PoE Ritual Crafting Guide – Path of Exile 3.13 Echoes of the Atlas Crafting
The new Path of Exile Ritual league has been out for a few weeks now, and many players are at the point where they are looking to make some of the top-end gear for their characters. But if you’re newer, you might be struggling with how exactly to make that happen. There are a variety of ways to craft in Path of Exile, and judging on what you want to make, you will want to approach it a different way. In some cases, you’ll want to avoid it entirely and just buy the item! We’re going to go over the main ways to craft in our PoE Ritual Crafting Guide, and some examples to show if they are right for you.
Should I be Chaos Spamming?
Chaos Orbs reroll an item entirely. They are the quick and easy way to look for an entirely new set of stats, on the same base. They are also almost always the wrong thing to be using. They are entirely too expensive for the complete lack of control that they offer. You will almost always get a better result out of buying fossils, essences, or waiting for rerolls from Harvest, rather than throwing your Chaos at an item. Not much else to say here. Unless you’re in SSF, or just looking to blow some money, don’t do it.
When Should I be Using Alterations for PoE Ritual Crafting?
Alterations, on the other hand, are very often the right way to go about crafting the base for your item. This heavily depends on what you’re looking for. If you need a very specific, rare modifier, alteration spamming is an easy way to attain that. But keep in mind, if you find the modifier you want, from that point the most you can have on that item is three normal modifiers (two from a magic item, one from the Regal Orb to turn it rare) plus crafted modifiers. In some cases you’ll be fine with this. For example, my end-game body armour on one of my characters has Spell Critical Chance, Additional Curse, Life, and three crafted modifiers. Or in some rare cases you may only need one modifier on an item for it to be strong. For example, if you’re using a weapon with the “Enemies have a chance to explode for 5% of their life as fire damage” modifier, you probably only care about hitting that modifier, and then crafting spell damage onto it.
The biggest place that Alterations shine, however, is rolling Cluster Jewels. Since Cluster Jewels can only have a maximum of four stats, being limited to three isn’t a huge loss. Particularly for Medium and Small clusters, trying to hit the exact one or two modifiers that you’re looking for isn’t too unlikely, and alteration spamming tends to be the best way to go about it.
Which Essences Should I Use for PoE Ritual Crafting?
Essences are essential Chaos orbs that guarantee one stat. In many cases, you’ll want to use them to generically guarantee life, a resistance, or attributes while you’re looking for other rolls. These really shine on armour pieces where there are several options that you can hit in order to make a good piece. For example, if you’re rolling with life essences, you really only need to hit two of the four resistances at decently high tiers for it to be a successful craft. Early in a league it’s advisable to throw any decent mid-tier Essence at whichever gear slot you’re lacking in. At their base level, Essences are great for getting your gear off the ground.
On the other side, Essences can also be some of the highest tier of crafting, when you’re using ones that provide stats the gear could not have otherwise attained. For example, rolling Dexterity Essences onto belts, which could otherwise not have Dexterity on them. That can get expensive, because you’re likely looking for perfect other rolls when you’re in that price range. Or, you could be using the four Essences that give their own stats (Insanity – Horror – Delirium – Hysteria). For example, one of the top crafted helmets currently starts by using Essences of Horror until you get the Concentrated Effect alongside it. This is for mid to top-end crafters, and I wouldn’t suggest using these Essences until you’ve properly looked into why you’re using them and what results you’re looking for.
How do Fossils Factor In?
Fossils are used when you’re trying to hit specific types of rolls, although they can be one of the cheaper ways to hit very specific rolls too. They provide a way to push RNG in your favour in ways that other crafting methods lack. For example, I wanted to make a helmet that had +3 to level of socketed minion gems, a high life roll, and nearby enemies take increased fire damage. Well, that’s going to be really tough for any other method of crafting, because they might be able to focus one stat, but all three at once is problematic. Which is where Fossils come in. Because you can socket up to four Fossils in a single craft (via resonators), you can push RNG in your favour in multiple directions at once. I was able to hit a strong helmet in a handful of tries using Bound, Scorched, and Prismatic Fossils to target each stat I wanted. With enough attempts, you can make some of the most broken gear with Fossil crafting. This is especially true because of their ability to block off other types of stats, but if you’re looking into that you’re probably a high-level crafter already.
On the other hand, similar to Essences, they can also be entry level crafting. If you’re just looking for a generic body armour with high energy shield, Fossils are a great way to push RNG in your favour, rather than simply Chaos spamming it. They are also very string at rolling entry level weapons, since they allow you to target multiple elements, or physical rolls.
What is Harvest Crafting?
Harvest is a mechanic added in, well, Harvest League. It left for Heist league, but now it is back, making a debut in our PoE Ritual Crafting Guide. Harvest allows you to roll an item guaranteeing certain types of stats. It is incredibly strong, probably the strongest entry level crafting style in the game. This is largely due to the fact that you can force a variety of stats. For example, with my body armour mentioned earlier, Spell Critical Strike Chance and Additional Curse are the only two caster modifiers on a body armour with Hunter influence. That means that every time I rolled for caster modifiers, I was guaranteed one of those two stats, making rolling the rest of the item incredibly easy, comparatively. These crafts can be used at entry level as just Chaos spamming but with pushes in your direction, or you can use them to force stats as mentioned above.
However, Harvest Crafting also allows for Augment, Remove, and Add/Remove for stats with specific tags. This is the highest end of crafting currently available in Path of Exile, and it is bloody expensive. This is used when you have a strong item already, and there are modifiers remaining that you can force on by using one of the Harvest Tags. For an easy example, if you have boots with 35% movement speed, 89 life, and Tailwind on critical strike, you can proceed to make them the perfect boots by blocking off the last prefix by Augmenting on something that would only be prefix, such as Defence, and then Augment on Cold to guarantee Cold Resist. Then you can Add/Remove cold until you hit a tier one roll. You simply repeat that for any resistance you want, making a perfect pair of boots for yourself. That’s an easy and base level example. For one more, using the body armour I’ve mentioned a couple times, if I had Spell Critical Strike Chance and 129 life on it, I could Augment Caster and force it to gain Additional Curse, because that’s the only other caster modifier available.
If this confused you, don’t worry, you’re not alone. Harvest Crafting is the most complicated crafting in the game, and there are many guides out there on using it properly. If you do want to use it better, I highly suggest familiarizing yourself with ww.poedb.tw/us/mod.php, which lists every modifier that each item will have available, as well as their tags. It’s invaluable for teaching yourself what Harvest can do.
Last Words
Hopefully this PoE Ritual Crafting Guide helped you better understand the crafting methods we have available to us today. Whether you’re a newer player using lower tier Essences and Fossils for some strong starter gear, or a veteran throwing hundreds of Exalts at Harvest, hopefully your crafts are successful and you keep having a blast in Ritual League!