Path of Exile is a complex game with a lot of different crafting systems and features. Almost all of them were left after the relevant challenge league. Like Harvest Crafting system, Syndicate crafting or Scourge mechanics that allows you to craft new mods on different items. Essences once were a part of the new challenge league as well, now they are an important part of PoE with a lot of specific features. We will tell you everything you need to know about Path of Exile Essences – how to get, upgrade, use them and also how to get corrupted essences.
Essences work similarly to PoE currencies, but there are much more of them and they give you guaranteed affixes on equipment. When you hover on any essence you can read what properties you will get on an item if you apply the essence. Many of them have different effects on different pieces of equipment, so be careful.
You can use essences on any normal item (white item without mods) and make them rare (yellow) with the guaranteed affixes mentioned on the essence. Other modifiers will be random. Some essences can also be used to reforge the affixes of rare equipment.
The list of essences is long and complex so everyone presents them at a table. But before we add the table of PoE essences let’s explain some basics.
Normally essences are divided into 6 groups and 8 tiers. The first thing that you can see is that group A contains essences that have tier 1 essences, while group B starts with tier 2 essences, group C starts with tier 3 and so on. The most powerful essences are at group F tier 8.
You can tell what essence is by its name. The tier of the essence as a prefix, the word ‘Essence’, and the type of the essence as a suffix. For example, Deafening Essence of Woe has the prefix ‘Deafening’ and the suffix ‘of Woe’, which means that it is a tier 7 essence of the Woe type. An essence’s type determines which guaranteed modifiers it can imbue to equipment, while its tier determines the magnitude of bonuses granted by those modifiers.
There are different types of essences that we have described above. Below you can see the table of all Path of Exile Essences presented in the commonly used Visual Guide. The more handy version of this you can see on the PoE wiki.
Also, you can buy the essence stash tab, where you can collect all your essences. The video below explains what you can use the essence stash tab for.
You can see that in the tab essences are also grouped accordingly to the principles that we have mentioned above. Groups A–E includes all types of essences that can appear naturally with essence monsters. These essences come in seven tiers, each distinguished by a prefix word. An essence’s tier can also be recognized by the number of lines in its 2D art icon. Note that not all types of essences exist for every tier. Higher tiers include fewer types of essences.
Above you can also see the table of essences in the natural form, but without corrupted essences that we will describe further.
We mentioned that essences can drop from essence monsters. You will see them frequently not only on maps but also during levelling. Essence monsters are frizzed and you will need to click three times on the monster in the centre to activate the encounter. When you hover on that monster you can see what essences or essences you will get when you kill all essence monsters. Also, note that every essence encounter has special attacks depending on the number and type of essences it possesses.
Some types of essences only exist at higher tiers. This forms a progression in which more types of essences become available in areas with higher monster levels. You can see the requirements to the area level to drop a particular essence in the table above.
If you have low tier essences you can upgrade them to a higher tier of the same type. You can easily do it at the PoE essence stash tab by clicking upgrade. All the essences that you can upgrade will be highlighted. Or you can take three same essences and sell them to a vendor to get the same result if you don’t have the tab.
Tier 6, ‘Shrieking’ essences can be obtained by upgrading lower-tier essences through the vendor recipe system or by corrupting tier 5 essences using a Remnant of Corruption.
Tier 7, ‘Deafening’ essences can be obtained by upgrading lower-tier essences through the vendor recipe system.
You can also get essences from Harvest Crafting system. There are two types of monsters that can randomly grant you essence recipes. Those are:
We mentioned all the recipes that can be granted by those harvest monsters. Recipes related to essences are bold.
https://poedb.tw/us/Essence#EssenceAcronym
Some other leagues also have ways that will help you farm essences faster. We will describe some of them below starting from different mods that you can get on your equipment or NPCs equipment in order to get more essences.
Below you can see the list of league specific items that grant you more chances of getting more essences.
All these ways are useful but you can pick only one that suits you the most. In many cases, it is wiser to farm maps with mods that grant you more essences. We describe below how that works.
Any map can be crafted, but there are no mods that give essences. On the other hand, there are a lot of other map-specific items that can have modifiers that grant you more essences. We will start from Atlas passive skills (PoE 3.16 Atlas skill tree) and continue with Zana mods, watchstones and sextants.
These are all ways of obtaining PoE essences that are active during PoE Scourge league. Some of them change from time to time, or new ways will be added in the future.
Essences can be corrupted by using a Remnant of Corruption on a monster trapped by essence before releasing it. But not all of them can be called corrupted. First, let’s see what you can get for using a Remnant of Corruption on essences monsters that hold essences from groups A-D.
When you use a Remnant of Corruption encounter will have one of those effects and will also empower the monsters.
To get Corrupted Essences you will need to use a Remnant of Corruption on monsters that hold essences from Group E. If you do so there will be a chance of getting the same effects as described above plus getting a chance of transforming the essence into Essence of Insanity, Horror, Delirium, and Hysteria
From time to time, you will see a challenge that requires you to craft with a Corrupted Essence. You can buy any of the corrupted essences from above, or try to obtain it by using a Remnant of Corruption on monsters that hold essences from Group E (of Scorn, of Envy, of Misery, of Dread). When you have a corrupted essence (Essence of Insanity, Horror, Delirium or Hysteria) use it on any item that you want to upgrade with the mentioned modifiers. Remember that item needs to be of normal rarity.
Simple enough. Firstly, choose the essence mods that you need on an item. Of course, it would be better to use the highest tier possible, but that means that you’ll need a higher item level for the crafted item. When you decide what mod to choose look at what piece of equipment is required to get that mod.
After that, prepare a base normal item that you want to craft essence modifiers on. We mean to use whetstones or armour scraps on the base to get the highest quality. Also, note that now pieces of armour can have a range of basic defensive stats. So press “Alt” and hover on the item to see whether there is a maximum number. You can reroll it with the new Sacred orb.
Of course, you can decide vice versa, have a good base item and use an essence that gives the most suitable mods.
When you decide on the item and essence mod simply use and essence on the item like you do with orbs – right click on the essence and left-click on the item. Low-tier essences work only on normal items. But high-tier essences work on rare items two. So you can use them on rare items to add the desired mod, but all other modifiers will get rerolled.
As a result, you will get a rare item with the mods guaranteed by the essence and some random ones.
Corrupted essences can be used the same way, but you can get them only the way we explained above.
This is everything that is related to essences. New challenge leagues may change or add new things to it, we will try to update the post when it happens.
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