The issue with crafting in POE2.

I'll try to be as concise as possible here, but I dislike the crafting in POE2 because it has changed one of the fundamental cost benefits of POE1.

As a disclaimer, I'm trash tier. Killed all bosses except uber sirus playing elemental spectral throw custom build I POB modified myself. I crafted most of my own items with some semi-decent meta crafting (no mirror tier). I do really enjoy the difficulty of POE2, but crafting makes me sad.

The TLDR is that POE2 has made the primary cost for crafting RNG (randomness) and time, negating the value of skill/expertise in the crafting system. This is similar to Last Epoch's approach, but worse. It has also significantly increased the amount of time required to achieve basic crafting outcomes without any ability to overcome this with expertise. Time is now the primary crafting currency and RNG has a much stronger (and negative) impact.

What do I mean by this? When we look at a a crafting system and the ability to improve ones gear we need to look at the ratio of time and expertise needed to improve a persons position (or item).

A good crafting system will have a large amount of RNG, but an ability to reduce this through learning more about the crafting system. A persons expertise gained through time invested in the game can have a permanent benefit to reducing RNG.

An example of this from POE. You want T1 attack speed on your gloves. With alterations and augments there is a 1/132 (0.007%) chance of hitting this. BUT, if we know about using fracturing orbs we can increase our chances to 1/4 (25%) through using more expertise (and crafting options). Our ability to craft an item with improved stats increases based on our knowledge of the game.

In POE2, you do not have an ability to increase the 0.007% because there is no way to use higher tier currencies, but you also have no way to use a lower tier currency (e.g., alteration) to re-try the craft on the same base item. This means you need 168 orbs of transmutation (ignoring augments) AND 168 item bases to use them on. The time I need to invest in farming Transmutes we can pretend is equal for POE1 and POE2, but now I need to find 165 pairs of gloves too... no thanks.

The fundamental issue is that for an item with multiple decent stats you need to hit multiple good RNG rolls and a single bad RNG roll can brick the item with no way to recover. My ability to understand the crafting system does not give me any increased ability to utilise it for good outcomes.

The TLTLDR is that removing orbs of alteration (and to some degree) scouring from the game fundamentally shifts the crafting system towards RNG and time invested. It moves it away from being able to learn how to craft better, and significantly reduces the use of divines for trading lower tier currency. I want to find that near perfect base and invest many hours of currency in to crafting an upgrade. I don't want to find hundreds of near perfect bases just to try and win the lottery over n over.

Hopefully I am overlooking something. But I just feel punished now for trying to craft equipment other than hitting a transmute and alt and praying for good RNG, which is obviously then bricked with a bad regal and divine.

Or you can just go play the game and pick the item with perfect stats from the floor, isntead of sitting for 10 hours in hideout and spamming those stupid orbs.

TLDR: THERE IS NO CRAFTING. just slamming and praying to RNG god. CRAP SYSTEM IS CRAP.

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GODOFWARSANCHEZ#4574 wrote:

Or you can just go play the game and pick the item with perfect stats from the floor, isntead of sitting for 10 hours in hideout and spamming those stupid orbs.

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Pick the item with perfect stats from the floor nice joke, thanks for the laugh!


After 150hours playing this EA, I still can't phantom what the hell was GGG intention by removing Alterations and Scours.

Force people to pick every white item from the floor? Force people to trade? Force people to stack MF to have a feasible chance to drop any useful item from the floor?


The next patch needs come up with a working functional crafting system or go YOLO with the drop rates... otherwise PoE 2 will be a no no for a large group of players.