Just another RNG rant

/rant
Yeah, me too.

Those of us who have been playing MMOs since the late 90s know the feeling, but this might just be the dumbest example of harassment (of me) by a game's RNG in my entire career (EQ, EQ2, AC1, AC2, WoW, GW2 and more).

FINALLY got my first usable unique (unique #7 total I believe in a month's playing since starting the game, taking my time getting to Cruel Act I very recently). I almost never make alterations to pieces I know are just going to soon be replaced, so this time I had saved up several dozen to several hundred orbs of various types for this 'special' drop. Thankfully changing the number of gem slots from one to three only took maybe six or so orbs, then burnt through 60+ chromatics trying to change the colors. I get it - three colors, three slots, that's a few combinations. But I am a witch, and I almost never saw blue come up. Ticked off, I still managed to chuckle a bit at the gambling aspect of the game, burning consumables keeps you playing to get more, right?

But, this is a game, so I decided to see just how far this would go; I had to look up where to get more chromatics. Yeena, trade in this x2 for these and trade those at x3 for chromatics. Great - I have a few hundred of the base orbs so I should be able to get it done. Nope. Burnt through everything. Even went back to have to hunt more to get more blues to ID and sell (I had even quit IDing blues as I didn't need to and having to collect a ton of crap to run back and forth to sell all the time is NOT fun). Now I'm having to spend 50% of my time @#$%*&ing around portalling back and forth selling crap instead of playing. As I said...not fun.

It is a 'free' game - I get it. It lacks character mobility, much polish, etc. but it is a cute little time-waster with a few entertaining complexities.

/ragequit (but will likely still play on and off...just a lot less ;o)

/end rant

Seems you don't know how Chromatics work in terms of how they respond to lets say a armor chest. In most cases it will only turn reds and greens and rarely blue. It's hard to offcolor these types and yes they don't tell you as a beginner they want you to learn the hardway which is fine honestly.

Say example the chest piece is full ES - INT base

Blue>>>>>>>>G>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>R

Offcolor'ing is pretty hard to do if it's a full thing basically.

Say the chest is Armor and ES then it will have better time getting blue and red colors.

Basic right?

Colors are linked to the attributes it has.

wiki about the cromatic orb :)

Doesn't know stat requirements affect socket color odds... RAGGGGE

Strength, Armour, Red.

Dexterity, Evasion, Green.

Energy Shield, Intelligence, Blue.

If the item you're trying to recolor is high in one stat but not another it can be damn near impossible to get the colors you want without using Master crafting.

The real issue here is not RNG, but your complete and utter lack of knowledge when it comes to this game's systems. You're clearly trying to play this like it's a friggin' WOW expansion. It is not. It is an ARPG with an internet connection, not an MMO.

If you're just now getting into Cruel chances are that unless you picked up an absolutely GG unique it's already being outpaced by rares you're vendoring to get more currency from. Stop this madness immediately. The only stats that actually matter are whichever is keeping you alive (life, evasion, or ES) and elemental resistances. Ignore everything else, no matter how amazing your unique supposedly is. It isn't that good if you can wear it in Cruel. Just use another item that already has the slots you need. Problem solved.

From your public information it looks like you somehow got yourself to level 49 before hitting Cruel. This is absolutely insane. The whole idea of leveling in this game is to get through the three acts as quickly as you can. By being so over-leveled you're doing yourself a massive disservice. Loot drops get crappier and your XP per hour tanks with each level. At this point you won't be back on track level-wise until Cruel Act 3 and even then you'll be halfway through it.

Stop trying to play the Acts like they're grindfests. They're not. They're the basic crap you get out of the way ASAP so you can get to the actual fun bit.

what others said, and even more: with masters you can get a GUARANTEED mix of colors, especially on small items. You can choose "get 2 blue, get 1 blue 1 red" etc.

Next time reed a bit more before spending

items are aligned with a certain color (or color combination), depending on the item base. in general it is

blue = int = energy shield
green = dex = evasion rating
red = str = armour

rolling many off-color sockets on an item is possible, but very unlikely. burning hundreds of chromes on some crappy low level unique (that probably isn't worth more than an alch in the first place) is a pretty bad waste of currency.
i don't blame you - the game is very overwhelming at the beginning, and all this crafting knowledge is pretty advanced stuff that you can't really figure out on your own without reading through a ton of wiki articles.

anyway - wasting a bunch of chromes is annoying, but it's not the end of the world. they're not particularly expensive or rare items.
if you keep on playing, i suggest you mostly keep your currency in your stash. when you think you need to upgrade your gear, you will probably get a much bigger upgrade for a much lower price by checking out poe.trade and buying some nice items from the people there, instead of blasting dozens of orbs on the random garbage you find while leveling. you can get pretty good leveling uniques for a few orbs of alchemy or orbs of fusing.
crafting your own leveling gear as you go can work out fine, too, but it requires you to know your way around the item and crafting system. if you are the kind of guy who enjoys spending hours on a wiki page reading about item affixes, that's cool. otherwise you're better off buying cheap leveling uniques from poe.trade and saving your currency for later.

There are even more things tied to base stats...

Dex - green - evasion - ranged - cold damage/resistance - dodge - frenzy charges

Str - red - armour - melee - fire damage/ resistance - block - endurance charges

Int - blue - energy shield - magic - lightning damage/resistance - spell block - power charges

Well you make a big mistake, playing the game and you not alredy learn all abouth it.
When i started this game i known what mast be done, frst you open the game and then you ALT Tab and search wiki, forum, then next 10 days you read and wach all abouth it.

So when you hit lvl 2 you then go agen on crusade for next 10 days examening skill tree and skill and all the effects and all.
Then game mechanics for each time you get oblitirated, mentaly damaged ect, spend time searching asking and complaying.

Finaly when you think its time to hit level 3 you need to get suporter pack and close the game. Open twitch and learn META, you cant be a pessant playing Glacial hamer now dont you and you dont whana spend precious MTX on not cool skills that be just soul crashing.

When you think you are ready to continiue use Ctrl + C/Ctrl + V for build of "choice".
You may whana consider upgrading you PC, SSD and no AMD components.
When you finish all this if you still having fun copy and past this instruction to people who are new to this proces...

Next time check over here first to see how many chromes it is expected to take to get the colors you want on your item:

https://siveran.github.io/calc.html


And as others have said, spending currency that early in the game is not needed. There are 2 approaches that work perfectly well up to around the end of Cruel:

1) Use whatever gear with the right links and colors, even if it's a white item. At most, throw a transmute at it and use it as is.

2) Use whatever you find with the most life and resists. Ignore the links.