Transcription
[snorts] Aira. [screaming] Well, you all asked for it, so here we go. Hey, I'm Mouse Sweet. To start off this video, I just wanted to thank all of you for your huge support on my last video. I never could have imagined that within only three videos, I'd have reached 3,000 subscribers. I only hope I can keep up the quality level of these guides going forward and can continue to be a reliable resource for all of you in the community.
Now, hopping right into things, let's begin talking about why all of you are here. Crafting, the infamous unachievable mechanic spoken of in the darkest libraries of the Path of Exile communities. So mystical, so confusing, >> so deep, >> mortal minds can begin to fathom its nuances. >> Or rather, that's what you've been led to believe. In actuality, crafting in Path of Exile 2 is actually not that difficult. And like all of my videos before, I hope I can shed some light on this intimidating system to help you all see how simple and approachable it really can be.
To begin, I want to clarify, like I have with all of my other videos, that this is a beginners's [music] guide to crafting. What that means is I am approaching it under the context that not only have you not crafted before in Path of Exile 2, you might not even know how it works or what items are used for it. Because of that, we'll be covering a lot of basics like simple currency items, what prefixes and suffixes are, and working our way up to the more complicated mechanics like desecration and fracturing.
If you've approached this guide as a complete beginner to Path of Exile 2 entirely, I might have to warn you that it can be a bit in-depth as a system, and I would personally recommend that you first get a handle on the general gameplay of Path of Exile before approaching the crafting systems. If you're still figuring out how to start out in the game entirely, go ahead and check out my other video linked in the card above and in the description below to learn everything you'll need to know about getting started in your journey in the lands of Rayclast. For everyone else who feels ready, let's step into the seemingly daunting yet actually relatively simple systems of crafting and help you all understand how it works.
In order for us to begin crafting in this game, we're going to have to understand how items work in Path of Exile 2, so that we can understand how they're influenced by the crafting itself. For this, I've mocked up this handy little display board that will help us visualize just how simple everything can be to understand. All craftable gear in Path of Exile 2 can have up to six total modifiers on it, depending on their rarity. These modifiers are divided equally into what are known as prefix modifiers and suffix modifiers. Prefixes are displayed as the top modifiers on an item, while suffixes are the lower modifiers on an item. As you can see here, only certain stats can be rolled as prefixes and other stats as suffixes. For example, on a body armor, you can only roll plus number to maximum life as a prefix and can only roll additional elemental resistances as suffixes.
As I discussed in my previous video, [music] almost all items in Path of Exile 2, come in primarily one of three rarities. There are normal rarity items, which have white names and only includes the item's base stats, but have absolutely no modifiers on them. Then there are magic rarity items, which have blue names and can have up to two randomly rolled modifiers. And finally, rare items, which have yellow names and can roll with up to six additional modifiers. These modifiers are evenly distributed between prefixes and suffixes. So for a magic item, it will only have one prefix and one suffix. A rare item then can have up to three prefixes and three suffixes. You can check the current modifiers in your gear for what they are by holding alt while mousing over them or by pressing the inspect button on controller. On the left hand side, you will see it listed as a prefix or a suffix. And on the right hand side, you'll see what the tier of modifier is. The lower number of a tier you have, the better with tier one modifiers being the best. Generally on armor, everything that adds life, mana, or a core defensive stat, like armor, evasion, or energy shield will be a prefix. The suffixes on a piece of armor will then be composed of resistances, attributes, and utility based modifiers. This rule is not absolute, but gives a general guideline for what you can expect. The only way to know for sure is to check the items manually to get an idea for what modifiers can roll as prefixes or suffixes, or to look up a list from an online resource like Craft of Exile.
Any items you find can also have different bases, as well as what is known as an item level. The base of an item is basically what variants of the item it is. For example, the Obliterator bow has much higher damage per arrow than the Gemini bow at the cost of 50% reduced projectile range. But the Gemini bow has a plus 50% chance to fire an additional arrow. These blue modifiers at the top of an item above the prefixes are known as an item's implicit modifier and are not lost or changed when upgrading your gear. So, when you're choosing which bow you'd like to craft for your build, you'll have to consider what base item you'll choose depending on what kind of a build you're playing.
