Path of Exile 2 Crafting Guide

How is Wraeclast treating you, Exiles? Have you managed to complete the first Act yet? In this Path of Exile 2 crafting guide, we’ll help you advance through tougher parts of the game’s content by explaining how the crafting system works. It’s going to be a pretty interesting guide because PoE 2’s crafting is not what you expect. So, if you’re new to PoE or just never really grasped the depth of this system, our guide will help you make what’s what.

By the way, if you need more crafting Orbs but can’t find any thanks to amazing randomization in this game, you should buy PoE 2 Exalted Orbs at SkyCoach. You can set the desired amount of Exalted Orbs you want to get, specify the difficulty and the platform, and our managers will allocate your order to one of our amazing PROs. Your orbs will be delivered to you as fast as possible with 100% guarantees. Save yourself dozens of hours and start making that build you always wanted!

Read our other PoE 2 guides:

• Item Filter Guide for PoE 2
• Best Builds
• Trial of Chaos Guide
• Endgame Guide
• Gearing Guide

 

 

How PoE 2 Crafting Works

The crafting system in Path of Exile 2 is not really something you might expect to see in a game like this. You aren’t going to be using any blacksmithing professions to turn ore into a piece of armor or weapon. Instead, the name of the game for the crafting system in PoE 2 is modification. That’s right!

You take a base item that you want to improve, and then you start modifying it by spending various Orbs on it to add or replace bonuses or to increase the item’s rarity and Quality. Fear not; in this PoE 2 crafting guide, we’re going to explain all of these things in due time, but for now, let’s start with the crafting materials, also known as the Currency Items.

PoE 2 Crafting Materials

At the core of Path of Exile 2 crafting are the currency items, primarily Orbs. They’re called currency items because, in a barter-based trading system of PoE 2, the community decided that the value of these orbs is settled, so it can be used as money or currency if trading an item for an item is not an option. Anyway, this was just a side node. Let’s take a look at what crafting materials you’ll be working with, but instead of dumping all of them at once, we’ve broken them down into categories.

Item Upgrade Orbs

These orbs upgrade the rarity of an item, allowing you to improve it from Normal to Magic, Rare, or even Unique. They are fundamental in enhancing gear progressively as you find better base items. BLOG20

These are essential when you want to transition your gear from basic (Normal) to more powerful (Magic or Rare) versions. Ideal for early-game progression or when you have a solid item base that you want to enhance.

Modifier Manipulation Orbs

These orbs let you add, remove, or modify modifiers on Rare items, which is what PoE 2 item crafting is all about, giving you control over the affixes to achieve desired item stats.

These orbs offer flexibility but come with risk, making crafting a strategic endeavor. They're used in mid-to-late game when you want to optimize your gear by adding or removing specific modifiers.

Socket Manipulation Orbs

These PoE 2 crafting orbs modify the sockets on skill gems or gear, which is essential for linking and socketing support gems effectively.

These orbs are crucial for maximizing your skill gem setups. The more sockets your gear has, the more support gems you can link to your main skills. Runes, introduced in Path of Exile 2, add additional depth by socketing into Martial Weapons and armor.

Quality Improvement Items

These items improve the quality of specific gear types, increasing their base stats or effectiveness.

Quality is a secondary that you don’t really have to think about too hard when you’re crafting.

What Is Quality?

Quality grants small bonuses to an item depending on the type of item.

• Martial Weapons gain 1% more Physical damage per Quality.
• Armors gain 1% more Defenses per quality.
• Rings and Amulets have a number of possible quality types that provide bonuses to specific modifiers on the item.
• Flasks gain 1% more Life and Mana recovery per Quality.
• Charms gain 1% increased duration per Quality.
• Skill Gems or equipment that grant Skills grant a specific bonus to their Skill based on their Quality.

Quality is a fundamental aspect of the crafting and item enhancement system in Path of Exile 2. While the bonuses granted by quality may seem small at first glance, their impact can become significant, especially as you progress through the game and encounter tougher enemies and more challenging content.

Disenchanting and Orb Shards

Now that you know how to craft items in PoE 2, it’s time to learn how to destroy them.

With the introduction of gold in PoE 2, getting rid of unwanted gear has become a trivial task. But gold has limited use in this game, and if you want to get more orbs, you can instead use Disenchanting to break down gear into Shards.

Some NPC vendors like Una at the Clearfell camp in Act 1 or Zarka at the Ardura Caravan offer the option to Disenchant items:

• Disenchanting Magic items gives you Transmutation Shards
• Disenchanting Rare items gives you Regal Shards BLOG20

Here are some PoE 2 crafting tips – you’ll get 1 shard per item, no more, no less. The other types of shards are obtained by disenchanting other qualities of items later in the game. What’s interesting is that you don’t have to identify Unidentified items before disenchanting, so you can keep those Scrolls of Wisdom you’ve been hoarding since Act 1.

