Early in Act 3 of Path of Exile 2, you’ll have to venture into Jiquani’s Machinarium to find a soul core. When you find it, naturally, it’ll be alongside a boss fight, Zicoatl Warden of the Core to be exact. Zicoatl can be a difficult battle if you’re not sure of its attacks. Fortunately, we have you covered! Read on to find out how to defeat Zicoatl of Jiquani’s Machinarium.

Table of Contents¶

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Zicoatl Location¶

Zicoatl can be found in Jiquani’s Sanctum, which is deep within Jiquani’s Machinarium. To reach it, you’ll need to find small and medium soul cores to open stone altars and power generators. Due to the random nature of the game, you can find the soul cores anywhere. However, if you pay attention to the sounds, you’ll hear the soul core “drop” nearby.

Take a look at the mini-map, and you’ll notice a small green ! on it, which depicts where a soul core is. In the Sanctum, you’ll need to find two medium soul cores to power up two generators to reach Zicoatl. Once again, these can be found anywhere, so pay attention to the sound and keep an eye on the mini-map.

Zicoatl Boss Attacks¶

When you go to grab the large soul core, it will be attached to a giant construct known as Zicoatl. Although it looks difficult, knowing its attacks beforehand will help you tremendously. Let’s take a look at Zicoatl’s move set.

Arm Stab¶

Starting with the generic attacks, Zicoatl will stab at your location with three of his arms on one side. It will briefly pull back the arms on one side of the body before the attack occurs.

A simple roll to the side will circumvent this. You can generally get one to two melee attacks off before he’ll attack you again with it, so hit it once or twice, roll, rinse, and repeat.

All Arms Stab¶

This is the same as the previous attack, and the way to avoid it is the same. The only difference is that it will deal more damage to you should it hit you.

Lightning Beams¶

Zicoatl will use all its arms to unleash beams on either side of it and fire them off in front. This is a perfect opportunity to get behind the construct to not only avoid the attack but to get several hits of your own as it will be stationary during the attack.

Lightning Orb¶

This is a simple projectile attack that will travel across the room. Simply stay out of its path to avoid it.

Electric Line¶

Zicoatl will occasionally place a small line in the arena that will deal damage and slow you down briefly if you go through it. This is less of a damage attack and more of an attack to restrict movement. Fortunately, this is easy enough to get around it, just make sure you don’t go through it.

Tri-Beam¶

If you see Zicoatl crouch, it’ll fire off three beams in a wide arc in front of itself. First, you’ll see two beams, one in the center, and one on one of the sides next to it.

The final beam will appear on the opposite side a second later. Once again, get to the side or back, and attack it while it’s performing the attack.

Cross Beam¶

Sometimes, Zicoatl will lean forward, crossing its arms. When you see this, Zicoatl will unleash beams from each arm that cross each other as the attack moves forward. If you’re close to the boss, get behind it to avoid the attack. If you’re at a distance, stand in the middle, and the beams will miss you.

Bouncing Rays¶

Arguably one of the most difficult attacks to avoid from Zicoatl is Bouncing Rays. It will immediately face a wall to the side of the room and hurl numerous rays at it.

This will display faint white/blue lines all across the arena where the rays will appear. Make sure you’re not standing on the line when the attack appears a second later.

Tri-Wave¶

The other difficult attack to avoid is Tri-Wave. Zicoatl will place a large red triangle on the floor before waves of energy come out from each side of it. Because it’s a triangle, the waves will come from three sides. To avoid the attack, stand at a distance from the triangle at the corner of the shape.

Strategy¶

Like most bosses in Path of Exile 2, you’ll want to attack it from behind as most of its attacks will be either at the side, or in front of the boss, but be careful of Cross-Beam as that does start just behind the boss before it goes forward.

The beginning of the battle will be predominantly melee attacks with the odd Lightning Beam attack thrown in. When the boss gets to around approximately 60%, it’ll begin to throw in the rest of its attacks, especially Bouncing Rays.

When Zicoatl gets to 30% or so, it’ll start using Triangular Wave, which can be difficult to avoid, so make sure you’re healed up to full at this point. If you have ranged attacks, we recommend attacking the boss from mid-to-far range at this stage, so you can be ready to avoid the attack.

Final note, most of Zicoatl’s attacks are lightning-based, so we recommend you to use another element to damage it. You can still damage the boss with lightning, but it’ll die quicker using another element.

That’s it for the boss, once Zicoatl is defeated, pick up the large soul core from its corpse, and exit the dungeon, and return to the Infested Barrens, where you’ll place the soul core.