The final thing to consider when crafting is what's known as the gear piece's item level. Item level effectively controls what random stats an item can roll on it and how strong those stats will be. For example, in order for you to be able to even roll the chance to fire an additional arrow modifier on a bow, you will need a bow that is at least item level 46 [music] at minimum. Just like viewing your prefixes and suffixes, you can check what your item's level is from hovering over the gear piece and holding down the inspect key. Keep in mind, a gearpiece's item level is not the same as the level required to use that gear. So, just because an item requires level 50 to equip it does not mean it's also going to be level 50 item level.
Now that we understand what prefix and suffix slots are, base items and item levels, let's start the process of actually crafting in Path of Exile 2. Crafting in Path of Exile 2 is done primarily through the use of what are called currency items. The most commonly used of these currency items, which I'll refer to as additive currencies, are the transmutation orb, augmentation orb, the regal orb, and finally the exalted orb. All of these items will affect the rarity and modifiers of your gear pieces. And each one, as I implied, will always add modifiers to your gear. However, even simpler than these items, we have what I'll refer to as upgrade currency items. These upgrade currencies are items that will directly upgrade a piece of gear with no RNG required. Items like the artificer's orb, which adds augment sockets onto an item, or currencies that provide an item with quality, such as the blacksmith wetstone and armor scraps. Quality directly increases the base stats of an item, granting a percent increase to whatever base stats the item comes with. Augment sockets, however, will provide you with an empty socket which you can slot specific items into, such as runes, soul cores, and talisman to provide you with a specific unchanging benefit. Once you do slot an augment into a socket, it cannot be removed by normal means. And if you decide you want to change it, you must overwrite the previous augment.
Moving on from the upgrade currencies, let's get into the actual core currency items in Path of Exile 2 so that you can see specifically what they are and how they work. For this, we'll use our handy board from before. The most simple of all currency items is the transmutation orb. This item upgrades a normal rarity item into a magic rarity item and provides it with one randomized stat. This stat can either be a prefix or a suffix. An orb of augmentation then will take [music] any magic item that currently only has one modifier on it and fill in the other slot. If you already have a prefix, then you'll get a suffix instead and vice versa. Moving up, a regal orb is like the big brother to a transmutation orb. It will take any magic rarity item [music] and turn it into a rare item, granting it one more additional random modifier, which can also be a prefix or a suffix. Be careful, though, as the regal orbs will work even if you only have one modifier on a magic item. So, it's almost always a good idea to use an augmentation orb to guarantee two modifiers before moving up to this step. Lastly, and most importantly, we have the exalted orb. Like the regal orb was a big brother to the orb of transmutation, the exalted orb is basically the upgraded version of the orb of augmentation. Using it on any rare item will [music] add one random modifier to any available slots. You'll need three exalted orbs to make a full six modifier item if you're starting from where the regal orb left off. The last kind of basic currency item you'll see used occasionally are orbs of alchemy. These orbs will take any normal item or magic item and upgrade to a rare item with [music] four random and completely new modifiers. These can be nice to quickly toss on an item in hopes that you get a good roll and save on exalted orbs or can be used when you get two bad rolls on a magic item and just want a complete redo.
Once you've reached later stages in the game, you'll additionally find higher tier versions of these currency items. These higher tier currencies will be called greater and perfect versions of their named currencies. At a basic level of understanding, these higher tier versions of currencies will simply increase the chance of you getting better rolls on your items while guaranteeing you can't get below a certain tier on the modifiers. The way they actually work is a bit more complex, but I want to go over it and simplify as much as possible for all of you as the mechanics behind them are a very core part of crafting.
