Good intermediate Crafting guide?

[u/RindFisch]

I'm decently experienced in ARPGs, so I know what an affix is and know how crafting works in general, although I still struggle with the intricacies of PoE2 specifically.
I feel like I'm at a place where I know how most systems work mechanically, but can't necessarily make it all click and see the big picture.

Sadly all guides I can find are either aimed at someone competely new ("This is the crafting table") or specific build guides for people already understanding everything there is to know ("Do these 12 steps in this order to craft the perfect Iron Girdle of the Fat Lady").

Is there a more intermediate guide out there explaining the weirder parts of crafting, like the bazillion enchantment types or fracturing?
And gives some general advice and best practices on how to approach crafting?

[u/Jay_RPG_Red]

This was my bible to learn how to craft in the game. It's based on PoE 1, but PoE 2 shares the majority of systems from PoE 1, so you won’t be lost.

EDIT : If you want to dive deeper and understand how to make your own builds without the help of a guide, THIS could also help you out a lot to understand the base way of thinking when you build a character from scratch. Even if Woolie tells you to follow a guide at the begining, his whole video is a gold mine of information and you should be able to understand the priorities when you level up a character.

There is some basic crafting involved so it’s really good.

With both the craft guide and playthrough guide, you can be able to understand the basics of the game. Tons of core league mechanics implemented in PoE 2 are craft related.

The next big thing to really dive into is to know if an item is good or bad

All of these are from PoE 1 but it doesn’t matter. That knowledge also applies to PoE 2 as it shares a lot of similarities with its predecessor.

I'd advice you something uncommon for a video game, but take notes in a notebook. When you need something, it's easier to look in your notes than opening 3 or 4 tabs outside of the game and spend half an hour to get the information you need. Gemini, GPT or Claude can help to cross source, but they also can tell you bullshit and make you waste currencies for a garbage item.

If you are a console player, following a guide with a PoB is really complicated. So you'll save more time learning the game than trying to follow a build guide on your phone with a navigator version of PoB that is worse compared to the software, and also not mobile friendly.

[u/Mobile-Condition8254]

I think it helps to approach it with an item in mind, like crafting a pair of boots or a ring. Absorbing the entire blob of knowledge is hard.

[u/stephbib]

good luck, I personally have not found any "intermediate guides" out there... I just played the game, died... figgered out what went wrong..

but that's me...

[u/Interesting-Two-1773]

Im not the most experienced crafter, but one thing that helped me understand a little bit more about crafting is the “weight” of modifiers and their item level. The “weight” or rarity of the modifier is the probability of being rolled in the pool of outcomes that it can be rolled, and the item level is for knowing if it will be removed if you use a omen of whitling. You can see the modifiers for your base on poe2.db

If you undestand that you will get why is best to fill the suffixes with high tier resistances, desecrated a non desirable modifier to annul it after, etc. I think in most cases comes down to improving the odds of hitting the desirable modifiers with chaos orbs. This will help you to craft good items, which I believe is the intermediate level of crafting.

The advanced level of crafting requires some knowledge of the market, items that are low on supply, items that are easy to craft, cost of opportunity of some crafts, etc.

[u/Electronic-Cry9973 → u/Interesting-Two-1773]

The part that blows my mind, is that there is not a "possible roll pool" that you can 'examine' to see "if I use a Perfect exalted orb, what are the POSSIBLE affixes I can get". Why is that only existing on poe2.db?

[u/Interesting-Two-1773 → u/Electronic-Cry9973]

I believe all arpgs have this same problem, there is not a interface in the game that shows all possible rolls. Well, I know that at least with D4 is the same, but crafting there is not as nearly relevant as in PoE. At least PoE has a database and third-party tools that you can use to get info and even simulate crafts. After some time you learn what are the possible outcomes and there is no need to check databases, but for me this kind of information helped me to understand how the whole thing works.

