In Act 2 in Path of Exile, Deal with the Bandits is one of the main quests. A bandit lord hires you as a mercenary. Your mission is to steal precious amulets from the other bandit lords. All the bandit lords, Oak, Alira, and Kraityn, are competing to use your superior fighting skills to help them rob the others.
On completing the Deal with The Bandits Quest, you are rewarded with an increase in stats bonus that stays with you for the rest of the game. You also win an essential item in the quest that lets you set free the Vaul Oversoul when the act ends. For an easier grind, players can buy PoE Currency.
An interesting option provided in the quest is that you can also choose to ally with the scholar Eramir and shun all the Bandit Lords. We will have a look toward the end of this guide at the implications of making this choice.
It can be tough to judge which Bandit Lord will be the best to side with. PoE is a continuously evolving game, and you may not know which reward in the quest will be best for your passive tree.
We here bring for you the PoE Deal with The Bandits Guide to help you choose the best option.
Let’s break down the rewards you stand to gain by helping the various Bandit Lords.
What do you gain by siding with Oak?
If you choose to help Oak, you will gain a massive strength bonus. This can be helpful for those who are looking to go for a tank build or are generally trying to become stronger.
The other benefit of helping Oak is a significant increase in your physical damage stat. This can be helpful for those looking to carry in the late-game
When you align with Oak, you have to kill Alira and Kraityn. Siding with Alira, though, gives a huge boost to elemental resistances. For most players, the small reduction in damage and the small increase in life regen that helping Oak brings is just not enough to offset the huge increase in elemental resistances that helping Alira provides.
Consequently, many players avoid committing their allegiance to Oak.
Summary of the stats rewarded by siding with Oak:
- Life Regeneration Per Second at the rate of 1% of Total Life
- Reduction in Physical Damage by a further 2%
- Increase in Physical Damage by 20%
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What do you gain by siding with Alira?
Allying with Alira is arguably the best choice to make in PoE Deal with the Bandits. If you complete the conquest successfully as Alira’s hired assassin and kill both Oak and Kraityn, you get the huge reward of the Pyramid Apex and the bonus that comes along with it.
The reward from helping Alira gives a massive boost to elemental resistance. This is a powerful stats bonus that is critical in the late game when Kitava would be slashing off your elemental resistances as you enter into Act 6. With Alira’s reward increasing your elemental resistances, you would not need to spend on sextant mods or deal with costly map resistance penalties in the later stages of the game.
In our mind, you gain the Point of Exile deal with the bandits’ best reward by aligning with Alira.
Summary of the stats gained by helping Alira:
- 5 Mana Regenerated every second
- 20% Multiplier to Global Critical Strike
- 15% Boost to Elemental Resistances
What do you gain by siding with Kraityn?
Siding with Kraityn is beneficial if you are playing as a character who is a heavy caster. The rewards from siding with Kraityn are perfect for agility builds. You could be a witch, scion, ranger, or templar – it does not matter. Helping Kraityn will reward you with multiple speed bonuses. All of these will come in handy for agile caster builds by providing vital movement and attack speed increases.
For example, Rangers have low values of physical damage and defense. Therefore, they need to be swift and fast in their movement and attacks to balance out these weaknesses. The reward gained by helping Kraityn will make sure that Rangers can do this successfully.
Summary of stats gained by helping Kraityn:
- 6% Increase in Attack Speed as well as Cast Speed
- 3% Chance to Evade Attacks
- 6% Increase in Movement Speed
What do you gain if you shut all the Bandit Lords and ally with Alira?
If you cannot decide which reward from siding with one of the bandits will help your build, or if you are going for a general build, you should choose to help Alira. This is a safe bet and lets you have an all-around improvement in your build without committing to any particular capability.
If you kill all the Bandit Lords in helping Eramir, you are rewarded with an additional two passive skill points. This reward lets you choose which stats to increase later in the game. This way, you keep your options open. We recommend this strategy for new players who are not playing by following a build guide.
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You have the option to change your reward!
A good thing about the PoE deal with the bandits quest is that you can hedge your bets by trading your earlier reward for a new one at a later point in the game.
As we mentioned at the start of this guide, it is difficult to judge which reward will be suitable for your build accurately. Hence, the option to change the reward is very useful.
You can get a new reward by undoing the reward selection that you made earlier. This will remove your original reward. You can then get a different reward of your choice by spending 20 Orbs of Regret and the corresponding new amulet.
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Verdict – Which is the Path of Exile Deal with the Bandits Best Reward?
As with all things in strategy games, the theoretically correct answer is – it depends on you, what strategy you want to play and how you approach the game.
However, the practical answer for all purposes has to be the reward from siding with Alira. Increased elemental resistances and boosted critical strikes are going to be helpful in almost all build-types and roles, especially at the later stages of the game. If you ask us, our money is put on Alira in the PoE Deal with the Bandits Quest.
