also what the heck are amanamu or kurgal modifiers. You are forced to look them up online, something in game would be amazing

Hard agree. I should be able to mouse over an omen, orb, essence or whatever and see exactly what mods it can add. There really should be an in game Codex or encyclopedia for crafting. I know that’s not as simple of a task as it sounds but its desperately needed.

And for the love of God while we are at it reverse the tiers on dropped items so they match the order of mod tiers.

Yeah, this is carried from POE1 sadly

Stuff like Increased armor on amulet is global but the same stat with the exact wording on an armor piece is local…

Edit:typo

Yes, I 100% agree with this. There needs to be a kind of crafting encyclopedia in-game. Right now new people who are reluctant to use third party resources are at an insane disadvantage due to how wasteful crafting is when you just wing it, and you might not even be able to understand what/why shit went wrong.

1. Anything with this amount of depth and complexity needs to be as clearly explained as possible. Otherwise figuring things out sometimes feels like an extremely messed up game of telephone.

I’ve made the suggestion before but I’ll say it again

This game has needed for years now a special bench in our hideout that will display information on what you put in it.

If you put in a weapon, it should show the player a complete and comprehensive list of every mod available for that item.

And to OPs point, it should also show every special mod for those crafting items such as the abyss ones.

Needing to go through 3rd party sites is just so lame, please for heavens sake put the information in game man

One wording inconsistency that annoys me is that in Trial of Sekhema, the chest that gives currency is called “Arcanist’s” (like the currency strongboxes in PoE 1) and the one that gives caster items is called “Mage’s”, but with strongboxes “Arcane” is the one that gives caster items and “Researcher’s” is the one that gives currency.

Understandable, allot of whittlings have ruined allot of crafts because of that. My current gripe si with Breach tree and wombgifts. Currency Womb-> Lavish Wombgift. Ring Womb->Signet Wombgift. The amulet and neck I wll never remember even if I’m at a prize show and it was one of the questions.Like please ggg, no need to be fancy : Belt Womb-> Belt Wombgift

I’m not an ig-no-ra-moose but I think if they need to have this nailed down in 1.0. How can I recommend this game to anyone? “Is the crafting any better than POE1?“ 

No. It’s worse, because they got halfway to simplifying it and then added a bunch of stuff that’s never explained. So in the end you still need an external resource just to do something the game should teach you how to do. I can craft some endgame starter gear and that’s about it.

If a new player gets some bizarre currency, how likely do you think it is that they’ll use it? Truly new players might, only to have the equipment gutted by the attempt. Anyone who’s had this happen but still doesn’t know up from down will hesitate to even use it for fear of wasting something useful (whether that’s the currency or the equipment).

Game need a wiki in it that can show these stuff. Why do I have to go to poedb//craftofexile to look into shit?

My personal favorite is Necromantic Talisman & Fixation of Yix.

There is exactly 0 reason why it shouldn’t work, but it doesn’t. Why? Who knows.

Last Epoch has a pretty good in game guide that goes over mechanics of the game. Something similar to that where it goes over the different omens, item level breakpoints, etc would be a good start. As systems progress they would just add tabs and it can essentially become a journal for our character.

I’m a technical writer please hire me

I remember before/ shortly after EA release, they said they wanted to make it more beginner friendly, added extended tooltips to certain terms and even added videos to skill gems. How fast that was forgotten. Its GGG, they cant help themselves. Just add a lot of shit, dilute every mechanic and forget about anything being beginner friendly/ accessible information in game.

I think GGG has the mentality that you have to discover things like this and so game knowledge would matter more, but with external help tools being available it just doesn’t make sense for things like this to be hidden.

I just experienced a similar problem. Yesterday i wanted to use an omen of whittling to remove a t2-level modifier on an item. The item only had t1 modifiers except for that one t2. When i clicked the omen and then hovered over the item with a chaos orb, i saw that my crafted t1 modifier would be removed instead of the t2.

How could i have known that the omen that always “removes the lowest level modifier” doesnt always remove the lowest level mod?

I posted in the official feedback forums a thread asking to update the tool tip on inscribed ultimatums that give 4th ascendancy to mention the 3 fates you need. I was frustrated because at the time I was fairly weak, and getting to the end just to be greeted with a locked door felt VERY bad. I got flooded my stans telling me I should have known and that there’s no issue.

I can’t even recall the name of the tablet that allows to do a map twice, but I know that it’s very cryptic and so is the description, too.

Yeah this could be improved massively.

Also for the love of the atlas points of I cannot allocate a point until I reach a quest state. Put text on that point that says “must complete X step” before I try every single time I get a new point. It’s not hard to say why you locked this from us.

I agree. I wish wording in poe was as rigorous as magic the gathering lolol

Even the new monk ascendancy feels weird. Every ascendancy skill says melee description, but when using support gem it doesn’t work

Same with silly things like unborn lich, you get to choose 3 skills but reveal doesn’t even say what they do like you are supposed to pull it ouf of your ass. Same with abyss lord mods, like I’m supposed to know list of Kurgal modifiers by being omniscient.

I volunteer as tribute.

I hate doing tech writing for generic b2b saas bullshit

I don’t know why they can’t add simple lists and some explanations with an in game menu. I know it’s not the same type of game with Civilization but this game needs a basic tutorial/info page like civilopedia.

Most shown detail is not enough for modifiers and crafting, some are not even enough to correctly socket support gems. Most people won’t read the “civilopedia” anyway but there are definitely some people that would willingly read it all and even give feedback on it without expecting anything.

