Low Level Dueling (LLD) Crafter's Guide {on hold forever}

Swords: Antique Rapier (pretty slow), Jagged Foil (fast), Elegant Sword (almost-as-fast)
Maces: Bladed Mace (pretty slow), Ceremonial Mace (REALLY slow)
Sceptres: Ochre Sceptre (fast-ish), Ritual Sceptre (REALLY slow)
Claws: Cat’s Paw (fast), Timeworn claw (slow)
Axes: Arming Axe

Swords are without question the best non-crit 1-handed weapon type. Maces (for physical builds) and Sceptres (for elemental builds) can be used with good effect too. Claws and Axes are strictly worse than other options, but feel free to try to prove me wrong.

The general consensus is that the Jagged Foil is the best all-around non-crit 1-handed weapon. If you are on a budget, this is probably the wisest choice to spend your crafting resources on.

Unfortunately not many of the unique 1-handers are really good enough to be used as a main dps weapon for LLD.

The Goddess Scorned does decent damage and you will at least be able to kill people with it, but I have yet to see a top-tier build that uses it.

Facebreakers are the other noteworthy option. It is also not a top-tier build because of the limited skills that work with Facebreakers, but it does decent damage. It’s probably the best budget 1-handed option if you use a good weapon swap (such as a bow, 2-hander for flicker strike, or Brightbeak for Leap Slam mobility).

(I haven't forgotten about Ungil's Gauche - see the "attack daggers" section!)

For most weapons, 90% of your damage will come from good prefixes. For a Physical damage build you ideally want all 3 of ipd (Vicious), hybrid ipd/accuracy (Mercenary’s), and flat physical damage (Gleaming).

The top Master Crafting affix from Vagan’s bench for flat physical is basically top-tier, which means you should always use it when you can. So is his attack speed suffix. However Vagan’s top ipd roll is only 79% (whereas you really want Vicious, which tops out at 109%) and you cannot craft hybrid ipd/accuracy onto physical weapons at all using the crafting benches.

Since the only really important suffix for most of these weapons is attack speed, you have a few crafting options depending on your budget:

Super-Budget:
Guarantee yourself one good damage prefix with the Rare Rustic sash / ipd vendor recipe or the Granite Flask / flat physical damage vendor recipe. Augment a suffix; if you don’t get anything good that’s ok. Then Regal. Hopefully you regal another good damage prefix. Finally, add one more affix (either a missing damage prefix or Attack Speed) using Vagan’s crafting bench. Total cost should be 5-10 chaos. However if you can find one, you are probably better off purchasing a mediocre weapon for a few chaos from someone instead of crafting one like this!

Budget:
Same as super-budget except you repeat the Regal step if you don’t get a decent damage prefix. In this case I also recommend using the Granite Flask recipe instead of the Rustic Sash recipe, because this will leave you with a (small) chance to regal either the Vicious or Mercenary’s prefixes. You can also alteration-spam until you get any flat physical damage roll, then upgrade that roll to the top flat physical roll using Granite Flasks; this will cost you more alterations but fewer Granites. You might also hit the Vicious or Mercenary prefixes along the way, which you can also Regal. Total cost should still be under an Exalt.

Middle-Class:
Use the classic alt-aug-regal crafting technique until you are happy with the results after adding 1 Master Crafting affix. Ideally you want either Vicious or Mercenary’s prefixes before regaling, plus a useful suffix. Alternatively if you have tons of extra Granite Flasks you can use those to force a top-tier flat physical damage roll before regaling each time. This strategy will result in a weapon with at least 3 good stats (or 4 if you were lucky enough to get attack speed before Regalling). Total cost: 1-2 Exalts.

Rich:
Use alterations until you get the Vicious prefix by itself, OR use the unique rustic sash recipe (with Prismweave) to achieve the same thing. Regal. Repeat these steps until you successfully regal a hybrid ipd prefix (hopefully Mercenary’s, but pretty much any hybrid ipd would be pretty good). Then add Elreon’s multi-mod affix, and buy the top flat physical damage prefix plus attack speed from the crafting benches. Total cost: 2 Exalts + some chaos for master crafting, plus all the regals and alterations/Prismweaves you spent on the first step (expect this to take 5-10 regals and as many Prismweaves, or, say, a thousand alterations).

Elemental damage melee weapons are not popular in the current metagame but this could very easily change due to the pvp balance changes introduced by patch 1.3.

You probably already know that you want to use the fastest base weapon possible to maximize your elemental damage scaling. A Jagged Foil is usually going to be optimal since it is the fastest 1-handed LLD weapon, but Ocre Sceptre and Cat’s Paw are interesting secondary options.

For prefixes, you ideally want top lightning (Sparking) and cold damage (Freezing) for shock and freeze/chill, plus elemental damage with weapons (Empowering), but fire damage (Flaming) is obviously good as well. Unfortunately the Master Crafting options are not top-tier for any of these prefixes. Fortunately we can use the ele resist flasks / ele damage vendor recipes to force top-tier LLD ele damage rolls relatively cheaply.

For suffixes, Attack Speed (of Renown) is extremely important for ele damage builds. Good secondary options are Critical Strike Chance and Life Gain on Hit, both of which we can get through Master Crafting as well.

Super-Budget:
Use a Jagged Foil so your attack speed won’t be too bad even without an attack speed roll. Use the Sapphire flask / cold damage or Topaz Flask / lightning damage recipes to get a top-tier elemental damage prefix. Augment a suffix (hopefully attack speed!), then Regal (hopefully attack speed!). Add a mid-tier elemental damage roll using the Master Crafting benches. Total cost: 6 elemental flasks, 7 augments, a regal, and a few chaos for the second Master Crafted elemental damage prefix.

