This guide will take you through the process of crafting a +7 to Physical Spell Skills Reaping Staff for my Reap Blood Mage build. This is much more expensive than the Budget Version and the first step alone will cost about 15-20 Divines on average, and can cost more depending on your luck.
Guide
What You'll Need
Base: Item Level 81+ Reaping Staff with Level 20 Reap (Possibly Several depending on method chosen)
Broken Circle Artifacts (Several)
[Alt Method] Chaos Orbs (Possibly Hundreds)
[Alt Method] Orbs of Annulment (Several)
Omens of Dextral Crystallisation (Several)
Omen of Sinistral Crystallisation
Omen of Homogenising Exaltation (Several)
Omen of Dextral Exaltation (Several)
Omen of Greater Exaltation
Omen of Light [if not using the Alternative method]
Omen of Abyssal Echoes
Omen of the Sovereign
Preserved Jawbone
Essence of the Abyss (Several)
Perfect Exalted Orbs (Several)
2x Hedgewitch Assandra's Rune of Wisdom or Saqawal's Rune of the Sky
Step 1: Recombination
Buy a Reaping Staff (ilvl 81+ with Level 20 Reap) with the modifier #% increased Spell Physical Damage
Buy a similar Reaping Staff with any low-tier SUFFIX modifier (something like T4-8 Intelligence). If you can't find an affordable one, you can use a couple of Chaos Orbs until you hit another low-tier Suffix modifier
Recombine the Spell Physical Damage modifier with the low-tier SUFFIX modifier - you should have a 100% Chance of Success, but can use a Omen of Recombination if this is lower than than 100%
You should now have a Reaping Staff with two modifiers: Spell Physical Damage and the low-tier Suffix
Note: if you start with a very high tier of Spell Physical Damage on a Reaping Staff (T1/T2), you can recombine it with a low-tier Suffix on a Staff of any base type. The Recombinator is much more likely to select the Base with the rarer modifier (lower weight, higher modifier level), so it's very likely the Reaping Staff is selected. However, this might mean that your Chance of Success with the Recombinator is lower.
Alternative Step 1 Method
If the only Reaping Staves with #% increased Spell Physical Damage are very expensive (more than 2 Divines), you can
Buy a Magic base with one modifier, use an Orb of Annulment to get it to 0 modifiers (or a Rare base and Annul down to 1 modifier), then apply a Regal Orb to have a Rare Staff with one modifier.
Repeatedly use Chaos Orbs until you hit any tier of Spell Physical Damage (approximately a 1 in 33 chance of success)
This method might be preferable as it allows us to skip having to use an Omen of Light later on, and also means we only need one base for the craft. In the video, the bases were really cheap, so I was able to buy them easily and Recombine, but now that the prices of bases has skyrocketed, this might be the better method
Step 2: Getting +7 to Level of All Physical Spell Skills
You should now have a Staff with increased Spell Physical Damage and a Suffix.
If you went for the Chaos Orb spam for Spell Physical Damage, skip this and go to the next set of bullet points
Activate an Omen of Dextral Crystallisation
Apply an Essence of the Abyss
This will remove the Suffix modifier and add a Mark of the Abyss modifier. This ensures that the only Tags we have on our Staff are "Physical" and "Damage".
Next
Activate an Omen of Dextral Exaltation
Activate an Omen of Homogenising Exaltation
Apply a Perfect Exalted Orb
With this method, we can only hit the +# to Level of All Physical Spell Skills. With a Perfect Exalt, we can either hit Tier 2 (Weight: 250), or Tier 1 (Weight: 100). This means we have a 1 in 3.5 chance to hit the +7
If you hit Tier 2 instead of Tier 1
Repeat the first step - Recombine the Staff with Spell Physical Damage with another Reaping Staff with a low-tier Suffix. Again, if you have high tier Spell Physical Damage, you can use a non-Reaping Staff on our donor base (just check the chance of Recombination Success)
We keep doing this until we end up with a Staff with +7 to Level of All Physical Spell Skills, the Mark of the Abyss modifier and the Spell Physical Damage
If you did the Alternative Method
Instead, use an Orb of Annulment and try to remove the +5/6 Level of Physical Spell Skills. If you hit it, great, just attempt the previous step again. If you fail and Annul off the Spell Physical Damage, you'll need to Chaos Spam for it again
"Why Not Just Buy a Staff with +7 Physical Spell Skills and Recombine?"
