Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2)

Crafting Guide

Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2) Walkthrough Team

Last updated on: December 9, 2025 03:48 AM

Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2) - Crafting Guide

Crafting is a process in Path of Exile 2 that allows players to modify and enhance their items and equipment. Check out the various crafting mechanics and currencies found in the game in this guide, updated for Patch 0.3.0 - The Third Edict!

List of Contents

Upcoming Crafting Machines
All Crafting Methods
Currency Crafting Guide
Step-by-Step Sample to Crafting
What is Crafting?
Related Guides

Upcoming Crafting Machines

Rooms in Fate of the Vaal League

Using the Temple Console

In the new Fate of the Vaal League, you will be customizing your own Temple runs using the Temple Console in the Vaal Ruins. Here are some of the rooms that were showcased in the 0.4.0 stream:

Room	Use
Locus of Corruption	Gain access to a Corruption Altar. When the room is upgraded, the altar can further modify Corrupted Items. There is a 50% chance the item will be destroyed.
Sacrificial Chamber	When upgraded, gain access to Juatalotli's Triumph, which can add modifiers to Corrupted Vaal Unique items.
Doryani's Masterwork	Further modifies a Corrupted Skill Gem. There is a chance the item will be destroyed.

Turn Crafting Machines into Currency

Vaal Infuser
Fortunately, you do not need to bring your items for modifying when going on runs. Instead, you can take crafting machines you encounter and turn them into their respective currency. You can use the currency after your run or sell them on the market.

All Crafting Methods

Crafting Mechanics
1. Basic Currency Crafting 2. Augment Sockets and Items 3. Quality Currencies 4. Essences 5. Liquid Emotions and Instilling 6. Metacrafting with Omens 7. Recombinators 8. Desecrated Modifiers with Abyss Crafting 9. Corrupting with Vaal Orbs

Basic Currency Crafting

The basic currency crafting involves the use of the game's basic currencies to add, remove, or reroll modifiers from your gear. These currency effects are random which makes them unreliable to use for crafting as is.

All Basic Currencies

Currency	Use/Purpose
Orb of Transmutation	Upgrades a normal item to a magic item with 1 modifier
Orb of Augmentation	Augments a magic item with a new random modifier
Regal Orb	Upgrades a magic item to a rare item
Orb of Alchemy	Upgrades a normal item to a rare with 4 modifiers
Artificer's Orb	Adds a socket to a martial weapon or armour
Exalted Orb	Augments a rare item with a new random modifier
Chaos Orb	Removes and changed one modifier on an item
Divine Orb	Randomizes the numeric values of modifiers on an item
Orb of Annulment	Removes a random modifier from an item
Orb of Chance	Unpredictably either upgrades a Normal item to Unique rarity or destroys it.
Vaal Orb	Corrupts an item, creating unpredictable effects like adding a new modifier or socket to a piece of equipment.
Fracturing Orb	Fracture a random modifier on a rare item with at least 4 modifiers, locking it in place.
Mirror of Kalandra	Creates a Mirrored copy of an item.
Hinekora’s Lock	Allows an item to foresee the result of the next Currency item used on it. Modifying the item in any way removes the ability to foresee.

List of Currency Items

Augment Sockets and Items

Equipment Sockets

Armour and Weapons can have augment sockets in which you can put in Runes, Soul Cores, or Idols to give additional effects. These augment items have different tiers and rarity and will provide different bonuses depending on what kind of item they're socketed in.

Socket and Socketable Currencies

Currency	Use/Purpose
Artificer's Orb	Adds an Augment Socket to a Martial Weapon, Wand, Staff, or Armour.
Runes	Basic augment items that contain generic, yet useful, effects. The effect differs when socketed in Martial Weapons, Armour, or Wands and Staffs.
Soul Cores	Socketable items obtained in the Temple of Chaos. Harder to obtain the runes but can provide more unique and powerful effects. The effect depends whether it's socketed on a Martial Weapon or an Armour.
Idols	Items that can only be socketed into a specific armour type to provide unique effects. Many Idols can also be socketed into Sceptres for additional effects that affects Allies in your Presence.