Budget:
Same as super-budget except you repeat the augment step if you don’t get attack speed. I hope you have a lot of extra elemental damage flasks lying around, otherwise you will be forced to use alterations at some point. Since you are forcing attack speed in this case, you can try crafting an Ocre Scepter if you want a Templar / ele damage / mace build with not-terrible attack speed. Total cost: Same as super-budget plus a bunch more ele resist flasks and/or alterations.

Middle-Class:
Same as budget, except you should only accept a good elemental damage roll or elemental weapon damage prefix for your regal. Then add a third elemental damage prefix with the master crafting benches. You probably don’t have enough extra elemental resist flasks to complete this crafting technique with, so you’ll need lots of alterations too. Total cost: a bunch of Alterations and Regals in inverse proportion to your luck.

Rich:
Regal either top Elemental Damage by itself or with top Attack Speed. You must hit either top Attack Speed or another top Elemental Damage roll on your Regal. Then either Master-Craft a third mid-tier Elemental Damage roll plus attack speed with Elreon’s Multi-Mod affix, or Eternal-Exalt a perfect weapon (although for LLD items, it might actually be cheaper to Exalt without Eternalling and starting over if you fail). Total cost: 4 Exalts if you are lucky.

This is an interesting mod for low-dexterity / low-accuracy builds and/or against very high-evasion characters, but probably isn’t worth it most of the time since it uses up a damage prefix. A very well-rolled “can’t be evaded” 1-hander could be a useful item to carry around as a weapon swap option against some high-evasion builds though.

Like all Master Signature items, the best way to craft these is to find them on vendors / buy them for cheap, and regal them hoping for a good second roll. If you succeed, you can use Elreon’s Multi-mod affix to finish crafting a good item relatively cheaply. Leo’s upcoming “Can’t roll mods requiring above level 28” meta-mod may also useful (depending on its cost), since most of the Master Signature items have too high of an ilvl (usually level 59) for successful LLD crafting.

Armor: Close Helmet
Evasion: Leather Hood
Energy Shield: Tribal Circlet
Ar/Ev: Visored Sallet
Ar/ES: Great Helmet
Ev/ES: Festival Mask

The three pure-defense helms are generally more powerful than the hybrids IMO, although the hybrids that provide some ES are nice if you otherwise would have no ES, for the 50% chance to avoid stun. There also used to be important differences on what affixes the different armor types could get (namely mana and int/dex/str), but Master Crafting has mostly done away with this since it lets you add any helm affix to any base.

There are a lot of interesting and useful unique helms, so I’ll just comment on all of them.

First, the good ones:


Malachai’s Simula is a very powerful, but niche, helm… don’t underestimate it!


Asenath’s Mark is a nice all-purpose “DPS Helm”. It is probably your best option if you are building a glass cannon ranged build.


Leer Cast belongs on your Animated Guardian… unless you are in a team match and can convince all of your teammates to use it too. Then you should put one on as well!


Crown of Thorns has always been the best-in-slot item for lowlife builds, and ever since it got a major ES buff it is even better. Lowlife casters are not necessarily the most viable builds (especially in 1v1) but if you are planning on making one then you should be wearing the Crown!

Next the mid-tier, you-don’t-have-to-be-embarrassed-if-you-use-these helms:


Heatshiver is not best-in-slot for any build but it is a decent budget option if you can make use of the +1 fire/cold gems, and the mana regeneration is excellent. One day I’m going to make an Elemental Hit build with this item I swear!


Ezomyte Peak is not completely worthless since it provides decent life, but “cannot evade” is a very significant drawback in LLD. Note that the increased physical damage works for EK and Bear Trap as well as for physical attacks.

And now “the rest”:


Goldrim is NOT a good LLD item. It is not that hard to cap your resists without it (since all LLD happens in Normal difficulty), so it essentially does nothing for you. Use it only if the rest of your gear is terrible.


Honourhome is a hard item to justify using, even if you are a lowlife build. You need to be using a very high mana cost skill (like a 6-link ice spear) for the 20% reduced mana costs on low life to be relevant. Elreon jewelry is going to do this job much better for you most of the time (see 7.17 on Rings and 7.18 on Amulets). The resists on low life are pretty good but not a good enough reason by itself to use this over, say, Asenath's Mark. If you can get your resists from other items, the high ES and passive points saved by using Crown of Thorns is going to be much better for your lowlife build.


The Peregrine is a nice item for Capture the Flag games but that’s about it!

Non-unique helms are a pretty straightforward item slot. You almost always want life and 2+ resists; mana is always great to have; plus strength for more life, or int/dex if you are in need of those.

Assuming all your other gear is top-tier (meaning you don’t have mana problems and your resists are already good), the perfect helm would probably look like this:

Prefixes:
1. % Ev/ES/Ar or hybrid % + stun recovery
2. + Ev/ES/Ar or hybrid % + stun recovery
3. +Life
Suffixes:
1. +Strength
2. +All Attributes (from Haku crafting bench) for more Strength/life!
3. res/int/dex as needed, or +accuracy if you are an attack build

Haku’s crafting bench can also add % weapon elemental damage to helms, if that is something your build is interested in.

None of the corruptions you can get on helms are very useful for LLD either. I recommend you spend your Vaal orbs elsewhere.

So, how do we craft our helms?

Super-Budget:
Farm until you find a rare helm with 60+ life and some resists. Done. Total cost: an hour of your time.

Budget:
Use alterations until you get top life and a resist. Regal. If you have some more currency to spare, buy another resist or mana from a Master Crafting bench. Never think about your helm again. Total cost: less than 5-10 chaos.

