Withered Willow PoE 2 Guide

The Withered Willow is the southwest Delirium hub on the Atlas in Path of Exile 2 patch 0.5: introduced with the “Return of the Ancients” update. It is a gloomy, leafless forest map, and it is the only place where you interact with Elder Madox, unlock the Decanter of Madness, and ultimately open the door to Tangmazu. Ignore it and your character stays mediocre. Simple as that.

The hub sits southwest of your starting Atlas area. Every map surrounding it has a guaranteed Delirium encounter. Convenient. Also relentless.

Before 0.5, Delirium was a fog you ran through while hoping for splinters. That’s gone. The Path of Exile 2 Delirium rework replaced aimless farming with a structured progression: a named quest, a hub NPC, escalating fog depth, a Simulacrum, and a pinnacle boss. If you played the old version, forget it.

Atlas Position

Direction	Hub	Mechanic
Center	The Fallen Court	Atlas start, map device
Southwest	The Withered Willow	Delirium / Hare & Raven
West	Caer Tarth	Ritual / Wildwood
South	Monastery of the Keepers	Breach
Northeast	Lira Vaal / Atziri’s Temple	Fate of the Vaal

Strange Reflections Quest

The Strange Reflections quest PoE 2 is the questline that sends you to the Withered Willow. It begins the first time you encounter a Delirium Mirror in the endgame: inside the mirror, you find Elder Madox trapped in one of Tangmazu’s delusions. You walk through the mirror, finish the encounter, and free him. He immediately asks for more of your time.

1. Free Elder Madox

Walk through the Delirium Mirror in any endgame map. Survive the fog encounter. Madox is now coherent enough to give you directions.

2. Travel to the Withered Willow

A route appears southwest on the Atlas. Travel there. Speak to Madox again. He explains that Tangmazu stole a shard from the Delirium Mirror.

3. Kill Five Delirious Map Bosses

Maps marked “Area Contains a Mirror of Delirium” near the hub always spawn encounters. Use them. Five bosses. Straightforward if your build works.

4. Unlock the Decanter of Madness

Return to Madox after five kills. He hands you the Decanter: the crafting device that instills Notable Passive Skills onto amulets via Liquid Emotions.

5. Consume the Strange Fruit

Interact with the Strange Mirror at the hub, receive a Strange Fruit, eat it. Delirium fog spreads across a section of your Atlas. This is not reversible. You wanted this.

6. Run the Delirious Region

Clear maps within the fog. Deliriousness starts at 10% and climbs as you kill Rare monsters and bosses. At 100%, the Simulacrum of Delusion unlocks.

7. Complete the Simulacrum

Survive all 15 waves. The Raven’s Reflection drops: the missing mirror shard. Bring it back to the Withered Willow.

8. Defeat Tangmazu

Place the Raven’s Reflection into the mirror. Enter the Paracosm. Kill him. Quest complete. Rewards unlock.

Fog Mechanics & Progression Bar

Every Delirium Mirror encounter PoE 2 starts the same way: a shattered-glass portal near your spawn point. Walk through it. The entire map fills with fog. Enemies become stronger, take less damage, and drop items normal mobs cannot. Walk away from the fog and it resets. The game is not subtle about which direction punishes you.

The progression bar at the bottom of your screen is not decoration. It tracks fog depth and time remaining. It also shows which direction you are facing relative to the fog: turn away and the bar depletes faster, giving you a deliberate way to end early once you have taken what you wanted. Watch it.

Shard Types

Shard Color	Effect	Recommendation
Purple	Shatter to make all enemies more nightmarish: larger demons, harder mobs, more rewards	Only if your build does not care about dying
Red	Spawns high-difficulty arena encounters with boosted loot bias	Survivable. Do them.

Splinters only drop from Tier 11+ Waystones. Farming low-tier maps expecting splinters is a personal problem, not a game problem.

Grand Mirror

After enough Delirium Mirror completions, a Grand Mirror PoE 2 spawns on a nearby Atlas map. It duplicates the map boss: you fight both simultaneously. Kill them both. This unlocks the Trial of Madness and spreads fog over a larger Atlas region, potentially spawning multiple Simulacra. The passive node “You thought you were free” expands the area further. Name chosen with obvious contempt for the player.

