Path of Exile 2

Path of Exile 2

DTM May 19 @ 1:29pm
Crafting (Long post)
Crafting in PoE 2 in it's current state is making me not want to play much anymore.

Before I get people saying "cool, go play something else", which is valid, hear me out.

I like the game, I'm not a vet, and realize there are a lot of intricacies to crafting. Lots to learn. Here's the thing: the feeling of encouragement / dopamine / happiness in creating your own items and to actually have them be good, great, or perfect is extremely lacking. And in my opinion this is pushing some people, including myself, away.

The base item dropping that you want is one factor
The base mods that roll are another factor
The tier of the mods are another factor
The # or % roll of the mods, regardless of tier, are a factor

Four main factors that spread into at least a hundred of others, essentially making me feel like the chance of crafting a good (not great, and not perfect) item is somewhere around 0.1%, with investment.

Why this is an issue: in order to craft, and if you want to increase your chances of crafting successfully, you need to invest a lot. Finding a magic/rare item with a couple good mods and exalt slamming is a potential way to net a good item, but the chances are extremely low. If you want to increase those odds, you can use a fracturing orb to fracture a mod to lock it in place (cost of the orb is currently ~1/3 of a div). There's a chance you fracture the wrong mod. You can use an omen of whittling (current price of one of these is over 4 div) to pinpoint a mod to remove, then hope for the best with an exalt. Then you can just get the same, or a different trash mod. 4+ divs down the drain in that case.

I'm a Diablo 2 vet, so I use this as a baseline. They're both ARPGs and PoE is heavily Diablo inspired. I get that they're two different games, but the reason people still play D2 to this day is the item system. Definitely not the gameplay.

Here's how things feel in Diablo 2: You farm, farm, farm, and at one point you find a high rune. Let's just say you got super lucky and found a Ber rune. The feeling is incredible because you know that Ber is going to be useful in one way or another. Nothing can "brick" your Ber.

Yes, certain certain runewords have ranges for rolls and you can roll a ♥♥♥♥♥♥ HOTO (which needs a Vex, not a Ber rune) and get 30% all res instead of 40%, but the runeword is still strong and the difference between a ♥♥♥♥♥ HOTO and a good one isn't that massive.

PoE2: you can invest into an item using methods (and more) described a few paragraphs above to create an awesome, strong item. Then you have the ultimate choice to vaal it or not, essentially turning it from awesome to Fing amazing, or completely bricking it. Not everyone vaals great items but it's the last way to give it that last little jump in power.

There are TOO many factors at play, and we have little to no agency without investing an absurd amount of time into finding currency (i.e. divs, or 1300 exalts for a SINGLE omen of whittling. And even then, there is not enough agency over the outcome.

This leads myself wanting to not craft, and just trade, taking a huge element of the game away. I get how RNG works and how the slot machine vibes can be fun, but when you're playing slots 50 times on a single item it's just way too inconsistent, and not fun when you invested so much time into getting the currency to ultimately throw it out the window.

With how things are, an amazing item can go for like 250 divs. Most people do not have the time to get 250 divs one way or another. Unless you play 8 hours/day, minmax, or get EXTREMELY lucky (talking lower chances then winning a real lottery), you will never find and craft an amazing item.

This post is getting longer than I originally anticipated, would like to elaborate more but here's what I would like to see, and what I think would really help players stick around to play slots: make the items that give players a sense of agency over their crafting much more common. Omens of whittling, the omen that affects anull orbs, etc.

With more direction to crafting, the outcomes will be more common, and more enjoyable to the player. They will still be rare as hell, but not to the point it is now where it just feels bad. This will thin the gap between an okay item costing 5 exalts, a good one 1 div, a great one 20 divs, and an amazing one 250 divs, which I don't really see as an issue since the gap is ridiculous.

Accessibility to crafting needs to be expanded upon to retain players, since the game revolves around crafting IMO.

Thanks for reading my novel, cheers and GL.
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Showing 1-9 of 9 comments
fx! May 19 @ 1:43pm 
Yeah well, hopefully it gets improved soon. Recombinators were great addition, I recommend using them instead of slamming blind bases on your own. Fracturing is only relevant if you hit high value affix and have a plan and currency to continue with the "craft". Outside of recombinators there are some ways to "guarantee" affixes (for example whittling for 2nd/3rd target affix) but that still cost hundreds of divines on average.

As you've said the odds are so bad and relevant omens are way too rare. Good thing is that average gear still allows you to clear everything in the game.
Crafting in this state of the game has a lot of RNG, you are right. But there are some ways to contol the RNG a little bit and more important, ways to not waste exalts by just slamming.

So, the most important thing: Do you know everything about the prefixes and suffixes? Do you know, if the stat you want is a prefix or an suffffix? Do you know the chances of the affix you want? Do you know the tier breakpoint levels of the affix?

For an example: It is not worth, slamming exalts on a wand to get a +5 Chaos spell for example. Chances are ridiculously low (0,137%). Especially not, when all suffix places are already used, because that can't appear on that item then. So, when I find a basic white wand, I slam a transmute on it, if the affix is a prefix, I slam an augment on it, to see the suffix. If the suffix isn't +5 Chaos spell in this example, I may regal it, if I swim in Regals anyway, but then use the 3:1 reforge to create a new one or keep it, if one affix is a very high tier to recomb it once.

https://poe2db.tw/us/ helps a lot with crafting. If you think wou don't know enough, search for some crafting vids on youtube, which explains the affix system and the use of Poe2.db. Don't be to proud to seek for help, almost everybody had to learn from more experienced players one day.

The other way is working with the recombinator of course, with omens and essences.

