Path of Exile 2: Complete Crafting guide for beginners

Itemization is a key part of making your build pop off in Path of Exile 2. Relying on luck will only get you so far — at some point, you'll have to interact with the crafting currency items to scale your damage and survivability against the incremental difficulty in later Acts. For someone not well-versed in ARPGs, it may seem a dauntingly complex process, especially as these crafting currencies are overall rarer than they were in the first game.

For Path of Exile 2 beginners trying to wrap their heads around the many crafting Orbs, this guide will detail everything you need to know. Here's our first disclaimer on that, though — since itemization varies widely on a case-by-case basis, we'll try to instead talk about the strategization that should inform your crafting choices.

How does item crafting work in Path of Exile 2?

Unlike the traditional sense of the word, you don't fully craft an item out of thin air in Path of Exile 2. Instead, it's more a process of modifying an item and sculpting it to fit your specific needs.

For this, your first order of business is to identify what exact stats you require on your item. Of course, a lot of different stats are useful to increase your power ceiling offensively and defensively. However, some return far more value for your investment than others.

Before we get into the nitty-gritty of using crafting currencies in Path of Exile 2, it's important to get a grasp of how often you might need to change gear. The following segment discusses exactly that.

How often do you need to craft or replace items in Path of Exile 2?

Higher-level white items make for better bases (Image via Grinding Gear Games)

The frequency of gear swaps you'll need will vary on class. That said, you should fully replace almost all of your gear at least once every 6-7 levels. One thing that factors into it, of course, is the type of roll you get on your crafted or found item for a slot. If it's good enough, it can carry you through an entire campaign Act before you find a better replacement.

The reason you want to replace items throughout your campaign journey in Path of Exile 2 is due to how item bases scale. Items of the same type and slot have higher-level variants every few levels, requiring higher player level and stats to equip, but also have higher base stats to show for it. For instance, the Oak Greathammer base requires lvl 4, and its average raw damage will be nearly half of the Forge Maul base, which requires lvl 11.

Weapons and damage scaling

Broadly speaking, there are two different ways damage scales in Path of Exile 2. Martial classes like Mercenary and Warrior will need to rely on their actual weapon a lot for the damage output, since their Skills deal damage based on the weapons at hand.

Casters, on the other hand, will rely on the Skill Gem level of their Spells to dish out damage, meaning the weapons on hand act more as passive stat sticks.

Martial weapons: Martial classes will, therefore, need to replace their armaments more often. Unless you get into quirky specific build ideas like a Thorns-based Shield build, most affixes that can go on these weapons are quite good. Generally speaking, though, you'll always want the percentage-based Physical damage increase affix for a higher base damage to work on.

The following are all the martial weapon types in the game, as of this writing:

Bows (Ranger)
Quarterstaves (Monk)
One-handed and Two-handed Maces (Warrior)
Crossbows (Mercenary)

Tip: Ranged weapons also need Accuracy to hit enemies reliably when they're far away. Generally, if you don't have high Accuracy, you're likely to miss enemies with attacks the farther away they are. Spells (caster class Skills) are not Attacks, so these do not care about Accuracy calculations.

Caster weapons: Caster weapons cannot be used to attack enemies. Instead, they grant innate spells that vary based on the type of Staff, Wand, or Scepter you're using. In many cases, this spell is one you'll seldom rely on.

Higher-level caster weapons come with higher-level variants of their granted Spell. However, since these Spells themselves are a situational add-on at best, you don't need to get a new caster weapon just for a higher-tier item-base.

Still, you'll want to replace your Staff (or Wand/Focus or Scepter/Focus combo) roughly once every 20 levels. This is because the item's base level also determines the upper limit of the modifier values that can roll on it. For instance, an Ashen Staff (requires lvl 1) can only have up to 49% extra Spell Damage affix, whereas a Chiming Staff (requires lvl 25) can have up to 79%.

For Staves and Wands, this value range increases at the following level thresholds: 11, 23, 35, 46, 58, 70, 80.

Scepters have more level thresholds for the same: 6, 12, 19, 25, 31, 36, 43, 53, 63, 69, 77. Of course, you don't need to replace items to get one every level threshold, as shown here, but these limitations are something to keep in mind.

The most important affix you need to scale your damage as a caster is +(number) to all Spell Skills of a specific element. Following that, extra Spell or Elemental damage is good too.

The same rules apply to offhand items, namely, Focuses, Quivers, and Shields.

Read More: All weapon types in Path of Exile 2: Which ones are available in Early Access?

Armor and defense scaling

Of your armor slots, the chestpiece is the most important, so you want to put extra focus into getting a good one. Depending on your attribute alignment, worn armor can provide a combination of two of three things — Armor, Evasion, and Energy Shield. The total EHP you gain out of these stats can get complex, but the general idea is you want them to go up as you face higher-level monsters.

