Path of Exile 2 respec: How to swap your passives

PoE 2 respec - Clearwater Encampment — (Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

With so many available passive skills it's understandable that you'd want to know how to respec in Path of Exile 2. The game is very good at giving you plenty of skills via uncut skill gems and support skills to compliment them with uncut support gems. However, these are separate to your passive skill tree.

As you level up and gain skill points, you'll place them in a massive board of passive nodes, increasing your damage, armour, and just about anything you can think of. This is what you can respec, and you'll need to do it often early on if you didn't come to the game with a clear idea of progression, or you want to take advantage of PoE's incredibly broad skill system.

Sadly, you can't respec right off the bat, but it's fairly easy to unlock through a couple of quests. Here I'll explain what you need to do to access it and how the whole shebang works.

How to respec in PoE 2

PoE 2 respec - Una — You'll need to complete Una's quests to revive The Hooded One (Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

While you can gain new skills in Path of Exile 2 by using uncut skill gems, and can swap around your support skills by moving gems, in order to respec your passive skills, you need to unlock The Hooded One. This special NPC is available in Clearfell Encampment once you complete both of Una's quests:

Secrets in the Dark
Sorrow Among Stones

The first quest sees you head to the Grelwood, where you find The Hooded One hanging from a tree, and Una has you explore the Red Vale to gather special rune spikes that let you free him. After that, you make your way through the Grim Tangle to the Cemetery of the Eternals, where you have to defeat Draevan the Eternal Praetor, and Asinia the Praetor's Consort, to get their keys to the count's mausoleum.

PoE 2 respec - Count Lachlan's Ring — Find Count Lachlann's Ring in the Cemetery of the Eternals (Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

Once you open the big gate, defeat the boss there, and claim Count Lachlann's Ring, you can return to Una. She'll then revive The Hooded One, unlocking his services. In order to respec, you'll need to spend gold, and it's worth noting that the price of respecc-ing nodes rises with your level, so it's better to change things around sparingly or early on.

PoE 2 respec - Refund passives — You can respec by selecting the 'Refund passives' option once The Hooded One is revived (Image credit: Grinding Gear Games)

You can also get The Hooded One to identify all the items in your inventory, too, so that'll save you a few Scrolls of Wisdom—not that they were scarce to begin with.

Sean's first PC games were Full Throttle and Total Annihilation and his taste has stayed much the same since. When not scouring games for secrets or bashing his head against puzzles, you'll find him revisiting old Total War campaigns, agonizing over his Destiny 2 fit, or still trying to finish the Horus Heresy. Sean has also written for EDGE, Eurogamer, PCGamesN, Wireframe, EGMNOW, and Inverse.