Middle-Class:
Use alterations until you get 2 top rolls that you want. Regal. Repeat until you have 3 top rolls that you want. Add a fourth top roll using the Master Crafting benches. Total Cost: 1-2 exalts depending on your luck with Regals.

Rich:
Use alterations until you get 2 top rolls that you want. Regal. Repeat until you have 3 top rolls that you want. Then add Elreon’s Multiple-Mod mod, and buy 2 more top rolls through Master Crafting. Congrats, you now have a helm that cannot be improved without using dozens of Eternals. Total cost: 4+ Exalts depending on your luck with Regals.

The three pure-defense gloves are generally more powerful than the hybrids IMO, although the hybrids that provide some ES are nice if you otherwise would have no ES, for the 50% chance to avoid stun. There also used to be important differences on what affixes the different armor types could get (namely mana and int/dex/str), but Master Crafting has mostly done away with this since it lets you add any glove affix to any base.

Ringmail Gloves and Strapped Mitts are pretty bad because they are such low level items (even for LLD!). You probably want to craft one of the other types if you don’t care about the ES from these hybrid items.

Lochtonial Caress
Not so great for attack builds but can be excellent for casters, as not only is 15% attack speed a lot, but these are also a good (cheap) unique to corrupt +1 to gems on. Conduit potentially has uses in team matches as well.


Ondar's Clasp
Best-in-slot for the “I can only beat you if I stay at full life the whole match” build (yes you can try going CI but good luck with that). I’ve never seen anyone take advantage of the lowlife movespeed; maybe if you want to make an extremely mobile, glass cannon Pain Attunement caster, but you can probably do better.


Shackles of the Wretched
These are the most popular gloves to use on an Animated Guardian, since when the guardian dies you get the frenzy charges. However these gloves are also one of the few ways to combat chill (although there are better alternatives to fight all the other status effects).


Hrimsorrow
Clearly you only want to use these in some sort of full-conversion elemental build. Corrupting Elemental Weakness on hit on a pair of these would be pretty decent.


Sadima's Touch
These are for farming LLD gear, not for using in LLD games.


Demigod's Touch
Most of the Demigod items are, sadly, useless in LLD, but for an attack build these are basically a superior version of Loctonial Caress. Still not nearly as good as a pair of crafted rare gloves, but at least these look cool.


Doedre's Tenure
Real nice for trapper builds (and for Cast on Death builds but let’s just try to forget that those ever existed).


Facebreaker
This probably belongs in the 1-handed weapons section but oh well. Besides dual Ungil’s Gauche builds, Facebreaker is the first thing most new LLDers try. As a build, it used to be completely outclassed by most other 1-handed weapon builds, mainly due to lack of mobility and other skill options. However now that Facebreaker builds can use Smoke Mine, Shield Charge, and all 3 counter-attack gems (which hit like a truck) they are much more competitive. Don’t overlook the fact that these grant 60% global crit multiplier either (even though most Facebreaker builds use Resolute Technique) – that’s more than legacy Maligaro’s Virtuosity!


Maligaro's Virtuosity
If you are a crit build there is a 99.7% chance you should be using these. Not much else to say really…


Asenath's Gentle Touch
Great gloves for some dual-curse builds (if corrupted with a second curse on hit), and any build where the high mana cost of temp chains would otherwise be too much. Being able to consistently apply a curse


Slitherpinch
There is no reason to use this in PvP. Leech is not as good as it sounds.

If you are a non-attack build, gloves are as easy to craft as helms, since only the usual defensive stats (life, resistances…) matter to you. But if you are attack-based there are some nice offensive stats you are going to want as well, so crafting a good pair will be tougher.

Crafting Gloves for Non-Attack Builds
If you read the crafting advice on Helms it’s pretty much the same story here. You almost always want life and 2+ resists; mana is always great to have; str for more life or int/dex if you are in need of those.
Assuming all your other gear is top-tier (meaning you don’t have mana problems and your resists are already good), your perfect gloves probably look like this:

Prefixes
+Life
%Ev/ES/Ar or hybrid % + stun recovery or mana (from Catarina’s crafting bench)
+Ev/ES/Ar or hybrid % + stun recovery or mana (from Catarina’s crafting bench)
Suffixes
+Strength
+All Attributes (from Haku crafting bench) for more Strength/life!
res/int/dex as needed, or a special master-crafted mod

Leo’s crafting bench also offers % chance to avoid freeze, chill and ignite as suffixes, if you don’t need the extra resist rolls on your gloves. Alternatively Haku can add 1-2% additional block chance to gloves if you are really trying to max-out your block.

If you are a caster, your other option for glove crafting is to Corrupt all your decent rare gloves until you get a good corruption - probably “+1 to socketed gems” but possibly something else like “elemental weakness on hit”. This might be better for you than corrupting unique gloves if you really need more life/stats/resists. In this case follow the “Budget” crafting advice below but corrupt each finished craft until you get the corrupt that you want. As a super-budget option, you could even corrupt any blue gloves with good +life and a resist/stat roll.

For example, my Iron Will + Blood Magic caster really wanted life and strength, so I kept crafting rare gloves with these stats until I finally made these after about 10 pairs:



Your mileage may vary, but gloves are the easiest/cheapest (and therefore best) slot to try to get the “+1 to socketed gems” corrupt so keep this in mind.

