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What are the essences in Path of Exile, how do they work and why should you care about this as a new player? In this guide, we are going to answer all of these questions.
Why should you care about essences as a new player? Because essences are one of the best ways to get gear, they're one of the best ways to get the basic items that you'll need to upgrade your character.
Essences are one of the core crafting currencies in Path of Exile, they were originally added in essence league. Occasionally on your travels through rayclast, you'll find an essence rare locked in stasis, if you click these monsters, three times they'll be released. Each rare has different abilities based on the essences they contain, if you're looking to get into crafting as a new player or you're someone who doesn't have a lot of currency to risk, and you don't really understand the tag system, then essences are a great way to get started - they're going to teach you some of the basics of how crafting works and push you to pay attention to bases and encourage you to use the mechanics of crafting currencies to improve your gear.
Essences are crafting currency in Path of Exile that when used on an item have a guaranteed effect, they're divided into tears: with whispering being the lowest tier and deafening being the highest tier.
You can raise the tier of the essence by vendoring three essences of the same type, so if you vendor three screaming essence of hatred, you'll get one shrieking essence of hatred. The essence tab is convenient because it allows you to upgrade these with a single click, but you can do it via a vendor if you don't have one. Lord to your essences function similarly to Alchemy
, you can apply an essence to a white item to turn it into a rare. Items crafted in this way will have one guaranteed property based on the essence used. For example, if you use a whispering essence of woe on a white wand, you'll end up with a rare wand - this wand will have 10 to 19 increased spell damage and all other properties will be randomized based on the level of the item, kind of just like if you'd used an alchemy orb. If you wanted to apply a different whispering essence, you'd have to scour the item.
On the other hand, higher tier essences function both as an Orb of Alchemy or an Orb of Chaos, which means they can be applied to white items to turn them rare and they can be applied to rare items to re-roll them and keep adding that one guaranteed property.
So if you wanted to use several Shrieking Essence of woe on a wand, you can keep applying them to the item even after it turns rare, each essence you apply will add the 67 to 82 increased spell damage and randomize the other properties on the item, this could be quite helpful.
Essences don't follow a lot of normal rules of crafting, they add a guaranteed modifier, regardless of if the item could roll it normally, and this is important for two reasons:
1. If there's a specific stat you absolutely need on an item, the essence can guarantee it even though the item would normally be unable to roll the stat. Let's say you wanted spell damage on a bow, you can't roll that, but if you use our good old friend the essence of woe, you'll guarantee spell damage on a bow and all the other modifiers will be randomized. This might be handy if you're trying to make a bow to play a spell-based cast on crit build. On the other hand, if you want boots with movement speed and you're not too picky about anything else, you can easily do that with a deafening Essence of Zeal, it'll have 32 movement speed and all the other stats will be randomized. Even though there isn't a 32 movement speed tier normally, you'd either have 30 or 35 percent. Being able to guarantee specific properties on an item regardless of if they normally roll, allows you to make items that would otherwise be difficult if not impossible. This is also helpful if you want a specific stat on an item such as if you want strength on your ring to fix problems your build's having with attributes. You can think of essences as Alchemy Orbs while leveling and once you get to the end game you can think of them as problem solvers.
2. The mod is determined by the tier and essence used and the base type of the item, not the item's item level. Normally mods in Path of Exile and what can roll on an item are determined by base plus item level, but essences completely break that rule. So if you had an item level two wand, you'd be restricted to low tier spell damage modifiers and because the number of modifiers that can roll on an item level two wand are so few, you're very likely to roll something such as plus one to the level of all fire spell skill gems, cold lightning physical or chaos spell skill gems, this makes item level two one's excellent leveling items because within a few tries you could easily boost the level of whatever skill you're using. However, this also means that if you combine them with essences, they could be an excellent endgame item. They'll inherit the level requirement of the essence, so you can't use this on a low-level character, but they'll still have that extremely restricted mod pool, so if you use a screaming, shrieking, or deafening essence of woe, all of a sudden you'll be able to have a high tier spell damage roll, in addition to the plus levels that we talked about earlier.
So in essence, this is a method of crafting you can use to put a specific mod on a base regardless of item level, one important note about essence is you can't metalcraft with them. If you use prefixes that cannot be changed the craft will fail, so while you can use meta crafting to further enhance the item after you've rolled it with essences, you won't be able to use it to force a specific outcome when applying essences. That said you can use essences on fractured items and you can fracture essence mods which do open up some interesting possibilities.
Because essences are core crafting currency in Path of Exile, you get them almost anywhere in the game, but if you want to target farm essences your best bet is to follow these tips:
Use Hayward Hamlet - With the controlled corruption and amplified nodes, you'll be getting a lot more essences per monster, this means tougher fights and better rewards. Almost every essence dropped in the Hayward Hamlet will be shrieking or above, so even if you're an SSF, you'll be able to get enough to use them for craft projects. In many leagues. you're also able to put additional essences into your map using Zona's map device, it'll only cost a couple of Chaos
Use Chromium Hayward hamlet watch stone - You can further boost essence drops by using a Chromium Hayward hamlet watch stone with the essential prefix, causing essence monsters in the region to have a chance at having an additional essence.
You can also roll from a sextant which adds additional essence monsters to your map and causes essences to have a chance to be corrupted. Corrupted essences will always drop a remnant of corruption and a remnant of corruption can be used to corrupt essences, this has various effects such as instantly releasing enemies which will do absolutely nothing if you're in hayward hamlet transform the essences into a random related type - upgrade the essences the monster has or add a random essence. If you corrupt a monster with a purple essence such as envy, misery, scorn, or dread, there's a chance you'll obtain one of a rare corrupted essence - delirium, horror, insanity, or hysteria. These corrupted essences are special because they can be used to add modifiers that don't exist anywhere else in the game, for example, you can use Essence of Horror on a helmet and you'll add a suffix modifier socketed gems deal 30 more elemental damage. Similarly, corrupted essences can be entire builds, for example, fire burst builds are played using a skill added to weapons by the essence of hysteria.
1. Crafting with essences is some of the easiest craftings you can do in Path of Exile because essences themselves are 100% deterministic in what they add and you don't need to really learn the item tag system. There's also a lot of very practical items that you can make with essences, so for example:
If you're just looking to make basic gear and you want that gear to have life on it, if you use Essence of Greed on an armor item it will have life on it;
If you're looking for blue life instead you use an Essence of Woe on an armor item and it has an energy shield;
If you're looking for chaos res essence of envy on armor items, will get you that Chaos res, and it's one of the easiest ways to make basic chaos rest gear if you just need some gloves boots or a helmet
2. On the other hand maybe you're playing some sort of stat stacker and you're trying to roll strength on an intelligence base like a hubris circlet, normally that doesn't work but you can use an Essence of Rage to rule strength on any armor base or jewelry, sorrow to roll decks and spite to roll intelligence
3. Another very common trick at league star that's super easy with essences is forcing plus two to the level of socketed bow gems, using a shrieking essence of dread if you're playing something like toxic rain, elemental hit, or explosive arrow that scales very well off of gem levels.
Essences are one of the best ways to get into crafting and one of the best ways to craft basic gear in SSF.
