SSF Crafting Guide - Fundamentals for Strong Gear

This guide will be a comprehensive overview of the PoE 2 crafting system, aimed at SSF players to build a well-geared endgame character. While this guide can't cover every item craft in depth, it will cover the fundamentals to adjust to your own experience.

This guide will assume that you know the basics of Item Modifiers, iLvl (item level) requirements, and weights. If you need an overview on these concepts, check out our Crafting Guide Part 1.

To summarize the basics:

• You will need to know what modifiers you want to build on your character in order to efficiently craft them
• Know the item level requirements of the item modifier(s) you want
• Understand how the weight affects your decisions when crafting and what items to use your premium currency items on

For Item Modifiers, poe2db is the go-to source for many players.

Example Modifier Table

In PoE 2, the basic crafting method is as follows:

• Find a Normal/White Item (aka Base) that you want to craft on
• Transmute for one affix and upgrade to Magic/Blue Item
• Augment for second affix
• Essence for 3rd affix and upgrade to Rare/Yellow Item
• Exalt for 4th and 5th affix
• Desecrate for last affix
  For more info on Desecration, check out our Abyss Crafting Guide

As you go through these steps, if any of the affixes you roll are bad, the item may be bad and not worth crafting further. However, this doesn't mean you should just sell those items off.

Alchemy Orbs upgrade a White/Blue item to a rare with 4 random suffixes. When you Transmute/Augment an item and get bad results, you can Alchemy next to try and roll a good item.

Even if the Alchemy Orb results in a bad item, you can still keep it! By using the reforging bench, you can reforge 3 of the same rarity item to a new unidentified item.

By reforging three rare items, you get one more unidentified rare item for a chance at a good item.

When you take advantage of these tools, you maximize your chances at getting good gear from the limited amount of items you find on the ground.

For example, this method is great for maximizing the chance you craft a strong Jewel for your build.

The unfortunate reality of SSF is that you need to craft everything for your character on your own. This means that you will need to pick up a lot of item bases to get good gear.

By using Filterblade, you can create an item filter tailored to the items you want to pick up. For example, you can filter out specific bases you want, specific item level thresholds, and more.

In order to streamline your crafting, you will want to have more stash tabs. Quad tabs are great for dumping lots of bases into as you map. From there, you can spend one session dedicated to crafting the stockpile you accumulated.

One of the most complex concepts in crafting is how to finish off good gear into amazing gear. If you Transmute + Augment an item with two amazing modifiers, you don't want to just follow the basic crafting method anymore.

This is where you will want to use more premium currency items to make a strong endgame piece of gear.

Every piece of gear will have different strategies, but here are some fundamental crafting concepts.

Perfect Essences

Perfect Essences remove one modifier from a rare item and guarantee a specific modifier. For many builds, this is a great way to finish off a good item into a great item.

There are also more deterministic ways to craft with Essences by using them in combination with Omens.

Abyss Omens

There are a few Abyss Omens that allow you to force or increase the odds of positive outcomes.

You can forcefully desecrate a Prefix or Suffix, have a chance to reroll your Abyss Modifier reveal with Abyssal Echoes, or force specific categories of Abyss Modifiers such as Kurgal or Ulaman.

Omen of Light can be an expensive way to retry your odds at desecrating again by removing your first try.

Ritual Omens

Ritual Omens range from being quite simple to extremely rare Omens that provide powerful effects.

• Greater Exaltation allows you to double up an Exalt, effectively giving you an extra Greater or Perfect Exalted Orb.
• Sinistral/Dextral Exaltation can force an Exalt to add a Prefix/Suffix.
• Crystallisation Omens force Perfect Essences to only remove a Prefix/Suffix
• Whittling allows your next Chaos Orb to reroll the lowest item level modifier (NOT Tier)
• Fracturing Orb - Picks one modifier to become unchangeable on an item. Minimum 4 modifiers

Essences and Omens are already very powerful by themselves, but when used in combination, they become even greater. Here are some examples of ways to use Essences in combination.

Perfect Essence on a 6 Mod Item

A Perfect Essence will add a guaranteed modifier, a prefix or a suffix. Say you want to use a Perfect Essence of Battle, which adds +3 to Level of Attacks, a suffix. If you have a weapon with 6 modifiers, this Perfect Essence will always remove a suffix in order to make space for the new modifier.

