Pressing Through: PoE Labyrinth Guide

As a Path of Exile player, you will most likely have a strong loathing of the labyrinth. However, even if it’s your least favorite part of the game, you still have to do it four times on each character in order to have them reach their full potential. You can either interact with the labyrinth to a minimum or farm it for profit if you so choose. There are many ways to interact with the labyrinth or ignore it to the best of your ability. Regardless of your choice, we have it covered in our PoE Labyrinth Guide!

What is Lab?

The Labyrinth, or Lab, is a subsection of Path of Exile. In it, you are forced to fight your way through some enemies, but it is mostly based around the traps inside, as well as the boss. The traps are tricky because they deal with a percentage amount of your life, so you’ll need to bring mitigation regardless of your build. In fact, high health builds can be at a disadvantage here since potions are far less effective for them. Either bring enough potions to deal with the traps or have other forms of mitigation ready. Also, the lab resets every day, so if you’re having a tough time it could be better to wait a day and try a better layout.

The boss, Izaro, is another matter entirely. He scales up drastically with the difficulty of the lab that you run. On the hardest difficulty, he can be so difficult that some builds simply cannot kill him. In this case, a carry would be required. He deals massive amounts of physical damage, and the room is full of traps, so you’re stick dodging constantly while trying to fight him if your build cannot handle him cleanly. The easiest way is to simply have enough damage to burst him down, but that’s a lot easier said than done. Izaro also varies in difficulty by day so another day might be much easier.

If you manage to finish the labyrinth you are awarded two skill points that can be used towards your ascendancy class. Completing the lab for the first time will also grant you the ability to choose from the three ascendancies available to your class. You can get a total of eight points, two for each of the four lab difficulties. If you decide to change your ascendancy, you can reset every point and run the easiest lab again.

For more PoE, check this out: PoE Announcements for Delve and Improvements

How do I activate the Lab?

In order to even gain access to the labyrinth you must complete the trials. There are 18 trials that you must complete in order to do all four lab difficulties. There are six for the first lab, three for the second and third, and six for the fourth. Each of the trials consists of a small trap section that you must complete in order to touch the ending and mark the trial as complete.

The trials throughout the acts are found interspersed as follows:

First Lab Difficulty

• Act 1: The Lower Prison, The Crypt
• Act 2: Chamber of Sins Level Two
• Act 3: The Crematorium, The Catacombs, and The Imperial Gardens

Second Lab Difficulty

• Act 6: The Prison
• Act 7: The Crypt, Chamber of Sins Level Two

Third Lab Difficulty

• Act 8: Bath House
• Act 9: The Tunnel
• Act 10: The Ossuary

The final six trials can be found throughout the maps randomly. They might be very difficult to find all of them, so if you’re having trouble and are in a league with trading available, you may want to join /global 820, which is meant for master and trial sharing.

The first three difficulties require only that you complete the corresponding trials in order to access them. The final difficulty (Uber) requires not only that you complete the acts, but also that you have an Offering to the Goddess. These are attained each time you complete a trial in maps – although you can only get one offering per trial, so if you complete them multiple times or with multiple people you will still only get one offering. The offerings are easily tradable and can be purchased fairly cheaply if you don’t want to run any more trials. The map trials can be very difficult for certain builds so it can be advisable to avoid them if your build cannot handle them.

Any tips for Lab?

There are a few huge tips that I can offer. The first is to make sure you have extra potions. Just this week I was having trouble with the traps in lab on a particularly tough trap day, so I took off my other potions and went in with four life flasks. I knew I could handle the boss because I understood my build and what it was capable of. This is hugely important when you’re doing lab, the only part of the game that emulates hardcore in that if you die you start over.

One huge thing that can help you is PoE Lab. It is a community run site that updates every day’s layout as soon as possible, including all the shortcuts and hidden passages. It is an amazing tool to check how difficult Izaro is, how many trap sections there are, and where every last bit of loot is. If you’re having trouble with lab, be sure to get the darkshrines. They will give you a permanent boost for that lab run and can make a massive difference. They are all shown on the poelab site, so use it judiciously.

Lastly, if you’re really having trouble with Izaro, purchasing a carry is often quite easy. You can find people selling carries all the time in both /global 820 and /trade 820. Don’t be shy to ask, some builds just cannot do lab easily. I myself have done hundreds of labs and still have to buy carries for certain builds. The sellers are there for a reason, make use of them!

Conclusion

Lab can be a massive pain in the ass, which is why we wrote this PoE Labyrinth Guide! If you know what you’re doing you can easily mitigate how difficult lab is. Be sure to bring lots of potions and health regeneration methods, as well as being ready for the boss’s difficulty. If you’re still struggling, use PoE Lab, and collect all the darkshrines. If even that doesn’t work, there’s no shame in purchasing a carry! Get your points and be all that your character can be!

For more PoE, check this out: A PoE Atlas Guide to Minimize Feeling Overwhelmed in the End-Game