A deep, complex and rewarding part of Path of Exile is crafting gear. Whether it’s rerolling stats or adding new mods, you can fine tune your gear with various currency items and techniques. The crafting bench is the main tool to make this happen. Using the bench is more expensive than using regular orbs, but it allows for precise modifications.
Crafting
Although Path of Exile is primarily an action-based roleplaying game, players are also encouraged to craft items and customize their gear. This is accomplished through a variety of methods, including currency orbs, vendor recipes, the crafting bench, and fossils. While most crafting techniques are costly and unpredictable, there are certain strategies that can ensure a desired outcome. The most common form of crafting involves the use of currency orbs. These orbs can transform items in a number of ways, ranging from enhancing their quality to changing their mods. Using a currency orb can also unlock rare affixes, which can greatly increase an item’s value.
There are many different types of currency orbs in the game, each with its own unique effect. For example, Armorer’s Scrap improves armor’s evasion or energy shield, while Blacksmith’s Whetstones improve weapons’ physical damage. However, the most important currency orbs are the ones that affect an item’s base stats. These orbs include the Orb of Transmutation and Orb of Alteration, which can change an item’s base stats or add one or two random explicit modifiers. It is important to understand how these orbs work, as they can be incredibly useful when crafting or rerolling items in the game.
Another valuable way to craft items is through the use of faceted fossils. These can be used to create specific gem modifiers that are difficult to obtain through other methods. Additionally, a faceted fossil can be used to increase an item’s gem level, which can dramatically improve its power and value.
Finally, meta-crafting is a useful way to manipulate an item’s modifiers through the crafting bench. This technique uses special mods available on the crafting table, such as “Cannot Roll Attack Modifiers” and “Cannot Roll Spellcraft or Weaponcraft”. Using these mods can make it more likely that an item will roll the desired prefix or suffix, thereby increasing its value. However, this method is generally only worth the effort when trying to target rare affixes, and even then, it can be difficult to succeed. For these reasons, it is usually best to purchase a desired item through trade rather than crafting it.
Currency
In Path of Exile, there are many different types of currency items which serve a variety of purposes, both in terms of item crafting and in player trading. Many of these items are crafted by the Harbinger or Temple of Atzoatl, while others are gained through questing, or dropped in small quantities from monsters and other players. Almost all of these items are used to craft or improve equipment, but some also provide special modifications which can be applied to the item in question. Some of these affixes can significantly increase the overall power of an item, while others are not useful at all. Most of the available currency is used in crafting or purchasing items from other players. This can be done using various orbs and other currency items, Vendor Recipes, the Crafting Bench, and Delve Fossils. Advanced items can sometimes be crafted using a combination of these methods, but it is typically easier and cheaper to purchase a high-quality version from another player.
Regal Orb: Upgrades a blue or higher item to a rare with three prefixes and three suffixes. Usually not used for equipment during the early game, but is very useful in later levels to improve items that have already been upgraded with other currencies.
Chaos Orb: Rerolls a rare item with 4-6 new random affixes (3-4 for jewels). Primary trade currency in the player driven economy, these are the “dollar bills” of the game, and they are rarely used during leveling due to their extreme value. Exalted Orb: Adds a single new affix to a rare item, as long as it has an open affix slot. Often not used for equipment during the early game, these are the most useful currency items in late-game gear-building, as they can drastically improve the strength of an otherwise underpowered item.
Armourer’s Scrap: Affects Body Armour, Helmets, Gloves and Boots. Generally used in small amounts during the early and midgame to maximize the quality of an upcoming rare item before attempting to further upgrade it with a Regal orb or an Orb of Transmutation. Also used in moderate amounts in some crafting bench recipes and for the final step of rerolling a +2 wand with an Orb of Alteration.
Item Base
The item base in craft of exile is a fundamental aspect that dictates the pool of modifiers an item can roll, and ultimately how strong it will be. This is true for both crafted and vendor items, and it is crucial to understand as a crafting novice. The basic item base is determined by an item’s level and its socket count. The higher the item level, the more modifiers it will have available for its sockets. This is why it’s important to plan your progression carefully, ensuring you have a good item base at every point in the game. Modifiers can be obtained through various methods in Path of Exile, including Orbs and other currencies, Vendor Recipes, the Crafting Bench, and Delve Fossils. They can also be gained through special challenges, such as the Betrayal league’s Veiled Modifiers.
An item’s base can be improved through a variety of means, including adding socket links, rerolling its implicit modifiers, and enhancing its quality. These improvements can significantly improve an item’s damage, defense, and other traits. However, each upgrade comes at a price, and the player must balance cost with risk. A Vaal Orb corrupts an item, modifying its base in unpredictable ways and often changing implicit modifiers. It’s a powerful tool, but it can be costly if you don’t know what you’re doing.
On the other hand, an Orb of Annulment removes a random modifier from an item, but it’s still a gamble. Using these tools wisely can make the difference between a good item and a great one. Enhanced items offer new, powerful, and specialized implicit modifiers not found on regular items. This can include a large increase in an item’s attack or defense, a unique skill, a rare gem prefix or suffix, and more. These are a great option for players who want to maximize the power of their gear.
Metacrafting is a method that allows the player to bench craft a set of items with specific mods. This can include things like Cannot Roll Attack Modifiers and Cannot Roll Caster Modifiers on a weapon. This is an invaluable tool for high-end crafting, where key modifiers can be expensive to re-obtain, but are worth the investment in order to build a truly exceptional piece of equipment.
Modifiers
Modifiers in craft of exile are an incredibly important component to the game. They can be applied in various ways through the use of currencies, vendor recipes, the crafting bench and Delve Fossils. Modifiers can also be innately applied (as implicit modifiers) to entities or be granted under certain conditions. For example, a monster may be augmented with modifiers such as +79 to maximum life or mana cost reduction when it is touched by or possessed by a Tormented Spirit. These implicit modifiers are called local and only apply to the affected entity. The game’s in-game currency items can be used to modify or improve items by adding, removing or altering existing modifiers. This is referred to as Crafting and many players pursue it as an endgame activity in its own right. It requires careful planning and research to achieve desired results.
Most items can have up to three crafted modifiers added to them. These include prefixes and suffixes, but also quality modifiers and a random influenced modifier. A player can also unlock a number of modifiers by using the Orb of Dominance on items that are already influenced by this effect. In 3.19, the game introduced a new system for modifiers which made them more efficient and less prone to bugs and issues. Modifiers now have a modgroup and tag which indicates which other mods they can affect. In addition, a modifier can only be part of one modgroup at a time and cannot overlap with itself or another modifier.
Conclusion
Examples of modgroups are the sextant modifiers, beastcrafting and harvest synthesis. An item’s implicit modifiers can also be combined with these to produce powerful items.
Some of the most valuable crafted modifiers are the ones which are unique to specific item types. A sextant, for example, can be added to a weapon to add a new damage type or to a wand to make it more useful when thrown. In addition, a sextant can be added to a weapon that already has a sextant on it, which allows for the creation of incredibly powerful hybrid weapons.
