Bone Warp Blood Mage Endgame Build

Introduction

If the dark fantasy of playing a spellcaster while destroying your enemies from the inside is your thing, or if you want to play one of the fastest map clearing builds in the game, then this is the build for you.

This build utilizes the Unique Staff The Unborn Lich‘s exclusive skill, His Vile Intrusion, to teleport around and instantly Cull all enemies except for Bosses and tanky Rare Monsters. On Bosses you might actually get to see their mechanics on lower budget.

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Strengths and Weaknesses

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Ascendancy

Allocate the Ascendancy nodes for Blood Mage in the following order:

1. Sanguimancy — This node is free and mandatory to take. Your spells will now cost Life and Mana, but you can Double your Life by killing and hitting your enemies through Life Remnants this node provides.
2. Whispers of the Flesh — Allows you to Cull enemies way easier because their Life will immediately go down to 85% when they are anywhere on your screen and you want to play Blasphemy in this build anyway.
3. Vitality Siphon — Just helps sustain your single target Life costs and give you some free recovery while map clearing.
4. Grasping Wounds — Provides significant defense by delaying 25% of the damage you take. You can recover the delayed damage easily through Life Remnants.
5. Crimson Power — With a decent Energy Shield Body Armour this gives you around 1k extra Life ( 2k because of Life Remnants )

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Passive Skill Tree

Below is the Passive Tree you should follow for this build, keep in mind it’s playable when you can equip the mandatory Unique Items which is at minimum level 65 but realistically it’s going to feel the best after level 78.

Fulfill all attribute requirements your gems/gear might require and all other attribute points should go into Strength for more Life.

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Skill Gems

Below are all Skill Gems you should use in this build. Gems are listed in order of importance, including Support Gems – Gems on the top are the most important, and Support Gems on the left are the most important.

If you for some reason cannot get Atalui’s Bloodletting use Lifetap instead. You will lose damage but atleast you don’t care about Mana costs.

Bonestorm is there only because you can very rarely get into situations where you need to deal damage off-screen or you cannot afford Life costs.

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Build Mechanics

Cull Threshold

This build’s main mechanic is stacking increased Culling Strike Threshold on both gear and passives to reach a point where Normal and Magic monsters can be Culled from Full Life. Among other things this lets us ignore any mods on these monsters – doesn’t matter whether they have increased Life or damage reduction, they just die instantly.

To instantly cull Normal mobs you require exactly 143% increased Culling Strike Threshold and for Magic mobs it is 325% increased Culling Strike Threshold. Keep in mind that these numbers are Blood Mage specific because of the Whispers of the Flesh ascendancy node. To reach these numbers you use the following:

• Myris Uxor – 100% increased Culling Strike Threshold, can be corrupted for up to 121%.
• Horror’s Flight – Up to 200% Increased Culling Strike Threshold, you have to stack it first though which is why you can’t play only these gloves. I suggest getting 143% without these gloves.
• Heart of the Well – Unique Jewel that drops from Abyss Rogue Exiles, can give you 15-25% Increased Culling Strike Threshold.
• Instilling your Amulet (or other pieces of gear) with Bounty Hunter (25%, Despair/Suffering/Guilt) and/or Hunting Companion (20%, Guilt/Envy/Ire)

Auto Impale

The defining feature of His Vile Intrusion is it’s high Impale Magnitude so this build leans into this mechanic for some extra damage. Normally you need Attacks to proc Impale on enemies but this build utilizes Repulsion curse which counts as an Attack. This means that when we Hit enemies with any skill the curse activates and automatically procs the Impale.

Bone Shrapnel

Build utilizes Bone Shrapnel support in His Vile Intrusion to make enemies explode for a lot of damage if they die while Pinned. Since Repulsion has high Stun Buildup by default we use Pin II support to convert it into Pin Buildup. This means we automatically Pin enemies and almost every kill will trigger an explosion.

Flask Refill

You can refill your Flask Charges by pressing Feast of Flesh near corpses because of Gorge support. You rarely use this, but it is very good to know this interaction.

Weapon Swap for Single Target Damage

To solve The Unborn Lich‘s low single-target damage, this build utilizes Weapon Swap. All you have to do is to get a decent Rare Staff, put it into Weapon Set 2, and set Bone Cage/Bonestorm to only be used by Weapon Set 2.

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Rotation

Vast majority of your gameplay is clicking or holding His Vile Intrusion with occasional Bone Cage for tanky Rare or Unique Monsters. There is no actual rotation, 1 button for map clear, 1 button for single target damage.

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Gear

In the table below, you will see a breakdown of the most important affixes for each gear slot, as well as what Unique Items the build uses. The affixes are listed in order of priority, so consider your gearing options carefully.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Make sure that you are capped at 75% Elemental Resistances and meet all Attribute Requirements when you are changing gear pieces.

