Redditor makes over 3000 exalts in Bestiary by duping

Copy and pasted from here; https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/8n2qja/how_i_duped_my_way_to_an_alt_art_alpha_howl/

Credits to; https://www.reddit.com/user/Epsi_d2/overview




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Ever since I've been playing PoE I've always dreamed of owning an Alt Art Alpha Howl; emphasis on dreamed, as this item was getting further and further out of reach with each passing leagues, gaining value on the market at a much faster pace than I could earn currency in the game.

But it always was a very special item to me, my Black Lotus, if only because if the rumor is to be believed, the mere act of equipping one should immediately grant you access to the Alpha Test Realm, not unlike owls and Hogwarts invitations.

So if you had told me before Bestiary started that I would be able to use crafting recipes to collect enough mirrors to finally aquire one, I most likely would have laughed at the very idea.



Allow me to tell you the story of the E.P.S.I. recipe, short for "Extremely Profitable Split Imprint" (some players also claim that the "E" stand for "Ethical", considering that no exploit was involved at any point during the whole process).



Discovery
It all started when I was trying to craft a mirror worthy RF scepter, on from a magic base that I was imprinting repeatedly as it had one of the rarest magic affix in PoE (Xoph's). At some point I had to idea to try the "Split a rare item in two" recipe after using an imprint, and I was actually able to revert the item to its original state after splitting it in two, effectively duping the magic mod!

I immediately e-mailed GGG, thinking that I had just found a significant exploit, and paused my crafting in the meantime, but I quickly received a reply that surprised me: it was working as intended.

Since I was monitoring all new beasts for trade for the imprint recipe, I could see that none of them were selling, and it became pretty clear that nobody else was using this specific combo.



I decided to take advantage of this unique opportunity presented to me (which to me was one in a PoE-lifetime, especially considering how quickly players usually jump on new techniques), and did some research on what could the most profitable (not the rarest) 2 mods magic item combination possible in PoE (sadly it could not be on a Shaped or Elder base as the Split recipe explicitly excluded them).

I ended up choosing the Jewelled Foil, as it was extremely popular (most likely thanks to the PogChampion rework) and at similar DPS was almost twice as expensive as the other high-end weapon bases. I invested into a "Merciless Jewelled Foil of Celebration" magic base (tier 1 physical damage % and tier 1 attack speed) for 20 exalts, divined it to a perfect 179% phys / 27% speed and colored it with 3 white sockets thanks to friendly Rhoas.



A quick look at the power of the combo:




Crafting Process
The Split recipe required a rare item, which meant that I had to use a Regal Orb to get a 3 affix item. The Imprint orb "revert" mechanic only worked on the item that stayed in the crafting window of the Menagerie, so you were not allowed to revert the item split on the ground. Thus I expected the chance to successfully dupe both "Merciless" and "Celebration" to be 1 in 6, since there are 6 possible permutations of 3 mods on 2 items.

But the Split actually had a nice quirk to it: the item that was split on the ground always had 2 affixes if you started from a 3 affixes rare, and 2 affix on the ground was the most desirable outcome. This changed the chance to successfully dupe the weapon to an amazing 1 in 3!



In order to start selling a copy of that foil, I first hard to regal a prefix (it would usually end up being flat elemental damage, but I once regaled Flaring for a nice 100ex sale!). If the regal gave a suffix I would split the foil again to create more copies. Once I got a prefix I would then craft multimod with Elreon (2 exalts), followed by flat Added Physical Damage to Attacks and Critical Chance %.

To finish each foil I would use the "Corrupt to 30% quality" recipe in order to gain 10% more physical damage with no drawback (since the foil was already 3xW), and with the added bonus to act as protection against further "Splits", just in case someone found out about the whole technique and tried to buy my foils in order to gain access to the original magic base (which were now 80ex+ and in extremely low supply)

Here's an example of a finished foil:


Sales
Each foil would usually end up between 385 and 400 physical DPS, sometimes a bit more if I was lucky and hit hybrid physical % with the regal, or a good flat phys. Their value on the SC marketplace was around 30 to 35ex at this point, but the first one took almost 3 days to sell. Since that was clearly too slow and combined with the fact that I was basically printing them out of thin air (the base cost for every finished foil was around 5 to 6ex depending on beast prices), I decided to undercut everybody else and price them between 15 to 20ex.

This turned out to be a great decision, as I would sometimes sell 3 or 4 per day, sometimes even just as soon as they were posted for trade and even faster than I could actually produce them! At first I was afraid that I would saturate the market, but this never really happened. And best of all, almost none of the foil I sold actually came back for sale later on, and even if they did, players would price them at the "perceived" market value, which was 10ex higher than mine!