Super-Budget: Farm until you find rare gloves with 60+ life and some resists. Done. Total cost: an hour of your time.
Budget: Use alterations until you get top life and a resist. Regal. If you have some more currency to spare, buy another resist or mana from a Master Crafting bench. Total cost: less than 5-10 chaos.
Middle-Class: Use alterations until you get 2 top rolls that you want. Regal. Repeat until you have 3 top rolls that you want. Add a fourth top roll using the Master Crafting benches. Total Cost: 1-2 exalts depending on your luck with Regals.
Rich: Use alterations until you get 2 top rolls that you want. Regal. Repeat until you have 3 top rolls that you want. Then add Elreon’s Multiple-Mod mod, and buy 2 more top rolls through Master Crafting. Congrats, you now have gloves that cannot be improved without using dozens of Eternals. Total cost: 3+ Exalts depending on your luck with Regals.

Crafting Gloves for Attack Builds
Good attack-based gloves should have high flat damage (physical or elemental) plus attack speed in addition to all the good defensive stats. Haku’s crafting bench can add good attack speed to gloves but not flat damage; this makes flat damage the most important affix to craft manually before master-crafting.

So, your ideal attack-based gloves will look something like this:

Prefixes
flat physical or elemental damage
a second flat elemental damage, or mana if you need it
+Life
Suffixes
Attack Speed
+Strength or +All Attributes (from Haku crafting bench) or res/int/dex as needed, or a special master-crafted mod

Leo’s crafting bench also offers % chance to avoid freeze, chill and ignite as suffixes, if you don’t need the extra resist rolls on your gloves. Alternatively Haku can add 1-2% additional block chance to gloves if you are really trying to max-out your block.

Super-Budget: Use alterations until you get a good flat physical damage roll, and/or attack speed, and/or a good life roll. Regal, then master craft either life or attack speed if you don’t have them both already. Total cost: around 5 chaos if you are lucky; not super-cheap but I told you that attack-based gloves are tougher! Chances are you can buy better gloves for this much, though.
Budget: Use alterations until you get a top flat damage roll with a good suffix, OR life + attack speed. Regal. Buy top life from the master crafting bench if you don’t have any yet, or attack speed, or something else. Total cost: around 5-10 chaos.
Middle-Class: Use alterations until you get a top flat damage roll + a suffix that you want. Regal. Repeat until you have 3 top rolls that you want. Add a fourth top roll using the Master Crafting benches. Total Cost: 1-2 exalts depending on your luck with Regals.
Rich: Use alterations until you get a flat damage roll either by itself or with a good suffix. Regal. Repeat until you have only top rolls that you want. Then add Elreon’s Multiple-Mod mod, and buy the rest of the affixes through Master Crafting. Congrats, you now have gloves that cannot be improved without using dozens of Eternals. Total cost: 4+ Exalts depending on your luck with Regals.

As for other gear slots, you probably want to craft one of the pure-Ar/Ev/ES options instead of a hybrid if you can, but crafting anything that provides a little ES if you would otherwise have no ES is a good idea.

Wanderlust: You probably want to carry around a pair of these to swap in for freeze immunity when you need it (unless you have and can equip a Dream Fragments). The dex, mana regen and top Movement Speed that these provide are all nice too. Because Wanderlusts are so cheap, and pretty useful, they are one of the most popular items to corrupt. For example, this is a good item to corrupt “+1 to socketed gems” on if you are a caster, or “cannot be knocked back” if you are melee.

Dusktoe: On one of those rare occasions that you play against someone focusing on chaos damage, these can be nice to swap on. This can be better than swapping in an amethyst flask during a match because the flask will start empty, whereas these boots will provide chaos res immediately. If you have room in your inventory it may be worth carrying around a pair of these (probably not though).

Wondertrap: The only reason you might want to wear these is if you really, REALLY need more str int AND dex, but that is unlikely. Leave these on your high-level magic find characters.

Ondar's Flight: These are pretty spiffy for lowlife characters since your best defense is to be really fast so you can avoid damage. They’re cheap too so it should not be too hard to corrupt additional movement speed or +1 to gems on a pair. I have experimented a bit with the “mana gained on hit” mechanic on a Mind Over Matter character, and it seems actively bad unless you can make all your skills free with Elreon Jewelery (AND have a lot of mana regen that you wouldn’t otherwise need!). For most builds, I would just consider that effect to be a nice little bonus of using these boots.

Nomic's Storm: If you want to go REALLY fast these are the boots for you. I guess. Just don’t get hit by any puncture arrows…
The only neat trick I can think of with these boots is to use Zealot’s Oath with a very low ES pool (probably just the ES from these boots), so that you can quickly regen to maximum ES and keep the 40% movespeed. Maybe for CTF matches this is worth doing, if you are a flag runner.

Bones of Ullr: You can’t bring in Spectres from outside of the arena so these aren’t ever worth wearing IMO.

Deerstalker: Amazing boots for trapper builds, providing an easy 5-link plus very high move speed. If you think you should be using these, you should be.

Sundance: The only reason you would consider using these boots is for the 10% attack speed… which is quite a lot actually.

Wake of Destruction: The only reason you would consider using these boots is for the 1-120 lightning damage… which is quite a lot actually.

Boots might be the absolute easiest slot to craft due to the movespeed recipe. This requires a generous number of quicksilvers – you pick up and save every quicksilver you find, right? If not, finish the Hailrake quest on all your characters on all difficulties to quickly farm up a bunch of them, or try buying them in trade chat for like, 1 chance orb each or something. You can also add some movespeed to any “really good but slow” boots using Tora’s crafting bench for 4 chaos.

Everyone wants pretty much the same affixes on their boots: movespeed, life, and resists. mana and additional str/int/dex are great to have as well. Leo’s crafting bench can add a “50% chance to avoid knockback” suffix to boots which is very useful for melee.

