Right now a lot of PoE 2 players are quietly dropping their old leveling routes and living inside the Temple, because the experience there is just that good when you stack room upgrades and effectiveness, especially once you've already sorted your PoE 2 Currency and gear. It did not happen overnight. GGG kept nudging the numbers patch after patch, and at some point the Temple stopped being "that side thing you run for loot" and started feeling like a proper endgame zone built around raw XP per hour. If you have not checked it since the recent buffs, the jump in monster power and rewards is pretty shocking.

Effectiveness And Room Choices

The core of it is that effectiveness stat tied to how you shape the Temple. Every time you upgrade a room, you are not just tweaking drops, you are cranking up enemy level, damage and life in a way you can feel. That makes your layout decisions way more interesting than just "can I reach the boss". Players now look at rooms they used to skip and think about how much effectiveness they can squeeze out of them, because that number basically turns into a straight XP multiplier. You start plotting routes where you chain as many high-impact rooms as possible, even if the layout is a bit awkward.

Medallions And Risk Stacking

Medallions push the whole thing further. They throw random mods on the Temple, but the real value is how much extra effectiveness they add when you hit the right combinations. A good medallion on top of maxed rooms can make the monsters feel way beyond normal league content, easily past what you would expect from regular maps at the same stage. It is risky though. One bad roll and you are dealing with brutal damage spikes or nasty on-death effects everywhere, so people start treating them almost like invitations to a hardcore training ground instead of casual side content.

How The Fights Actually Feel

Once you step into a fully juiced Temple, the tone changes fast. Screens fill with lightning and overlapping spell effects, and even the so-called trash like Experimental Primates stops being trivial. You are constantly dealing with "Royal" and "Experimental" versions of mobs, so there is almost no downtime. Bosses such as Tezoloc, Thaumaturge or Quenalo, the Royal Blood Priest now have real health pools and mechanics you cannot just brute-force unless your build is seriously overgeared. A lot of players talk about getting caught off guard by a random rare pack while they are still focused on the boss arena.

Why It Became The Go-To XP Farm

The reason people keep going back is simple: that effectiveness number turns all this danger into massive experience gains, and it lines up perfectly with the usual Path of Exile "risk for reward" mindset. If your build can survive the chaos, you watch your levels fly by in a way normal mapping just cannot match right now. Instead of only worrying about a clean path to the final encounter, you start planning around which rooms will juice your effectiveness the most, how hard you can push medallions, and how much your character can realistically tank. For players willing to invest time, gear and even some external help like poe2 buy gold, the Temple has quietly become one of the most efficient and engaging ways to level in the current game.