Path of Exile (POE) Crafting Guide for Beginners

POE Crafting Guide

Crafting in Path of Exile can prove to be a tedious and complex task, sometimes eluding even the veteran players of the game.

What is PoE Crating? PoE crafting refers to the process of either creating or improving items by adding or removing modifiers from them. Players can craft different items through multiple methods including the use of certain orbs and other currency, or even with the help of the PoE crafting bench, vendor recipes, or masters.

PoE Crafting – All you Need to Know

All the PoE players require the game’s in-game currency to do any kind of crafting or trading with items.

Generally, crafting requires you to invest a lot of your currencies. That is why players need to make sure that all their crafting attempts are successful, therefore making the whole process cost-efficient.

This is also the reason why many players tend to avoid crafting items themselves and choose instead to buy the desired items from another player/crafter. Thus, even though crafting in PoE has its downsides, if you become good at it, you can benefit a lot from it.

Before you begin with your crafting journey, you must know one universal thumb rule for Path of Exile – you should avoid advanced crafting for different equipment and weapons unless you have access to high-level items (item level > 80). This ensures that the player will have the highest tiers of modifiers available.

But don’t worry about the whole complex-sounding process. We have created the ultimate PoE crafting guide to make it easier for all gaming enthusiasts!

The Ultimate Guide to Crafting in Path of Exile

All the items in Path of Exile have different values. Their rarity is attributed to their colors.

For example, the color white symbolizes normal items, blue symbolizes magic items, yellow symbolizes rare items, and orange symbolizes unique items. In the four categories, unique items are the most valuable, and they can break most of the in-game rules that restrict other items.

This particular element of the game represents the number of affixes that each item can have.

For example, normal items have no affixes. Magic items can have up to 2 affixes while rare items can have up to 6 affixes.

Furthermore, affixes can further be categorized into prefixes and suffices.

For example, magic items can have 1 prefix and 1 suffix, but they cannot have 2 affixes of the same kind. Rare items can have 3 prefixes and 3 suffices.

This element of items is important because different modifiers can be either suffixes or prefixes.

For instance, resistance is one modifier that will always be a suffix.

Implicit Modifiers

Apart from prefixes or suffixes, you have another modifier that is called an implicit. It is neither a suffix nor a prefix.

Usually, implicit modifiers associate themselves with particular base items. They are quite lucrative when it comes to crafting in PoE because they guarantee that you will have one particular mod on the resulting item.

Item Base

The next important attribute for an item is its base. The names of all the items in the game represent their base. The base of the item is absolute. It won’t change even if you craft the item from normal into magic, rare, or unique. Because of the steadfast nature of the base, the implicit of the item also remains the same.

Shaper/Elder Bases

An item can also have the Shaper or Elder base. These categories of bases are represented by the cosmic or tentacle backgrounds respectively. You can spot items with these bases on the map with Shaper or Elder influence.

Some affixes are exclusive only to items with Shaper or Elder bases.

Advanced Mod Descriptions

As we have mentioned before, the maximum number of affixes that any item can have in PoE is 6. But you might have seen many players wielding items that look as they have more than 6 affixes.

So how does that happen?

To find out, you need to look at the advanced mod descriptions tab of the item. To get more comprehensive information about any item, go to Options > UI > and check the “Advanced Mod Descriptions” setting. Once done, you can hold the Alt key and hover your cursor over the name of any item. This will bring up all the extra information.

Here you can see that even if items that look as though they have 7 affixes only actually have 5 or 6 affixes. This implies that with enough crafting, you can add another prefix to the item, which makes it more valuable and useful.

The entire advanced mod descriptions tab holds information like the name and tier of each affix along with the numeric range of each modifier.

The tier of the affix is an important attribute. The tier of your item will also dictate the possible numeric range of your affix. The highest tier that your item can have is 1 while the lowest is about 13.

Item Level

The item level is another major attribute for any item within the game. The level of your item will determine the possible tier range for your affixes.

Just remember that tier 1 is the highest, and the higher the tier, the larger will be the values of each affix. Thus, bigger item levels will allow items to have higher tiers.

Different Types of Crafting in PoE

Now that we have introduced you to the most basic structure of different items in the game, let us talk about some basic PoE crafting methods.

Currency Crafting

The most commonly used crafting method in Path of Exile is through the in-game currency orbs. These orbs can modify an item in different ways. The most basic currency orbs affect the quality of the item.

All of these currencies are capable of enhancing the qualities of each item by up to 20% depending upon the type of the item.

For example, these currencies can increase the quality of white items by 5% with each orb, 2% on magic items, and 1% on rare and unique items.

Next up, we have orbs that players can use to upgrade item levels. For example, you can use these orbs to upgrade items from one kind of a rarity to another.

Please note that using these orbs won’t change the base type of the item, neither will it change the implicit of the item.

Next up, we have orbs that can help players remove or modify the existing mods from an item:

• Blessed Orb is an interesting currency as it can re-roll all the values of implicit modifiers if your items have one. It works on all kinds of rarities.
• Orb of Augmentation can allow players to modify their items by adding an extra affix to a magic item that only had a single one.
• Orb of Alteration holds similar properties. Players can use this orb to re-roll random mods on a magic item.

These are the basic orbs that players should know about before they go on an adventure of crafting in the game. You can read up more about the more rare orbs with enhanced abilities on the game’s website or wiki.

Crafting Bench

The other basic crafting method is to use the hideout Crafting Bench.

You get access to your hideout following the completion of a quest in Act 2. The NPC Helena will be the one who gives you access to your hideout. While there are other benefits of the hideout, the most important benefit is the availability of the crafting bench.

Normally, you can use the crafting bench to add a single affix on a magic or rare item which has less than the maximum amount of affixes allowed. When you first encounter the bench, it will come with some default recipes.

However, you can find more as and when you play the game and completely different types of quests and content.

You can retrieve some of these recipes in some parts of the Delve mine, or after unveiling the items that the Syndicate members drop. The more esoteric of these recipes can be found in the Incursion Temple rooms once you complete the prophecies.

It is important to remember that the affixes that you add through the crafting bench will have lesser values than the ones that are naturally rolled. However, it is still a great option if you want to improve your gear at a cheap rate.

However, the biggest benefit of the Crafting Bench is that it offers the players some control and flexibility when they wish to customize their items. On the other hand, up-gradation through currency orbs is completely random and based on luck and chance.

Final Thoughts

In this article, we have introduced you to all the avenues of crafting a special, overpowered item in Path of Exile. However, the process is still complex and would take some personal experience for players to get the hang of it.

We recommend that you use a PoE crafting simulator called the Craft of Exile before you try out your luck in-game and waste your valuable resources.

The craft of Exile, an online tool, aims to make crafting easier for PoE players to find out the easiest, best, and most cost-effective methods to achieve their crafting goals.

We hope that this article was able to help you. Enjoy playing, enjoy crafting!