Quality Currencies

Currency	Use/Purpose
Armourer's Scrap	Improves the quality of an armour.
Blacksmith's Whetstone	Improves the quality of a martial weapon
Arcanist's Etcher	Improves the quality of a wand, staff, or sceptre
Glassblower's Bauble	Improves the quality of a flask
Gemcutter's Prism	Improves the quality of a skill gem

Certain crafting currencies increases an item's Quality, which increases a Weapon's Physical Damage and the Defences on Armours and Shields. Quality can also increase the effect of Skill Gems, Skills from Caster Weapons, and Flasks. Lastly, Breach Catalysts also increases the Quality of Rings and Amulets which increases the effects of certain modifiers on the item.

Essences

Essence Mob

Essences let you add modifiers to items in a more deterministic way than basic crafting currencies. For example, an Essence of Fire will always guarantee a Fire-related modifier such as Fire Damage or Fire Resistance.

When used on a Normal item, an Essence upgrades it into a Rare while guaranteeing the special Essence modifier. Higher-tier Essences (Lesser → Greater → Grand) all work the same way, but the guaranteed affix becomes stronger with each tier.

Perfect Essences go a step further by removing a random existing modifier on an item, then replacing it with their powerful guaranteed Essence modifier.
List of Essences

Liquid Emotions and Instilling (Distilled Emotions)

Path of Exile - Distilled Emotions and Instilling

Distilled Emotions have been renamed to Liquid Emotions. Liquid Emotions are used to instill (anoint) Notable passives onto an Amulet and to affect Waystones (Delirium modifiers). This allows you to save Passive Points and allocate Passive Points that are too far from your current Passive Tree by instilling it on an Amulet instead.

Liquid Emotions are endgame currency items tied to the Delirium mechanic. You earn them by completing Delirium encounters, typically through Waystones - where fighting shadowy foes fills a reward bar.

List of All Liquid Emotions

Metacrafting with Omens

Path of Exile - Metacrafting with Omens

Some Omens change the effects of various basic crafting currencies, making them more deterministic or powerful. These crafting mechanic is used at highest tier of crafting to drastically increase your adds to replace the worst modifier of an item into something more favourable.

Recombinators

Path of Exile 2 - Recombinator Items Must be the Same Item Class

The Recombinator is a tool that combines two or more different affixes from two different items of the same item type and merge them into one new item. Recombinating requires currency acquired from Expeditions. The more modifiers you choose, or the rarer those modifiers are, the higher the chances are for the recombinator to fail and destroy both items.

Recombinator Guide

Corrupting With Vaal Orbs

Path of Exile - Corrupting With Vaal Orbs
A Vaal Orb corrupts an item to unpredictably modify an item for the better or worse. There are many different outcomes to Vaal Orbs, from adding an adding a enchanted modifier or another socket, or rerolling the values of the item's modifiers past its minimum or maximum range.

Omens of Corruption are used alongside Vaal Orbs to guarantee the corruption does something to an item since Vaal Orbs can lead to duds where nothing changes.

Vaal Orb Outcomes and How to Get

Desecrated Modifiers with Abyss Crafting

Desecrated Item
Desecrated Modifiers are a new form of crafting affix introduced in Patch 0.3.0 The Third Edict (Rise of the Abyssal League). Using Abyssal Bones (e.g., Gnawed Jawbone, Preserved Rib, Ancient Collarbone) on a Rare item adds an unrevealed Desecrated Modifier.

You must travel to the Well of Souls, unlocked in Act II (in the Mastodon Badlands, through the Lightless Passage). At the Well, you can reveal the Desecrated Modifier by interacting with the item. You are presented with three distinct affix options, from which you choose one to finalize the modifier.

Important note: Fracturing Orbs do not interact with Desecrated modifiers. Because of this, it's best to use a Fracturing Orb on an item that already has a Desecrated mod. Doing so raises the chance of successfully fracturing your desired affix on a 4-mod item from 25% to 33.33%.

