GGG, what is the purpose of Essences?

I played for 400+ hours. I found more Greater Jewelers than greater Essences. In fact I only ever found ONE greater essence and maybe 15 lesser ones. That's it. AND... it somehow got WORSE after patch 0.1.1 because Essences practically went extinct for some reason.



GGG, what is the point of Essences? You don't get enough to use them on anything and if you do use them, they give you the lowest possible tier roll EVERY TIME.

Are we supposed to use them while leveling? Are they end-game currency? Because you don't get enough to use at low levels and the rolls are so bad that you would never use them on end-game gear.



This game has so many problems right now that people don't even talk about Essences despite the fact they are utterly worthless. Essences have a useful function. They allow you to target specific stats. Why not make them common and make them an option for crafting while going through the campaign?



Same thing with Orb of Annulment. The second rarest currency in the game (second to Mirror) that has no use right now. Why not make them drop as often as Chaos Orbs and make them more interesting by having them remove all stats on an item. Or add a little bit of RNG and make them remove either all Prefixes or all Suffixes. Right now they serve as a worse version of a Chaos Orb that you don't even want to use because it's so rare.

Found 2 greater essences in 300 hours.
I don't know why they are so rare, they aren't overpowered, actually they are barely useful. Even with 3 good mods, here is 95% chance that item will be trash.

Currently small essence is a slightly better transmutation, and greater essence is a slightly better regal.
If small were a regal, and greater were a chaos, they would be much more useful.

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LeadRaven#6291 wrote:

Found 2 greater essences in 300 hours.
I don't know why they are so rare, they aren't overpowered, actually they are barely useful. Even with 3 good mods, here is 95% chance that item will be trash.

This is the only form of deterministic crafting we have.
Some items for those attribute stackers cost mirrors.

And this 95% chance comes straight from the random number toilet...

"

LeadRaven#6291 wrote:

Currently small essence is a slightly better transmutation, and greater essence is a slightly better regal.
If small were a regal, and greater were a chaos, they would be much more useful.

There are tons of white jewelry that are good for crafting, breach rings in particular.

Example:
You can do small lightning essence, or mana, or attribute. And if you like the roll, you can craft it further.

Triple attack damage, triple attribute, double lightning, or mana-caster are selling for a small fortune.

Just think about it.

"

peter1990ex#0531 wrote:

I played for 400+ hours. I found more Greater Jewelers than greater Essences.

As any game mechanic, you need to focus on this.

Stacking tablets for essence, picking the atlas passives, picking maps with essence is the way to go, if you want to farm.

(Attribute greater was around 250 exalts last night.)

If ritual/delirious/breach was not that profitable, I would consider playing for essences.

It is not bad, it is just not that powerful in terms of mobs density / currency, but I expect nerfs to those mechanics and buffs to other.

Keep this in mind.