Basics of crafting

Crafting in Path of Exile is mostly done by using orbs on non-unique items. The outcomes are going to be wildly different each time and, since Wraeclast is an inhospitable place the outcomes will probably be quite bad. You really need persistence and strong fingers to withstand the endless torrent of bad luck this game can throw at you. It is mostly gambling, the ways to specifically target a specific item are very limited so crafting will more often give you a good result for someone else than for you. There is a method to the madness though! In this game, you can't beat the odds by sheer willpower. Having a solid plan and improving your odds are the two keys to success in the world of crafting.

The basics

Types of mods

First off, there can be two types of modifiers (mods) on an item. These are implicit and explicit mods.

Implicits: These mods are tied to the base of the item. For example, the Rustic Sash has a (12-24)% increased Global Physical Damage implicit modifier. They cannot be removed or changed out for another implicit, except with a vaal orb, which is likely to destroy your item. So, in most cases you are stuck with your implicit.
Explicits: These are the mods that you can roll on an item using currency like the chaos orb and other means. They are visually presented under the implicit mods. Generally, these are the most important modifiers and determine whether an item is worth using. There are two types of explicit mods: Prefixes and Suffixes. Depending on the base of the item the maximum number of explicit modifiers varies. On most rare items, the maximum number of suffixes is three, while the maximum number of prefixes is also three, for a total maximum of six explicit mods.

Base item

Crafting is done on a base item - they might not look like much, but some are worth a lot or are very hard to come by. A base item is for example a normal rarity Vaal Regalia or Jagged Foil. Most base items are not worth using your orbs on, because some bases increase your chance of getting a good item by a lot. This is because some base items have a specific implicit (like the very powerful Opal Ring with up to 25% increased elemental damage), while some others base items have a lot of main attack (physical damage) or defensive stats (evasion, armour and intelligence).

Item rarity

Normal (white name text): An item of normal rarity has no explicit mods. These are the most common items.
Magic (blue name text): An item of magic rarity has at least one explicit mod and can have a maximum of 1 prefix and 1 suffix for a maximum of two affixes.
Rare (yellow name text): An item of rare rarity can have much more mods then a magic item. They will usually have more than four mods, with a limit of 3 prefixes and 3 suffixes for a total of 6 maximum explicit mods. Jewels (of any kind) are the exception with a maximum of 4 mods, with a maximum 2 prefixes and 2 suffixes.
Unique (brown name text): These (mostly) cannot be crafted and have special properties crafted items cannot have. They can be very powerful or very bad, so even though they are of the highest rarity, they won't always be the best choice.

Influences

An item can be influenced by the elder, shaper or a conqueror. Having one of these influences on an item allows it to roll special "influence mods". The influence is indicated by a moving visual effect on the item.

There are 6 types of influences: Shaper, Elder, Hunter, Redeemer, Crusader and Warlord. An item usually has one influence (or none) but through the use of an awakener's orb, items with two influences can be created, giving access to mods from both influences.

Crafting Currency

Currency in Path of Exile isn't just used to buy items from other players, you can also use it to create or modify your own items. Some of the most common methods of crafting involve currency orbs. An item can be modified using the following orbs you will find throughout Wraeclast. Items that change the rarity of an item follow the same rules for rolling their modifiers as items of that rarity you pick up off the floor.

