Crafting system should be reworked

One aspect of POE that I really like is its crafting system however I feel like it hasn’t been developed to its maximum potential. It is far easier to trade for the items you need then to craft them especially when it comes to endgame itemization. Crafting can be such a currency sink especially if you’re unlucky. Trading feels like the only reliable way to obtain what you need and this can feel like hassle for those who don’t enjoy it. I would like to be able to meticulously craft my own gear in a way that isn’t so dependent on rng yet still provides that rush of excitement when you land on the role you were looking for, to be able to skillfully manipulate the rng to be more in my favor.

Some ideas to improve the crafting experience are: providing a new master that lets you only role for offensive or defensive affixes on items, having high level items that you find (not the ones you trade) being unable to roll lower tier affixes, or creating a master vendor recipe where if you sell five items with the same name that all share the same affixes you gain a new item of the same name that has the previous shared affixes permanently locked in equal to the lowest affix tier (I think this one might be too easy though).

I think the crafting should feel more rewarding the more planning you put into creating an item. It would better for solo-self found players and make the game a little more understandable for new players as well.


What are your thoughts on the current crafting system? What do you like, what do you not like, what would you change about it? Do you have any ideas on how to improve the system? How do you feel about trading and such?

crafting is for std nolife rich kids.

It should be for everyone I wanna make my own cool stuff but I am too poor :'(

I think crafting is one of the many areas that needs a bit of a rework.

Even with the crafting tables and the meta crafting mods or essence use (since you can't use both) your results are still wildly variable, and that is even before numbers are considered.
High variability + expensive + requires endgame levelled Masters = out of reach for many players and irritating to use.

The system is also rather opaque with knowing about prefix vs suffix, crafting bases and what the hell is a Vaal Orb even supposed to do.

Its odd that Regal and Exalted orbs are so rare when they have such a small chance of applying a useful modifier to your item.

"

HousePet wrote:

I think crafting is one of the many areas that needs a bit of a rework.

Even with the crafting tables and the meta crafting mods or essence use (since you can't use both) your results are still wildly variable, and that is even before numbers are considered.
High variability + expensive + requires endgame levelled Masters = out of reach for many players and irritating to use.

The system is also rather opaque with knowing about prefix vs suffix, crafting bases and what the hell is a Vaal Orb even supposed to do.

Its odd that Regal and Exalted orbs are so rare when they have such a small chance of applying a useful modifier to your item.

Yeah where the crafting system currently stands it feels like a mess that is only ever fun or profitable to tinker with early in the main story. In the earlier story all affixes you role can be useful to you, but once you get to late game the only way you can reliably upgrade your equipment is through trading. Maybe you get lucky and get a good drop that has exactly what you're looking for but that can take forever. I feel like the crafting system is balanced around the early game but was never properly balanced around late game.

Crafting could use a bit of a boost, yeah.

As a SSF player, alterations become kinda precious, but it's... well, you go through hundreds of these things. I mean, you can definitely get lucky (and I have)... some things I've crafted:



The Helm I used an Exalt on and whiffed (life regen after blocking a prefix)... The amulet was fine for a while, but I'm kind of sick of its measly DPS and rolling a new one is... well, resource-heavy...



I crafted this... SUPER, SUPER lucky... Have been working, as I get Exalts, on rerolling the suffix.

But crafting is kinda bootstrap, I have to admit. Like, you can easily go through two-hundred alterations on a single item and not get the desired result. And you need to keep a good stream of Regals, so when you run out, it's back to the recipe grind (for SSF, anyway).

But a solution? IDK. Futzing with the system seems like it would require creative solutions, and, TBH, I can't think of anything at the moment.

TL;DR: I think crafting could use a bit of love, but it's definitely not broken (at least from a SSF point of view).

its more like gambling than crafting.


wish we could get a system similar to median XL honorifics were the item starts as a lv 1 clean item and it can be upgraded multiple times with special orbs gaining mods and levels based on the orbs used.

Further thoughts:

Uniques and crafting could do with looking at:
You can spend a lot of time levelling up the Masters or collecting a load of currency, but you can't tune Unique items to better match your build or extend their usefulness into late game.
There are a lot of interesting Uniques that probably don't get a lot of use because they don't have stats that are good enough for late game.

Item Quality:
This mechanic basically doesn't work.
If you have the currency (and you always do), you max out the quality on your gear. It doesn't do much for half the slots. Does even less for weapons as a caster.
Flasks: Wait until end game and then quality them up.
Gems: Maybe max out the quality on your attack gem with your new character to make levelling up slightly easier, or just wait for the level 20 recipe in late game.
This could do with a serious rethink.

Crafting is where it needs to be. Just trade for the items you need and sell all the crafting currency.