In Path of Exile 2, whenever you add a modifier onto a piece of gear, the modifier that is chosen and the chance of it being chosen is based off of something called the weight of that modifier. In simple terms, the heavier the weight or bigger number it is, the more likely that modifier is to be chosen. Breaking it down further though, you can imagine weights being the different sides of a dice. Let's say you have a pair of boots and for example, we'll pretend that there are only three possible modifiers they can roll. These being dexterity, fire resistance, and movement speed. We'll give each of these modifiers a weight based on how rare they're supposed to be. Dexterity will have a weight of three, fire resistance a weight of two, and movement speed being the rarest, will have a weight of one. When the game is deciding which modifier to give you, it first adds the weight of all these modifiers together. So, in this case, the total weight will be six, which we'll represent with the six-sided dice. If the die rolls the numbers 1, 2, or three, your boots will gain dexterity, as dexterity had a weight of three. Next, if you roll a four, or five, you'll receive fire resistance. Finally, all that's left is if you roll a six, you'll receive movement speed as it was the final roll remaining. Every single time you roll a new modifier, this system is used to determine which roll your item will get.
Expanding this example, let's say we add in one more roll. It will be a percent reduced attribute requirement on your shoes and will give it a really big weight value of 14. This upgrades our six-sided die from before all the way up to a 20sided die. As you can imagine, our chance of getting movement speed on our boots has gone down a lot, as now we'll have to get a natural 20 just to get that specific stat. And rolling a 14 or lower will give you reduced attribute requirements, which for many people is a useless roll. This right here is where tiers of currency items come in. When you use a higher tier of currency, let's say a perfect orb of transmutation, it will guarantee that no modifiers below item level 70 can possibly roll on your item. Let's pretend reduced attributes is a level 45 modifier. By using our perfect orb instead of a regular one, we have basically forced the game to remove that role from the possible pool of options entirely, bringing us back down to our much more comfortable six-sided die.
The last thing to discuss in this section is the idea of blocking rolls. I won't go too into this, but basically, when you're rolling for a new modifier, it cannot be a duplicate of one you already have. So, let's assume we're using a perfect regal orb to add a new modifier to our boots. We'll say the boots already have dexterity on them from the previous example. Since a perfect regal orb will block any modifiers below level 50, we still can't roll reduced attributes. Additionally, since our boots already have dexterity on them, that option is removed as well from the pool. So, now all that's left is our fire resistance and movement speed rolls. Now, our chance of getting that movement speed is only a 1 in three shot, which is much more likely than the potential 1 in 20 if all the modifiers were possible. In actuality, when rolling for modifiers, there are a lot more potential modifiers that can be rolled with much more variance in their weights. On top of that, even if you roll a modifier you like, such as movement speed, there's no guarantee you'll roll it as high of a value as you would like. However, I wanted to explain all this so that you could understand the systems working in the background and how they operate so that you might be able to figure out how you could best get the roles that you were hoping for.
Moving up from the additive currencies, we're going to start tackling some of the more slightly complex crafting items. I'll call these modifying currencies, as instead of always directly adding modifiers like the previous ones, they modify the ones you currently have or will grant specific roles. The most important and basic of all of these currencies are known as essences. You'll find these throughout the campaign attached to monsters that are trapped in a crystal. Freeing the monsters and defeating them will reward you with whatever essence was attached [music] to them originally. You can also use currency items called V orbs to corrupt the essence before [music] opening them. Doing this will either upgrade the essence, add an additional essence, change the essence's type, or cause the monster to instantly break free. Essences will come in tiers like additive currencies growing up from lesser to greater essences. There are also perfect essences, but they behave slightly differently, and we'll cover those in a little bit. For all essences besides perfect, they basically operate as advanced versions of regal orbs. When used on any magic rarity item, they will upgrade it to a rare item and provide a specific guaranteed stat to the item based on the type of essence that was used. This stat will always come as a specific tier of that modifier based on the tier of the essence. For example, the essence of the body will always grant plus maximum life when used on any kind of armor. The lesser versions will only grant 30 to 39 maximum life. The regular essence will grant 85 to 99 life, and the greater essence guarantees 100 to 119 increase to your maximum life. Each kind of essence provides a different stat, may only work on certain types of equipment, so make sure to check the essences before trying to add them to an item.