Orb of Transmutation: Will turn a normal item into a magic item (with one or two random explicit mods).
Orb of Alteration: This is one of the most commonly used orbs in crafting. It will reroll a magic rarity item into a new magic item, removing all old explicits on it and giving it up to 2 new explicits mods. If you just need to hit a certain mod, this can be a cost-effective way of creating an item with that mod.
Orb of Augmentation: Will add a new random explicit mod to a magic item that is missing a prefix or suffix. This is often used while alteration-crafting. If you create a single-mod item with a good mod, it is probably worth using one of these on it.
Regal Orb: Will add a new random explicit modifier to a magic item turning, it into a rare item.
Orb of Alchemy: Will turn a normal item into a rare, adding up to six randomly generated explicit modifiers.
Orb of Scouring: The opposite of the Orb of Alchemy, this orb will turn a rare item into a normal rarity item and remove all explicit modifiers from it.
Chaos Orb: Will reroll a rare item into a new rare item changing all its explicit mods.
Divine Orb: Will reroll the numerical values of each explicit mods on the item but will do so within the actual value range of the mod tier. It does not change the mod tier.
Essences: Essences are essentially alchemy orbs that always grant one guaranteed mod. That means that even the worst ones are still almost as good as an alchemy orb while the best ones are a lot better than those. Essences have 7 tiers (from Whispering to Deafening), the 5 lowest tiers of which can be found as drops from frozen mob packs riddled throughout Wraeclast.
The two highest tiers of essence (Shrieking and Deafening) can actually be used on a rare item, meaning that they can function as a special chaos orb instead of an alchemy orb with a single guaranteed mod.(include graph of essences?) Three essences of the same type can be vendored to receive one essence of the next tier up.
Vaal Orb: These will modify the item unpredictably with four possible outcomes. Use at your own risk!
It will either: do nothing except adding the "corrupted" status, change the item into a rare and totally reroll its explicits (this is known as bricking and is very bad), add a corrupted implicit to the item (this can be good and is usually what you're after) or in the case of socketable items, transform a number of sockets into white sockets (these can be socketed with gems of any color). Once an item has been vaaled, it will gain the "corrupted" status, which means it cannot be modified any further, not even by another vaal orb. That means that these orbs are quite likely to destroy your item!
Exalted Orb: Will add a new random explicit modifier to a rare item that has at least one vacant prefix or suffix. It cannot add modifiers that are already on the item.
Conqueror Exalted Orbs: Warlord, Redeemer, Crusader and Hunter Exalted Orb function like normal exalted orbs do except that they will always add a modifier related to their specific influence. You can only use these orbs on uninfluenced items, and it will apply their influence on the item.
Awakener's Orb: This orb will combine two influenced items of a different influence together and create a new item with both items' influences. It will take up to one influenced modifier from both items (if they are available) when making the combination. The other explicit modifiers are rerolled as if using a chaos orb - meaning that for most uses this is essentially a chaos orb with two influence modifiers locked in place.

Common crafting methods

The crafting bench

Using the crafting bench in the hideout is probably the most crafting used method in the game. This is the most straight-forward and predictable method. You can choose a single modifier to add to an item and if you pay the crafting cost it is added as a freely removable "crafted mod". Some of these modifiers can be extremely powerful and can be used flexibly to add a missing piece of elemental resistance to a character or to add maximum life to a piece of gear that is otherwise perfect for you.

More modifiers to craft can be found through crafting recipes in different places in the storyline, maps and the delve mine. You can also unlock specific crafting options by unveiling mods on veiled items.

One specific crafted modifier of note is "this item can have up to three crafted modifiers". This modifier is used for what is known as "multimodding".

Disclaimer for newer players: all the strategies discussed beyond this point are best done on a good base. It can be helpful to check your odds of success on this website. Try at your own risk, crafting can be very expensive! Don't expect good results on your first try, or maybe even your first 1000, depending what you are planning to do. The following crafting methods are often done for either profit or improving ones own build. If crafting for the endgame, it is advisable to buy a good, high level item base, that unlocks the highest tiers of resistances (this is usually item level 84, if these are available within your budget) and, if needed, a good influence. Check the page on this website of the item you are planning to craft to see what powerful modifiers unlock at different item levels!

Multimodding

This strategy makes use of the aforementioned crafting bench mod "this item can have up to three crafted modifiers" to create high-quality items with up to 5 desirable mods. This crafted modifier is itself counted as a modifier, meaning this craft essentially allows you to add two other crafted modifiers through the crafting bench, instead of the normal one. The downsides to this strategy are that the crafted modifier takes up one of the three suffix spots (where some of the most powerful crafted mods reside) and that crafting the mod costs two exalted orbs, which is quite expensive. Multimodding is ideally done on an item with three desirable mods. These are usually created through alt-aug-regaling.

