Path of Exile: Crafting

One of the rewards you can earn this race season is an alternate art moonstone ring. There is no way to inspect other characters that we can find so having an alternate art ring didn't seem very useful. Then it was pointed out that these items actually all have an item level of 100 and can therefore roll all of the best affixes. Most of the rewards are unique items so that doesn't matter but for this one ring it does matter. I hit that reward plateau a while ago and the ring has just been sitting around waiting to get used.

There are two main ways to try to craft something really good. There's the complete reroll method and there's the iterative gain method. The complete reroll method involved using an orb of alchemy to turn a white item into a yellow item and then using a chaos orb on the resulting yellow item if you don't like it to force a complete reroll. The iterative method involves starting with an orb of transmutation to turn your white item into a blue item. Then you reroll the blue item over and over with orbs of alteration until you get the most important prefix and the most important suffix on your item. Then you use a regal orb to upgrade it to a yellow item and get an extra affix. Then you use 3 exalted orbs to add more affixes to the yellow item. This still gives you a bunch of random stuff on top of your really good stuff so you can also use an eternal orb to save the state along the way.

The second method is the one most likely to generate a really good item, but it's also more expensive. Really expensive. An eternal orb alone is worth 40 chaos orbs! 3 exalted orbs are another 60! I can't imagine this ring is worth enough to run that amount of money into crafting it. Could it even be worth tossing a couple chaos orbs at? Should I just try for one yellow item? Or make a really good blue and be done with it?

I should probably start by looking at what affixes I want to end up with on an idea yellow item and how those differ on an item level 100 item versus a 67 that I can easily find on a monster...

Prefixes:

Energy Shield: 47 base or 22% VS 37 base or 16%
Increased Item Quantity: 24% regardless
Mana: 68 VS 59

Suffixes:

Cast Speed: 22% VS 19%
Fire/Lightning/Cold Resist: 45% VS 41%


Realistically the odds of even hitting the top category of a given affix is probably pretty slim. I need to get IIQ on any ring I use because that's what my character does and the second most important thing is energy shield. Those are both prefixes so making a really good blue can't even get the two things I most want. The best would be a high resist with the IIQ and that's not going to be better than the yellow ring I have now with 32% IIQ and 32% fire resist. (It's a gold ring so it starts with extra IIQ. The moonstone ring does start with extra energy shield at least.)

So I think the way to go with this ring in particular is to just use an orb of alchemy on it and hope for the best!