Edit: If you have further questions, you can add me here on Steam. I love to help out, if someone is in need of it and doesn't only blame the game. I'm a pure HCSSF player, so this is also my life insurance.
Last edited by Supercow ツ; May 19 @ 2:24pm
The developers basically just want a small handful of whales/no-lifers playing this 'game'.
Ateius May 19 @ 2:51pm 
I'm basic at crafting. I haven't yet learned how to use all the specialized currencies effectively, but these are my thoughts.

Crafting is much reduced in this game compared to POE1. They completely removed the crafting bench. It's limited right now, but I guarantee they will introduce new crafting mechanics in the league. You may want to stick around and check those out when they arrive.

As crafting stands It is indeed difficult to craft those ultimate tier items, and people do it by destroying a large number of items, which is why the price goes to the moon.

But perhaps you should not be thinking so hard about those ultimate tier items. If you are playing in trade league, you can get strong enough items to progress the campaign for 1 exalt, where if you try to craft such an item it would cost you much more. You benefit from other player's RNG.

Crafting great items is indeed a rich man's game, and you shouldn't concern yourself with it until you have the fundamentals down well enough that 100 exalts or more doesn't seem like a lot of money to you.

However, crafting somewhat lower tier items is very accessible, and I recommend you do it constantly. Firstly if you are poor. Pick up every magic and rare item of every base and disenchant it. This will give you a steady flow of currency for crafting.

Save every base you like, and transmute > augment > regal until you get a bad mod, then sell it if you do. This game has craploads of loot, so you will be getting hundreds of these items. If you do this with every item of a base you are interested in, you will get some high tier mods. After that it's up to you if you want to exalt, and how many times.

So yes, you do need to do this hundreds of times, but it's just part of the flow of going back to town. You sell some stuff, craft some stuff, it usually turns out bad, then you just sell it and your gold grows.

I recommend you give it a try. That way you're crafting all the time and you can start to really see more of what is possible. Once you get the reforge and the combinator you can start saving bases for their high tier mods and transferring them until you get a good start so your RNG gets a lot better on getting a good item.

And obviously if you learn how and when to use all the specialized currencies you can dramatically improve your chances of getting what you want.

Have you tried crafting in POE1? It's much more complex and shows you how far systems like these can be developed. However I know that the devs are resisting the system becoming quite like that which is why they removed the crafting bench from the game. They want us to care a lot more about the loot on the ground.
DTM May 19 @ 2:56pm 
Originally posted by Supercow ツ:
Edit: If you have further questions, you can add me here on Steam. I love to help out, if someone is in need of it and doesn't only blame the game. I'm a pure HCSSF player, so this is also my life insurance.

Thank you for your kind offer, it is appreciated!
DTM May 19 @ 3:16pm 
Originally posted by Ateius:
I recommend you give it a try. That way you're crafting all the time and you can start to really see more of what is possible. Once you get the reforge and the combinator you can start saving bases for their high tier mods and transferring them until you get a good start so your RNG gets a lot better on getting a good item.

Cheers for the response, just quoted part of it so this reply isn't overlong - I agree with you, I've been trying and maybe I'm just running low on patience after 0 payout. Which is on me of course, felt like posting this though because I'd like to think there are some who are in the same boat. Maybe GGG will consider it.

My main's currently lvl 87, still playing an amazon twister build because it's more enjoyable than LS imo. I have 5 divs, 7 fractures, 500 exalts, around 40 chaos. Not rich by any means, but not particularly poor.

I've gotten to the point where I'm finding (or building up with the low-tier currency) good bases and investing exalts and chaos' to try and get good results. Once I have 3-4 good/great rolls on an item, I exalt and always get the worst of the worst, which turns the item from having great potential to trash (I drop 1-2 chaos' before discarding it just in hopes to turn it around first).

I don't see a way to effectively turn these around without the omens that cost multiple divs, so it just feels as though I'm at an impasse in terms of self-progression at the moment. I've built my stash up and have attempted to improve a couple hundred good bases and always end up selling them in the end.

P.S. I'm knowledgeable on the prefix/suffix system (other than the exact weighting for each mod off the top of my head), I've been trying the recombinator and see the potential, in my case the new bases I get just end up in the same boat as other items after investing a bit into them. Sold to the vendor in the end while having two very good T10+ mods, or stashed to try again and fail again. Regarding PoE1 crafting - only have about 100 hours into it, so not overly, but I am somewhat familiar.
Ateius May 19 @ 3:27pm 
Looks like you're doing all the basic stuff. I also would like to grow beyond this level. I wonder what the best resources are for being more strategic with the systems we have. Supercow posted some recommendations, I'll have to check them out.
Crafting?? what the hell is that LOL??
jokes aside tho... I never success in crafting like at all especially for my own equipment... all of my equipment is 100% from trading or prob 1 or 2 piece that I managed to craft but not from scratch... how can I buy that?? is from selling in trade
Crafting in this game is just too stupid to even care for me... in order to craft you probably need like 2 or 3 or maybe 4 quadstash (which their intention prob to keep making money) full of said equipment and start pouring your currency to have a hope to make something useful... I literally don't care and just buying from people
I tried everything except for mass whittling which cost and arm and leg to even get one... and tbh that's still RNG that you won't get your specific affix
Recombinator?? lol even with 40% that thing failed like there's no tomorrow and don't even try t1 affix lol it's gonna say something like 6%... which is actually a lot... but after combining 3 quad stash full of them and keep failing... I just stop caring lol
Ateius May 20 @ 12:32am 
Originally posted by HunterXCooL:
I suck at crafting
cool story bro
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