PoE 2: Essence & Catalyst Crafting Guide

Time: 2025-02-03 by mmojugg Game: Path of Exile 2 Guide Tags: PoE 2 Essence Catalyst Crafting

In Path of Exile 2, crafting plays a central role in character development, allowing players to tailor their equipment to specific builds. This guide provides an in-depth look at using essences and catalysts to craft better items, with a focus on improving resistances and damage output, particularly for rings.

Crafting Resources

Essences

Types:

Small essences: Common, used to add a mod to a normal item, making it a magical item.

Rare essences: Less common, more powerful, capable of upgrading a magic item to rare with an additional mod.

Functionality:

Essences can add a variety of mods such as defensive stats (dodge, energy shield, armour), health mods (flat health, health regeneration, health leech), or elemental mods (fire, cold, lightning, chaos).

Best for Rings: Rings provide a great canvas for essence crafting, as they have the potential to host many useful mods.

Rarity and acquisition:

Rare essences are scarce and often require extensive farming of high-level content. Their high value is reflected in their trade cost, which can be as high as seven Exalted Orbs.

Catalysts:

Effect:

Catalysts increase the quality of a ring or amulet by up to 20%, which in turn amplifies the existing modifiers.

Example: A ring with a lightning resistance modifier could be increased from 28% to 32% at 15% quality, giving an additional 4% resistance.

Use strategically:

Use Catalysts after applying Essences to maximise the benefits of crafted mods, significantly increasing the effectiveness of items for specific builds.

Crafting strategy

Choose the right base

Start with normal (white) rings to craft on, as they are the base for adding new mods.

Choose essences that match the requirements of your build, such as Health for survivability or Elemental Resistances for defence.

Apply the essences

Essences are used to add a single mod to a normal item, making it magical.

Tags and Mods: Check the tags on the essence to understand potential mods (accessible by using the Alt key), as this information is less visible in PoE2 compared to PoE1.

Catalyst implementation

After adding a mod with an essence, apply a catalyst to improve the quality and thus increase the impact of the mod. This step is crucial for optimising gear in the endgame.

Advanced Crafting with Rare Essences

For higher level crafting, use rare essences to turn magic items into rares, potentially adding another powerful mod.

Risk vs. reward: Remember that this process is costly and results are subject to the RNG, which may not always yield the desired result.

Crafting Tips and Tricks

Understanding Mods: With the UI changes, knowing what an essence will add requires checking its tags, which can be less intuitive.

Checking prices in PoE2:

Adapting to the new trading system by using the "weighted sum" method to value crafted items:

Weight different resistances or mods to find comparable items on trading platforms.

Use keyword searches with brackets to account for both explicit and implicit modifiers for more accurate pricing.

Practical example

A typical crafting scenario involves starting with a white ring, using an essence to add a mod like lightning resistance or damage, and then applying a catalyst to increase the quality. Even if the result isn't perfect, this method allows the item to be improved or salvaged through further crafting or trading.

Risk and reward in crafting

Crafting is inherently risky; even with significant investment, the results can be unpredictable. However, with careful strategy, it's possible to mitigate some of these risks or turn less than ideal results into something usable or profitable.

Thank you for reading

This guide emphasises the importance of strategic crafting in PoE2 and encourages players to make the most of their Essences and Catalysts. It advocates learning new mechanics, adapting to the game's current trade environment, and understanding the economic implications of crafting