 

Salvage Bench

There’s a crafting station in the game called the Salvage Bench, which serves as another way to get rid of unwanted gear by breaking them into Blacksmith's Whetstone if you salvage a weapon or armorer's Scrap if you salvage an Armor piece.

Unfortunately, you can only do it to items that either already have improved quality or contain run sockets. And speaking of runes…

Path of Exile 2 Crafting & Runes

Although we've already covered runes in our Gearing guide, it's worth revisiting them here, as runes extend the crafting system, which is fundamentally designed to enhance character stats.

Sometimes, the items you find have sockets in them. What kind of PoE 2 crafting materials do you insert into those? These sockets are reserved for Runes. Here are a few examples:

These runes add extra modifiers to your gear, providing significant boosts or solving specific issues in your build. This system allows you to fine-tune your character's stats, helping you address weaknesses like resistances or damage output.

• Body armors and Two-Handed Weapons can have up to two sockets.
• Helmets, Boots, Gloves, and One-Handed Weapons can have only one socket.

Don’t get the wrong idea about PoE 2 rune crafting. They might seem like the tip of the iceberg, so you might think, “I’ll worry about runes later in the game,” when, in fact, you’ll be finding first runes as early as Act 1.

Some runes add elemental resistance when slotted into armor. It will be impossible to keep all 3 elemental resistances equally high without using runes. So, while you’re on the lookout for your next item to equip, make sure to get one with a rune socket in it. You’ll have plenty of runes to spare but not enough items with sockets in them. To get more, start stashing Artificer's Orbs, which you can get by combining 10 Artificer's Shards from salvaging other equipment with slots.

Endgame Crafting

When you make your way to Atlas, there will be more advanced crafting items for you to use. In general, these items will either allow you to get specific mods for your gear or allow modification of things that were previously not modifiable.

Essences

Essence is an item type that can be used to upgrade normal items to magic items with a guaranteed mod. Take a look at the list of currently available essences:

You can get Essences by engaging with essence monoliths found throughout the game world. These monoliths contain monsters trapped in crystals; releasing and defeating them rewards players with corresponding Essences, such as:

These also come with a “Greater” prefix, which means that they can upgrade a magic item to a rare one.

Soul Cores

Soul Cores are powerful socketable items with mods that cannot be obtained from regular runes.

To acquire Soul Cores, you have to participate in the Trial of Chaos, an endgame activity inspired by Path of Exile's Ultimatum mechanic. Within these trials, Soul Cores can appear as rewards from the Trialmaster, offering players the opportunity to enhance their equipment with these powerful modifiers. BLOG20

It's important to note that Soul Cores are exclusive to the Trial of Chaos and cannot be obtained through other means. Therefore, engaging in these trials is essential for players seeking to maximize their gear's potential with Soul Cores. Here are a few examples:

As you can see, you can use them just like runes and slot them either into armor or a weapon.

Omens

Omens come from the Ritual mechanic of the endgame. When you complete a ritual, the altar might contain a random Omen, among other items, and you can buy it by spending Tribute.

The way you use this item is quite different. Once used, it will create a buff, which will trigger the described effect once the condition is met. By the condition, we mean using the right orb.

Catalysts

Catalysts come from the nodes with Breach on the Atlas. They’re used on jewelry like rings to increase specific mods. But, they’re most effective when used on special Breach Rings, which is a new type of ring that can also be found only when playing Breach.

The combination of catalysts and Breach Rings opens up new avenues for character customization and min-maxing, particularly for builds that rely on specialized modifiers. Whether you’re looking to boost your resistances, enhance damage, or improve survivability, catalysts provide a versatile way to enhance your jewelry and push your build’s potential even further.

Conclusion

Crafting in PoE 2 is the process of modifying an item to shape it into whatever you want it to be. In other words, it’s a way to change the item with random stats to have stats and bonuses that you want. This is mainly done through items like Orbs, aka the currency items. Besides them, there are also socketable items like runes or Soul Cores. A bunch of more advanced and more specialized crafting items become available once you reach the endgame. These late-game crafting items like Catalysts or Essences can only be obtained from maps that contain specific mechanics like Breach or Delirium. 

But you definitely shouldn’t wait for the endgame before modifying your items. Unlike the first game, you get way fewer item drops from monsters across the board, which means that you should be paying more attention to what items you keep for crafting or which ones you salvage or disenchant. Even Normal items can now be turned into something good. Even early on, you can upgrade them into Magic and then into Rare and add more bonuses. Just try to craft items that already have sockets. Those runes are really good. Good luck, exiles!

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