Ascent to power act 2 cruel bug

Hi

I can't finish the quest. It shows that I should talk to Zarka. When I approach NPC, nothing happens. There is no dialogue about this quest.

I have the same problem. Please help us

If you are in Cruel, this quest is copied from Act 2 Normal and you can't complete it in Act 5. There is nothing to do in Act 5 and no quest item is supposed to drop from Balbala.

The area and level for the Trial entrance remains the same as it was in Act 2. Your Trial difficulty is determined by the item level of your Barya. Djinn Baryas will also indicate in their description if they will or will not grant further ascendancy points for your current character (based on their item level).

You access the Trials using the same level 22 area from Act 2, but there is now a side button for this area on the World Map to access this area as well.


There have been a couple of changes related to this quest recently.

i) In Act 2 Normal, you now need to open the Halani Gates before you can talk to Zarka to unlock the Trial of the Sekhemas waypoint.
ii) The level requirements for some trials were adjusted (as noted on the Wiki page below).


For further information See:

The wiki page about Ascendancy Trials.
This post about where to get each set of ascendancy points.
This post for a summary.

Some players have a different issue where they cannot start their original quest in Act 2, because they dropped or did not obtain the original Balbala's Barya quest item.

This is an entirely separate issue from the Act 5 quest, which remains misleading. The quest appearing in Act 5 will not affect your progress in the game and does not prevent you starting maps as some threads speculated.

Sometimes people believe that not having this quest completed is preventing them from accessing the endgame, but this is not the case.

You cannot immediately run maps from your hideout on a new character.
Every character's first map must be run from the Ziggurat Refuge, a location available in Act 3 Cruel after finishing the campaign.

There should be a FAQ (as sticky post), where all of these possible issues are listed!

"

Pehr#3739 wrote:

Some players have a different issue where they cannot start their original quest in Act 2, because they dropped or did not obtain the original Balbala's Barya quest item.

This is an entirely separate issue from the Act 5 quest, which remains misleading. The quest appearing in Act 5 will not affect your progress in the game and does not prevent you starting maps as some threads speculated.

I think I dropped the quest item or I didn't get it. That's why I'm having trouble progressing the game. What should I do about this?

Did you actually fight and defeat Balbala (who drops the quest item), or did your quest start when you randomly dropped a (non-quest) Djinn Barya at some other time?

If you never fought Balbala, you probably still can in Act 2 Traitor's Passage.

If you discarded the quest item, I'm not sure if you have a fix. You could try having someone invite you to the trial, but that probably won't work due to your quest state. I vaguely recall someone suggesting discarding any Djinn Barya you have and then repeating the Balbala fight in Act 2, but I have no idea if there is any benefit to that as I haven't had this specific problem (you could try storing them on another character out of your stash; it doesn't seem likely that having them in your stash or not would affect this, the way that POE loads stash data).


Also, remember that you need to open the Halani Gates now before you can talk to Zarka and progress the Ascent to Power quest in Act 2. This was a new step added in Dawn of the Hunt (0.2.0). After this you would need to use the Desert Map to travel to the Trial area and unlock the waypoint.