Essence Crafting in PoE: Guaranteed Mods, Explained

Essences are a crafting favourite for one reason: they guarantee a mod. Apply an essence and the item comes out rare with that essence's modifier, while everything else on it is random. You aren't fishing for the hard mod at all. You're only fishing for good company around it.

Choose the retained base and companion tiers

The essence supplies its forced modifier; the other natural mods still need an eligible base and item level. For a suppression glove craft, an appropriate evasion base at ilvl 85 often covers the goal. For boots with natural 35% movement speed, use 86. A pure-ES glove is not a normal suppression base. Check the slot-specific data and base guide.

A useful fracture can preserve one anchor while the essence supplies another. Choose that fracture and the complete target first; base price alone does not tell you whether essences beat Alt rolling. Reapplying an essence rerolls the other unprotected mods, so do not spend on a good magic Alt hit expecting it to survive.

How essences work

• On a normal (white) item, an essence upgrades it to rare, with the essence's mod plus random others.
• Screaming, Shrieking, Deafening and the four special corrupted essences can reforge a rare item. Lower regular tiers require a normal item: they cannot be repeatedly applied to the rare result. Check the tooltip.
• Each essence family (Greed, Hatred, Wrath and so on) grants a different mod depending on the item type. The same essence does different things on boots than on a ring, so check the tooltip.
• Essences come in tiers. Deafening is the top of the regular tiers, and higher tiers guarantee higher-tier versions of the mod. There are also rarer special essences with their own unique mods.
• Since 3.28, essences stack to 10 instead of 9.

When essences beat alt-spam

Use an essence when:

• The mod you need is on an essence for your item type. You get it every time instead of fishing for it.
• You want a rare with one strong anchor, and you're happy to reroll the rest until it's good enough.
• The guaranteed mod and a useful fracture fit your plan, leaving a realistic set of companion mods to roll.

Use Alteration + Augmentation instead when the mod you need isn't on any essence (influence mods, for example), or when a magic item with one or two mods is all you need.

The workflow

1. Start from the retained base and item level chosen above, at normal rarity or rare if your essence tier can reforge it.
2. Apply the essence. The guaranteed mod is always there.
3. Check the other mods. Stop when they meet your bar, such as life plus a resistance, or reapply.
4. Finish with a bench craft, or metacraft the open side.

Tools like Craft of Exile show what else can roll alongside an essence mod on your base. Worth a look before you buy a stack.

Where Exiled Bench fits (and where it doesn't)

To be straight about it: essence spamming isn't one of Exiled Bench's rolling methods today. The Items page rolls with Alterations, Augmentations, Chaos Orbs and Alchemy + Scouring, and its stash crafts add Regals and Exalts. It doesn't pick up and apply essences.

Where it does help around an essence craft:

• The step before. If you'd rather alt-spam a magic base for a mod no essence gives, the Items page does that hands-free and stops on the hit.
• The step after. A stash craft's After the target can spend up to a set number of Exalts on a finished item.
• Essences you'll never use. The Harvest page's Currency reforge feeds a stack of unwanted essences through Harvest until it becomes an unticked keeper; tick the essences you are willing to feed. Prices come live from poe.ninja, and it reports what went in and what came out. See Harvest crafting explained.

Tips

• Match the essence to the item type. The same essence can be great on one slot and useless on another.
• Deafening for the top tier, lower tiers for volume on cheaper bases.
• Price the reforge. Count the input essences and Lifeforce; a random conversion can lose value.

Sources

• PoEDB: Essence — usage and tiers
• GGG: 3.28 patch notes
• Craft of Exile: metamod interactions (check before spending)