Super-Budget: Buy a pair of Wanderlust (or possibly Deerstalker if you are a trap/bow build). Or just go farm for a pair of boots with some movespeed and life on them.

Budget: Use the Quicksilver recipe to make a pair of 20% movespeed boots. Augment and Regal. If you didn’t get life with your regal, add life with Haku’s crafting bench. Total cost: around 5 chaos.

Middle-Class: If you are a caster, save all of your boot crafting monies to buy Wanderlusts and corrupt +1 to socketed gems. Budget for around 20 tries. It’s probably cheaper to socket/chrome/fuse them after you have successfully corrupted since Wanderlusts have such low stat requirements (unless you want really strange colors such as 4 red!). If you want good rare boots instead, use the Quicksilver recipe to make 20% movespeed boots, and regal until you get a good life roll, a resist, or some other prefix. Then use Elreon’s multimod affix to finish your craft. Total cost: under 3 exalts. You might not even need to use the multimod on your boots if you are happy with good 3-stat boots (i.e. movespeed, whatever you regaled, and life purchased from Haku’s crafting bench), in which case this craft will cost well under 1 exalt.

Rich: You won’t break the bank no matter what you do to craft a good pair of boots. You will probably want to use the quicksilver recipe to start, then regal until you get +/% defenses or hybrid defenses (i.e. Ar/Ev/ES), then finish your craft with Elreon’s multimod. You can also craft multiple pairs of good 4-stat boots (with QS+Aug+Regal+bench) and then corrupt them all until you get “cannot be knocked back”, “+1 to socketed gems”, additional movespeed, or dodge chance!

Your chest armor will provide the majority of your primary defensive stat (Ar/Ev/ES), so whichever one you are going, you should probably choose the non-hybrid version – especially if you want ES.




Armor: Full Plate
Evasion: Full Leather
Energy Shield: Mage's Vestment
Ar/Ev: Full Scale Armor
Ar/ES: Full Ringmail
Ev/ES: Scarlet Raiment

On the subject of 6-socket LLD chests: I think Vorici’s 6-socket crafting option is strictly better than trying to get the specific 6-socket chest you are looking for out of an “extra socket” strongbox. By the time you get lucky and get the 6-socket you want from a box, you could have easily farmed the equivalent of 350 jewelers you need to socket it with Vorici. It also costs a lot of alterations to add “additional socket” on each strongbox (but note that you should only be spending your currency on Large and Armorer’s Strongboxes – the other boxes are not worth it).

Bramblejack: This plus Punishment curse is a legitimate threat to Heavy Strikers and Cycloners. You can also equip your Animated Guardian with one of these for some more surprise damage against melee.

Tabula Rasa: When you absolutely, positively need a 6-link and don’t have any other option - although having all white sockets is a real nice bonus, as it makes it effortless to swap gems when you need to during a fight. A corrupted Tabula with “+1 to socketed gems” is probably the most popular chest armor in LLD, as a “+1 to gems” item is pretty much essential to have in order to do enough damage as a caster or trapper. Elemental attack builds (such as explosive arrow, wanders, and even some glass cannon / crit molten strikers) are also going to wear this chest 95% of the time because the 6-link is so important to them. But obviously, if you have some other 6-link LLD chest lying around, you should probably wear that one instead.

Thousand Ribbons: This actually has some uses. It gives you an extra link with Elemental Proliferation (which can be useful against trappers and summoners, and in team matches), and it gives you a small damage boost if you are an elemental attack build. Don’t forget that it reduces your cast speed if you are a caster, though. The toughest thing about this chest is finding a good linked one.

Briskwrap: This is nice for a level 9 chest but doesn’t have much of a use in LLD.

Ashrend: Obviously pretty good if you are playing against any kind of burning build, so it’s nice to carry one around to swap on for those situations. The problem with swapping chests is usually your gem links, though.

Solaris Lorica: The ONLY time this would ever be worth wearing is if you have PERFECT ES gear in all other slots. Otherwise, your lowlife build will be a glass cannon whether you wear this chest or not, and will get 1-shot by non-chaos damage just as easily as chaos damage. Even if all your other ES gear is perfect, you still want to default to a nice Mage’s Vestment for your lowlife build and only swap on the Lorica when your opponent tries to counter you with chaos damage.

Cloak of Flame: Another unique chest with pretty obvious uses. Just know that it IS good enough to use in those builds.

Foxshade: A very popular LLD chest - probably the most popular after Tabula Rasa. It provides good evasion, damage, and extra movement speed, so it’s especially good for archers. Most of my attack-based builds end up wearing this, mainly for the extra physical damage. For the same reason it’s also pretty good for budget Facebreaker builds. Note that this chest provides a lot of Dex, so even if you don’t have enough other Dex to wear it you can probably temporarily wear a Jade ammy, then put on this chest, then take off the ammy.

Unlike unique chests, rare chests offer purely defensive stats (unless you want a low WED roll from Haku, but that hardly counts). But the most important thing about your chest armor is the links, as it will be your only opportunity for a 5- or 6-link in some builds, so keep this in mind when crafting. If you manage to find a linked LLD chest, even if it is tier 2 LLD (like a Wild Leather or Copper Plate), you should probably craft and use this over a tier 1 LLD chest that has fewer links.

Super-Budget: Farm for a 4-linked (hopefully 5-socket) chest piece. You might even be able to find a 5-linked chest piece for sale for a few chaos, which would be a very good investment. Use alterations until you get the top life roll (Rotund). Hopefully you get a resist too. If you have some spare currency, you can regal and add a resist using Haku’s crafting bench.

