Crafting, My Thoughts

I was going to start off by saying I didn't particularly care for the crafting in the game, but I realized something while writing the rest of this—the game doesn't actually have much crafting at all. It mostly just has identifying.

--Identification--
We have scrolls of wisdom, which identify random amounts of mods on an item.
We have orbs of transmutation which identify the first mod on an item.
We have orbs of augmentation which identify the second mod on an item.
We have regal orbs which identify the third mod on an item.
We have alchemy orbs that skip ahead and identify 4 mods on a white item.
We have exalts which identify the remaining mods on an item.

In other words, there are effectively six tiers of wisdom scrolls. This is a bit of a simplification, but this tends to be how it plays out in practice.

--The Actual Crafting Currencies--
There are a few actual crafting currencies, which can be kind of fun. The actual crafting currencies are Chaos, Annulment, Greater Essences, and Vaal Orbs. You can include Omens in this pile, but they just remove part of the gamble from the prior currencies that they effect, which is why they were called meta-crafts.

--"Lesser" Essences--
Flavored versions of the transmute. I don't want to just gloss over these as "flavored identify scrolls for the first mod on an item" but they feel like it. I know they aren't, but they don't actually feel that good. I think the reason is that they are a more expensive (due to scarcity) transmute.

Transmutes can identify the highest tier mod you may want on an item, and the item can still be absolutely terrible. The first mod doesn't make an item, but it can break it. This flows into how the first tier of essences work. They remove a large part of the pool, including the other three mods you wanted on the item, but they don't guarantee the correct mod in most cases, nor do they guarantee a usable tier of said mod. There are a couple of exceptions, and those essences are more expensive because of it.

When crafting any piece of armor, the bases are easier to find than the essences. I will never have the essence income to "identify" all of my good armor bases with essences, so I don't. I use them on jewelry and 82 special bases only. This removes them from most of the game even if they were good--simply because I don't have enough of them.

--Greater Essences--
These are probably the single most powerful crafting tool we currently have somewhat easy access to. They do exactly what you would want from an advanced crafting item. They limit the points of failure on an already good item and can help you influence what will be added next, so that it synergizes with the rest of the item.

The reason these are so much better than the "lesser" essences is that you use them on an already good item, meaning it's an item that already has value... not an item that can be found once a map. These get used on items that can be found once every 50 maps (very rough estimate).

Unfortunately, I have seen almost none of these. They aren't that expensive on trade, so it's not prohibitive, but it does amaze me just how rare they are. Not a currency that is meant to be "played" with much, which is sad because it is probably the main source of actual crafting within the game currently.

--Chaos Orbs--
The gamble currency. There isn't a whole lot wrong with this item. If you have an almost good item, you can throw some of these at it with hopes it doesn't hit one of your two good mods and adds something more useful than the four garbage ones currently filling slots on the item. Sometimes it hits, sometimes it bricks.

With an infinite supply of these, you would have an annoying version of chaos spam from poe1. That would be bad. I like how these work, and I like that they are scarce, but not scarce enough that you cannot play with them a bit.

--Annulment Orbs--
These are scary. At their most powerful state, they can wipe out an entire item--letting you start over an infinite number of times, but without the ability to use a greater essence again. In their general use-case, they tend to just be a rarer chaos orb with extra steps. Their main use seems to be as the catalyst for some of the good omens.

GGG clearly knows this and has set them to a scarcity that makes them one of the rarer currencies, so that they don't conflict with chaos and are likely just used for omens.

I do want to mention that they do work on magic items, so they are more powerful than chaos, but this function is almost meaningless without the presence of an extremely expensive base item and or a large stock of omens with the intent to make a nearly perfect item. It will simply be too costly or risky to use them otherwise.

--Vaal Orbs--
Super fun. No complaints. Love the changes. I don't want to spoil anything for anyone by getting into what they do now. A wonderful change to the final step of crafting that makes it actually feel like a final step to crafting.

--Meta Crafting Omens--
A couple of these would have PoE 1 players jealous. These range from downright useless to one of the most powerful crafting tools PoE has ever seen. Not really sure what I think of this yet, since the ones that currently exist are quite expensive, but in theory they allow for some fairly wild crafts and crafting steps that do have me excited.

I do wish that some of them were changed to work with greater essences as well as regals, as it would greatly improve the usability of both items without guaranteeing a full success.

--Early Crafting--
Here is where I have my biggest complaint with the system. All of early crafting (from campaign to tier 15 maps) is simply identifying ground gear or identifying the rest of the mods on a vendor find. You have no control. The only control you have is what items to use your identification currency on. If you need fire resistance, you "identify" items with open suffixes or you "identify" ruby rings.

I'm not saying we need to have capped resistances sooner, the game seems fairly balanced around not having resistances all the way up into mid-tier maps. What I am saying is that we don't have the tools to do anything but identify bases.

As an example that isn't resistances, I wanted to try out playing totems. Totems only have one stat on weapons that matter: level of melee skills. This means I can use attack essences, but that only removes about 10-20% of the pool (rough estimate), since most weapon mods are attack mods. I realized very quickly that I couldn't sustain fully "identifying" every mace base that dropped on the ground, and I still didn't have a mace with level of melee skills on it. Identifying magic and rare maces was free though, so I stuck to that for awhile. I identified probably 40 maces before I found the stat, and by then I had found one from a vendor. This doesn't even include the 20-30 other maces I fully exalted while looking for the mod.

At this point, I am level 90 and I have identified almost every mace I've seen. The highest version of the mod I have seen is +4. It goes to +7--not that I have identified very many bases that can roll +7. If I had attempted to "craft" this mace with currency on every base I had seen, I wouldn't have any. What's crazy about this is that identifying rares has a higher chance of success than using my currency due to the tiered identification system.

