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InPath of Exile 2, The King in the Mists is an optional boss players can fight inside Freythorn. This map is very frustrating to navigate, mainly because of the extremely narrow wooden bridge pathways that make getting trapped between hordes of monsters almost inevitable.
The King in the Mists is a tricky boss fight at early levels and can get overwhelming to figure out because this cultist shaman has a seemingly infinite number of tricks up its sleeve, and it isn’t afraid of using them.
How to Find The King in the Mists in Freythorn
To activate the King in the Mists boss fight, players will first have tofind, activate, and complete three Ritual Altarsspread across the edges of the map in Freythorn. Activating a Ritual Altar will spawn a wave of monsters for the player to defeat, after which it will be considered completed.
The Ritual Altars are easy to find because they all have a Checkpoint nearby, an indication that one is in the vicinity. After all three Ritual Altars are completed, players will need to find a large, open arena where the King in the Mists can be found. Activate this fourth and final altar to summon the King in the Mists.
If players enter the King in the Mists boss fight arena before completing all three Ritual Altars, they will find a black cloud surrounding the central altar, blocking access. Return after the prerequisites have been met, and the black cloud will disappear.
InPath of Exile 2, all maps are randomized, andeach time an instance is reset, the map resets as well. TheRitual Altars are in different locations each time, but they’re typically near the edges of the map.
How to Beat The King in the Mists
The King in the Mists is a two-phase boss fight, but before the actual boss appears, players will have to defeat a wave of cultists that spawn as soon as the altar is activated. Similar to how the previous Ritual Altars functioned, you’ll have to clear the space before the King in the Mists spawns.
Phase 1: Human Form
In human form, the King in the Mists appears as a hooded figure holding a wooden staff. His primary strategy is to swarm the arena with curses, afflictions, and status effects that do a combination of direct damage and damage over time to exhaust the player.
Description
Thorngrip
The boss creates damaging vines in a small cone directly in front of him, dealing medium damage.
Invasive Growth
The boss slams his staff on the ground, creating a large AoE of damaging vines and dealing medium damage.
Blood Pools
Red pools of blood appear around the arena, causing damage to the player if they stand in it over time.
Affliction Totems
The King in the Mist summons Affliction totems on the ground, which send out an arena-wide pulse periodically, inflicting curses on the player and causing physical damage.
Ritual of Dance
The boss places a curse on the player, causing them to become imprisoned in stasis for about three seconds if they stop moving before the timer runs out.
Ritual of Meditation
A curse is placed on the player that makes it so if they are caught moving as the timer runs out, they will be imprisoned in status for about 3 seconds.
After identifying the calling signs the King in the Mists uses for most of his attacks, they are fairly easy to dodge. His moves are telegraphed and somewhat slow. The main thing to pay special attention to is the combination of theRitual of Dance, which curses you if you stop moving, and theRitual of Meditation, which curses you if you move. The escape strategy for the two curses is directly opposite to each other, and the main difficulty of this fight is understanding which curse is affecting you right at that moment.
There are two ways to identify which curse the King in the Mists is using. The first is theicon on the top left of the screen. The Ritual of Dance appears as a green, blue, and purple icon with a man dancing in the middle. You can hover over it to confirm. The Ritual of Meditation appears as a red, pink, and purple icon with a man standing in the middle. Taking a look at the icon is an easy way to identify what your move should be.
The second way, which is a lot easier, is to pay attention to the color of the curse circle that appears around your character when a curse is cast. TheRitual of Dance is purple, and theRitual of Meditation is red. The color intensity also serves as a visual indicator of when the curse is going to hit you. It starts off muted and gets brighter as it nears activation.If the curse is purple, keep moving. If the curse is red, stop moving.
Players arefree to summon friends to helpif the King in the Mists is proving too difficult to beat solo.
Phase 2: Wildwood Form
After the King in the Mists is brought down to roughly 33% HP, he will become untargetable for a brief moment to regain all of his HP and barriers. He will cry out, “The Wildwood’s power… is mine!” before transforming into a leshen-like tree creature, shedding his human form.
In this form, the King in the Mists gains a few new attacks in addition to the ones he had in Phase 1.
Purple Pustules
The King in the Mists will cause glowing purple pustules to grow from the ground, which explode if you come near them, afflicting the player withShadow Surge, a stacking effect that debuffs the character to receive more physical damage per stack of Shadow Surge.
Insect Swarm
The boss swings his arm forward, summoning a wave of insects that move in a straight line, damaging those caught inside.
Insect Ball
The boss summons a swarm of dark insect-like creatures that follow the target and explode on impact.
In Phase 2, the frequency of curses becomes more intense, but the broad strokes remain the same. The main move to be wary of are the purple pustules that grow on the ground. While getting one or two stacks of Shadow Surge will not be a death sentence, five or more stacks will result in the boss easily one-shotting you, so make sure the number doesn’t get that high. The rest of the fight is fairly simple.
King of the Mists Boss Fight Rewards
After players defeat the King in the Mists for the first time, they will be able to obtain theGembloom Skull, an item you can use togain +30 Spirit permanently. It is the only boss that gives Spirit capacity as a reward in all of Act 1.
Players will also be able to obtainRitual Rewardsby interacting with the Ritual Altar. The currency used in this shop is called Tribute, which you can get more of by repeatedly defeating this boss over and over, at least in the early game. This shop refreshes after every boss kill.
Upon breaking the Gembloom Skull to obtain the +30 Spirit, the player will also receive anUncut Spirit Gem4, which is the earliest possible way toobtain theRaging Spiritsskillfrom the Sorceress skill tab.
