Unlocking Headhunter in Path of Exile 2: A Guide

The Headhunter is a highly coveted heavy belt in Path of Exile 2, making it one of the top collectibles that can significantly enhance your gameplay experience. Like its predecessor, Path of Exile 2 revolves around acquiring loot. Finding, collecting, equipping, and selling items are your main strategies for empowering your character and advancing in the game. While you can certainly progress by skillfully using whatever gear you find and upgrading it as necessary, certain items gain popularity among players due to their unique bonuses or effectiveness in optimal builds.

The Headhunter is one of these prized items. This belt is an exceptionally powerful piece of endgame equipment, not only because of its numerical enhancements but also due to a distinctive mechanic that alters your gameplay. It has quickly become a favorite among players, and if you’ve spent some time in Path of Exile 2, you’ve likely encountered it. But how can you acquire it, and what makes it so desirable?

What Makes Headhunter Valuable?

Stats of Headhunter

The Headhunter makes a return from PoE 1, and although it has been slightly toned down for this iteration, it’s still a formidable piece of endgame gear. It provides three somewhat randomized bonuses: an increase of 40-60 in maximum life, a boost of 20-40 in strength, and an additional 20-40 in dexterity. More importantly, when you slay a rare monster while wearing the Headhunter, you temporarily gain that monster’s modifiers for 20 seconds.

This allows for a wide range of buffs: rare monster modifiers can vary greatly, making it less about targeting specific bonuses to enhance your PoE 2 build and more about maximizing the advantages you can utilize on the go. The Headhunter Heavy Belt encourages a dynamic and unpredictable gameplay style, where you continually acquire new modifiers and aim to leverage them effectively before they fade away. It’s a prime choice for endgame builds, especially successful when it comes to mapping.

How to Obtain Headhunter

Random Drops

Regrettably, like most loot in Path of Exile 2, the Headhunter is acquired through random drops. There isn’t a specific enemy or merchant that will provide it; even I haven’t yet managed to find one myself. Eventually, it may drop unexpectedly after defeating a boss, and you might not even realize its significance until you look it up.

However, there are a few strategies you can employ to enhance your chances of snagging the Headhunter. It typically drops during the late game on Cruel difficulty and is unlikely to come from enemies that are below level 50.

Using Orbs of Chance

As an alternative approach, you can try to obtain the Headhunter via Orbs of Chance. These items allow you to upgrade common gear into rarer items of various types, meaning there’s no surety you’ll get a Headhunter by using an Orb of Chance on a Heavy Belt. However, collecting Orbs of Chance can improve your odds.

If you possess duplicate or less useful unique items, you might consider breaking them down to acquire Chance Shards, which can be transformed into Orbs. Otherwise, the most reliable method for acquiring Orbs of Chance is by completing maps. Ultimately, there’s no single clear-cut way to collect these rare materials; focusing on finishing as many high-level maps as you can will boost your odds.

Acquiring Headhunter Through Ultimatums

Additionally, you may have a better chance of finding rare drops like the Headhunter by completing Trials of Chaos. These high-level dungeons require Inscribed Ultimatums to access and can be quite challenging, often featuring multi-stage gauntlets for increasingly valuable rewards.

However, the loot obtained from Trials of Chaos is frequently corrupted. Corrupted items come with unpredictable modifiers that can alter their effectiveness, making them either advantageous or detrimental. Once an item is corrupted, there’s no going back, and you have to live with the results. It’s a risky but potentially rewarding way to hunt for the Headhunter.

Trade Marketplace

Finally, if you’re unable to find the Headhunter through gameplay, you can purchase it from the official Path of Exile 2 trade marketplace. As of now, prices range from 2 to 1,000 Divine Orbs, 500 to 1,000 Exalted Orbs, or one Mirror of Kalandra, so it could be hit or miss. With careful searching, you might find something that fits your budget.

While obtaining the Headhunter may prove challenging, its multitude of benefits makes it worthwhile. This item can completely transform your Path of Exile 2 experience, so it’s certainly worth the effort.

Source: Path of Exile Trade