Path of Exile: Essence League Mechanic Guide

Essence is one of the oldest league mechanics in the pool of mechanics that make "core" Path of Exile. Its straightforward design makes it a great starting point for players who want to dip their toes into Path of Exile's endgame, but don't want to be overwhelmed too quickly. The Essence mechanic is composed of two parts - the Essence monster, and the Essence itself. You get Essences (such as [ITEM LINK] from monsters trapped in, well, Essences!

Essence is considered Extra Content and has a baseline non-zero chance of randomly being encountered in maps.

Our league mechanic guides are structured according to "Depth" - the deeper you go into the article, the more complex the mechanics get. If it all becomes too much, take a break from this guide, play with the league mechanic enough to master the fundamentals then come back and delve deeper!

Difficulty: Generally easy, with occasional mortal danger.
Complexity: Low, for Path of Exile standards.

The icon that denotes Essence content and rewards of the Essence type.

Depth 1 - Basic Interaction

In your journeys, you will find packs of monsters trapped in icy crystals. The central monster, a Rare, is what you're interested in. Clicking on its crystal prison three times will release it and its minions! Kill the monster and it will drop the Essences its tooltip promised. Here's a quick example:

VIDEO

There's a few things to keep in mind and watch out for:

• The imprisoned monster's tooltip lists its Rare modifiers. Make sure to read them before you release it so you know what you're getting into!
• Each Essence on the monster acts as a buff - the monster becomes stronger and gets a new ability for each Essence it contains.
• For example, a monster possessed by the Essence of Misery will occasionally shoot out pulses that inflict a Chaos Damage Over Time debuff on any player hit.
• A monster with a lot of Essences can become extremely dangerous - beware and be prepared!

Essence monsters can become very dangerous through more than just stacking Essences - be sure to check the last section of this guide to find out what stacking mechanics can do!

Depth 2 - Essence Fundamentals

So, you killed the monster, and got some Essences. Let's see how they behave at the simplest level:

• An Essence is a one-time use item. It is consumed when used.
• Essences can stack up to 9 times.
• An Essence can be used on most equippable gear.
• The Essence rerolls an item's modifiers and guarantees one specific modifier.
• The modifier varies from Essence to Essence, and within each Essence can vary based on the target item's type.

Here's an example. In the video below, I'm using a Deafening Essence of Loathing on an amulet, then on a pair of boots:

VIDEO

From the video, we can observe the following:

• The Essence rerolled the modifers of both items.
• It guaranteed a different modifier for each item, because their item type is different.
• When holding ALT over the item, we can see the Essence mod is a Suffix modifier called "of the Essence".

That's the gist of it. While endgame Essences upgrade a Normal item to Rare or reroll the modifiers of a Rare item, note that lower-level versions of some Essences upgrade a Normal (white) item to Rare. The end result is the same: A rare item with an Essence-specific modifier, but the base item you use will need to be a different rarity. Speaking of ranks...

Depth 3 - Essence Ranks

Most Essences have multiple ranks. Those can be upgraded to their next tier with a simple vendor recipe. A vendor recipe is when you sell a specific combination of items to any vendor. The recipe in this case is:

3x Essences of the same type and tier -> 1x Essence of the next tier higher

This is a common upgrade recipe you'll see popping up for various other items. Essence rank matters for a few reasons:

• An Essence's rank determines the maximum item level it can be used on. For example, the lowest-tier Essence can only be used on items whose level is 35 or less. You can check an item's level by hovering over it with your cursor and pressing alt.
• An Essence's rank also determines the power of its modifiers. The higher its rank, the stronger the modifier.

Most Essences have at least three ranks. The "endgame" Essence ranks, ordered from least to most powerful are "Screaming", "Shrieking" and "Deafening". These are the ones you really want. What's more:

• The top rank of Essences you can find naturally in White maps is Screaming.
• The top rank in Yellow and Red maps is Shrieking.
• To get Deafening Essences,, you need to either use the vendor recipe of a Remnant of Corruption, which we'll talk about next.

There are four Essences that have no rank and can only be obtained by Corrupting Essence monsters before releasing them. We'll talk about those in Depths 4, 5 and 6.

Depth 4 - The Remnant of Corruption

The Remnant of Corruption is... well, an "evil" essence if you will! It is not used in item crafting. Its sole purpose is to Corrupt trapped Essence monsters. A Remnant of Corruption is used before you release an Essence monster from its prison, inviting potential chaos, but also potential reward.

So far, we've generally been referring to Natural Essences in our discussion, but remember those four Essences with no ranks I alluded to earlier? Those are Corrupted Essences, and they can only be obtained by using a Remnant of Corruption on an Essence monster.

Remnants of Corruption can randomly be found inside Essence monsters, same as Natural Essences. When you use a Remnant of Corruption on an Essence monster, one of the following random outcomes will be chosen:

1. The monsters are released instantly (oops!), and they're empowered.
2. All the Essences contained within the rare monster are upgraded to a tier higher. This is the outcome you want if you're looking for Deafening Essences.
3. The Rare monster gains an additional Essence, becoming stronger and dropping that Essence as well upon dying.
4. Essences are transformed into random ones from the next group. Occasionally, this also means upgrading an Essence's tier.

What's this group I speak of? Essences are split into six groups. Let's break them down in the next section.

