You jump into Path of Exile 2 for "a quick map", and next thing you know you are staring at that weird Temple Console again, wondering why your best rooms keep vanishing while you just wanted to farm and maybe poe2 divine orb buy on the side to keep things rolling. Those red beacons that pop up on the minimap are the start of the whole mess. They look like tiny pyramids, and you need to clear the corrupted packs around six of them to get a single temple charge. The game never tells you this clearly, but saving those charges matters. In endgame mapping you can hold up to ten, so a lot of players just build a full stack during T16 runs, then slam several temples back-to-back instead of stopping every few minutes to chase more crystals.
Present vs past temple
The early acts kind of lie to you about how the system really works. Before Act 4 you are stuck in the "present" version of the temple. Fewer rooms, bad layouts, loot that feels like a waste of time. Once Doryani's time travel opens up, you finally get the "past" temple, and that is where the real decision making starts. When you enter the antechamber you see the grid, and this is where a lot of people mess up. You can not just drop rooms anywhere that has space. That green highlight shows where a room properly belongs. If you ignore it, your layout will fall apart the moment decay starts chewing through the structure.
How decay and the snake layout work
The decay rules are what quietly kill your good setups. You beat a boss, feel great for a second, then notice your favourite loot room just got eaten from the wrong side of the path. That is why people talk about the "Snake" strategy so much. Instead of fat clusters of rooms that all die together, you build one long chain that winds across the grid. You put your best stuff at the head of that path, so Tier 3 Corruption Chambers or key Architect rooms stay safe for as long as possible. Decay always starts from the tail, so you basically sacrifice the cheap rooms first. It feels odd at the start, but once you see a temple survive multiple rounds of decay with the important pieces still intact, it clicks.
Room combos that actually feel good
Room tiers matter, but the real power comes when you line up the right neighbours. Dropping a Garrison wherever it fits is easy, but you get way more value putting it next to a Commander's Chamber. When both hit Tier 3, the pack size boost is obvious. You get more monsters, more chances at decent drops, and more juice for your build. Some rooms focus on crafting, like those that let you double-corrupt gear. They are scary because you can brick an item you love, but when it works you walk out with a piece that would cost a fortune to buy. The trick is learning which combos support what you are trying to do: mapping fast, stacking currency, or gambling on crazy crafts.
Fighting Xipocado and keeping your sanity
At some point you are going to pull the Royal Architect, Xipocado, and that fight tends to decide if your temple setup lives or dies. He keeps phasing around, throws constructs at you, and when you finally drop him, the decay spike can rip through a bad layout in seconds. The reason you still do it is the Medallions. Those let you lock rooms in place or bump tiers, and they are also part of the road to Queen Atziri. If your build is not pushing strong damage, fights like this can feel rough, so a lot of players lean on a solid mapper like Lightning Arrow or a tanky RF Chieftain to carry them. When you do not have time to live in T16 maps just to fund these attempts, it is pretty normal to grab a bit of extra currency from a trading site like U4GM, which focuses on safe PoE2 currency and item orders so you can get back to testing layouts instead of grinding the same map over and over.