Simulacrum of Delusion

The Simulacrum PoE 2 0.5 is no longer a static arena you dump splinters into. It is now a twisted fragment of the player’s mind warped by Tangmazu: 15 waves of escalating Delirium monsters, each wave carrying its own modifiers similar to Waystone affixes. Before each wave starts, you can read the modifier list. Read it.

• Between waves: a rest area with a stash and portal. Use the stash. Every wave. You will forget once.
• Loot piles drop after each wave. Do not leave them behind: subsequent waves do not pause for sentiment.
• Higher-difficulty waves can spawn Delirium bosses in addition to standard mobs.
• Completing the Simulacrum rewards the Raven’s Reflection shard and large quantities of Liquid Emotions.
• Unique items exclusive to Simulacrum can drop here and nowhere else. Voices jewel is one of them.

Collect 300 Simulacrum Splinters to build a Simulacrum key. You need T11+ Waystones to generate them. Stop looking for shortcuts.

Distilled Emotions & Crafting

Distilled Emotions Path of Exile 2 are the primary currency of the Delirium loop. They drop at the end of fog encounters and in bulk from Simulacrums. In patch 0.5, they serve two purposes: instilling Notable Passive Skills onto amulets, and applying specific mods to Timelost Jewels. This is not a minor system. It is how your build gets its last 20% of power.

Amulet Instilling (Decanter of Madness)

Combine Diluted Liquid Ire and Liquid Paranoia in the Decanter to add the effect of one Notable Passive from the skill tree onto your amulet: including notables your class cannot normally reach. It costs travel points on sub-optimal pathing. The Decanter removes that cost. Worth understanding.

Jewel Crafting

Liquid Emotions can remove one modifier from a Timelost Jewel and add a guaranteed specific affix in its place. Ancient Emotions: ten new craftable materials introduced in 0.5: apply affixes to Timelost Jewels that do not exist anywhere else in the game. Three of them (Ancient Potent Emotions) unlock modifiers unavailable from any other source. The Delirium jewel economy is effectively its own sub-game.

Emotion Type	Use	Source
Liquid Emotions (base)	Amulet instilling, Waystone Delirious application	Fog encounters, T11+ maps
Distilled Emotions	Jewel crafting, amulet notables	Simulacrum, deep fog
Ancient Emotions	Timelost Jewel affixes	Delirium Atlas tree rewards
Ancient Potent Emotions	Exclusive modifiers, no other source	Specific boss types in fog

Upgrading Tiers

Three Liquid Emotions of one type at the Reforging Bench yield one of the next tier. Three Liquid Ire become one Liquid Guilt. Stack all three into the same slot: the bench accepts it. Efficient.

Applying a Liquid Emotion directly to a Waystone adds permanent Delirium fog that never dissipates. It does not stack with a Delirium Mirror already in the map. Pick one or waste one. The game will not warn you.

If farming specific Potent Liquid Emotions PoE 2: for example, Potent Liquid Melancholy which only drops from human bosses afflicted by fog: the map type matters. Where you spread the fog is a crafting decision, not an aesthetic one.

Tangmazu, the Raven Trickster

Tangmazu boss PoE 2 is the pinnacle of the Delirium questline. He is accessed by placing the Raven’s Reflection into the mirror at the Withered Willow and entering the Paracosm. He is the architect of Elder Madox’s delusion, the thief of the mirror shard, and an encounter that is not designed to be comfortable.

Fight Behavior

• Tangmazu teleports constantly between mirrors in the arena. He vanishes mid-fight and reappears at a different location every time.
• You must track his reappearance points and reposition immediately: standing still does nothing for your damage uptime.
• The arena also features a reflected, empowered version of the previous map boss fighting alongside him during the post-quest Grand Mirror versions.
• The pinnacle encounter is not subtle. It is not fair. It is the logical endpoint of a mechanic built around madness.

Rewards

• Voices unique jewel: exclusive to Tangmazu and higher-difficulty Simulacrum runs.
• Veilpiercer Amethyst Ring.
• Delirium-exclusive unique items unavailable elsewhere.
• Grand Mirror re-fight keys after quest completion: harder version with additional unique drops.

The Hare and Raven questline PoE 2 does not end with one kill. Grand Mirrors continue appearing after the quest. Each one offers a key to re-fight Tangmazu at higher difficulty. The game would like more of your time.