Go from rags to riches at league start with Vaal orbs!

Most crafting content provides a list of steps to craft a specific item that was profitable at some point in the past with no guarantee the method still works. They also typically require a budget that can seem unobtainable for the average player. But I promise that you can learn how to get aheaed of 99% of players on league start by profit crafting.

I used the strategy I am about to show you with the Gravebind Rope Cuffs unique item. I would buy the bases for 5 Exalted orbs and sell them for 2 Divine orbs! That is a insane profit margin.

Mental model #1: Budget crafting checklist

When crafting on a budget we have some requirements:

  1. You need a mathematical edge. This is the most important and most overlooked point. 99% of crafting guides don’t tell you the expected value of a craft. This is absurd to me. If you follow a set of crafting steps without doing any calculations to understand the expected outcomes YOU ARE A GAMBLER.

https://youtu.be/IPFiKEm-oNI?si=O5Q9KOpqxaDLpI_1

  1. Crafting materials need to be cheap. The less we spend on crafting materials the more times we can attempt the carft and make profit.

  2. Crafting results need to have low variance. Lower variance in outcomes means that our risk of ruin will be lower. Risk of ruin is the proabibility of going broke. When youre budget crafting or in a league start scenario this can be extremely painful, so prioritize low variance crafts at all costs. I think the minimum success rate you should consider is 25%, at least until you build up some currency.

With these three rules in place you’re ready to be a cheapskate master!

Mental model #2: Two types of uniques

A helpful strategy I created for profit crafting is categorizing unique items into two groups: unique items where the unique effect does not have a roll range and unique items where the unique effect does have a roll range.

Tip: Unique items in POE2 are items that have a "unique" effect that no other item has.

Let’s look at an example of each type:

Unique items without roll ranges

Remember the Gravebind Rope Cuffs I mentioned earlier? This unique has the following unique effect.

Enemies in your Presence killed by anyone count as being killed by you instead

This effect does not have a number that can roll within a range.

Unique items with roll ranges

The Greed’s Embrace Vaal Cuirass unique item has the following unique effect.

(30—50)% increased Rarity of Items found

This unique effect does have a roll range.

Ok, but why do we care?

If a unique item with no roll range is best-in-slot for a build, then crafting that item has high demand and low variance. In practice this means the best outcome for a pair of Gravebind Rope Cuffs is adding an additional socket with a Vaal orb.

In the current league Vaal orbs are going for less than 2 Exalted orbs! Whats more is that the probability of adding a socket is 25% This immediately satisifes our mental model of budget crafting requirements by having low variance and cheap crafting materials.

Tip: Vaal outcomes: 25% do nothing, 25% Add a socket, 25% add enchantment, 25% Krangledivine (explained shortly)

Using this information we can derive that crafting a best-in-slot Gravebind Rope Cuffs item would cost on average ~8 Exalted orbs!

Tip: Gravebind Rope Cuffs are a required item for a build archetype called 'rarity cullers'. This is a popular build among wealthy groups.

What about uniques with a roll range?

Let’s revisit our friend Greed’s Embrace Vaal Cuirass. This item provides increased rarity from 30 to 50%.

When taken at face value this item has 21 variants (30 to 50 inclusive) with only one of those variants (50% increased rarity) being the best. However, to truly understand how bad this is for crafting we need to understand how Vaal orbs work.

Vaal orbs have an effect called Krangledivining. This effect randomizes the items number rolls and then multiplies it by a random number between 122% and 78%. This range includes all whole numbers so in total there are 45 outcomes.

What does this mean for our craft? Well in order to get the best Greed’s Embrace Vaal Cuirass the following would have to happen:

  1. Vaal orb outcome applies Krangle divine (25% probability)

  2. Krangle divine needs to max roll the initial range of 30-50% increased rarity (4.7% proabability)

  3. Krangle divine needs to multiply that number by the maximum % in the range of 122% and 78% (2% probability)

The probability of all 3 outcomes going in our favor and creating the best variation of the item is 0.026455026% Compare this with our Gravebind Rope Cuffs where we had a 25% chance of crafting the best variation.

To reiterate the point, crafting the best version of Greed’s Embrace would require on average 3780 attempts. Crafting the best version of Gravebind Rope Cuff’s would require 4 attempts. Which craft would you rather try on a budget?

How to identify budget crafting opportunitues for yourself

  1. Go to poe.ninja (or any other tool that lets you see builds people are using) and attempt to identify uniques that people are using where the unique effect does not have a roll range.
  2. Calculate the expected value of crafting that item by multiplying the sell price of the end result by the probability of it happening. For Gravebind Rope Cuffs the expected value is 2 Divine x 0.25 or 0.5 divines.
  3. Subtract your costs from the expected value. For the Gravebind example that would be 0.5 divines (around 200 exalts currently) minus the cost of the base and the cost of crafting materials. The base is 5 Exalts, A socket orb is 1 Exalts and a Vaal orb is 2 Exalts. 200 -5 -1 -2 = 292 Exalted orbs. This means every time we socket and corrupt a Gravebind Rope Cuffs we profit 292 Exalted orbs!

Conclusion

If you utilize the mental models you should never be blocked from progressing by currency ever again. You will always be able to make multiple divine from just a few Exalted orbs.

I encourage you to try and apply the concepts to other strategies.