Desecrated Modifiers and Abyss Crafting Guide

Currency Crafting Guide

Currency Crafting is the main method for crafting as well as getting the best possible items you can get in the entire game. However, it is extremely difficult to use due to its randomized nature so we're going to be having an in-depth section on how to fully understand currency crafting.

Understanding Affix Tiers

A default item view with no additional information revealed.

Before rolling in exalts into gears, we'll need to first learn about Affix Tiers. Each item can have affixes attached to them but these affixes have certain tiers to themselves as well. In addition to that, each tiers cannot roll without limitation on items as certain item tiers require a certain amount of item level in order for it to potentially be added to the item.

Crafting via currency requires knowledge with these three factors before attempting to craft.

Item Stat Explanation

Item Affix Tier	The Item affix tier shown on the right side of the list of affixes. This is the main indicator to learn how possibly high (or low) that affix's value may roll. Higher values will always mean a higher stat range.
Item Levels	This is the main factor that will decide if an item can possibly roll a certain affix tier or not. The higher the item level, the higher the upper limit of an affix may roll. This does not mean that lower tiers will no longer roll, it simply increases the tier cap that the item may get.
Affix Values Range	This is the stat range that you may get if you decide to reroll an item's affix value via a Divine Orb. Lower affix tiers will naturally result in a lower and higher range limit.

Base Item Types and Possible Affixes

The second most important thing to know when trying to craft is to learn what possible affixes you may get from certain gear types. For example, it will be impossible to roll a movement speed affix on a weapon nor will it be impossible to get physical damage modifiers on your belt. However, it is impossible to know these just via in-game. You can check out our weapon, armour, and accessory guides to learn which possible prefixes and suffixes may roll on an item.

Difference Between Prefixes and Suffixes

There are two main types of Affixes that a gear may have, namely Prefixes and Suffixes. Each gear may have 3 of each (normally) and each prefix and suffix have certain modifiers that can only be found within their affix group. For example, attributes may only roll as a Suffix, this means that if your chosen gear already have 3 non-attribute suffixes attached to it, it will no longer be possible to gain any attribute even if you try to add an affix to it via currency.

Prefixes are modifiers that tend to have offensive effects while suffixes tend to have defensive effects but this will always vary depending on the item type.

Omens and Controlling Currency Effects

Now, Currencies as we all know, are filled with a huge amount of RNG elements attached to it which makes crafting extremely difficult. However, it is possible to control a currency's effect (to some degree). These items are mainly in the form of omens. Omens are items that passively grants a consumable effect depending on the type of omen you have, and several omens have effects tied to currency effects.

For example, an Omen of Whittling can cause a Chaos Orb to remove the lowest tier affix on your gear. With this in mind, you'll be able to remove an affix with low value on your gear without suffering from possible risk such as a good affix being removed!

Omen Effects Are Stackable

It is also possible to stack the effects of Omens. For example, you may have a Tier 6 movement speed affix on a boot and another Tier 6 different suffix with all other affixes being a higher tier. Since a movement speed affix belongs to the prefix group, you may have both Omen of Whittling as well as Omen of Dextral Erasure, this will guarantee your Chaos Orb to remove the other Tier 6 effect instead of your movement speed affix.

Step-by-Step Sample to Crafting

Crafting Mechanics
1. Find a Good Item Base 2. Craft a Magic Item with Good Modifiers 3. Upgrade the Magic Item into Rare with Essences 4. Desecrate It at the Well of Souls (Optional) 5. Fill Up its Affixes With Exalted Orbs 6. Remove Unwanted Affixes 7. Clean The Gear With Divine Orbs 8. Improve Its Quality and Add Sockets 9. Corrupt It With a Vaal Orb (Optional)

1. Find a Good Item Base

Everything begins with a good base. Item bases define attack speed, implicit mods, and socket colors. For example, if we want to craft a spear with accuracy, crit, and high damage, a Spiked Spear is a solid choice.

The item level of the base is equally important, because it dictates which tiers of mods can appear. Higher ilvl unlocks stronger affixes, so trying to min-max on a low-level base will waste resources. Many players farm or trade for clean high-ilvl bases before beginning serious crafts.

