Last Epoch - Crafting Starter Guide

This is a simple guide explaining each crafting mechanic at a high level. 

Players under level 15 will encounter a crafting tutorial during their first time progressing through the Osprix War Camp. This brief tutorial will walk you through upgrading an Old Silver Ring. You’ll learn how to add and upgrade affixes on items as well as using glyphs. The tutorial will only need to be cleared once per stash, so you shouldn’t have to see it too much during a season.

NOTE: SEASON 4 IS COMING WITH NEW CRAFTING CHANGES. 

The new corruption system will be similar to PoE's vaal orbs where you can use a Rune of Corruption on an item to get a random outcome. This outcome could be a big upgrade, downgrade, or brick the item, and this item can never be modified again, but can be shattered or vendored if you don't like the outcome. 

Credit: lastepoch.com

Start crafting once you can afford runes of shattering. 

Use runes of shattering in forge menu (press F) on items to gain crafting shards from them. This is a dismantling mechanic. 

During campaign you want to mostly vendor all unused items for gold, but in end game you want to start dismantling as many items as you can afford to (usually 50/50 on dismantle vs vendor).

Reforging/Forging Potential: 

You can craft/reforge items as long as they have forging potential. 

Different types or crafting/re-rolling spend different amounts of potential but can be modified via glyphs. Zero potential means you can no longer craft/re-roll an item. 

Exalted items are best forging potential items.

Item Rarity/Levels: 

Normal (white), Magic (blue), Rare (yellow), Exalted (purple), Unique (orange/golden brown), Legendary (dark red/crimson)

Legendary & Unique:

• Legendary potential on a unique item is required to make it a legendary.
• Combine a unique you like with an exalt of the same type (exalt must have 4 unsealed affixes and ensure they are high level good affixes you want), to create the legendary. 
• Legendaries must be created in the eternity cache at the end of the Temporal Sanctum dungeon. Higher dungeon tiers are required to craft higher level uniques. You can eventually skip to boss using tokens at the start of the dungeon. 
• You can also get random legendaries via upgrading a Nemesis boss which you'll encounter throughout the game.
• Save your exalted items that roll high tier affixes that you'd want on a future legendary.

Affixes: 

• Every item has 4 affixes (2 prefixes + 2 suffixes). 
• Crafting screen shows prefixes on left side and suffixes on right side. 
• Best of the Common Affixes: health, resists, primary stats, attack boosts for your skills, +skill levels
• Key Affixes on Specific Items:
• Belts - hybrid health, cleanse ailments (you should seal this one when 100% cleanse shows up on a T1/T2 ailment affix), elemental/spell resists, defensive stats
• Gloves - Attack or Cast speed
• Boots - Movement speed
• Weapon - Attack speed, spell or attack damage

Shards: 

• Shards are used to add new affixes or affix tiers to items. 
• Shards are affix specific.
• Each item can have 2 prefixes and 2 suffixes (4 affixes total). 
• Each affix can be Tier 1 – Tier 5 (tiers change the range of values). 
• Shards add a chance at critical success, adding a tier upgrade on top of the craft. Critical success doesn’t cost any extra materials or forging potential. 
• Shards are obtained via monster drops or via rune of shattering. Shards drop as items that will automatically go to your crafting wallet in your inventory when picked up.

Runes:

• Rune of Shattering: Destroys entire item creating shards. 
• Rune of Removal: removes a random affix from item and returns shards.
• Rune of Refinement: Rerolls all affix values within their same tiers. (PoE divine orb).
• Rune of Shaping: Rerolls all implicit modifiers. (these are the stat values between item name and affixes, PoE blessed orb).
• Rune of Ascendance: Upgrades an item into a unique or set item of the same type (i.e. turns rare chest into random unique or set chest, PoE ancient orb).
• Rune of Creation: Duplicates item and removes forging potential from both. (PoE mirror).

Glyphs:

• Glyph of Hope: Modifies craft to have a 25% chance of no forging cost. 
• Glyph of Chaos: Randomly modifies the outcome of an affix upgrade to another affix. 
• Glyph of Order: Guarantees the affix range when upgrading an affix to the next tier. (i.e. max T3 upgraded with GoO would guarantee a max T4 roll).
• Glyph of Despair: Has a chance to seal a random affix on the item forever and freeing up the affix slot for a new one. (low chance to seal T3+)

Reforging Sets into Affix Shards: 

A new echo was created from Season 2 onwards which allows you to break down your unwanted set items into affix shards so you can roll set bonuses onto other items. 

You can get these shards via choosing The Great Bridge Woven Echo, which you can get on your monolith when you complete a Woven Echo and use the Echo Chamber at the end of it to modify existing echoes in your current monolith timeline into specific woven echoes. 

Ensure you save all your unwanted set items and run this woven echo 1-2 times per timeline to break down all your set items into affix shards.