I know they think some things should be discovered by players but the secret interactions should be different than what they try to do imo. Or they can at least add detailed info for previous leagues and once some items/interactions go core.

That shit is frustrating but even more so when we get so few pulls on this slot machine they call a crafting system

This game is like a growing excel database that gained sentience, but they still can’t get the story just right. And yet they force you to play through it over and over and over. Thanks Jonathan.

An easy solution would be to have the preview videos for crafting like they do on skill gems.

This. I recently spent like 15 minutes trying to understand what to socket into Cast on block, and still have no idea.

GGG Presented PoE 2 as if no one had ever played Poe1 or 2 Before. Problem is they have lost their own vision in that respect and are slowly turning into their poe 1 ways of thinking. Now i have a ton of hours in both games.

But i would CERTAINLY love if they added a in-game craft book that you could scroll through that told you what ever single piece of currency didand what modifiers i could add. I think that would benifet every single player new and old.

Yeah this patch is great but refinement is a glaring problem that needs to be addressed before 1.0.

The biggest issue I’ve ran into is using higher level currency on a lower level item and massively inflating the level requirement to use that item.

I agree the mod info panel should show not only mod tier and its tags, but also mod level and maximum number of tiers of this mod (so lets say its T3 maximum of 9 tiers, it would show T3/9, tier 3 out of 9)

Yeah. Imagine my surprise when I found out after some testing that Blackflame still works with Avatar of Fire. And how Blistering Bond doesn’t. And yet, both of those had their wording changed. Iron Ward’s description is also wrong. And there are plenty of other things, i.e. Herald of Blood and more.

ngl it starts with increased, more and as extra

yes yes yes yes and YES

If anyone from GGG is reading this, I’m a technical writer by trade and would love to help. shameless plug lol

It doesn’t fix the whole problem but it baffles me that there is a special tooltip to see the mod tier and tags but it doesn’t show the actual numeric level of the mod, which is necessary info that could easily be right there and prevent going to 3rd party sites and would reduce situations like the one you described.

100% agree.Their wording is crazy bad!

I bought poe 2 because i never managed to break the wall of “know how” that was needed to play poe 1 - But poe 2 is really not easier to get into as a newbie. Its great you can hold Alt to get an explanation. But then that explanations suck! I wouldnt be able to play if i didnt have an ai to ask a gazzilion questions.

i spent my first 3 divines for a chest armor with 700 ES and bricked it by runeforging it. Nowhere it said it would reduce its ES and all pieces i runeforged during the campaign had a bit of both defenses so i was guessing it was free ward on top of the ES.

Absolutely no explanation for something that legit can ruin your items.

Go onto craftofexile.com (unsure if they have poe2 support) or poe2db and you’ll soon understand why there isn’t an in game alternative to those sites yet.

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Definitely. As someone who likes trying to figure it out myself, it’s basically impossible without burning through all the currency

PoE 2 was my introduction to ARPGs, and I’m a very casual player.

I think that for the most part, the game does a pretty okay job of explaining things to the player, but there are some things which confused me at first and I had to Google them.

For example, I did not realize that “increased” and “more” are different modifiers, and even after learning the difference between them I did not know that the Shock status effect is a multiplicative damage modifier simply because its description is also worded as “increased”. 

It seems like PoE2 is good at explaining the bigger stuff while being bad or useless at explaining the smaller, often very important bits of the game.

Omen of whitling makes no sense to me. It says chaos will remove lowest level modifier, but it doesn’t actually do that

Not that I agree or disagree with any of this, but this type of ‘friction’ is intentional game design from GGG. I believe its Jonathan that has this type of vision where not everything in the game is laid out to you in a ‘connect the dots’ method. Understanding crafting is a ‘skill’ in it of itself, to them.

 

As for my personal opinion on it, I don’t like the crafting system at all. Gaming in 2026 means you have creators and websites that tell you everything you need to know, so the ‘friction’ doesn’t exist outside the game. I can’t understand in today’s gaming ecosystem why companies obfuscate data intentionally as if its some mystery when I have outside tools that can teach me exactly what’s going on. I think the game should do that, not some content creator.

 

Just know, a lot of what GGG does is intentional. Maybe not everything, but a lot. Even their UI systems, like the Vaal Temple are designed to have friction so players need to learn how to use it. Again, not agreeing, just what it is with GGG..

Given this game expects players to use sites like pob, I think we’re ice skating uphill to expect everything explained in game.

Using a website/external reference is part of the game loop. Accept this.

Crafting is designed to have this friction I think. It’s a knowledge check. I don’t think they want people to craft to easy so a lot of information is player sourced and obscured. Like d2 rune recipes aren’t clear.

Actually never thought about this before as I am used to having poedb or wiki open ²⁴⁄₇ since I’ve been playing poe1 for over a decade. 

But yeah no way would I make any crafting decisions without external sites/tools. They certainly can improve upon this in the future to have this stuff ingame.

However the tooltips in poe2 for most keywords are actually amazing for new players. There was never such thing in poe1 at all, so it’s clear that they are aiming to have more info ingame

Whil I agree that whittles display information incorrectly it’s also a scenario where anyone who has the furrency available for whittles should always be using third party tools to verify the desired outcome.

Using them does highlight which mod will be removed so clarity shouldn’t really be an issue.

Redditors and their solutions.

Look up poe2 db and then items > modifiers, that answers all your crafting questions for level req, tags, etc. Whittling are very basic, they chaos the lowest level tag (IE say t8 mana on staff which requires like level 3), and replaces it with a random one.

A bit of research explains how this stuff works rather than blaming the devs.