Summary:
What happens when you ignore efficiency and instead focus on summoning the highest number of minions possible in Path of Exile 2? This incredible endgame experiment spent over 400,000 Divine Orbs to create an army of more than 3,000 minions, revealing surprising mechanics, insane Spirit scaling, POE2 Currency, and even testing the limits of the game's engine.
Step 1: The Goal – Build the Largest Minion Army in POE2
Most Path of Exile 2 builds are designed around clearing maps faster or defeating pinnacle bosses. This project had a completely different objective:
Summon as many minions as the game allows.
Instead of chasing maximum DPS, the team focused entirely on increasing the total number of active summons. The chosen minion was the Skeletal Cleric, mainly because it has one of the lowest Spirit reservation costs among summon skills.
The strategy was simple:
Reduce the Spirit cost of Skeletal Clerics as much as possible.
Increase total Spirit to absurd levels.
Fill every available point of Spirit with additional summons.
While the concept sounds straightforward, executing it required one of the most expensive character setups ever created in POE2.
Step 2: Stack Spirit Reservation Efficiency First
The most important mechanic behind the project was Spirit Reservation Efficiency.
Every summon requires Spirit, so lowering reservation costs allows significantly more minions to exist simultaneously.
The build stacked reservation efficiency from nearly every possible source, including:
Reservation Efficiency modifiers on rare gear
Unique equipment
Passive Tree nodes
Anointments
Timeless Jewels
Jewel modifiers
Special weapon effects
One of the key items was the unique Quarterstaff Matsya, which grants 50% less Spirit Reserved by Skills, making it far stronger than a traditional Scepter for this particular experiment.
Instead of increasing damage, every gear slot was optimized to squeeze out just a little more Spirit efficiency.
Step 3: Convert Massive Life into Even More Spirit
Choosing the Infernalist Ascendancy was another critical decision.
Infernalists possess an Ascendancy node that grants:
+1 Spirit for every 25 Maximum Life
This completely changes how the character scales.
Instead of focusing purely on Spirit gear, the build also invested heavily into:
Maximum Life
Strength
Life modifiers
Strength corruption bonuses
Since Strength naturally increases Life, every point of Strength indirectly generated additional Spirit.
The result was multiple scaling systems working together simultaneously:
Strength → Life
Life → Spirit
Spirit → More Minions
This synergy allowed the character to reach Spirit values far beyond what normal builds can achieve.
Step 4: Use Expensive Endgame Gear to Push Spirit Above 1,800
The equipment itself represented hundreds of hours of crafting.
Some highlights included:
Triple-modified Grip of Kulamac rings
Perfect Over Ingenuity scaling
Triple Grand Spectrum jewels
Four-passive Voices clusters
Legacy of Greymake
Strength-corrupted unique jewels
Spirit-heavy amulets
Reservation Efficiency anointments
High-end Timeless Jewels
The Timeless Jewel alone required countless Divine Orb rerolls to find the perfect combination of Tribute bonuses and Reservation Efficiency.
Overall, the complete gear set was valued at roughly:
400,000 Divine Orbs
Approximately 75 Mirrors
Even then, the creators admitted the build still wasn't perfectly optimized.
Step 5: Reach More Than 1,800 Spirit
Once every piece of equipment was equipped, the Spirit total skyrocketed.
The progression looked something like this:
1,100 Spirit
1,400 Spirit
1,500 Spirit
1,660 Spirit
1,720 Spirit
1,820 Spirit
After socketing a level 31 Skeletal Cleric with 30% quality, each Cleric only reserved 3 Spirit.
Mathematically, that meant the character could theoretically summon over 600 Skeletal Clerics.
Unfortunately, the game had other ideas.
Step 6: Discover POE2's Hidden Minion Limit
While attempting to summon over 600 Clerics, something unexpected happened.
The game refused to go above:
255 Skeletal Clerics
This revealed a hidden internal limit.
Interestingly, that cap only applied per minion type, not total summons.
The team immediately adapted.
After reaching 255 Clerics, they started summoning:
Skeletal Reavers
Skeletal Snipers
This bypassed the restriction entirely.
One character eventually reached:
255 Clerics
176 Reavers
At this point, performance had already begun collapsing.
Step 7: Multiply Everything with a Six-Player Party
One character wasn't enough.
The team created:
Five nearly identical Infernalists
One Spirit Walker companion specialist
Every Infernalist wore almost identical gear, while the sixth character specialized in collecting as many companions as possible.
The Spirit Walker contributed:
Bears
Wolves
Dragons
Tamed beasts
Giant turtles
Crabs
Gorillas
Starfish
Elephants
Mosquitoes
Devourers
The result wasn't simply skeletons anymore—it became an entire zoo marching together.
Step 8: Push Spirit Even Higher Inside the Trial of Sekhemas
The experiment didn't stop outside maps.
Inside the Trial of Sekhemas, relic bonuses dramatically increased Maximum Life.
Because Infernalists convert Life into Spirit, entering the Trial boosted Spirit from roughly:
1,800 Spirit → nearly 2,900 Spirit
Every player suddenly gained roughly another 1,000 Spirit, allowing even more summons than before.
At full capacity, a single player controlled approximately:
250 Clerics
250 Snipers
Over 60 Reavers
For a total of around:
567 active minions
Multiply that across the party and the battlefield contained over 3,000 summoned entities.
Step 9: Watch the Server Fight for Survival
The results were hilarious.
Frame rates dropped dramatically.
Players experienced:
20 FPS
Thousands of milliseconds of latency
4,000–5,000 ping
Delayed dodge rolls
UI freezing
Inventory becoming unusable
Massive rollback
Despite the overwhelming lag, one thing stood out:
The game never crashed.
Considering Path of Exile 2 is still in Early Access, the engine proved surprisingly resilient even under ridiculous conditions.
Step 10: Can 3,000 Minions Actually Kill Bosses?
Eventually, the team stopped stress-testing the engine and actually attacked bosses.
Initially, too many summons caused severe lag, making fights nearly impossible.
After reducing each player's summon count to around 150 Skeletal Snipers, the army finally became manageable.
The results were impressive.
Bosses quickly lost millions of health while being attacked from every direction.
Although some encounters still failed due to overwhelming lag and mechanics, the group successfully defeated map bosses with their enormous skeleton army.
The creators also noted that adding support characters with powerful buffs dramatically increased the minions' damage potential.
Step 11: The Funniest Part Was Breaking the Camera
One unexpected highlight came during a cinematic elevator sequence.
Because thousands of minions loaded simultaneously, the cutscene became completely distorted.
Players witnessed:
Broken camera angles
Delayed animations
Slow-motion cinematics
Skeletons filling every corner of the screen
Massive visual glitches
Rather than ruining the experience, the bugs actually created one of the funniest moments of the entire experiment.
The game looked like a fantasy movie featuring an endless undead army.
Final Thoughts
This incredible Path of Exile 2 project proves just how deep the game's character-building system can be. By combining Spirit Reservation Efficiency, Infernalist Life scaling, Strength stacking, and some of the rarest gear in the game, cheap Path of Exile 2 Currency, the team created one of the largest summon armies ever seen in POE2.
While no practical build needs over 3,000 minions, the experiment showcased the incredible flexibility of POE2's mechanics and highlighted just how far dedicated theorycrafters are willing to go. It also demonstrated that, even under extreme stress, the game's new engine can survive some truly absurd scenarios. For players who enjoy pushing mechanics beyond their intended limits, this minion-maxing adventure stands as one of the most entertaining and ambitious community projects in Path of Exile 2 to date.
