Path of Exile 2’s 2,000-Skeleton Party Turned a Hideout Into a Lag Trap
Six players pushed their minion builds past the game's limits before baiting other players and trade bots into the resulting skeleton-filled hideout.
Most Path of Exile 2 players eventually step away from a league when the grind loses its appeal. Empyriangaming took a different route, spending an enormous amount of in-game currency on gear designed to summon as many skeletons as possible.
A normal minion build usually keeps around 10 to 15 skeletons active. Empyriangaming’s group worked out how to reduce the cost of each minion to single digits while stacking as much of the required resource as possible. The plan ran into one hard limit, though. The game removes minions once a player reaches 255 of a single type and resets the count.
That forced the group to bring in friends. Each of the six players prepared a separate build, allowing their armies to exist at the same time. The first test already pushed the game to its limits, with 255 Skeletal Priests causing the action RPG to slow down to a crawl.
Inputs took several seconds to register, and the skeletons appeared to move in bursts as the server caught up. The group still wanted to see how far the stunt could go, so they entered the roguelike Trial of the Sekhemas mode.
That mode includes a bonus that nearly doubles the number of minions each player can summon. With all six players using it, the group reached roughly 2,000 skeletons. The result was less like a playable dungeon run and more like a slideshow. A dodge roll could take about a minute to appear on screen, while moving a few feet in a map took several minutes.
The group also tried taking the army into a normal map to fight a boss. That test went about as well as expected. Finding the boss was difficult when the game could barely process movement, and attacking it was even harder.
For the final experiment, Empyriangaming brought everyone back to a hideout. The players began summoning skeletons while he listed a highly valuable item for an absurdly low price on the game’s trade website. Automated accounts and players looking for a bargain soon started arriving, only to find a room packed with hundreds of skeletons.
Some visitors left almost immediately. One player simply typed, “Wtf is this,” after entering the hideout, while another eventually grabbed the cheap item and escaped. The stunt showed that Path of Exile 2 can handle a remarkable number of minions right up until it very much cannot.
Empyriangaming documented the experiment in a video titled We summoned more minions than the game could handle!.
Path of Exile 2’s minion systems have produced plenty of unusual builds, but this one turned a group activity into a test of how much lag six players could create. Share your thoughts in the comments, and follow us on X, Bluesky, YouTube, and Instagram.
Path of Exile 2
Developed by Grinding Gear Games
Path of Exile 2 is a next generation Action RPG created by Grinding Gear Games. Set years after the original Path of Exile, you will return to the dark world of Wraeclast and seek to end the corruption that is spreading. Path of Exile 2 is a free-to-play online multiplayer game with co-op for up to six players.
- Genre: Role-playing (RPG), Hack and slash/Beat 'em up, Adventure
- Platforms: Xbox Series X|S, PC (Microsoft Windows), PlayStation 5, Mac
- Modes: Single player, Multiplayer, Co-operative, Massively Multiplayer Online (MMO)
- Release: 2024-12-06
- Publisher: Grinding Gear Games, Kakao Games
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Age Rating:
GRAC 19+ / PEGI 18 / ESRB M
- IGDB Rating: 82.1/100
