harbinger crafting help

Please note, that crafting depends on your luck. Be prepared to invest and lose quite a bit of currency. If you're aiming on high 400+ DPS results you might need THOUSANDS of alteration orbs and a lot of luck.

First of all, you want to find or buy a base. The means a white/magic/rare harbinger bow. You want as high item level as possible. You can also buy a high level harbinger from another player.

Harbingers start dropping somewhere in merciless act 3. You can also use a decimation bow for early crafting in a new league, which are weaker, but much easier to find.

To find out the itemlevel of a item, hold the item and enter " /itemlevel " into the chat. The highest base that is of interest for us is level 77. Higher bows don't get any new mods.

Levels of interest are:
1) iLvl: 60: 130 to 149 (Cruel) - Local Physical Dmg +%
2) iLvl: 65: 24 to 33 / 49 to 57 (Tempered) - Local Min/max added physical damage
3) iLvl: 73: 150 to 169 (Tyrannical) - Local Physical Dmg +%
4) ilvl: 73: 75 to 80 / 100 to 135 (Emperor's) - Local Physical Dmg +% / Local Accuracy Rating
5) iLvl: 77: iLvl: 77: 29 to 38 / 58 to 68 (Flaring) - Local Min/max added physical damage


The most important level is 73. In addition to the mods listed above it also adds the top crit chance and crit damage rolls. And even with flaring being an insane mod, you can attempt to craft some quite good items using ilvl73+ harbingers.

(Check http://www.poemods.com/index.php?item_type=bow for more information).

You should also watch out for the internal critical strike affix on the harbinger bow. It can go from 30% to 50%. You can reroll the affix with a blessed orb. The orb is very affordable and should not create big complications. So this should not be your primary criteria, when shopping for bows.



Once you have such a bow. You should transmute it (if it's not magic already) with:



then start applying:



The goal is to get a harbinger bow with one of the mods listed above and a second decent mod (crit chance/attack speed/crit damage). The exception is "tyrannical", if you get this mod simply proceed crafting, no matter what suffix you get with the augmentation orb.



Once you have two good mods, apply a regal orb.



With a bit of luck you'll get a third good mod (Crit, Crit chance, Hybrid PhysDamage/Accuracy, high accuracy, attack speed). If it's not (and you're after crafting a REALLY good thing and need a good 3rd mod) use a



...and start over.

Even if the mod is bad (especially in the beginning of the league) you can then bring the bow to "Tora - Master of the Hunt" and apply the "other" physical mod. Here's a screenshot of some of the things a (already level 5) tora can do:



Alternatively if you have a good 3 stat rare bow, you can ask a playing with a level 8 Elreon to add the "can receive multiple master craft bonuses" on it and then add 2 bonuses on it (usually crit chance and damage. Note that this is expensive and should be done with very good results only.

Also: if you get a single stat blue item after alterating with either Flaring/Tyrranical, you can attempt regaling it. If you get the other one (so you have Flaring+Tyrranical), congratulations, you managed to create the holy grail of crafting in new leagues. Ask a trustworthy player with level 8 elreon+tora to add Crit chance/damage (or attack speed/returning arrows) + WED (now that Hybrid damage/ac is gone) and you have a godlike bow that can reach 400-500 DPS.

If you want to try your luck you can also try improving the bow using the following orbs:



Finally improve the number of sockets, links and quality with jewelers, fusings and blacksmith's, adapt the colors and enjoy your new killing machine.



The whole process can be frustrating, but if you're smart and a lil' bit lucky, you can also make quite a profit by selling these bows (made around 15 exalts this way).