Mektul the Forgemaster is one of Path of Exile 2’s many optional bosses. However, they’re incredibly important, as they unlock one of the important crafting features. While in Act 3, Oswald will give you a quest, Treasures of Utzaal. You’ll need to navigate the Drowned City until you find the opening to the Molten Vault. After exploring all the twists and turns, eventually, you’ll find a lift that takes you down to meet Mektul, the Forgemaster face to face.
This fight is very much a race against time because the flow of molten gold is constantly heading your way — slowly, but moving nonetheless. The faster you DPS this boss down, the safer you’re going to be. If you’re stuck on Mektul the Forgemaster in Path of Exile 2, we’re here to get you through it.
How to beat Mektul the Forgemaster in Path of Exile 2
Mektul the Forgemaster is one of the more interesting optional fights in Path of Exile 2. It’s a race against time, for sure — if the molten gold fills the hallway completely, you’ll constantly take heavy fire damage until you die.
There’s really no stopping it. That means you need to come in at a high level, with the best DPS gear you have. I did it on a Minion witch build, but I could see other classes doing quite well.
This optional boss is Empowered by Molten Gold, making him much stronger. For those without high burst DPS, it's important to purge this buff to deal any meaningful damage. There's no artificial means to dispel the buff, though. Instead, if you pull him away far enough from the molten liquid, the buff expires after a point.
As you get him down to 66% Life (and again at 33%), Metkul will retreat back into the lava to recuperate and get his buff back. You of course don't want to chase him into it. It's meant to be a health-gating mechanic to prolong the fight and force you to deal with the boss mechanics if your DPS is not high enough.
One of his common attacks is that he’ll do a long cone of spikes and molten gold in a pretty wide path. Around the 50-60% health mark, you’ll have to start dealing with rolling waves of molten gold. These roll down pretty much non-stop, so keep dodging, and attacking when you can. This makes the fight far more annoying for melee fighters, in my estimation.
Mektul the Forgemaster can also do a leaping smash AOE in Path of Exile 2, which has a radius that’s hard to see due to all the moving molten gold. However, when you get to around the 40% mark, those lava waves thankfully stop.
This boss walks slowly, so during this part, he may spend very long periods in the molten gold, which slows down minion builds — unless you have quick reviving minions. They will just keep fighting and dying over and over again.
At this point, he didn’t even fight. He just kept slowly walking down with the lava, making the whole fight a race against time. Thankfully, he doesn’t have a lot of varied attacks — just the one or two attacks. You have to really push him around and hit him as hard as possible. Frost Sorceress builds can do very well, due to this boss’s weakness to Cold.
Fire builds can still overcome this boss if you use the Flammability curse to lower its Fire Resistance. Once you’ve slain it, take the hammer back to the Ziggurat Encampment, and you’ll complete the quest with Oswald.
Check out our other Path of Exile 2 guides and features:
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