At this point my main worry was that someone would notice that I was constantly posting 179%/27% white foils for trade and that they would make the connection that duping magic bases was now a possibility in the game (clearly a few people had phys foils on "Live Update", and as soon as one would sell I would put up a new one for trade (limiting myself to 2 at once at any point). I was even considering the possibility to divine them to lesser values or to re-chrome some to regular colors, in order to avoid patterns, but it turned out to be unnecessary, nobody ever messaged me to ask how on earth I was able to produce top-end physical swords one after the other, day after day.



After a month of this, I decided to stop because the entire process, despite being very profitable, was soul crushing. Each imprint required 4 different beasts, each split 4 others, and 4 beasts to corrupt to 30%, most of which was aquired via individual trades. After an entire month of slashing prices on foils and having them constantly for sale, the "low" price became the norm and it was getting much harder to move them. Beasts prices also spiked significantly as they were pretty rare and in low supply. Many other players also had started to use the Imprint recipe (but nobody was apparently using the Split one. I suspect it stayed extremely cheap because it was bugged and most people gave up on it early on).



SO. MUCH. PLAYER. INTERACTION. (and that's only a fraction of the total)



Flashback
But the Flashback event was announced, and it would also get the "Bestiary" mechanic. This opportunity to start on a fresh economy with very little competition on the foil market was too good to pass up. My main worry was to obtain the magic base, as I didn't want to have to imprint attack speed on a "Merciless" base since I knew the beasts would be in very low supply at the start of the race.

In what I believed was the single luckiest moment of my entire PoE game experience, on day 3 of Flashback I augmented "Merciless" on a "of Celebration" ilv86 Jewelled Foil (with around 2000 alterations total), paving the way for a home run and complete dominance over the physical damage foil market. No other foil came close to the same DPS at this point of the race, and I was free to sell them at a higher price than on Bestiary.

Once again, despite the fact that I could dump the best foils in Flashback one after the other, nobody blinked an eye.



"I mean, seriously, how often do you really look at a man's shoes?"



End result
I was able to exit both temporary leagues with a total of 13 mirrors, which combined with my savings in Standard was enough to purchase the cute wolf helmet! :D

This was the final state of my foil stash from Bestiary:

(each golden imprint was a sold foil, and each foil still in stash is a failed "Split" recipe outcome that didn't successfully dupe the 2 desired mods)

And in Flashback: (much less volume, but also better returns per foil)



Fun-fact: if Bestiary was rolled over in the main game, Standard crafters would now be able to split mirror-worthy 6 mods rare items into 3 mods rares while keeping the source intact! (thanks to Eternal Orbs)

Thanks for the summary I actually enjoyed reading the path of the scooper (your upcoming book title)

Wish i'd been rich enough to experiment with the imprint but GGG did their usual magic on the drop rates and made it extortionately expensive unless you were doing something that yielded multiple ex from the result.

Expect to see some similar shenanigans with incursion. A little knowledge and willingness is all that's really needed to pull this type of stuff off.

I wouldn't call it "duping" though, since that implies that the act wasn't intended. Carries too much baggage from the D2 days.

Other people just buy essences in bulks and gather the same amount of currency during a league

Still interesting, but most league mirror worthy weapons come from the same person every league

And a T1/T1 is rare, but in 30k alts/augs you would hit them like 99,9%
So 80ex for such a base is a joke

And that is why you don't play the actual game but rather the trading game.

Now just imagine this in a combo with bots buying beasts and seeling foils for you.

This game has new mechanics every league, they cant prevent this shit to happen if they dont slow down a little and bring some balance on things already in game. This league will bring lots of new crafting "again", probably someone will find something like this again and be rich.

Everybody has the right to think before acts. He did, and did it well enough to get an alt art Alpha's. I'm always searching some unknown 'meta' in each patch, I never found one (probably cuz I don't know well enough the mechanic of this game).

Gz. :)

Nice read. I couldn't stand such gameplay, but congrats.

13+ mirrors for Alpha's is it now? If I cared about Std I could be rich...

Answered:

I didn't realize it was a similar looking item from beast crafting, imprint of a magic item.

Thank you Vesuvius079

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So, pictures and process is from Bestiary League. Yet, he still has Eternal Orbs in "Remove Only" stash tabs. How is that possible? I thought they were disabled...

Hehe, and I'm just a filthy casual still ID'ing yellows :p

It's neat to see how these things are done.

Remember chris saying there was only 1000 duped items?