Slot	Base	Prefix	Suffix
Weapon Set 1	The Unborn Lich	1. % increased Magnitude of Unholy Might buffs you grant OR 1. % increased Spell Physical Damage 2. % increased Spell Damage per 100 Maximum Life	1. +% to Block chance
Weapon Set 2	Rare Staff	1. % increased Spell Damage per 100 Maximum Life OR 1. % increased Spell Damage with Spells that cost Life 2. Any % Spell Damage 3. % of Damage as Extra	1. +# to Level of all Physical Spell Skills 2. % increased Cast Speed 3. % increased Critical Hit Chance for Spells
Helmet	Myris Uxor	/	1. (100-121)% increased Culling Strike Threshold ( Can go over 100% with Vaal Orb )
Body Armour	Energy Shield	1. % Increased Energy Shield 2. +# Energy Shield 3. to maximum Energy Shield | #% increased Energy Shield OR 3. % increased Energy Shield | # to maximum Life	1. Resistances/Attributes
Gloves	Horror’s Flight	/	1. 20+ to Dexterity preferred
Boots	Energy Shield Runeforged	1. % Movement Speed 2. +# Maximum Life	1. Resistances/Attributes
Belt	Rare Belt (Utility Belt)	1. +# Maximum Life	1. Resistances/Attributes
Rings	Rare Vitalic Ring OR Rare Ring	1. +# Maximum Life 2. % increased Spell Damage	1. Resistances/Attributes 2. % increased Magnitude of Impales inflicted with Spells 3. % increased Cast Speed
Amulet	Rare Amulet	1. +# Maximum Life 2. % increased maximum Life	1. +# to Level of all Spell Skills 2. Resistances/Attributes

Augments (sockets)

This table will show you what Augments are used for each gear slot. Listed in order of priority.

Slot	Socketable
The Unborn Lich	1. Fenumus’ Rune of Agony 2. Perfect Vision Rune
Weapon on Set 2	1. Hedgewitch Assandra’s Rune of Wisdom 2. Perfect Iron Rune 3. Perfect Vision Rune
Helmet	1. Idol of Eeshta 2. Idol of Egrin
Body Armour	1. Soul Core of Ticaba 2. Soul Core of Jiquani 3. Perfect Body Rune
Gloves	1. Tecrod’s Gaze 2. Fenumus’ Rune of Spinning
Boots	1. Farrul’s Rune of the Chase 2. Perfect Body Rune

Instilling

In the table below you can see some instills worth mentioning. They are divided by their purpose and ordered by priority.

Increased Culling Strike Threshold	Damage	Defense
Bounty Hunter	Barbaric Strength	Battle-Hardened
Hunting Companion	Material Solidification	Warding Fetish
	Dangerous Blossom	Mental Perseverance
	Vulgar Methods

Jewels

There are three practically mandatory Unique Jewels that are hard to replace:

• Heart of the Well – Need one with % increased Culling Strike Threshold but if you can get 343% from other sources this Jewel can be replaced with a Rare Jewel described below.
• Prism of Belief – Get one with +# to Level of All Bone Cage Skills
• Undying Hate – the Amanamu version with Sacrifice of the Flesh Keystone. Put this into the socket near Resonance on the Passive Tree. Offers greatly increased defense for minimal investment.

Besides the three Jewels mentioned above, you should get one Rare Jewel with these affixes:

• Prefixes
  • % increased Spell Damage
  • +1 Suffix Modifier allowed ( obtainable from Potent Liquid Contempt )
• Suffixes ( Any of these three )
  • % increased Critical Damage Bonus
  • % increased Critical Damage Bonus for Spells
  • % increased Critical Hit Chance
  • % increased Critical Hit Chance for Spells

More Jewels worth mentioning are Megalomaniac ( see Instilling for Notables ) and a Time-Lost Sapphire/Diamond. The mods for the Time-Lost Jewel are identical to the normal Rare Jewel mentioned above with one exception – instead of “+1 Suffix Modifier allowed” you want “Upgrades Radius to Very Large”. The reason I only mention these options is that these are very high budget Jewels that are almost unobtainable and are not necessary.

Flasks and Charms

Modifiers to look for on your flasks and charms:

• Health and Mana Flasks
  • Prefix: #% increased Recovery rate | #% of Recovery applied Instantly
  • Suffix: # Charges gained per second
• Charms – Thawing, Stone, Antidote:
  • Prefix: Also grants # Guard
  • Suffix: % reduced Charges per use

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Campaign Buffs

Throughout the campaign, you will encounter several opportunities to gain permanent buffs for your character by completing side-quests or some “hidden” areas or bosses and in some of them, you have a choice. Keep in mind that your endgame builds might require to choose differently but these are my generic recommendations for those:

• Valley of the Titans Altar (Act 2)
  • 30% Increased Charm Duration.
• Venom Draught (Act 3) cannot be changed
  • +30% increased Elemental Ailment Threshold.
• Eye of Hinekora (Act 4)
  • 5% to each Elemental Resistance
• Solitary Confinement (Act 4)
  • 30% increased Life Recovery from Flasks.
• Tribal Medicine/Shark Fin (Act 4) cannot be changed
  • 30% increased Global Armour, Evasion, and Energy Shield
• Qimah Pillars (Interlude 2)
  • +5 to all Attributes.

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Changelog

• June 21th, 2026: Guide created for Path of Exile 2 Early Access (Patch 0.5)