PoE 2: Vaal Siphoner Explained

The Vaal Siphoner is a consumable item in Path of Exile 2 that applies a kill threshold to an item and modifies the item once the desired amount of kills is reached.

What is a Vaal Siphoner?

A type of Vaal Incubator, the Vaal Siphoner

The Vaal Siphoner is an incubator currency item which can only be used on Corrupted Rare rarity Jewellery items, that being Amulets or Rings.

Upon use, the Vaal Siphoner will add a specific number of required kills and a minimum Monster Level for the required kills to be valid. Path of Exile 1 players may recognise the mechanic from the similar old incubator system of Legion league.

Note: because the Vaal Siphoner can be used on Corrupted items, it can be used on a item that was previously impacted by the effect of another Vaal Siphoner. However, using a Vaal Siphoner on an item that is already incubating will simply overwrite the current progress.

Whilst a Vaal Siphoner is active on an item, it will also state 'Bathing in Blood' until the kill threshold has been reached.

An Amulet with an active Vaal Siphoner

Upon reaching the required kill threshold, a random explicit modifier on the item is selected and that modifier will lose a tier. For example the above Amulet has '+47 to Spirit' which is a tier 1 modifier - if this modifier was randomly selected, it would be downgraded to tier 2 (+43-46) and have its roll range randomised.

In trade off though, all other explicit modifiers will have their roll ranges randomised independently between their current value and +10% over the maximum possible value for their tier. Using the above example, the remaining 5 modifiers will have their roll ranges randomised:

• '+54 to maximum Energy Shield' (T4, +52-61) - Vaal Siphoner roll range: +54-67
• '+91 to maximum Life' (T3, +85-99) - Vaal Siphoner roll range: +91-108
• '+24 to all Attributes' (T1, +23-24) - Vaal Siphoner roll range: +24-26
• '+25 to Intelligence' (T3, +25-27) - Vaal Siphoner roll range: +25-29
• '18% of Damage taken Recouped as Life' (T3, 16-18%) - Vaal Siphoner roll range: 18-19%

Note: the value of a modifier cannot exceed 110% of its maximum roll range.

This item cannot be used to improve modifier values on Unique items as it can only be used exclusively on Corrupted Rare items, however Vaal Orbs can already result in a similar outcome for Unique rarity items.

Note: a modifier is not removed if it is already at its lowest tier and is chosen to be downgraded. The remaining modifiers will still have their ranges rolled between current and 110% of maximum even if a modifier doesn't lose a tier due to being at the lowest tier.

Where to find Vaal Siphoner

The most reliable way to farm this item is by boss-rushing Atziri, the Red Queen in the Vaal Temple league mechanic. Vaal Siphoner is a common drop from the Royal Troves encounters after successfully defeating Atziri.

Additionally, you can rarely find Vaal Siphoner from chests that spawn in Map areas after completing the encounter for an Ancient Beacon.

Vaal Siphoner Use Cases

This item not only requires the target Jewellery item to be Corrupted, but it also can potentially make your item worse by downgrading the tier of a good modifier. The use case for Vaal Siphoner is therefore somewhat limited.

It can be useful in cases where you have a handful of good modifiers and 1-2 throwaway modifiers that are not particularly useful to your build. Ideally in this case, the roll ranges of the good modifiers are already at the high end, which means that a successful modifier tier downgrade selection is likely to result in an item with several normally unobtainable modifier values exceeding 100% of their standard maximums.