy. This can only occur once every few seconds.
- Defiance Banner: While this skill is active, killing enemies with attacks or standing in the vicinity of a unique enemy generates Heroism. Using this skill consumes your Heroism to place an inspiring banner with an aura that grants you and allies in the vicinity armor, evasion, and movement speed as long as the banner lasts. The banner cannot gain Heroism while it is placed, and you cannot place a banner while you already have a banner placed.
- Lingering Illusion: Creates a short-lived illusory copy of you when you use the evasion roll. The copy can be damaged by enemies, and copies destroyed by enemies grant you an energy charge.
- Cast on Ignite: While the skill is active, it gains energy when you ignite enemies and triggers embedded spells as soon as it reaches maximum energy.
- Cast on Creature Death: While the skill is active, it gains energy when one of your creatures is killed and triggers embedded spells as soon as it reaches maximum energy. No spells can be embedded that create creatures.
- Time of Need: Summons divine blessings that regularly heal you and remove curses and elemental impairments from you.
- Cast on Freeze: While the skill is active, it gains energy when you freeze enemies and triggers embedded spells as soon as it reaches maximum energy.
- Cast on Shock: While the skill is active, it gains energy when you shock enemies and triggers embedded spells as soon as it reaches maximum energy.
- Overwhelming Presence: While the skill is active, enemies in your presence can be stunned more easily and elemental impairments can be inflicted on them.
All Spirit Gems of Level 14
- Blink: Replaces your evasion roll with a spell with a short cooldown that allows you to overcome space and time and immediately reappear at medium distance.
- Archmage: While the skill is active, your non-channeling spells cost additional mana and deal extra lightning damage, both based on your maximum mana.
- Charge Infusion: While the skill is active, you gain powerful buffs based on your active charges. However, maintaining the buff consumes charges every few seconds.
- Sacrifice: While the skill is active, your undead resurrecting creatures can be used instead of corpses for your skills, but your creatures are resurrected more slowly.
- Alchemist’s Blessing: While the skill is active, it passively grants you flask fills and causes your life and mana regeneration from your flasks to also apply to allies in your presence.
- Sickle Summoning: While the skill is active, this summon gains energy when you kill an enemy with a melee attack. When the summon is used once enough energy has been collected, it consumes energy to trigger embedded spells and can trigger them multiple times as long as it has enough energy.
- Frenzy: While the skill is active, it strengthens your frenzy and grants you life steal based on your frenzy, but you lose health during the frenzy.
- Death Banner: While this skill is active, killing enemies with attacks or standing in the vicinity of a unique enemy generates Heroism. Using this skill consumes your Heroism to place an inspiring banner with an aura that grants you and allies in the vicinity stun threshold, elemental impairment threshold, and flask fills as long as the banner lasts. The banner cannot gain Heroism while it is placed, and you cannot place a banner while you already have a banner placed.
- Cast on Critical Hit: While the skill is active, it gains energy when you hit an enemy critically and triggers embedded spells as soon as it reaches maximum energy.
- Cast on Evasion Roll: While the skill is active, it gains energy when you use the evasion roll and triggers embedded spells as soon as it reaches maximum energy.
- Weariness: While the skill is active, you deal more hit damage to rare and unique enemies the longer you fight against them, and you gain death blow against them if you have fought long enough.
- Confluence of Elements: Draws from a stream of raw and unpredictable elemental power, causing you to deal significantly more damage with a randomly chosen element. The chosen element changes frequently, with the same element being chosen multiple times in a row.
Recommended Spirit Gems for Individual Classes
To avoid listing the Gems and their effects multiple times in the text, we will mention the Spirit Gems recommended for each class in the game below:
- Witch:
- Level 4: Grim Feast, Withering Presence
- Level 8: Barrier Summoning, Cast on Creature Death, Blasphemy
- Level 14: Sacrifice, Cast on Critical Hit
- Sorceress:
- Level 4: Flame Skull, Arctic Armor, Mana Remnants
- Level 8: Cast on Ignite, Cast on Freeze, Cast on Shock
- Level 14: Blink, Archmage, Confluence of Elements
- Warrior:
- Level 4: Pillaged Armor, Herald of Ash, Magma Barrier
- Level 8: Time of Need, Overwhelming Presence
- Level 14: Frenzy, Death Banner
- Mercenary:
- Level 4: Herald of Ash, Herald of Thunder, War Banner
- Level 8: Shard Eater, Overwhelming Presence, Defiance Banner
- Level 14: Weariness, Death Banner
- Ranger:
- Level 4: Herald of Thunder, Pestbringer, Wind Dancer
- Level 8: Berserker Rage, Herald of Pestilence
- Level 14: Alchemist’s Blessing, Weariness
- Monk:
- Level 4: Spirit Dance, Herald of Ice, Herald of Thunder
- Level 8: Barrier Summoning, Elemental Summoning, Lingering Illusion
- Level 14: Charge Infusion, Sickle Summoning, Cast on Evasion Roll
In the Early Access of Path of Exile 2, there are currently six classes and two ascendants each:
Equipping & Activating Spirit Gems
How do I equip Spirit Gems? You activate the uncut Will Gem and then select a permanent enhancement from the overview that suits your class. For this, you can navigate through the classes on the left or click on “All Gems” below. Then, when you cut a skill, you will find it in your inventory. After that, you place it in your skill overview in a free slot.
If Gems are grayed out, it is because you need an uncut Gem of a higher level or you do not have enough points in an attribute.
How do I activate Spirit Gems? If you have enough Will, you can activate the new skill with the key that is shown to you when hovering over it. It grants you a permanent enhancement triggered by other skills. For example, the skill “Flame Skull” of the Sorceress is triggered when fire area spells are used.
Can I swap Spirit Gems? You can remove Spirit Gems from your skill overview, swap them, and reinsert them – just like “normal” skill gems. This allows you to try out different Will Gems for your builds. If you pull them out of their slot, you can store them in your inventory or your chest. This applies to all Gems – uncut and cut.
To upgrade Spirit Gems, you need to find uncut Will Gems of a higher level. If so, you can upgrade the level of your existing Gems or cut new ones.
In addition to Spirit Gems, there are also Support Gems in Path of Exile 2. As the name suggests, these are a support for the skills you have equipped. With support gems, you can modify and enhance your skills. What Support Gems are available and what they can do, you can learn here: Path of Exile 2: All Support Gems and their effects overview
