Vaal Orbs and Corrupting Items

Vaal Orbs are a type of currency you find from Act 3 onwards. If you need a briefing of how currency works, check out our PoE 2 Currency Guide.

The Vaal Orb is an extremely high risk crafting orb, with RNG outcomes that can be good... but that can also be awful.

Using a Vaal Orb on an item permanently prevents that item from having other currencies used upon it. If you haven't applied quality, filled all modifier slots with Exalted Orbs and applied all possible rune sockets before Vaaling the item, you never can.

A Vaal Orb can boost an item beyond normal limits, but it can also ruin the item, rerolling high rolls into low ones, replacing valued modifiers with useless ones. Or it can achieve nothing besides adding the 'Corrupted' tag.

It is at its best when you have two very similar items, such as two weapons that are within 1-2% damage from each other. If you Vaal one and the Vaal Orb rolls well, it may pull 5% ahead.

And if you roll poorly... well, you had a backup for a reason.

This section does not apply to jewels or Waystones. Vaal Orbs work differently on those items. Rare items generally don't Vaal all that well.

25% - No Change (except the item becomes Corrupted). See the section on the Omen of Corruption.

25% - Apply an effect similar to a Chaos Orb to the item once, twice or three times. Unlike a Chaos Orb, this can apply to magic items. This effect usually ruins the item.

25% - Add a special enchantment to the item. This is often a very good outcome and the possible enchantments vary for different item slots. Examples of helmet enchants: "+1-3% maximum fire resistance", "+50-100 accuracy", "+1 to all minion skill gem levels".

25% - Push the item beyond normal limits in a different way. This adds an additional rune socket on armor and martial weapons, which can pass the socket limit for this item. On caster weapons, it adds or removes up to 10% quality at random from the item. This cannot drop quality below 0% or raise it above 23%. Caster weapon quality applies gem quality to the skill the weapon grants.

Some unique items Vaal well, others do not. Reminder: before Vaaling, apply quality and rune sockets if they'll be relevant.

25% - No Change (except the item becomes Corrupted). See the section on the Omen of Corruption.

25% - Add a special enchantment to the item.

25% - As rares, add a socket or change caster weapon quality. This does nothing if the item can't have sockets or caster weapon quality.

25% - Apply an effect somewhat like a Divine Orb to the item, except more extreme. Players sometimes call this 'Krangledivining' the item. This name references a Path of Exile 1 meme where corrupted items were referred to as "krangled", and the Divine Orb.

Kranglediving Explained:

If this outcome is chosen, all of the following occur in order:

• Apply an effect similar to a Divine Orb to the item.
• For each modifier on the item, pick a number at random from 0.78 to 1.22. All 45 'exact' percentages in range appear to be equally likely. (So you can get 81%, but not 81.773%)
• Multiply the numerical value of the modifier by the chosen number.
• Round to the nearest whole number, or to a set number of decimal points on certain modifiers. (For example, the cooldown modifier on Temporalis rounds to the nearest 0.01 seconds).
• If the item has a multiplicative quality bonus, this applies now.
• Some items have very complex rounding, such as Mask of the Stitched Demon. This occurs when the game reveals one stat to the player but the game files use a different one. On Mask, the game actually reads the stat as "Regenerate 3 Life per minute per Maximum Energy Shield" and krangledivining will rarely change this to 2 or 4.

If in doubt how the item rounds, check items other players have listed for trade.

Krangledivined uniques can be very desirable... if you roll well. It is especially good when an individual modifier is extremely powerful, such as the fire skill level modifier on Fireflower.

Note that this can scale modifiers without a random component, for example Kaom's Heart 's +1000 to life, which would become +1160 life if 1.16 was rolled. (Or 780 if you are unlucky)

Gem corrupting is highly RNG, and generally best when you are wealthy and can afford to sacrifice a lot of Perfect Jeweller's Orbs chasing the very best gems in the game, level 21 gems with 5 support slots and 20% quality.

25% - No Change (except the gem becomes Corrupted). See the section on the Omen of Corruption. You likely want to use an Omen if and only if your gem has had a Perfect Jeweller's Orb applied to it.

12.5% - Permanently add a support gem socket. Early in trade league progression, while Lesser Jeweller's Orbs are cheap and Greaters are unaffordable, this is a great outcome.

12.5% - Permanently remove a support gem socket. This basically destroys the gem.

12.5% - Enchant the gem with +1 gem level. This will be retained if you level up the gem. This is generally the best outcome.

12.5% - Enchant the gem with -1 gem level, ruining it. This will be retained if you level up the gem, so don't.

25% - Adds or removes up to 10% quality at random from the item. This cannot drop quality below 0% or raise it above 23%.

Waystones are often very good if Vaaled. You should Vaal Waystones often, once your character is powerful enough to beat corrupted maps.

All changes that add prefixes or suffixes to Waystones are allowed to the exceed normal limits for how many prefixes or suffixes the Waystone can have (3 of each if the Waystone is rare, 1 if magic)

25% - No Change (except the Waystone becomes Corrupted). See the section on the Omen of Corruption, although you'd never use one of those on a Waystone.

25% - Adjust the Waystone's tier by 1, up or down. This usually changes the mods on the item, but I have seen it keep the same exact mods at least once. This is the primary method you'll get tier 16 Waystones.

12.5% - Remove all prefixes from the Waystone, and add a suffix for each prefix removed, bypassing the 1 or 3 suffix limit. These Waystones will be very dangerous, but very good to run on Citadel maps if you have a monstrously powerful character, as %chance to drop Waystones (found on suffix mods) becomes %chance for the boss to drop Arbiter fragments.

12.5% - Remove all suffixes from the Waystone, and add a prefix for each suffix removed, bypassing the 1 or 3 prefix limit. These Waystones will be easier to defeat than others, and more likely to have item rarity boosts. Very good to run on maps with lucrative but dangerous encounters like Breach.

25% - Add additional mods onto the Waystone, bypassing prefix and suffix limits. This makes the best Waystones that exist.

Among these outcomes, the only unambiguously negative one is dropping the tier by 1. Vaaling Waystones is low risk, high reward... if you can defeat tough maps.

The best jewels in the game are corrupted, but the amount they upgrade with a lucky Vaal Orb is smaller than for other items.

25% - No Change (except the item becomes Corrupted). See the section on the Omen of Corruption.

25% - Apply an effect similar to a Chaos Orb to the item once, twice or three times. Unlike a Chaos Orb, this can apply to magic items. This effect usually ruins the item. If the Jewel is unique, this outcome does nothing.

25% - Add a special enchantment to the item. These are generally quite small, but welcome bonuses. Immunity to Corrupted Blood is arguably the strongest.

25% - Add or remove a modifier at random from the jewel. Modifiers added this way can break the usual limits of how many modifiers can be on the jewel. If the Jewel is unique, this outcome instead 'krangledivines' the item, see the section on unique items.

If you play the original Path of Exile, you may be averse to using Vaal Orbs because in POE1 they are generally quite weak.

They have uses in POE1, but only on a few items.

Vaal Orbs are considerably stronger in POE2.

On most items they have a lower chance to result in terrible outcomes and a higher chance to do extremely powerful things.

They should still be used only after careful thought.