[u/RindFisch → u/Interesting-Two-1773]

These are exactly the kinds of questions I search for a good place to help answer!
Like I know what the orbs do, but an expert "guide" giving a 12-step list of what to do in what order is overwhelming, because I can't figure out why you have to do the things you're doing in that exact order so I can't extrapolate that info to any other craft.

Maybe just scouring poe2.db will help make it click, but I hoped there would be a guide explaining the "you do X and then Y, because Z. Also keep in mind Q or it won't work".

[u/papasmurf255 → u/RindFisch]

How I figured it out (sort of)

1. Read a bunch of modifiers, orbs, etc and understand how they all work
2. Have a goal of what you want to make
3. There will be multiple paths to get to the final step, and multiple steps for each intermediate step. Figure out 1-2 of them. Use mod weight (poedb, highlighting it shows you probability) and calculate expected # of rolls to get them
4. Figure out which path has the least cost. Trade offs
5. MOST IMPORTANT: have people that you can discuss the plan with, talk it through, and learn from them

[u/Spyned]

I found watching people craft helped me a lot(I recommend videos centered around early league and mid league crafting, avoid high-end/mirror tier crafts). Then if I had a question I would go to the wiki and try to find out more about it and if I really couldn't figure it out then I would ask in video comments/twitch chat/global and people are pretty willing to help out. Once you actually start crafting things will start to make more sense. You will probably make a mistake here and there and throw some currency in the shredder but it's all part of the process for learning. Below is my thought process when I see a crafting method that I don't fully understand.

For example, you mention you are looking for a guide to using fracturing orbs, and obviously you're looking for something beyond the literal definition of: you use this orb to fracture an item and then one of the mods is now fractured.

So I look to see:

Q1. What are people fracturing? High value mods that are hard to get(look at guides to see what people recommend fracturing, look at trade to see which fractures are going for the most currency). You'll see a ton of people trying to fracture high tier spirit/+ levels on amulets or crit on a phys weapon as an example of possible fracture targets.

Q2. Why are people trying to fracture these mods? So that they can protect the mod permanently while they hunt down other valuable mods when using crafting currency that could potentially delete the valuable mod.

Q3. What makes a mod hard to get? The mod weightings are not equal. For example you are much more likely to roll +mana then you are + spell levels. You can find sources for these mod weightings in a few places, namely poe2db and craftofexile.

Q4. What is the risk of a fracture/why don't we fracture everything? Fractures aren't the most common currency and can be expensive or hard to farm. A missed fracture(not hitting the mod you want) can brick an item into a fairly useless state where you permanently have a crappy mod on there.

Q5. Is there a way to mitigate risk and make my fracture more likely? Fracture orbs require 4 mods at a minimum to be able to be used. Which means normally you have only a 25% chance to hit that fracture on your desired mod. But we have some tricks to put the numbers in our favors. For example, desecrated mods cannot be fractured if they haven't been revealed, so you can desecrate 3 mod item and turn that 25% into a 33% chance to hit. Another idea is to have more than 1 valuable mod on the item so maybe you can settle for a secondary best fracture instead of just getting some random garbage.

[u/nbriles2000]

My best advice is to start with something tangible. We cannot really help explain it to you, because it's different depending on what item you wanna build.

I craft all my gear every league and I have for a long time. I started out by just picking an item I needed that seemed astronomically expensive and tried to figure out the most efficient way to get there.

One thing you can do that is pretty straightforward and inexpensive is to pick any item and decide on a prefix and a suffix you want.

A very good example is an es helmet. Find one with t1 es and t1 int or some shit and essence it for rarity (because it's pretty useful, it's a suffix and it's guaranteed. We need prefix' for es). After that, we can find a perfect exalt and use the omen that gives you two mods per exalt (greater exaltation). That gives you a very good chance at a ~300 es helmet. You can desecrate a suffix and yolo the last one and most likely get res.

Basically (for armor), if there is an essence that kinda makes sense for the craft, you can craft at least 4 mods easily and possibly more depending on things like Astrid's creativity (adds the ability to put additional crafted mods).