Melee Build Strategy: Smash Through Stone and Steel

For melee characters, the Collapsed Temple offers both opportunity and risk. You’ll be face-to-face with POE2 Currency animated statues, construct swarms, and elite guardians who slam and stun.

Best melee tactics include:

    Wide-cleave skills like Cyclone, Sundering Blow, or Reaping Slam—perfect for tight corridors with clustered enemies.

    Leech nodes or Life Gain on Hit mods (acquired through crafting or drops) help you recover in the middle of group fights.

    Timing your cooldown buffs, such as Molten Shell or Enduring Cry, allows you to push through heavy traps between combat waves.

Don’t overlook stun resistance or increased armor from tree nodes—many enemies in this temple will attempt to stun-lock you with multi-hit combos.

Ranged Build Strategy: Movement and Precision

For ranged builds, this quest plays to your strengths—there are long corridors, elevated ledges, and plenty of sightlines to use to your advantage.

Key tactics for ranged characters:

    Use skills with pierce or chaining, like Lightning Arrow, Frost Blades, or Volatile Dead, to hit multiple enemies in tight formations.

    Kiting is essential. There are several trap rooms where enemies flood in once you step on a pressure plate. Lay traps or totems in advance.

    Prioritize Evasion and Spell Suppression over raw armor. Most damage in the temple comes from elemental traps and ranged construct attacks.

Ranged characters should also utilize Quicksilver Flasks to reposition quickly when glyphs trigger timed gates.
Puzzle Mechanics and Glyph Chamber Navigation

Each glyph is housed in a different chamber behind a sealed door that must be opened by solving simple environmental puzzles. These puzzles vary between playthroughs due to procedural elements but typically involve:

    Activating pressure plates in the correct sequence

    Redirecting beams of light using rotating mirrors

    Surviving a timed enemy gauntlet without dying

Once all three glyphs are secured, you return to the central temple gate to unlock the final chamber—where a mini-boss named Sand-Echo the Eternal awaits.

Boss Fight: Sand-Echo the Eternal

This boss blends physical burst damage with sand-based arena control. He’ll conjure sandstorms that obscure vision and deal stacking chaos damage if you stand still.

Melee strategy: Stick close, use stuns and interrupts, and cleanse bleed or poison effects using crafted flasks.

Ranged strategy: Keep mobile, shoot between sandstorm phases, and use ledges or pillars for cover. Blink Arrow or Flame Dash can reposition you instantly when cornered.

Rewards and Progression

After defeating Sand-Echo, you’ll receive:

    One guaranteed rare item, often with modifiers tied to intelligence or trap builds.

    A currency chest with Orbs of Transmutation, Orbs of Chance, and sometimes a Vaal Orb.

    A passive skill book granting one skill point—an invaluable bonus for any early build.

In addition, completing this quest unlocks a shortcut to Act 1’s Temple Passage, reducing backtracking and opening access to the next region’s vendor and crafting station.

Conclusion: The Value of Exploration

“Secrets Beneath the Sands” exemplifies what makes Path of Exile 2 shine in its early hours—meaningful exploration, rewarding risk, and layered design. Whether you’re playing a relentless melee brawler or a precision-focused ranged specialist, this quest sharpens your awareness, gear decisions, and combat skill.

As the sands shift and the ruins collapse behind you, you’ll emerge from the temple not only richer in gear and currency—but stronger in preparation for POE 2 Divine Orbs for sale the trials that await deeper into Wraeclast.