It’s wise to pick up multiple copies of the same Normal base as crafting often takes a few tries before you hit something worth building on.

2. Craft a Magic Item with Good Modifiers

The real goal here is to turn your pile of Normal items into at least one Magic item with a strong prefix and suffix combination. You’ll usually need multiple bases to cycle through. To get there, you can:

Transmutation + Augmentation Orbs – upgrade Normals into Magic and quickly roll many items.

Reforging Bench – recycle Magic items with junk mods, giving them another chance.

Recombinator – merge one item with a strong prefix and another with a strong suffix into a single hybrid.

After burning through your stack, you’ll typically come out with one solid Magic item that has both a desirable prefix and suffix. That becomes your crafting foundation.

3. Upgrade the Magic Item into Rare with Essences

Essences in POE2 have been reworked to be more deterministic. Using a Lesser, Normal, or Greater Essence on a Magic item upgrades it into a Rare while also guaranteeing a specific modifier, depending on the Essence type. This makes them best used on a solid Magic base - something with strong stats already - so you lock in a desirable third modifier without leaving it to chance.

Perfect Essences work differently: instead of upgrading, they overwrite a random modifier on a Rare with a guaranteed one. These are great for refining gear you already like, smoothing out weak rolls, or chasing one last perfect affix.

4. Desecrate It at the Well of Souls (Optional)

The Well of Souls (Desecration) offers another route: you can sacrifice items or slot Abyssal Bones to add unique “Desecrated” modifiers. These can supercharge gear, but the process is irreversible and dangerous. Both systems are high-stakes gambles, usually reserved for gear you’re confident is already excellent.

The risk-reward is steeper than corruption: while a Desecrated spear might gain terrifying new damage multipliers, it could also inherit downsides that make it unusable for your build. This is a playground for risk-takers chasing perfection at any cost.

5. Fill Up its Affixes With Exalted Orbs

Now that we have a 3 Affix spear, we're ready to use Exalted Orbs to slam the gear with more affixes.

Your goal is to fill them with synergistic stats. Exalted Orbs can be used to add a new random mod one at a time, though this is costly. More commonly, players lean on the Reforge Bench (unlocked in Act 3), which rerolls all affixes with a bias toward a chosen category like “physical” or “defense.”

6. Remove Unwanted Affixes

Now that we have a 6 affix gear, it's time to assess which affix we want. For example, we've gotten a light radius suffix on our gear, we'll then want to remove those and reroll them using Chaos Orbs. Using Omen of Whittling partnered by Omen of Dextral or Sinistral Erasure, you'll be able to reroll your chosen lowest level prefix or suffix modifiers. This will remove lower leved tier affixes so if you had good high tier rolls, there's more control in removing unwanted affixes.

7. Clean The Gear With Divine Orbs

Now that you've gotten high tier affixes on your gear, it's time to min-max it with Divine Orbs. Divine Orbs will simply take all of your affix and its tiers then randomly reroll the values of your affixes in their given range. This is perfect to use if you have high tier affixes but low values from them.

8. Improve Its Quality and Add Sockets

Now that your affixes are great, you can then improve it by adding quality and sockets to it to further improve its performance. You can do this before truly maxing out the gear but its usually best to do this at the end of your crafting process if you were able to get good rolls on your currencies.

9. Corrupt It With a Vaal Orb (Optional)

Now that you have a potentially maxed out item, you can reroll it further a last time using a Vaal Orb. A Vaal Orb's effect is random and cannot be undone and further modifications to the gear may no longer be possible. It can potentially brick your item making it a treasure into an unusable item or add more effects to it and strengthening it further.

Make use of Hinekora's Lock

Hinekora’s Lock is the ultimate insurance tool when you’ve reached a point of no return. It lets you preview the result of the next currency used - whether that’s a Vaal Orb for a corruption, a Fractured Orb to lock a mod, or a Perfect Exalt/Chaos at the end of crafting.

Because these locks are nearly as rare as a Mirror of Kalandra, they’re usually reserved for endgame items where one bad roll would destroy weeks of investment.

