At its core, currency items shape your gear and gameplay experience. From basic transmutations to advanced alterations, how you use your currency can make or break your build. The crafting bench offers more targeted item enhancement options. Using fossils, for example, can protect specific mods from being changed by other crafting methods like the scouring orb.
Crafting
The game’s craft of exile system allows players to modify or improve items through a variety of methods. These methods involve various currency items and techniques, with careful selection and combination of modifiers important for successful results. These methods include regal and other orbs to upgrade items, splitting and imprinting items, and using flasks for customization. In addition, the player can use beasts and the Menagerie to manipulate item modifiers for powerful early game gear. A key factor in the success of an item is its base modifiers, which determine how many other mods can be added to it. Different types of modifiers have different probabilities of rolling on an item, and certain bases are more likely to roll a specific type of mod than others. It is helpful to consult PoEWiki for information on these base types, as well as the best combinations of prefixes and suffixes for each type of item.
Several currency items can be used to change an item’s modifiers, including fossils and other orbs, glimmering orbs, chaos orbs, annulment orbs, and catalysts. These orbs can be used to change the rolled values of an item’s modifiers, making them more useful or less valuable for a particular build. The faceted fossil is also an important craftable item, as it can be used to target specific mods on a piece of jewelry. This technique is difficult to master and requires a large investment in gems, but it can significantly increase the strength of an item’s defenses and attack damage.
In addition to these methods, the crafted bench can add special mods to an item that prevent certain aspects of its functionality from being changed by other crafting methods, such as ensuring that a prefix cannot be removed or a suffix can not be added. These special mods are a result of the fact that each mod has a group, and modifying an item will only affect the corresponding groups.
Modifiers
Modifiers are bonus effects that can be innately applied to items, strongboxes, areas, or monsters. They can apply statistics or buffs, and some of them are even hidden from the player’s view. Some of these modifiers are purely beneficial, while others are harmful. They can also be influenced by certain effects, such as corruption or enchantment. Many players focus on finding or obtaining good modifiers for their items, as they can improve an item’s stats and increase its value. This is called crafting, and it involves a lot of effort to find and obtain the best possible modifiers. It is a popular endgame activity and often a career path for players.
Some modifiers are based on the items’ base types, while others are unique to particular item categories such as Helmets, Body Armour, Gloves, Rings, and Amulets. This allows for a wide variety of possibilities for each type of item. There are a number of ways to acquire or craft these items, including using Orbs and other in-game currencies, the Crafting Bench, vendors, delving Fossils, and reforging. Each modifier has a group associated with it, and only one modifier from that group may appear on an item at a time. This system helps to create tiers of modifiers, as some groups are mutually exclusive with other modifiers.
Some modifiers can be crafted multiple times on the same item, with different sets of affixes. This is known as multimodding, and it is common among high-end items. Adding these mods can be expensive, but it is usually worth the investment. The downside of multimodding is that the crafted modifier itself counts as a modifier, limiting the number of crafted modifiers that can be added to an item.
Orbs
While the primary means of acquiring new equipment in Path of Exile is through monster drops and vendor recipes, orbs provide additional options for players seeking powerful equipment. They also play a key role in the player to player trading system. Orbs can be used to upgrade items, change their base stats, add a rare or forged influence, or restructure an item’s passive skill tree. Orbs can be found as drops from monsters and chests or bought at the various town vendors in Wraeclast. They can also be obtained by completing certain areas and maps or as part of the Master crafting system.
Some of the most common orbs in the game include Orbs of Transmutation, Orbs of Augmentation, and Orbs of Alteration. The former two orbs allow a player to directly upgrade a white (normal) item into a magic or rare item. However, this is only possible if the item has enough explicit mods to be upgraded.
In addition to these orbs, there are a few other types of currency in Path of Exile. These include Sacred Orbs, which can be used to randomly reroll an item’s implicit modifiers. Additionally, Sacred Orbs can be used to increase the chance that a utility flask will roll a specific base type. Another orb that provides valuable customization options is the Orb of Scouring. This orb allows players to reroll the existing mods of a magic item, while protecting any meta-crafting mods from being rolled. This is especially useful if a player has found a great item but is missing a few critical mods. Additionally, Orb of Scouring can be used to prevent a random non-caster affix from being added to an item.
Modifier Influence
Modifier influence in Path of Exile is a critical part of crafting gear that can make all the difference in your build. It determines how many potential modifiers appear on an item and what specific ones. It’s sort of like a pool filled with possible modifiers, where the size of the pool is determined by the item level (for example, 11-15% spell damage for Carved Wand). Players can then scoop out these modifiers and place them into the prefix and suffix slots on an item. This is done through various means, from Fossil crafting to rerolling items with Chaos Orbs and Exalted Orbs. Using these orbs is a complex affair, but they give you the ability to modify your gear in very specific ways.
Fossil crafting is similar to rerolling an item, except it offers more control. This is because fossils have their own unique tag that reworks the modifier pool, increasing or decreasing the chance of certain modifiers appearing. Some also block certain modifiers, making them less likely to roll on the item. Combined with the other options available in the crafting system, fossils offer an extremely powerful way to craft gear for your endgame build. For instance, the Fossil of Irina allows you to add a new base implicit mod and also boosts the chance that a caster-specific mod will appear on an item.
The other main part of this crafting system is the use of catalysts and orbs. A Vaal Orb corrupts an item and changes its implicit modifiers, while a Catalyst or Orb of Annulment can remove random modifiers from an item. Finally, there are a few other orbs that can improve your chances of getting specific or rare mods.
Essence
Essence is a currency item that can be used to upgrade a normal equipment piece to rare or reroll the modifiers on an already-rare item. It is available in a wide range of tiers, with higher tiers offering more powerful mods. They can be obtained from essence monoliths or dropped by essence monsters. They can also be upgraded to a higher tier by using the Upgrade button in the Essence Stash tab or by selling three of a lower tier essence to a vendor. Unlike orbs, essence does not require a minimum item level to work. It is a great option for players who want to ensure that a particular stat is rolled on an item, especially when the stat cannot be guaranteed by other means. For example, a player could use the essence of horror to guarantee spell damage on a bow even if the affixes on the item would otherwise be randomized.
It is also useful in ensuring that an important affix rolls on an item even if it is not the base or item level that would normally trigger it to roll. This can be very helpful when making a gear set for a new character or trying to find the perfect combination of affixes for an existing one.
Conclusion
Using an essence on an item works similarly to using an orb, with the exception that it does not remove any existing affixes. The resulting item will have the guaranteed affixes listed on the essence and all other affixes will be rerolled. The result of the reroll is determined by a combination of the tier and essence used and the item’s base type and item level.