Helmet crafting (ssf) or path of struggle

Im playing ssf for first time, so if i want good items i need to craft them by myself so thats my personal experience
---

helmet i want is
fractured prefix
+2 aoe
t1 life
t1 res
t1 res
life regen rate
----

method is
essence spam resist > hit regen rate > if third suffix is empty > fill prefixes+suffixes cannot be changed craft>reforge resist gamble till t1 resist so in the end u have perfect triple suffixes and fractured mod with 2 open prefixes
after that u need to hit t1 life somehow, u can elrich chaos/annul+regular exalt spam or block suffixes and reforge life>>make space for suffixes cannot be changed and veiled exa to gamble 50/50, if life removed = repeat hitting t1 life, if you won first gamble then unveil to gamble +2 aoe
----

okay, now lets talk about achieving access to every aspect

1 step.

Fracturing orbs, way u farm them is mostly mapping with more currency, there is no farmable divination cards for it, i believe you can get fractured orb as reward in left bottom quadrant, but i found none for few dozens of astrolabes(without failing encounters ofcourse, you miss one reward case if you fail).

I was unlucky so i won 25% gamble for fracturing 4mod item only after 12 fracturing orbs. I used to farm breach maps with at least 90% more currency maps, full atlass tree for it, six mod maps. During this farm ive dropped around 250 div so fracturing orb to divine droprate is 1/20, it sound acceptable if you want to craft only one item and rest of your gear is pretty much unique things or something that need less investment, but normally you want more fracturing orbs for gloves/ring/amulet and sometimes weapon, and dont forget you can refracting fog your jewels, so would be nice to fracture cluster jewels too. When you know it you understand one thing = fracturing orb droprate is too low , its just a fact.

2 step.

Essences, nothing fancy, having one stack of every essence scarab is enough to farm enough scarabs even if its wrong ones(harvest helps here). I spent over 200 essences and some dozens of divines to craft triple t1 suffixes, its kinda deterministic and acceptable.

3 step.

To get t1 life as only prefix you need a lot of divines to suffix cant be changed+reforge life, or as another option is eldrich currency+regular exalts. I tried both methods, i had like 250 divines and 60+ eldrich chaoses/annuls. I lost all divines and all eldrich currency during this process to hit t1 life only !!10 times!!
You can expect this step to be most painful, but in reality everything is acceptable, because you farm divines during mapping, which is designed to be a part of gameplay where u spend most of you time, and you also generate much more resources during this farm aka nightmare maps, exarch and eater domain maps, guardian maps, regular currency, and much more.

4 step.

Veiled exalted orbs. Before start of this farm i knew that safehouses is not hard to farm, so i thought u just spam maps alcngo, i also know perfect board setup to spam safehouses as fast as possible. Also dont forget its ssf and you cant have lot of betrayal scarabs to grind it ultra efficient, but once u start, you understand one main this, farming betrayal for veiled exalted orbs is an actual nightmare, lets talk about this.
I havent done any notes about exact math for syndicate but i anyway can explain +- real situation here. First of all i decide to run transport and intervent because they are just fast to run, no walls no ladders etc, transport is gravicius(hope for lvl4 enli empo), and it that fled for foulborn uniques. Intervention is whatever + hillock cuz it drop fertile catalyst div cards.
Hard to say what amount of maps needed for single safehouse, like 6-7 i think. But you need maybe +- 10 safehouses to farm a syndicate medallion, which have like 20% droprate for veiled exalted orbs. I ran over 3000 maps(tracking with exarch invitations) to farm 10 veiled exalted orbs from 65+- medalions. How is this even acceptable???
Let me explain how bad this "matryoshka" is.
---map spam for safehouses, if you want(you really want it) to farm veiled exa orbs, you cant do any others mechanic to farm except tree nodes for guardian maps drop frmo boss, cuz u need to kill boss and get all map nodes to sustain your maps, otherwise this path to farm veiled exa will take eternity. Safehouse loot is just a joke, why bother opening intervention case with 4 targeted scarabs(which is always worst and common ones) when i can invest this time for regular alcngo mapping and find x10 scarabs(but random, which in the end still grant me more of scarabs u want) for same invested time.
---catarina loot is fine if u need flask, so you spend time to find good life/es on kill roll with veiled mod u want, behind that is.