--Tiered Rares--
I don't want to get into it too much, since this is ground loot and not really a crafting system. However, after mentioning it above, I felt it deserved a brief comment. When comparing using currency on an item vs. buying a tiered rare, the tiered rare will end up a better item most of the time. The only difference is that you can choose to stop identifying a "crafted" item early in the process and throw away the base without eating much of a cost. If the cost of the base was multiple exalts though, then you probably should have bought a tiered rare of the same base instead.

--Runes--
I believe that these were meant as the solution to the above early game crafting scenario where you need to balance your resistances and can't find fire resistance. My issue with them is that they cannot be changed--even at cost or destructively. This means that once I find a very good piece of gear, I am incentivized to play with empty rune sockets until I find the rest of my endgame gear, since I do not know which resistances will be on the other pieces, so I do not know which direction to balance my resistances.

This could obviously be my spoiled benchcraft brain talking, but it feels incredibly bad to have permanent runes that cannot be destroyed in my item. Even if removing them also destroyed the socket and required it to be re-added, I would prefer that over permanently filled sockets.

--Alt Spamming--
I know why it is gone. I do not want it back. I am one of those people who has used probably over a million alteration orbs... hopefully not in a single season, but no promises. I don't want alteration orbs, and I don't want chaos orbs for magic items. There are many possible solutions to this hole in the crafting system, and although I feel like alteration orbs would fix it, they bring their own problem to the table that is understandably gone in poe2.

--Crafting Minigame--
Something that existed in poe1 that is currently lacking from poe2 is that you could have made poe1 crafting into a stand alone game, added some tutorials and explanations and it would have held up as its own game. There are players (myself included) who could spend hours crafting items in poe1 just because it was fun (and to make some currency or items I guess). This might exist in poe2 at the very pinnacle of infinite currency, but doesn't exist anywhere else. I cannot sit down and craft an item. I simply identify it and that's it.

--Final Thoughts--
So, my takeaway from the system and how it is meant to be used (excluding omens) is that generally you are attempting to assess when in the process to stop identifying your items and get a new one. At this point, I usually stop after identifying the first mod or second, since a low tier mod means I will be identifying an item with 1 guaranteed bad affix if I continue.

Realizing this, has spoiled the current currency system of poe2 for me, since it no longer feels rewarding to use currency on most of my items. Wisdom scrolls have never been a particularly engaging crafting mechanic.

Chaos are kind of a fun "just annul it off" currency, but aren't going to make an item out of thin air.

I do not have any solutions, as there are countless ways to take the path of exile orb system, but I wanted to voice my complaints about the current system. I agree that having your item come to a dead end is a good thing for the value of bases on the ground. I do not agree with the purely linear choice of currency progression used on an item to completely identify it with almost no actual choices along the way except whether to continue or put it down.

++

So, a friend of mine read my crafting review and told me that I couldn't just say there were numerous ways to fix the crafting system without giving any. I disagree with this, but I will give a few since it was a big discussion for us and I would like to see changes to the system.

Almost no thought was put into these, I just wanted to give examples. I personally think some type of crafting system where runes and artificers orbs were used to craft an item by adding and removing runes to alter the chances of outcomes would be cool, but in the end... I just want actual choices in the crafting system.

So here are some examples of currency that adds to the system (hopefully) without breaking the ground loot value.

--Orb of Scouring--
Destroy all sockets on an item, including their contents.

--Runic Orb--
Augments a Magic or Rare item with a new random modifier. Socketed runes influence this outcome.

--Orb of Sands--
Downgrades a random modifier and upgrades a random modifier on a rare item. Modifiers that end up too high or low are removed.

--Singularity Orb--
Removes all but one modifier from a rare item. Upgrades the remaining modifier based on removed modifiers.

--Orb of Ruin--
Reroll all of the modifiers on an item. The item becomes corrupted.

--Orb of Resonance--
Augments a Rare item with a new random modifier that is similar to an existing modifier.

--Orb of Discovery--
Augments a rare item with a new random modifier which isn't similar to any modifiers that already exist on the item.

--Orb of Reconstruction--
Remove a random modifier and augments a rare item with a new random modifier that is similar to the removed modifier.

Actually, this ^ is very broken and probably not a good idea, but I'm leaving it here anyways.

Other games have also introduced limited crafting using a resource on an item that is randomly consumed when you make attempts. This can allow for fairly free crafting on an item, but still bricks the item after a certain point.

An example of this in poe2 could look like a set of very powerful currencies that have a chance to add stacks of brittle to an item, and once you reach X stacks of brittle, the item is brittle and cannot be modified by currencies that cause brittle.

None of these examples would be usable on an item with more than X brittle stacks.

--Forge of Gold--
Adds a random modifier to a rare item. More likely to be of higher tiers. Has a chance to cause brittle. Cannot be used on an item with any brittle.

--Forge of Iron--
Adds or removes a tier from a random modifier on a rare item. Cannot fully remove a modifier. Has a chance to cause brittle.

--Forge of Copper--
Remove a random modifier and augments a rare item with a new random modifier that is similar to the removed modifier. Has a chance to cause brittle.

--Forge of Ice--
Rerolls all of the prefixes on an item. Has a chance to cause brittle.

--Forge of Fire--
Rerolls all of the suffixes on an item. Has a chance to cause brittle.

--Forge of Calamity--
Removes every modifier from a rare item with six modifiers. This item becomes too brittle for forging. Lower tier modifiers no longer exist on this item.