This can help protect your item when it already has 3 good suffixes or 3 good prefixes.

Perfect Essence + Crystallisation Omen

If you have an item with 3 good suffixes and bad prefixes, you can use a Perfect Essence + Crystallisation Omen to ensure the Essence removes the prefix to add the new modifier.

This is helpful when you don't want to just slam 6 modifiers onto a good item. This allows you to desecrate a mod for a higher chance at a good mod. If you desecrate and exalt the item to 6 modifiers, there's a chance you remove a good modifier. Remove the bad modifier first and then try to craft two more good modifiers with this method.

Fracturing Orb + Essence of the Abyss

Fracturing a rare modifier on an item allows you to craft very powerful items. If you Fracture a good modifier, you can annul the other mods off and spam Chaos Orbs until you get two great mods. From there, you can finish the item with other methods to craft a powerful item.

Fracturing is usually a 1 in 4 chance, but with Essence of the Abyss, you can make it 1/3. You cannot fracture a desecrated modifier. Let's say you find an item with the perfect suffix. You can use Essence of the Abyss + Crystallisation to remove a prefix and add a desecrated mod. Now when you fracture, you have a 1/3 chance to fracture the suffix you're targeting.

The opposite is also true with prefixes.

In these next sections, we'll go over common crafting methods to make endagme ready gear. It won't be top-tier gear, but these methods can often power up your character to tackle the endgame in full.

Generic Phys Weapon

1. Transmute / Aug a Weapon until you hit T2 or T1 Increased Physical Damage%
2. Greater Essence of Abrasion to upgrade to rare and add approx T3 Flat Phys
3. Omen of Greater Exaltation + Omen of Dextral Exaltation + Greater Exalted Orb
   - Add two suffixes. Hopefully hit good mods like Attack Speed
4. Desecrate and reveal hopefully for hybrid increased phys%/accuracy mod
   -Omen of Abyssal Echoes optional depending on how good the item is.
5. Perfect Essence of Battle to remove a random suffix and add +3 to Attack Skills. (hopefully removes bad modifiers)

This method will net you a decent phys weapon depending on your luck, and you can keep trying until you hit something good.

Phys Weapons are an example of a base item type that you don't want to use Alchemy Orbs on. Keep bad blue weapons to reforge for more chances at T2/T1 increased phys.

+3 to Level of Skills Amulet

Amulets are important for every build as they can roll +3 to Level of Projectile/Spell/Minion/Melee Skills.

Use your gold to gamble for Amulets to get one with this modifier. If you obtain one that is Blue, you can use Essences + Exalts + Desecration to try for other good modifiers.

If you find one that is rare, you can use the same methods, but you will be more limited in what you can add.

Lastly, you can try to fracture the +3 mod by using the 1/3 Desecration Method outlined above.

+2 Mele Skills Gloves / +2 Minion Skills Helmet

What's unique about these two modifiers is the low item level requirement. These mods start appearing on items as low as item level 41. As such, you can simply pick up every glove/helmet you find if your build wants one of these modifiers.

Movement Speed Boots

Putrification

Omen of Putrefaction corrupts the item and turns all 6 modifiers into Desecrated Modifiers. This is a great way to craft a good pair of boots without too much work. Simply reveal all of your modifiers and pick the best one.

By using item level 82+ boots, you can look for 35% Movement Speed. Reveal other modifiers like defences/life/resistances based on what you need.

Remember to add a socket and quality the item before using the Omen as it will corrupt the item.

Hysteria

Essence of Hysteria is a high-tier Essence that is only obtainable by corrupting an Essence that contains a Perfect Essence. When corrupting, there is a chance of upgrading the Perfect Essence into a high-tier Essence.

When used on Boots, Hysteria removes a random modifier and adds 30% Movement Speed.

Look for a pair of boots with 3 good suffixes (usually resistances) and use Hysteria on a 6 mod item to guarantee removing a prefix.

Or, you can find boots with 3 good suffixes and use Hysteria + Crystallisatino to guarantee remove a prefix. From there, you can desecrate for a good prefix.