Crafting is one of the most powerful ways to rework an item. It’s a complex process that can be difficult to get the hang of. With the Betrayal expansion, players have additional options available. These include: Fossil and Beast crafting; experimenting with catalysts, annulment orbs and flasks; splitting items; and bestiary crafting in Einhar’s menagerie.
Fossil Crafting
Fossil crafting is a powerful new way to modify items – it allows you to more deterministically craft items by blocking modifiers from rolling, guaranteeing certain types of rolls and adding many powerful implicits. It is a great alternative to Meta-crafting, replacing the need for Eater of Worlds or Searing Exarch influences to lock Prefixes and Suffixes. To use this method, choose your base (for example ilvl 83 Elder Gemini Claw), then chose the affix column you want to guarantee and the fossils you want to add. Then select “compute best selection” and the website will simulate which fossils are required for that and how much they cost. It will also provide you with a list of all possible mods that can be added by each fossil, including the ones it does not support.
There are a lot of different Fossils available for this, each providing a specific set of functions. Shuddering Fossil will block all mods that have mana or speed tags for example while Lucent Fossil will boost the spawn weight of any tag it blocks. This allows you to create incredibly powerful items with very few fossils.
Additionally, some of the special Fossils introduced in the delve league can be socketed into resonators to grant them special Delve modifiers. Perfect Fossil, for instance, can improve an item’s quality by up to 30% – this is separate from the 20% quality limit that items normally can have. The quality increase will also affect veiled modifiers, such as Corrupted Essence, and can even reroll the socket colours of an item. This is a very useful way to improve an item quickly and cheaply.
Beast Crafting
One of the best ways to obtain powerful new items in path of exile is through beast crafting. This process involves combining different beast parts to create weapons and armor that provide unique bonuses when equipped. Players can also use these items as a currency for trading with other players. To engage in beast crafting, players must first locate a blood altar. This can be done by searching for a quest or by visiting the Menagerie. Once located, the blood altar will display a vast recipe list. Each recipe will list the necessary requirements, including which type of beast part is required. Most recipes require a certain level of beast, while others will require a certain number of rare beasts.
After selecting a recipe, the player must then kill the specified number of rare beasts to complete the process. Once the requirements have been met, the player can then select the “Craft” button to begin the process. Upon completion, the crafted item will appear in the player’s inventory. Currently, there are over 200 different beastcrafting recipes in the game. Each recipe can add a specific modifier to an existing item, or it can be used to craft entirely new items. These modifiers include things like repulsion, tailwind, and more.
Players can also use the Blood Altar to manipulate the prefixes and suffixes on existing items. For example, if you want to put a veiled suffix on a magic flask, you can simply use a beastcrafting recipe that has the correct prefix (such as Seething or Bubbling). The most useful way to utilize beastcrafting is to imprint items before using splitting and Fossil Crafting recipes. This ensures that your hard-earned mods will not be lost in the process, and allows you to revert an item if the new one is not as good as the original.
Bench Crafting
In crafting, players can add a variety of modifiers to their items. These can be deterministic or random, depending on the method used. A regal orb can upgrade an item to a rare with three prefixes and three suffixes, for example, while a summoner’s reroll orb can only add a random affix to a weapon. A common method of adding a specific modifier to an item is bench crafting. This can be done using the tinker’s bench or the armorer’s bench. A tinker’s bench can turn shattered glass into a crafted fragment, while the armorer’s bench can process animal hide into leather.
These benches can also provide the necessary materials for other bench crafts, which can then be used to modify or improve an item’s quality. For example, an armorer’s scrap can improve the armor or evasion base of an armor piece by one tier. Alternatively, a summoner’s reroll can boost an armor or weapon’s physical damage by a certain amount. This can be extremely helpful when trying to build a new character.
Using a reroll to add a specific attribute is known as craft of exile, and it can be a very powerful way to increase an item’s stats. Metacrafts are expensive, though, and they can easily burn through a player’s currency. To prevent this, it is best to only use these methods on high-level items. This will increase the chances of a successful outcome, and it will ensure that the item is suitable for its intended role in the game. This will also help to reduce the chance of losing valuable affixes or components.
Faceted Fossil
For players that want to take their crafting to the next level, faceted fossils are available. These special currency items allow you to add modifiers that cannot be added otherwise. However, you need to understand how they work and how the modifier pool works to maximize their effectiveness. A faceted fossil works like a chaos orb but with a twist. Instead of rerolling the item, it modifies the pool to make it easier or harder for certain modifiers to appear. For example, a Shuddering Fossil blocks the appearance of damage and poison mods while a Lucent Fossil boosts physical ones.
The faceted fossil can also be used to add sockets to an item. This is similar to how a regal orb works, but it has a higher chance to add two white sockets than a regular orb. It can also boost the amount of sockets an item has up to a maximum. Another unique feature of a faceted fossil is that it can add an additional slot to the modifier pool for an influenced base. This can be especially useful for weapon, armour, helm, chest, and flask bases. This can improve an item’s defence and increase its damage output.
Conclusion
Fossil mods were moved out of the faceted fossil and into different influenced base slots in 3.10. This change reduced the chance of a specific modifier rolling, but it did not remove the possibility of rolling that modifier. Using a faceted fossil will still provide the best chances of getting a rare mod, but it is no longer as easy to obtain. For this reason, many players now choose to use a regal orb when creating their items. This allows them to have the best possible mix of modifiers and can lead to a powerful item.