Alt-aug-regaling

This strategy is usually used to create items with a few very high-quality modifiers. To do this method, use alteration orbs and augmentation orbs until you create a magic item with to desirable explicit modifiers, then regal it, hoping you will hit a third good mod. If the regal isn't great, scrap it, using a scour orb to remove all the explicit modifiers on the item. Start again using an orb of transmutation, making the item magic again and go back to the orbs of alteration and augmentation. Repeat this process until you create an item that meets your needs.

Even though this method may use cheap materials, it usually requires large amounts of these cheaper orbs and a lot of patience.

Chaos spamming

This is done by simply using a chaos orb on a rare item repeatedly. Every time a chaos orb is used, it removes the old explicit mods and adds new ones. Since there is no hand-picked selection like in alt-aug-regaling, the results will vary wildly. That said, this method is markedly faster at creating good items then Alt-aug-regaling, while usually coming at a higher cost. By chaos spamming on a good base item, for example an influenced item of a high item level you can increase your chances of creating something valuable and potentially some of the most valuable items in the game.

The same as chaos spamming can also be achieved by using an orb of scouring, followed by an orb of alchemy repeatedly (this is known as scour-alching). This is cheaper most of the time but requires more clicking.

Fossil crafting

This strategy makes use of fossils and resonators, that are usually found in the delve mines. In order to craft using fossils, resonators are socketed with the fossil combination of choice. This method is the best way to target specific modifier combinations out of any crafting method.

A resonator with fossils is used to reroll an item with influenced chances of rolling certain modifiers. Some fossils can be used to make mods (for example caster mods) more likely, while they can also be used to totally prevent certain mods from appearing when used (this is called mod blocking), make them more unlikely. A player can socket multiple fossils into resonators, to essentially create custom currency that has the perfect combination of manipulated chances to create a certain item.

There are even a few fossils that give powerful fossil-only mods, like adding an additional abyssal socket.

Essence spamming

There are two scenario's in which essence spamming is usually done. The first is simply as a slightly worse alchemy orb with one guaranteed bad mod. Even though that sounds unappealing, by the time you finish the campaign you probably have dozens of essences lying around - using them is essentially getting a lot of free alchemy orbs!

The second scenario is using the essence as a much better alchemy orb, guaranteeing a certain mod. It is common for players to upgrade their essences to tier one (Deafening) using the 3-to-1 vendor recipe upgrade in order to get the most out of their guaranteed modifier. It is however worth considering going with a slightly lower tier, since going down a single essence tier means getting three times the chances at a good item.

Other crafting methods

Beasts: Einhar's bestiary offers a few powerful advanced crafting options, including adding 30% quality to your items and splitting a rare item into two. In order to use these crafting methods, you have to gather the correct red beast and sacrifice it at Einhars menagerie. An important bestiary craft to know about is the crafting of "aspects" - these are special buffs that reserve mana like an aura that can only be acquired by using a special bestiary craft on an item with an empty suffix.
Betrayal crafting benches: As part of the betrayal expansion, players can investigate the research safehouse to add powerful crafting benches to their safehouse rewards. The crafting benches received depend on the syndicate members in the research safehouse and their rank. Notable crafting benches include: Leo rank 2 (free divine orb use), Leo rank 3 (free exalted orb use), Jorgin of any tier (will turn an amulet into a random talisman of the same tier as Jorgin's rank), Aisling rank 2&3 (adding two veiled modifiers to an item), and vorici of any rank (coloring up to three sockets on an item white).

There is two other syndicate members that are relevant for crafting - Hillock and Guff. These two aren't limited to the research safehouse in order to provide a crafting bench. Hillock allows you to add up to 28% quality to an item, depending on his safehouse and rank. This can be very powerful on weapons or energy shield armours. Guff is the odd one out of all of these - his bench is very powerful but very limited. Guff can give the player up to 20 seconds of free crafting time with unlimited currency (depending on his rank). You need to bring a normal rarity item to use his bench. Using the right base item, Guff's bench can be extremely rewarding but 20 seconds is a short time!
Vendor recipes: There are a few vendor recipes that can be used to create decent leveling items during the campaign. This method of crafting is very limited but can be quite useful if you are just starting, or trying to compete in a race. Here is a list of useful leveling vendor recipes.