The next modifying currency we'll go over is known as the orb of anulment. These are fairly rare and often more expensive currency items, so using them tends to be less common. Their purpose is very simple. They simply pick a random modifier on your current item [snorts] and delete it. The modifier chosen is entirely random, so it can be a bit of a risk if you have two or three really valuable roles you'd prefer to keep. Next up, we have chaos orbs. These orbs, similarly, will pick one random modifier on your current gear and delete it, sort of like an orb of anulment. However, on top of removing the modifier, they will then immediately add a new modifier and place it with the one that was taken. Chaos orbs also come in greater and perfect forms, but end up usually costing a good amount at the higher end.
The second to last modifying type of currency that we'll be discussing are known as preserved bones or desecration type currency items. These come in the forms of collar bones, jawbones, and ribs. Collar bones work on jewelry. Jawbones are used for weapons and quivers, and ribs are used for armor pieces. There are also preserved craniums, but those don't apply to most items. and instead only affect jewels. When using any preserved bone on a rare item of their associated gear type, they will desecrate the item. Upon desecrating an item, a new type of modifier known as a desecrated modifier will be added to the item in the form of the squiggly green text. If there is no room for a new modifier on an item, the desecration will first remove a random modifier and then add the desecration in its place. Once an item is desecrated, you can take it to the well of souls located in act two to reveal what modifier was added. Upon revealing a desecration, the item will roll three different modifiers and allow you to pick one to add to the item. One of these three modifiers will always be a special desecrated modifier. This is as if you took the dice from our previous example and rolled three of them at once. Then got to pick which number you wanted to choose from the results with a few new options added in. Each desecration currency can either come in nod, preserved, or ancient variants. Nod bones will desecrate their respective items, but can only be used on gear up to item level 64 and below. Preserved bones can be used on their respective items and will give completely random roles. Ancient bones are the equivalent of greater orbs from the previous currencies, meaning they'll desecrate the item and wing revealing modifiers will never give any role that is below item level 40.
Finally, coming back to the start, we have perfect essences. If regular essences are like upgraded regal orbs, perfect essences are like upgraded chaos orbs. They'll pick a prefix or suffix on your current gear, remove it, and put a new one in its place. Like normal essences, the modifiers they give are guaranteed and sometimes will only work on specific pieces of gear. The modifiers that come on perfect essences are mostly unique to them, and because of that, they can become very valuable.
Lastly, we'll be discussing some of the more advanced crafting materials in the game, but covering them in less detail each as they get more specific use cases and oftentimes are very rare and can cost extremely high amounts of in-game currency to purchase them. Starting out, we're going right for the big guns, the divine orb. Divine orbs are the gold standard for trading in Path of Exile 2. With almost all other currency items being compared against them, they can be worth several hundred of other currencies such as exalted orbs and are usually used to purchase higher quality items from other players. Despite all of this, divine orbs are fairly simple in their usage for crafting. When used on an item, they will randomize all of the current stats within their same tier. For example, tier 1 maximum life can roll from between 200 to 214 maximum life. Let's assume you got really unlucky and rolled 201 on it. You could use a divine orb on the item and potentially roll it up again to that 214 life maximum. Though useful, divine orbs are basically only used on items with several extremely good rolls to try and get that last little bit of juice out of them. And I'd personally recommend against using them for crafting unless you have a god roll of an item. As for one divide an orb, you could potentially craft dozens of new items.
Fracturing orbs are the next high-end currency and are also often times not worth using unless you really know what you're doing. While divine orbs can be worth hundreds of exalted orbs, fracturing orbs can be worth dozens of divine orbs. When using a fracturing orb on an item with at least four modifiers, it will fracture one of the modifiers at random. Fracturing a modifier will turn the text a light brown and cause it to become permanently fixed to that item as it was. Now, no matter what currencies are ever used on that item, the fractured modifier will remain and cannot have its values changed, even by divine orbs.