How to use crafting items in Path of Exile 2

This is generally how you do crafting progression in Early Access (Image via Grinding Gear Games)

The main goal of crafting in Path of Exile 2 is to fabricate an item step-by-step till you get your best-case combination of affixes. It should be noted that gear with the perfect stats can always be bought from other players, which completely trivializes gear progression.

Be that as it may, on a Solo Self-found character in Path of Exile 2, a copious amount of crafting attempts is the straight and narrow path one must take.

Alongside Unique gear, there are three item rarities in Path of Exile 2:

White (Common) items have no affixes
Blue (Magic) items can have up to two affixes
Gold (Rare) items can have up to six affixes (three prefixes and three suffixes)

In what is called a god roll, you'll get six of your most desirable stats on the same item. However, chasing the god roll is a dream too ambitious, and getting all of your items via crafting in Path of Exile 2 is a lesson in how to settle for second-bests and almost-goods.

The general idea of crafting, therefore, is to take a white base item, and then turn it into something useable as you upgrade its rarity. Before we delve into that, a great beginner tip is to always check vendor stock. These reset every time you level up; chances are, you end up getting something greatly useful out of the gate.

Magic items with two useful affixes are of much higher value than Rare items with six affixes that don't help with your build goals specifically. Naturally, this is exactly where item crafting in Path of Exile 2 is far more useful than getting drops from Gambling vendors and RNG.

The regular way of crafting items in Path of Exile 2: Using common Orbs

Use the two common Orbs to modify good base items you get (Image via Grinding Gear Games)

To start with, get the latest tier of white items available to you, and note the two affixes you most desire.

You want to turn this into a Magic with an Orb of Transmutation. If you don't get one of your desired affixes, put it away for later use. If you do get a good affix, it's time to invest an Orb of Augmentation to try your luck for the second affix.

It's generally a good idea to keep one stack of Orb of Transmutation and Orb of Augmentation, each, on your inventory when you run through areas, so you can pick up desired white items on the spot, and then do this routine.

The next step is to use Regal Orbs to turn this item into Magic. Then, if you like the third modifier, you want to use an Exalted Orb to add more. However, due to how rare Regal Orbs are in Path of Exile 2, transitioning to Rare is something you should do only with the best-case Magic items.

Tip: For those who haven't played the first game, do not use Chaos Orbs to modify your gear. These were the main currency item in Path of Exile 1, and they're just as valuable to hold on to in this game.

Essences: An alternative path

Essences are a more deterministic way of crafting items in Path of Exile 2. These can turn your white gear into Magic gear with one of the two affixes being pre-determined. These will be based on what type of Essence it is, and there are many in the game.

Essences are generally a rare drop, but you can get them rather cheaply from the currency exchange.

Greater Essences do the same thing, except they turn Magics into Rares (with one pre-determined modifier added in the process). Greater Essences, however, are quite expensive and rare, so it's better not to use them for now.

What to do with discarded items

Since even the crafting process is quite chance-based, you'll produce a large discard pile of failed attempts. Instead of selling them for Gold or tossing them away, you can utilize them in the following ways:

One of the vendors in your town hub can Disenchant items for you, giving you Transmutation Shards or Regal Shards (for disenchanting up to six Magic items at once)
After you unlock the Reforging Bench in Act 3, you can use three of the same items (same base and rarity) to reroll them into one new item of that same type and rarity.
Any socketed item can be used in the Salvaging Bench to get Artificer's Chisels, which can make Artificer's Orb.

Also Read: Path of Exile 2 Salvaging and Disenchantment guide

I have my Rare, now what?

Once you do get a Rare item worth keeping around, you want to do two things. First, use an Artificer's Orb, or two, to create sockets on them. Socketed items in Path of Exile 2 can hold Runes, which can give them a specific extra stat based on the type of Rune. This stat doesn't bite into your total affix count. Note that caster weapons cannot be socketed.

The next step is using quality-enhancing crafting materials to increase gear quality. This, again, is not useful on caster weapons from our testing. That said, they do have an exclusive quality material called Arcanist's Etcher.

That's all about item-crafting in Path of Exile 2... for now. There are many other crafting currencies than the ones discussed here, and changes made during the Early Access process may vastly change the paradigm of what's worth spending on.

At the time of writing, crafting currencies other than Augmentation and Transmutation don't drop too often, so it's best to use them sparingly.

Check out our other guides on the game:

Path of Exile 2 Class tier list (Early Access)
Path of Exile 2 Spirit resource guide
Path of Exile 2 Keystone passives
Path of Exile 2 Frost Sorceress guide
Complete Trial of The Sekhemas guide