The Headhunter is a valuable heavy belt in usefulness for meta builds.

The Headhunter is one of those. It's an incredibly powerful piece of endgame gear, not only because of its numerical bonuses, but also because of the unique mechanic it introduces to your gameplay. It's become a very popular item for players to seek out, and if you've been playing Path of Exile 2 for a little while, you've probably already heard of it. But how do you get it, and what actually makes it so good?

Why Is Headhunter Good?

Headhunter's Stats

Headhunter is a recurring item from PoE 1, and though it's been slightly nerfed between games, it's still an incredibly powerful piece of endgame gear. It gives you three somewhat randomized bonuses: anywhere from 40-60 additional points of maximum life, 20-40 to strength, and another 20-40 to dexterity. Perhaps more importantly, though, whenever you kill a rare monster with Headhunter equipped, you gain that monster's modifiers for a period of 20 seconds.

Headhunter also gives you anywhere from a 20-30% increase to your Sun Threshold, and has one charm slot. It requires level 50 to equip.

This can lead to a wide variety of buffs: rare monster modifiers can do just about anything, so it's less about seeking specific modifiers to excellent for endgame builds - few items are better when it comes to mapping.

Best Way To Get Headhunter

Random Drops

Unfortunately, like most loot in Path of Exile 2, the Headhunter is a totally random drop. I can't point you towards a particular enemy that provides it, or a particular merchant to buy it from: I haven't even gotten my hands on one yet. One day, it'll just appear randomly after you kill a boss, and you may not even know what you have until you look it up.

However, there are a couple of things you can do to increase your chances of finding Headhunter. It most commonly spawns in the late game on Cruel difficulty, and will almost never drop from enemies of less than its required level of 50.

Orb Of Chance

As an alternative, you can try your luck at getting Headhunter with Orbs of Chance. These items can be used to upgrade more mundane gear into rarer items of random types, so there's never any guarantee that you'll get Headhunter by using an Orb of Chance on a Heavy Belt. However, by farming Orbs of Chance, you can increase the probability.

If you have any duplicate or less useful unique items, you can deconstruct them to gain Chance Shards, which you can then craft into Orbs. Otherwise, though, you'll have to complete maps for a shot at gaining Orbs of Chance. Ultimately, there's no one obvious way to farm for these rare materials; I'd recommend just completing as many high-level maps as you can to get your numbers up.

Getting Headhunter Through Ultimatum

There may also be a higher likelihood of rare drops, like Headhunter, from completing Trials of Chaos. These high-level dungeons require you to use Inscribed Ultimatums to unlock them, and can be incredibly difficult, featuring multi-stage gauntlets for increasingly rare prizes.

However, loot you get from the Trials of Chaos is often corrupted. Corrupted loot typically has unusual modifiers that can completely change the nature of an item: they can be both beneficial and detrimental. Equipment can never be uncorrupted, so you're stuck with what you get. This is a high-risk, high-reward method of finding Headhunter, but it can work.

Trade Marketplace

Finally, if all else fails, you can buy Headhunter from the official Path of Exile 2 trade marketplace. At the time of writing, they're going for anywhere from 2-1,000 Divine Orbs, 500-1,000 Exalted Orbs, or one Mirror of Kalandra, so your mileage may vary. With a little searching, you may be able to find something in your price range.

Getting the Headhunter may not be easy, but with the variety of benefits it offers, it may be worth it. An item like this one can completely change your Path of Exile 2 playthrough, so it's at least worth a shot.

Source: Path of Exile Trade