Crafting endgame gear?

I’m playing self-found / self-craft only. I play since open beta and I have probably close to 2000 hours of game play experience.

My problem is the lack of an endgame weapon. For example, after all these hours of grinding my best PHY dagger drop doesn’t even match Bino’s.

I have enough gear to max my resistances get decent life, armor, evasion or energy shield. DPS or the lack thereof is what’s limiting me. Every time I do find a weapon upgrade I can push forward and grind higher level maps. But getting upgrades at this point seems as unlikely as winning the lottery.

I need to craft, but how? In close to 2k hours I’ve only found around 20 Exalts. Not a single Eternal (I really start to believe they’re a myth)!
How are we supposed to craft if ~100 hours of grinding are required per Exalt and even more for Eternals. With the big pool of affixes and tiers a handful of both will not get us an endgame weapon. I think at least 50 Eternals are required to craft something good and I’m not talking about mirror worthy gear here, not by a long shot.

How do you craft? What are your strategies?
Are there strategies for farming Exalts, Eternals? Do I have to stack item rarity or quantity for orb drops (I believe it's quantity)?
Is crafting something GGG has intended for streamers and full-time players only?

Thanks for all your input!

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fae76 wrote:

I’m playing self-found / self-craft only.

Your problem lies here.

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StDrakeX wrote:

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fae76 wrote:

I’m playing self-found / self-craft only.

Your problem lies here.

I simply don't like trading or a game called "Auction House Ticoon". I play ARPG because I like ARPGs and I rather play the game and try new builds instead of spending hours studying prices and items.

Even if I'd "buy" from other players, I'd still have to farm roughly the same number of Exalts.

The only thing you can do is spam chaos on a high ilvl ambusher if you want to beat binos. How else are we supposed to help you out when it's all RNG..

Or spam Chance orbs until you get a Binos.

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The only thing you can do is spam chaos on a high ilvl ambusher if you want to beat binos. How else are we supposed to help you out when it's all RNG..

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Or spam Chance orbs until you get a Binos.

I'm doing both already, no luck so far. BTW chancing never gave me a unique so far and yes I'm aware that I need the correct base item.

So you're both saying there is nothing I can do to improve my chances/drops and that it's totally normal to get 1 Exalt per 100 hours of grinding and no Eternal in >750 hours (I'm aware they were introduced after open beta hence >750 and not 2000)?

Don't get me wrong, I'm not qqing. I just like to know if I can do something to get forward. It's slowly getting frustrating to hit the same wall (gear check) with toon after toon. At this point I can more or less exclude that my builds are the problem (at least the latest 4 or 5).

You're chances of crafting something better than a Binos with self found Exalts and Eternals is low than actually spamming chaos farmed from chaos recipes. Good luck.

Not the answer I was hoping for but somehow knew I would get. Thanks.

I wish GGG would implement self-found leagues with greatly increased orb drop rates but any form of player to player trading disabled.

the multiple mod crafting is always an option. this would require finding high level ambushers, alteration spamming for extremely high phys % or flat etc, regaling for crit chance or attack speed or flat phys etc and then doing the rest with the bench. Im not sure the exact dps numbers u can get like that now but I wouldnt be surprised if you can still beat a binos with the right rolls.

Honestly a binos itself can crush lvl78 maps, that level of dagger is extremely strong, beyond that is getting into overkill land.

Ive never found a rare that would better a binos either, I found an actual binos but rares have always been sub binos level. Ive found 2 eternals in my time playing, with over 8,500 hours on the clock... ya, its the sort of thing that literally might never happen regardless of how long you play, and yes you would need vast amounts of them to actually eternal exalt craft a dagger.

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fae76 wrote:

Not the answer I was hoping for but somehow knew I would get. Thanks.

I wish GGG would implement self-found leagues with greatly increased orb drop rates but any form of player to player trading disabled.

Self found leagues Yes.. Increased drops for self-found league No.

I think the eternal orb drop rate should be increased for all realms. Furthermore, I think that eternal orbs should drop as frequently as exalted orbs. Keep exalt drop rates the same as they are now.