Disenchant Items to Receive Currency for Crafting

Disenchanting Items

With crafting, players can also disenchant items of various rarities to get currency shards used to acquire whole currencies. For example, disenchanting a magical item gives players a Transmutation Shard, used to form a Transmutation Orb.

What is Crafting?

Process of Modifying Items and Equipment

Crafting Explained

In Path of Exile 2, crafting is a mechanic that allows players to enhance and modify their items and equipment to help them throughout the game and allow for increased build and playstyle customization. Overall, it is an essential process that all players must learn about to progress further into the game.

Path of Exile 2 (PoE 2) Related Guides

Path of Exile 2 Tips and Tricks

Beginner's Guide

Gameplay Mechanics

Game and Character Progression

Best Ways to Farm and Spend Gold	Endgame Guide: What to Do After the Campaign?
Hardcore Guide	Hideout Location and How to Unlock
How to Ascend Classes	How to Farm Uniques
How to Increase Damage	How to Increase Defense
How to Make a Good Build	How to Power Level Alts
Leveling Guide: How to Get XP Fast	List of Permanent Buffs from the Campaign
Missables and One-Time Events Guide	Chaos Statue Location
How to Respec Ascendancy	-

Gear and Crafting

Are There Vendor Recipes?	Crafting Guide
How to Always Show Items on Ground	How to Get Corrupted Items
How to Hide Your Helmet	How to Identify Items and Equipment
How to Increase Inventory Size	How to Use Corruption Altars
How to Use Reforging Benches	Item Rarity Explained
Sell, Salvage, or Disenchant Equipment?	Sockets Explained
Recombinator Guide	Desecrated Modifiers and Abyss Crafting

Stats and Skills Guides

Best Defensive Stat	How to Get and Use Persistent Buffs
How to Get Ascendancy Skill Points	How to Get More Skill Slots
How to Increase Charm Slots	How to Increase Support Gem Slots
How to Level Up Skills	How to Respec Passives
How to Use Jewel Sockets	Weapon Set Skill Points Explained
Weapon Specialization Guide: How to Swap Weapons	-

FAQs and Other Guides

Can You Adjust Game Difficulty?	Best PC Settings and Keyboard Bindings
Guild Features and How to Join	How to Change Your Character's Name
How to Change Voice and Text Language	How to Get Loot Filters on Console
How to Get More Character Slots	How to Link Items in Chat
How to Revive Party Members	How to Use and Customize Chat Box
List of All Chat Commands	Is There Controller Support?
Multiplayer Guide: How to Play Coop	Party Bonuses and Group Scaling Explained
Stash Tab Sale Schedule and Prices	Should You Choose Mouse or WASD?
Do PoE 1 Supporter Packs work in PoE 2?	-

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Crafting Guide

Upcoming Crafting Machines

Rooms in Fate of the Vaal League

Turn Crafting Machines into Currency

All Crafting Methods

Basic Currency Crafting

All Basic Currencies

Augment Sockets and Items

Socket and Socketable Currencies

Quality Currencies

Essences

Liquid Emotions and Instilling (Distilled Emotions)

Metacrafting with Omens

Recombinators

Corrupting With Vaal Orbs

Desecrated Modifiers with Abyss Crafting

Currency Crafting Guide

Understanding Affix Tiers

Item Stat Explanation

Base Item Types and Possible Affixes

Difference Between Prefixes and Suffixes

Omens and Controlling Currency Effects

Omen Effects Are Stackable

Step-by-Step Sample to Crafting

1. Find a Good Item Base

2. Craft a Magic Item with Good Modifiers

3. Upgrade the Magic Item into Rare with Essences

4. Desecrate It at the Well of Souls (Optional)

5. Fill Up its Affixes With Exalted Orbs

6. Remove Unwanted Affixes

7. Clean The Gear With Divine Orbs

8. Improve Its Quality and Add Sockets

9. Corrupt It With a Vaal Orb (Optional)

Make use of Hinekora's Lock

Disenchant Items to Receive Currency for Crafting

What is Crafting?

Process of Modifying Items and Equipment