Budget: Try to find a cheap 5-link to buy if you can. Use alterations until you get the top life roll (Rotund) and a resist. Then regal and add another resist (or strength for more life, if you have enough resists) using Haku’s crafting bench.

Middle-Class: If you already have a very nice LLD chest to use, use Vorici to 5-link it. Otherwise you will want to obtain a 5-link somehow before starting to craft. Even if you have to spend the currency you would have used to multi-mod craft your chest, do it. Once you have a 5-link, crafting a decent chest with alterations and regal/bench crafting should be fairly easy. In fact it is probably cheaper to do a traditional craft than to use Elreon multi-modding on your chest.

Rich: Option 1 is to Mirror Grindcore’s chest (I recommend bench-crafting Strength on it first). If that is too rich for you, there are a few 5-linked “+1 to socketed gems” chests (mainly Mage’s Vestments) floating around standard that you might be able to buy for a few dozen exalts.
If you insist on starting from scratch though, you will either want to craft 4- or 5-links with the intention of adding a good corrupt (such as +1 to gems or “cannot be knocked back”), or an uncorrupted 6-link.
For a corrupt chest, you should just regal every Rotund life roll / good ES roll you get, add one master craft, and corrupt. Don’t forget to Chrome and Armor Scrap the chest before starting!
For the 6-link craft, you want to regal any Rotund life roll by itself and get hybrid defenses (% Ar/Ev/ES + stun recovery), then multi-mod strength, a resist, and one other prefix of your choice - the only good options are more % defense, mana, or perhaps % WED from Haku.

Good news! All of the belt bases are eligible for use in LLD. Of course, some are more useful than others.



Chances are you want either a Leather Belt or Chain Belt to maximize your defenses. Rustic Sashes can be great DPS belts with added weapon elemental damage. A Heavy Belt is only optimal for an Iron Will build that is trying to max out its strength; if you’re going Iron Grip you are going to want Meginord’s Girdle instead (see below). I have yet to see a build that actively wants to use either a Cloth or Studded Belt, but if you find a perfect one there is no shame in wearing it. Or, just Vaal it.

If you are a physical attack build, you want to wear this. No exceptions. Well actually there is one exception (see “Magnate”)…


Don’t wear this for the leech. You can’t really rely on leech in PvP. The rest of this belt can be surpassed by a good rare leather belt.


Best in Slot for Puncture builds. If you need a corruption on your belt you can also buy multiples of these for a lot cheaper than Meginord’s Girdle, if you are on a budget.


This is a very niche belt, offering a lot of stats, stun recovery and flask duration. Probably not worth it in most cases though.


If you don’t need a ton of resists on your belt to stay capped, and you are some sort of 2-handed physical build that doesn’t block, this can be a nice belt to swap to when facing a high-crit build. That’s about the only case where this belt is relevant, though.

[NO LINK YET - WTB]

Sweet belt for any high-ES, hit-and-run build like a caster or trapper. You get lots of ES, huge ES recovery, and even some increased damage. If you can manage without any resists on your belt and you want ES, you should definitely be using this.


It’s pretty obvious what builds this belt is for. If you want to go all-in on elemental DPS then be my guest. However, most copies of these belts are destined to be used in the weapon vendor recipe to roll the Vicious prefix!

Since there are so many good unique belt options, there are really only 2 types of belts you would ever need to craft (ignoring corrupt possibilities):

- A weapon elemental damage Rustic Sash that provides more defenses than Prismweave;
- A super-defensive Leather Belt (or maybe Chain Belt).

So we’ll assume you are only interested in crafting either of these in the advice below.

Make sure you consider the special belt master crafting mods too - there are a few interesting ones. In particular, don’t underestimate the flask-related mods! Master crafting can also be used to add good resistances and ES to belts, but unfortunately the best master crafting life roll is not very good (44 max).

Leo’s “Increased Damage” mod can also appear on belts, but since these are ilvl28 max (GGG PLZ FIX!), you can’t also roll top LLD weapon elemental damage on the same belt (empowering - ilvl30), which is a damn shame.

Super-Budget: For a defensive Leather Belt, it should not be hard to either find a rare belt with top life and a resist, or use Alterations until you have a nice life + resist blue belt. For an offensive belt, you should just settle for Prismweave, Magnate, or find a good deal on a Meginord’s Girdle!

Budget: For a defensive belt, roll top life + a resist with alterations, regal, then buy a second resist from Tora’s crafting bench. For an offensive belt, get either a good weapon elemental damage or life prefix with alterations, regal, then buy the other prefix from Tora. Tora’s Weapon elemental damage roll can be really bad if you are unlucky (as little as 8%) so you probably want to aim for rolling weapon elemental damage with your alterations, and settle for the mediocre life roll (35-44) from Tora.

Middle-Class: For a defensive belt, Alt-regal until you get top life and 2 other good stats (resistance or possibly armor, strength, stun recovery or a good flask mod), then add a fourth stat with Tora’s crafting bench. You could also Elreon craft if you regal any prefix onto a 1-stat top life belt. For an offensive belt you are going to want to alt-regal until you hit top life and top weapon elemental damage as your 2 prefixes.

Rich: If you REALLY want a tri-res, top-life defensive leather belt, I’m afraid you don’t have much choice but to eternal-exalt or chaos-spam. Neither of these options is really worth it IMO. You would be slightly more justified in attempting to craft a top-tier DPS Rustic Sash this way, but your currency is still probably better spent elsewhere. As far as belt corrupts go, one of the more popular options for LLD is “Grants Level 15 Vitality Skill”. This is a WAY higher level than you could otherwise equip for LLD, and on a high-life character can result in a lot of extra life regeneration.