Reaping Staves with +7 and Level 20 Reap cost at minimum 20 Divines on Trade. The above steps, at time of writing, cost about 75% of that cost. You can go this route, then Recombine it with another Staff with a low tier mod for a 75% chance of Success with Recombination, but this could result you losing everything in the first step, and also is contingent on finding these Staves on Trade.
"Why not transfer the +7 from a bad base to a Reaping Staff?"
The Recombinator in PoE 2 doesn't select the base randomly - it is not a 50/50. The Recombinator has a much higher chance to select the base with the lower-weight/higher modifier level modifier. This means that if we use a bad base with +7 (fairly cheap), the Recombinator will pick this almost every time. I'm not sure what the exact odds are, but I tried this probably a dozen times and it picked the bad base every single time. You could try to Recombine the +7 with a Reaping Staff with a low-weight mod, but then the odds of Recombinator Success are incredibly low, and it could still pick the wrong base
Step 3: Cleaning Up
We now need to clean up our Staff and prepare to add the Suffixes.
If you did the Alternative method, you can skip this and head to Step 4. You should have a Staff with +7 to Physical Spell Skills and #% increased Spell Physical Damage
Apply a Preserved Jawbone to the Staff - this will convert the Mark of the Abyssal to a Desecrated modifier. You can now Reveal the modifier - it doesn't matter what it is, we're about to remove it
Activate an Omen of Light and Annul the item to remove the Desecrated modifier. You should now have a Staff with just the +7 and increased Spell Physical Damage modifier
Step 4: Finishing the Suffixes
Activate an Omen of Greater Exaltation
Activate an Omen of Homogenising Exaltation
Activate an Omen of Dextral Exaltation
Use a Perfect Exalted Orb on the Staff
This guarantees we will get two of the three following Suffixes:
T1-3 increased Cast Speed
T1-2 increased Critical Hit Chance for Spells
T1-2 increased Critical Spell Damage Bonus
All of these are great, but getting at least Cast Speed is ideal
You should now have a Staff with +7, two of the above modifiers and increased Spell Physical Damage.
Step 5: Getting the Spell Damage per Life Modifier
Next we want to get the 4-5% increased Spell Damage per 100 Maximum Life modifier, but we first have to remove the increased Spell Physical Damage modifier
Activate an Omen of Sinistral Crystallisation
Use an Essence of the Abyss
This will convert that Prefix modifier to Mark of the Abyss
Activate an Omen of the Sovereign (Ulaman Modifier)
Apply a Preserved Jawbone to your Staff
Activate an Omen of Abyssal Echoes
Take it to the Well of Souls and Reveal
You are guaranteed to get the 4-5% increased Spell Damage per 100 Maximum Life modifier, but the Abyssal Echoes Omen allows us to reroll in case we get a 4% on the first attempt
Step 6: Getting the Last Two Prefixes
Your Staff should now have four modifiers, which you can see in the image above, and you should have two empty Prefixes that we will now fill
Activate an Omen of Homogenising Exaltation
Activate an Omen of Greater Exaltation
Apply a Perfect Exalted Orb to the Staff
The Omen of Homogenising Exaltation again means that we can only add modifiers to the item that share Tags with existing modifiers on the item. Our current tags are: Caster, Speed, Critical, Gem, Damage and Life. There are no Critical, Speed, Gem or Life-tagged Prefixes, so we can only hit Prefix modifiers with the Spell or Damage Tag. The modifiers we can hit are:
Gain #% of Damage as Extra Lightning Damage
Gain #% of Damage as Extra Cold Damage
Gain #% of Damage as Extra Fire Damage
#% increased Spell Physical Damage
#% increased Spell Damage, # to Maximum Mana (hybrid, dual modifier)
All of these are good options, but the hybrid Spell Damage/Mana modifier is the least sought-after modifier. However, it's still a decent amount of Spell Damage, so it's nothing to complain about.
Perfect Exalted Orb: Guarantees you hit Tier 1 or Tier 2 of any of these modifiers, or Tier 1-3 of Spell Physical Damage
Step 7: Finishing the Craft
All that's left to do is to apply Quality, Sockets and Runes to the item
Use ~15-20 Arcanist's Etcher's to the Staff to get it up to 20% Quality
Use 2 Artificer's Orbs to add two Sockets to the Staff
Add in two Runes of your Choice
Hedgewitch Assandra's Rune of Wisdom - +1 to Level of All Spell Skills (extremely expensive, but very powerful)
Saqawal's Rune of the Sky - 5% of Damage as Extra Damage of All Elements (much cheaper, still decent damage)