So you basically need 300 maps to achieve single veiled exalted orbs, this is not acceptable,
which is later on is 50/50 gamble hitting craft mod instead of life, so now in average of hitting mod is 450 maps per hit, after than you need to unveil +2 aoe, which happened with me only 2 times out of 10 attempts(maybe unlucky a bit, cuz its 1500 weight from 12000 out of 9 mods) , yes, thats another matryoshka multiplier, now its over 2000 maps, thats avg of having a crafted item, which still havent happened for me after 3><4k maps.

betrayal need to be reworked, how?

It should have 8% chance to appear in map, without any atlas tree nodes, like wildwood. It might be a portal to another location like vaal zone, with safehouse inside, you clear it, kill 5+ random masters, and open their cases. Ofc safehouse shall have greatly increased chance to drop medalion, not like 20%, but 200-300% more chance than current one, and catarina shall always drop exalted orbs.

map spam>syndicate safehouse%medalion>medalion%veiled ex>hitting right mod%>hitting right unveil%

yo ggg, have you ever tried to complete this step by ur own? try it, it supposed to be very fun right?

using eldritch chaos to reforge preffix normaly makes crafting something like your helm much cheaper for me

i prefer es builds so i would go for t1 es % or t1 es flat

not sure hhow good it is for ssf though

I don't think SSF was created with the possibility of making such good equipment quickly. The idea of SSF is you play with what you find and you settle with meh equipment and slow gear progression. What you want to do with your helmet seems more aligned with trade league economics. Perhaps you should consider migrating your character, I think it will be more fun for you.

"Crafting" is gambling, and there's nowhere else that it feels the worst in than SSF where you opt out of one of the most core aspects of the game: Trading.

If there's anywhere that needs the old Harvest crafting back, it's SSF.

"

Pizzarugi#6258 wrote:

"Crafting" is gambling, and there's nowhere else that it feels the worst in than SSF

Correct crafting in ssf can feel bad cause you have to grind a lot more, almost like the game is balanced around trading not SSF. Crafting is still less gambling that you think if you're aware of what you're doing, and not just click random orbs and pray for the best. As you can see, even SSF players end up with some bloody good gear, often better than what many casual players with access to trade manage to obtain during an entire league.

"

If there's anywhere that needs the old Harvest crafting back, it's SSF.

With how trade depended the old harvest was it wouldn't be a useful addition to ssf.
What SSF would really benefit from is having its own balance and no option to opt out, so characters created in SSF stay within their own balanced system permanently.

"

Agrante#2011 wrote:

I don't think SSF was created with the possibility of making such good equipment quickly. The idea of SSF is you play with what you find and you settle with meh equipment and slow gear progression. What you want to do with your helmet seems more aligned with trade league economics. Perhaps you should consider migrating your character, I think it will be more fun for you.

yes crafting always gamble and especially ssf one, but syndicate crafint need unreal amount of time investment, its fine to farm syndicate, but it should be just additional part of mapping, just rare appear with almost guarantee veiled chaos from safehouse andn veiled ex from syndicate. now if u want this currency u need to throw all time and force into farming syndicate

Can't you just run breach hive fortresses for lots of hiveblood and wombgifts, spec for more provisioning wombgifts on your atlas and 5:1 recipe any wombgifts that aren't provisioning to try to convert them to provisioning, and then just set the provisioning tree to target helmets with the fracture you want? The tree shits out good gear like there's no tomorrow, including tons of t1 fractures.

Okay, another "babycry" (reality showcase post).

GGG, do u even understand how hard is to farm cluster jewels? I tried both methods, simulacrum and syndicate/rogues full scarab thing.

First of all, simulacrum itself is trash, u get maybe 2 jewels total 84lvl.

Jewel farming is fine only if u need just some basic 2/4 mods (notables) jewels.

But if u want some 6point jewels, it takes too much of time to farm.

1.clusters efficient farm is possible only because in mirage league we have scarab farm method.(which we wont have next league and cluster farming will become an actual nightmare)
2.So if u want 6mod jewel lets say its area damage middle cluster, first you need to win 1/18 to get right base, then 1/3(if no weight here) to get 6 passives so its 1/54 chance(FOR MIDDLE JEWELS ONLY, dont foget you need to roll middle cluster ot of large and small ones too lmao).
Since we dont have t17 maps, the only way now is to spam as much unique monsters as possible with deli tree node that grant 2% chance for unique monsters to drop cluster jewel(it will be always 85ilvl if t16 map) .