A truly perfect LLD ring would use one of the above 4 bases. This is because you can never have too much life, ES, gem slots, or (realistically…) crit chance.




Resist rings are still very good, and realistically you will probably be wearing 2 of these in order to cap your resists. Note that 2-stone rings provide a maximum of 32% total elemental resists, which is slightly better than the 30% maximum provided by the single-element rings.



Paua and Iron rings are generally underwhelming bases, but if you find a GG one then use it anyway! Obviously we would rather not be wearing gold rings for LLD if we can help it, but you can always corrupt these if you are feeling lucky.

There is a good chance that you want to use at least one of these… which means you probably only have to worry about crafting/buying 1 good rare ring YAY!


Berek's Grip is a solid if not exciting ring for an LLD attack build, if you ignore the fancy leech abilities (which you should).


Berek's Pass: The only way I can see this ring ever being used in LLD is in a self-ignite build that is wearing either Mokou’s Embrace or Cloak of Flame. Sounds like a lot of work for some extra damage though.


Berek's Respite: Maybe you can use this to proliferate shock + burn onto a summoner? LOL


Don’t use Blackheart. A mediocre Coral Ring is better. I suppose if you are REALLY desperate for increased physical damage for your bear traps…?


Bloodboil is one of the few ways to get resistance to chill, and the rest of the stats are not terrible, so I suppose you could equip one of these plus Dream Fragments for the ultimate defense against Cold Snappers, Freeze Pulsers, and Glacial Hammerers.


Doedre's Damning: Unless you have successfully corrupted a nice ammy with +1 curse, this is the only way to dual-curse in LLD. This is especially fun if you have Asenath’s Gentle Touch corrupted with a curse on hit!


Dream Fragments: “Cannot be Frozen” is obviously very useful in some matchups, and it is usually much faster and easier to swap on this ring than a pair of Wanderlusts when you need it. Don’t forget that the mana boost this ring gives you is also insane so it might even be worth working into your build’s default equipment.


Gifts from Above used to be the undisputed best way to get a very high crit chance, but now that Elreon can craft crit chance onto rare Diamond Rings this item has lost a lot of its appeal.


Kaom's Sign is generally not worth using. If you REALLY need an extra endurance charge for some reason (although you probably don’t), try to get +1 endurance charge on a good corrupted belt instead of wearing this mediocre ring.


Kikazaru seems like an all-around GREAT defensive ring that tries to solve all of your build’s defensive problems for you at once. Note that the high flat life regen is equivalent to at least a good 1% life regen passive for an LLD character, depending on your life total. In fact this ring probably makes Righteous Fire possible in LLD for a glass-cannon spellcaster (but more experimentation is needed).


Le Heup of All: If you get a good corrupt on a perfectly-rolled one, this is a pretty solid ring! Otherwise you can probably do better. The “increased damage” mod boosts damage types of course, which can be useful for some builds that lack damage supports from the tree and/or other gear (but there aren’t a lot of these anymore).


Malachai's Artifice: Elemental Equilibrium tied to 1 skill is extremely powerful – it is just a matter of finding the right elemental skill to slot in this ring. Off the top of my head, Ice Shot, Cold Snap, and arc are pretty good candidates since they provide some secondary effects even when used unlinked in this ring.


Mokou's Embrace is obviously a great offensive ring for fire-based casters/trappers/archers. The increased cast/attack speed while ignited is no joke either.


Pyre: I can’t see ever using this in LLD over Mokou’s Embrace, unless you want to make a burning Ice Spear build, I guess.


Timeclasp has good ES plus cast/attack speed (in fact the attack speed is VERY good). You can find a rare moonstone with comparable stats though, so you are only going to use this if you REALLY hate Temporal Chains. I think I would rather carry around a Kikazaru for that purpose, though (at least for life-based builds).

This is hands-down the best LLD mod. Period. Using one of these will solve most of your mana problems all by itself, especially if you are a melee build, which tend to have low mana costs to begin with but also very poor mana. Equip 2 rings plus an Amulet with -8 Mana Cost to Skills, and you can literally make all your skills free, which means you need NO mana on gear or from passives plus you can reserve ALL of your mana for auras etc.

Unfortunately if you want this mod on your rings you are probably going to have to craft the ring yourself. To make things worse, All of these rings are at least ilvl 44 (and usually 59 from a higher-level Elreon), which means you may make the item unusable for LLD by crafting it.

These rings are so good, I personally levelled up Elreon (and a few other masters) on a second account to Level 4 so that I could have an extra chance at purchasing good master-specific items from them each day after the daily reset. I really wish I had 10 more accounts but I’m not THAT crazy…

99.9% of builds want +life/ES and +mana as 2 of the 3 prefixes on their rings. Certainly, any ring that doesn’t have a top life roll on it is not very good.

Physical damage is another popular prefix. Chaos damage (from Elreon’s crafting bench) is also an interesting option, mainly for builds with high crit multiplier. Of course there are many elemental (attack) damage prefixes that you might need instead, but elemental attack builds have a number of good options for unique rings too.

Finally, don’t forget that Elreon’s “-8 to Mana Cost of Skills” and Leo’s “% Increased Damage” affixes are prefixes too.

This is a big reason are why crafting rings is hard. There are TOO MANY good suffixes (and a bunch of bad ones too)!

Generally you want at least some elemental resistance suffixes, but cast speed and attack speed are really nice if you can get them too.

Elreon’s crafting bench can add additional critical strike chance to rings (at the high cost of 1 divine), which is something that rings normally can’t get.

Elreon’s multi-mod affix is also a suffix, so if you are actually trying to craft a ring from scratch, you probably want to plan for only 2 suffixes since you will need the multi-mod to finish your ring without spending a fortune.

