Some Thoughts on the Upcoming Crafting Changes in 0.4

The big one, of course, is the removal of Homogenizing Omens and the new limit on desirable runes. We can argue about Homogenizing Omens all day, but the Q&A makes it pretty clear they’re not coming back. With that in mind, here are the benefits from 0.3 that still remain—at least on paper and in no particular order:

1. Easier effective fracture odds on very low-weight mods (think T1 Crit or +3 Gem Skills on amulets) through Perfect Transmutes and Augments. This makes normal bases (and annuls for exceptional bases) even more valuable than before.
2. Better odds for Whittling when using Greater (ilvl 35+) and Perfect (ilvl 50+) Chaos orbs.
3. Improved jewelry slam outcomes using a combination of Catalyzing Omens (which weight up tags) and Greater/Perfect Exalted orbs (which limit the mod pool).
4. Higher chances of landing a strong third mod—assuming your first three mods are all prefixes or all suffixes—via the fracture → chaos-spam → Sinistral/Dextral Exalt slam with Greater or Perfect Ex → annul-if-miss chain. This is further improved with catalysts on jewelry.
5. Reduced dependence on third-socket corruptions for certain exceptional bases (e.g., 10% more MS on boots, +1 gem level on wands). Strong sanctification or enchant hits are now much more valuable—for example, a 5% MS corruption enchant on boots or +5 → +6 gem level sanctification on wands.
6. “Cheap” Sinistral/Dextral annuls through the Sin/Dex Crystal → Essence of Abyss → Reveal → Sin/Dex Crystal → Perfect Essence chain. This effectively provided a very cheap fourth or fifth mod, depending on where your fracture landed in the crafting sequence and Perfect Essences available relative to the base type.
7. The ability to use “named” Abyss Omens on jewelry to target-reveal specific mods. This also helps with setting up blockers (e.g., hybrid attribute mods on jewelry).
8. Desecration for the final mod, which effectively prevents bricking or a full prefix/suffix reset as happened in 0.1 and 0.2.
9. Ability to independently reroll implicits via Omen of the Blessed.
10. Better recomb odds via Omen of Recombination.
11. Greater and Perfect Essences. Not going to do a big write-up here, but these are still insanely powerful for target crafting good gear.

I’m sure I’m forgetting a few things, but I don’t think crafting is as doomed as people fear.

Crafting will definitely become harder and more expensive for top-tier items, but we’re still keeping a lot of the improvements that arrived in 0.3 to craft some really good gear.

On paper, jewelry retains the biggest benefit. Martial weapons are still as hard to make as before. Wands got much harder, but I think this is the right move as making insane wands was way too easy (the addition of certain bases such as Galvanic also help with targeting the specific +Gem Levels you need; hopefully they add more in 0.4). Triple-flat attack gloves also got harder to make. And given the limited prefix and suffix pools on armours, these were not very difficult to craft to begin with in 0.2.

We also still need to see what further changes to existing crafting materials appear in the upcoming patch notes—and what the new Vaal league crafting tech brings to the table.