Master Crafting Metamods

Exactly a year ago today, we released Path of Exile: Forsaken Masters, which included the Master Crafting System. A week after release, we patched in the level 8 Crafting Metamods. They were described in the patch notes as "They affect the rules of what mods can be added or changed on an item."

These mods allow for many interesting behaviours, like locking all of an item's prefixes in place and then scouring/divining the remaining ones. They're a powerful (but expensive) crafting mechanic for end-game players. These interactions were purposefully undocumented. Like many other aspects of our crafting system, it's up to the players to work out clever interactions and the best way to craft items.

Over the last year, we saw players use more and more of the cool tricks possible with Metamods in their crafting.

Yesterday, a reddit post was made where some players explained how they've been crafting items using clever Metamod interactions. The reactions in that thread surprised me, because not only have these mods been in the game for a year, but I've seen people using them publicly in these ways before. It turns out that this knowledge wasn't completely widespread.

FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS:

Why was this behaviour not clearly documented?

A large part of crafting and trading in Path of Exile is access to information. The value of items relative to the current metagame is constantly shifting. The value of mods rolled on items changes over time also. For example, +3 bow skills is great at the moment, but has been terrible in the past. There are secret recipes - one that generates a Regal Orb was only added to the wiki today, despite being in the game for years and also known by many people.

When we introduce new orbs, mods, items or crafting systems, we don't explain how to use them. The intention is that players try them out and find out what works. We feel that's a lot more fun than us just handing you an optimal crafting guide. Path of Exile is all about being rewarded for being clever.

Why did Carl quickly delete a reddit comment last year clarifying how this works?

He didn't want to accidentally reveal what was, at the time, not commonly known by the community. In the same way to how we don't reveal vendor recipes, we don't want to accidentally affect the natural progression of how players work out crafting tricks.

But someone says that this was changed in 2.0.0 to work differently?

This isn't true. We coded it with this intention, tested it, released it and players have been using it. We checked the code today and it hasn't changed during that year.

Please note that there is incentive for people to mislead others if they find a secret recipe or crafting trick.

Orb of Scouring says "Removes all properties from an item"! Why doesn't it remove mods that are locked?

The purpose of Mods is to override the regular game rules. If you have an item that says "You Can't Be Frozen", then that overrules the game rules that freeze you. In this case, the "Prefixes Cannot Be Changed" mod that you can explicitly add to an item overrules the static behaviour of the Orb of Scouring. Removal counts as a change.

Note that this explanation that they affect crafting rules was made in the initial patch notes when the metamods were released.

Is the behaviour going to stay like this?

It's very likely, unless some surprising problems are found. It has been used by people for quite some time, and while it's a powerful crafting method, it's an intentional feature that just happens to be hitting public adoption a bit later than we expected.

But the economy is broken now!

No, it's just a bit different for certain items. The economy has shifted in the past and it'll absolutely keep shifting in the future. That's part of the fun of trading.

We've found often when players use the word "broken" to describe the economy, they mean two things:

• a) It's reacting to a behaviour change in the correct way.
• b) It's different to what they are used to.

Can we have a Chaos Orb sink?

Chaos Orbs are already being consumed in vast amounts. The reason for the currency exchange rate shift that people are discussing is that Exalted Orbs now have higher demand. This is normal. The utility of specific currency items has and will continue to wax and wane based on metagame requirements in the future. (It's also worth noting that we believe some of the correction here is due to the removal of Eternal Orbs finally being felt in crafting - the rate of "Yolo Exalts" has increased.)

Additional uses for all currency items will continue to be added over time in future patches. We're not going to rush them in to try to keep the exchange rates fixed at some specific place though.