Other good ring suffixes include strength (for more life), int/dex/all-attributes, life on hit, accuracy, mana regen…

As mentioned in the Rings introduction, crafting rings is generally not a good idea. You are much better off looking for decent rings to buy, and perhaps adding a missing stat using Elreon’s crafting bench. You should also do the 5:1 rare vendor recipe on rings, since they take up so little space in your stash.

The one ring crafting exception is Elreon’s “-X to mana cost” rings, since you are unlikely to find any good, already-crafted ones to buy from others.

Super-Budget:
You can always farm for decent rings of course, but it will probably take a LONG time before you get lucky and find some good ones. The next cheapest option is to try to find some decent rings for sale (rare or unique) and buy those. Remember that you can add an affix to turn a mediocre-looking rare ring into a good one using Elreon’s crafting bench. One Elreon ring will probably help you a lot as well, so buy good ones from Elreon and augment them until you make a decent one.

Budget:
Same as Super-Budget, except you might want to take a chance and regal your Elreon rings after augmenting them. After that you might even want to add another mod using Elreon’s crafting bench, if you can spare the orbs (I recommend life if you didn’t hit any yet!).

Middle-Class:
Besides buying good rings from other people, the only other thing worth doing with rings is crafting an Elreon “-8 to mana cost of skills” ring. Regal these (without augmenting a prefix first), and if you get any good affix for LLD on the regal, spend the 2 exalts to craft the rest of the ring as you wish using Elreon’s multimod.

Rich:
Craft rings from scratch at your own risk! Even though you are rich, once you successfully regal a 3-stat ring you will probably want to use Elreon’s 2 exalt multi-mod affix to finish your crafting project. If you want to craft an Elreon “-8 to mana cost of skills” ring (note: you do), regal every -8 ring you can get your hands on (without augmenting; there really is no point) until you get the top LLD life roll (Rotund). You can’t get 60 life on jewelry using Elreon’s crafting bench so this is the only roll that really matters. Then use Elreon’s multimod to finish crafting.

In a perfect world, your amulet would be an Amber to maximize your life / melee physical damage, or a Paua because mana regen is awesome (unless all your skills are free because of Elreon jewelry, of course).



The rest of the stat amulets are all equally unexciting but usually necessary. Try to wear one that provides some strength if you can.



4 life regeneration per second is not useless, and is probably a better option than a non-strength amulet if you don’t require more int or dex. All decent Gold Amulets should be immediately Vaaled, then dealt with accordingly.

Ungil’s Harmony: In theory this seems like it could be good for any elemental damage build to more reliably trigger status effects; losing 50 crit multiplier is pretty rough though. The rest of the stats seem good enough to at least give it a try, but a really nice rare amulet with crit is probably going to be better.



Astramentis: Best in Slot for Iron Grip and Iron Will builds; otherwise mediocre. It sure is nice to not have to worry about int or dex on any of your other gear slots, though!



Carnage Heart: Until someone figures out how to make Vaal Pact worthwhile in LLD, this is just a bad Astramentis.



Eye of Chayula: Even if it costs you 250+ life plus some damage to switch to this amulet, in some matchups it is worth it. Everyone should carry one of these around to swap on when needed.



Atziri’s Foible: This amulet feels like cheating! However the price you pay for having GREAT mana is a loss of life and damage that you could otherwise have on your amulet. You probably never need this in an optimal build, but perhaps there is a build out there with INSANE mana costs that requires this (like a trapper or 6-link caster).



Daresso’s Salute: I don’t know how many accomplished flicker strikers use this but it seems like it could be useful in that sort of build. This definitely encourages a “hit and run” style of play. Note that the extra weapon range this provides is not very important IF you have knockback immunity.



Victario’s Acuity: I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you don’t want to use this in LLD. You can gain charges by destroying traps and minions - 10% of the time - but that’s basically all this amulet does for you. Plus some lightning res.



Karui Ward: Certainly not a best-in-slot item for anyone, but the extra projectile speed is nice for Etheral Knives at least.



Stone of Lazhwar: If you have a decent block chance then this is a great amulet to swap to when facing casters. Its even better if you are also a caster.



Araku Tiki: Best-in-slot for that Low Life Righteous Fire LLD build! (note: this may or may not be an actual thing)



Sidhebreath: I don’t see why an LLD summoner would use anything else – every other build can do better, though.

Go read the “Crafting Rings” section as 99% of the same advice applies here. The only important difference is that you can get crit multi on amulets, and crit strike chance is easier (i.e. cheaper, through Master Crafting) to get on amulets too.

As mentioned before, try not to depend entirely on your amulet for all of your extra str/int/dex requirements, so are you still able to switch to other useful amulets like Eye of Chayula when you need to.

Doedre’s Elixir is a niche flask, for team support builds using Conduit, and for flicker builds to instantly gain a frenzy charge for more flickering. Cold Snap and Immortal Call also benefit from this flask. Note that it consumes pretty much all its charges on use.


Forbidden Taste is basically useless – you are much better off using a Panicked, Bubbling or even Seething life flask with multiple charges. It also consumes ALL of its charges on use. Terrible. Don't forget that this is a Quartz flask though; maybe one day that will be relevant.

[NO LINK YET - WTB]

I'm pretty sure that if I owned a Taste of Hate I would be using it instead of a Granite of Iron Skin on all my physical damage builds (although I'm favoring Granites of Warding these days, which is a tougher tradeoff). Good against Freeze Pulsers too, especially if you have other "chance to avoid freeze/chill" effects. And it boosts your damage! Versatility is good.