Our next currency is a much cheaper option than the others of this section, but I decided to save it until late, as it's usually the very last step you'll use in the crafting process. The ball orb, when used on any item, will modify unpredictably and add a corrupted note to the bottom of the item. During the corruption of an item, many different things can occur. Modifiers may be added, removed, have their values changed, be completely rerolled, as well as they might gain extra augment sockets or quality. Additionally, any item that's corrupted may gain what is known as an enchantment. Enchantments are bonus stats rolled from a small pool of modifiers based on what kind of gear type the item is. These can be minorly helpful from stats like extra accuracy to incredibly valuable in other options like gaining maximum spirit or levels to skill gems. There are even more potential options from corruption that can occur, but they vary based on item types and rarity, so I'll be skipping those today. Once an item is corrupted, it can never be modified again by most means. There are a few new items added in the Fate of the V League that allow you to potentially modify corrupted items again, but these may change in the future and can also be potentially expensive options.
Lastly, and unfortunately most briefly, we'll be discussing omens. Omens are the most impactful means of crafting in Path of Exile 2, but because of that, they also are usually the most expensive means as well. Omens are items that can be toggled on in your inventory and will provide you with a bonus effect when their trigger condition is met while they're active. These can range from small buffs like giving you more gold when selling items to vendors to enormous options like the omen of whittling, which will cause your next chaos orb to only remove the lowest level modifier on your item, basically guaranteeing you'll always get an upgrade. A few options of cheaper omens that are still fairly useful can include things like the omen of greater exaltation, which makes your next exalted orb get used twice. When using perfect exalted orbs, this can be a good means for getting double the value for your currency. Omens of Sinestral Exaltation and Dextral Exaltation will instead guarantee that the next modifiers your exalted orbs add will be either prefixes or suffixes. Similarly, Omens of Sinestro and Dextral Necromancy will instead make your next desecration only add either a prefix or a suffix. This can be extremely useful, for example, when you have three bad suffixes, but open prefix slots to guarantee you instead remove one of the suffixes with your desecration instead of adding a new prefix in. Omens can be acquired primarily through the ritual and abyss mechanics and can be quite varied in their uses. Once again, these are basically the highest end of crafting and should be used later on once you have the money for them and know what you're doing and what kinds of items or modifiers you're looking for.
Originally, I had intended to have a section in this part of the video demonstrating the entire process of crafting an item from base to desecration and even selling it on the market. However, after spending about 2 weeks on this video and the current runtime already being [music] so long, I made the choice to cut that out for now. Instead, I'll be releasing a follow-up video where I can go more in detail with that process so that you all can get a good idea of how you can make your own gear completely independent. If you're still feeling confused, that's totally understandable. I'll be trying to release that example [music] crafting video shortly so that we can walk through the entire process of crafting together from start to finish. Even though I gave you the individual pieces of the puzzle, I know it can be hard to understand how to fit them all together. And so, I'm sorry I didn't finish that section in time for this video's release. If you're coming to this video in the future, feel free to check out my channel in case I finished uploading that video or any other crafting examples I hope to make. I'd love to show off several different items to help you all understand how you can target specific modifiers and how to handle tough decisions throughout the crafting process.
I know that crafting can be very intimidating as a system coming into Path of Exile 2. Hell, I know several people with thousands of hours in the game between Path of Exile 1 and 2 that still don't understand the systems and how to craft. However, I hope through this video we've helped you feel like you have a bit of a baseline understanding for how to get started in the entire process. If you found this video helpful, a like and subscription are always appreciated while my channel is still growing. If however you found anything confusing, please feel free to say so in the comments. I still try to read every single one of them and reply to any that I feel I can help with. No matter if you stick around for the next video or feel like you've got a well enough understanding from what we've discussed today, I wish you all the best in your journey. I hope after watching this video, you'll feel confident in your ability to craft items and understand the systems behind how crafting works in the game. And maybe you'll even manage to get that god roll item that nets you your first mirror. However your adventure may go though, I hope to see you again soon. In the meantime, stay safe out there, exile.