I ran those maps for full day or so,i used 4 rogue exile scarabs and 1 scarab to pair rogues+syndicate at map, and 85lv jewel avg drop is like every second map, somehow small and large jewels drop more often than middle ones.

3.According to fact how many maps needed to get exact base, your best way is to farm any 6 passive cluster, then farm refracting fog and gamble 1/18.

Let me repeat this again, its possible only because we have mirage scarab farm in the game now, with no investment access, next league we wont have this and cluster farm will be not just unacceptable, it will be impossible, thats why this thing in bad state now, because literally everything chained with scarab farming, when u dont have it = game is trash. Because you cannot beat this matryoshka gameplay.

For 10 full mirage containment scarab maps u can expect 160 anarchy scarabs(40 maps) , and like 50 scarabs of neuroses.

So your matryoska looks like

1.run all your containment(or spend x10 more time to run mansions without containment) > open rogue exiles map with deli tree > every second map you get cluster jewel > it need to roll middle out of small-mid-large(soemhow middle is rarest here)> it need to roll exact base with 1/18 chance > need to get 6passive jewel out of 3 values(somehow 6 passive is WAY rare than 3-4, its not 33% chance) >unlucky?>grab random six mod mid jewel>spent all your neurosis scarabs>every 5th map get a fog> toss is into jewel with 1/18 chance>unlucky?>farm more scarabs>repeat till lucky>fracture orb 2 good mod jewel 50% chance>unlucky?>cry at forum>repeat.

Can u imagine i spend full day tried to get area 6passive jewel, and still dont have it LMAO. and yes, i need 5 of them total=)
hey ggg support, can u comment betrayal and jewel farm matryoshka lifetime waste? I mean, ask your testers to create literally mirror gear 1000movement speed character with infinity damage, but not infinity resources like scarabs etc, and ask him to achieve at least 2 crafted cluster jewels lmao. Same goes for helmet i mentioned before.
remember my words - next league without scarab farming, this game will die, none will suffer this game with server lags which is obviously not ddos playing league that feels like perma std.

I did an even harder helmet craft in ssf this league, yours is piece of cake. I'm pretty sure I didn't get particularly lucky and there are a lot more people too who made way harder items in ssf.

First off you can spam breach tree for life fractures, it gives quite a lot. Farming fractures for NNN or giga rare mods (+2 minion f.ex.), is way harder, as even though you can force save the mod with recomb setup, it's still 1 in 4. Still very much doable.

On the essence side I have not the slightest clue why you're shooting yourself in the leg, that's not how you do it at all. You spam a res essence until life regen% and annul for 3rd open suffix. Then suffixes cannot be changed reforge element (anything other than the essence type you spammed). Since only suffixes have elemental mod, the one guaranteed mod from harvest reforge has to be that suffix, hence it's guaranteed to hit a res of some tier. If it's not T1 -> remove suffix/add prefix beast craft (cheaper than annuls) and hope you hit 1/3 to recover. If not, go again, cuz essences are giga free and the type doesn't even matter because of res swap. And every once in a while you also just going to hit like T2 essence on your essence spam along with your % life regen, so you can settle with that if it's fine with you, you don't need to spend a lot of divines on reforges.

I have no idea why you reforged life, because exactly that you aren't forcing the suffix, but instead have the option to force hybrid life (can brick your suffix, so you go again), and adds regen too to the suffix pool, which likewise bricks. This is straight up currency waste for what you're doing here.

Once suffixes are done, your flat life is done too, because that was fractured. So all you have to do is suffixes cannot be changed and veiled chaos which is dirt cheep. You block whatever and can unveil +2 AoE. If you hit 1/17 fill prefixes, eldrich annul saves you for free. You do not need veiled exalted orbs at all. None. And veiled chaos is free.

On avg this craft roughly would cost 10 divs, 2 veiled chaos, 1 eldrich annuls, 60 essences (of any of the 3 resist types combined cuz res swap), 5 of one of the most common red beasts and 3k harvest juice.

I would recommend you learn some essential crafting methods for ssf. As you describe, you are dependant on your own-farmed resources, so efficiency is important. Especially how you spend them.