Depth 5 - Essence Groups

Generally, no one spends hours learning which group each Essence is a part of. Most important is remembering which Essences are in the "Purple MEDS" group. Purple MEDS is known as group E, and is comprised of "Misery", "Envy", "Dread" and "Scorn". Corrupted Essences are part of group F. When you hit random outcome #4 using a Remnant of Corruption, any Purple MEDS have a chance to become Corrupted Essences!

This behavior can be observed across groups. Essences in group A can become group B essences, B become C and so on.

When you use a Remnant of Corruption, it's usually for the following reasons:

• You hope to transform one or more Essences from the Purple MEDS group into a Corrupted Essence.
• The monster has a bunch of Shrieking-tier Essences, which could be transformed into Deafening ones, the highest tier of any non-Corrupted Essence.

This guide will eventually have a nice table that shows which essences are in which group, but for now, I'll list them in a very ugly way.

The table below will better show which Essences are part of which group:

Group A: Greed, Contempt, Hatred, Woe
Group B: Fear, Anger, Torment, Sorrow
Group C: Rage, Suffering, Wrath, Doubt
Group D: Loathing, Zeal, Anguish, Spite
Group E: Scorn, Envy, Misery, Dread
Group F: Insanity, Horror, Delirium, Hysteria

Depth 6 - Corrupted Essences

You'll notice that our Group F Essences, the Corrupted batch, don't have different ranks. Indeed, what you see is what you get with them, and if you hover over them you'll notice their modifiers are much stronger and distinct compared to their Natural siblings. Coupled with their increased rarity, they can fetch a nice price on the Trade site. If you're enjoying doing Essence content, consider paying extra attention to opportunities where you can try for a Corrupted Essence by Corrupting Essence monsters! If you don't have a use for them, stop hoarding them and put them up for sale!

While very rare, Corrupted Essences do have three other ways they can be acquired:

1. Infused Incubator - Grants three random Essences, which can include Corrupted Essences.
2. Three Voices - Grants three random Essences, which can include Corrupted Essences.
3. The Void - Grants a random Divination Card reward, which can include the reward of the aforementioned Three Voices Divination Card.

Depth 7 - More Essences & Essence Scarabs

Want more Essence? In this section we'll talk about the basic steps you can take to increase and guarantee Essence content in your maps, as well as other places in the game where you can find Essence loot without interacting with the Essence monster mechanic itself.

First up, there's three ways to artificially increase or guarantee Essence monsters in your maps:

• Using the Essence map crafting option, which guarantees an additional 2 Rare Essence monsters for the cost of 3 Chaos Orbs.
• Using an Essence Scarab, also guarantees an additional 2 Rare Essence monsters.. You can use up to 4 of these Scarabs in a single map!
• Allocating certain passive nodes etc. - there's a notable that guarantees 1 Essence monster. We'll finish this when we have the Atlas Planner ////////////////

In addition, you can get Essences from a plethora of other leagues' content. Open the box below to check them out!

In addition, there are 4 more Scarabs you can use to further juice the mechanic in your maps. Note that some of there do not guarantee Essences in your maps; you'll want to combine them with one of the above options to guarantee they do not go to waste.

• Essence Scarab of Ascent - //does this go over the Shrieking softcap???
• Essence Scarab of Stability - Removess random outcomes #1 and #3 from the Remnant of Corruption's possible effects.
• Essence Scarab of Calcification - If you really need Essences in bulk, this will be a fun one. This is the only other Scarab that guarantees Essences on its own.
• Essence Scarab of Adaptation - Combine this with, say, the Scarab of Calcification and you'll have more Essences than you can carry back home. Warning, monsters will be extremely dangerous.

Depth 8 - Essential Atlas Passive Tree

You've made it to the end, congratulations! In this final section we'll take a look at the various Atlas effects found in Notable passive nodes, what they do, and if they're worth taking. There's several other aspects to farming more efficiently in Path of Exile, such as which maps to prioritize, but in an attempt to keep this guide evergreen, we'll focus on parts of the farming strategy that are set in stone. Atoll might be a great map for farming Essences, but what if it's not in the rotation every league, y'know what I mean?

Other Considerations

Think of this section as a cautionary tale, a collection of red flags.

Lots of things can kill you in Path of Exile, and Essence monsters are no exception! "Funny" things can happen when an Essence monster interacts with other league mechanics:

• An Essence monster may be corrupted by a Tormented Spirit, which will make it exceptionally beefy and powerful.
• An Essence monster may occasionally be a Beast if Einhar is present on the map. This adds another layer of resilience as well as unique abilities to the monster.
• An Essence monster can be affected by various zone / area effects such as Delirium, adding yet another layer of danger.

With the way Path of Exile's systems were designed to interact with each other, it's possible that all three of the above conditions could be active at once, on the same monster. Always be aware of all the ways an Essence monster can be enhanced, and decide whether the reward is worth the risk!

With regards to crafting, the most important thing to keep in mind about Essence Crafting is how it interacts with 'metamods'. A metamod is an expensive, special craft you can find in the Crafting Bench that adds what you could call a 'crafting modifier' onto an item, such as "Prefixes Cannot be Changed" or "Cannot Roll Caster Modifiers". While many other crafting mechanics in Path of Exile, such as the Chaos Orb, will respect these metamods' conditions, Essences will ignore it and override it, so don't go wasting you currency!