Essence

Sometimes you'll discover monsters frozen in essences: solidified, crystalline corruption. These dangerous monsters can be broken free.

If you defeat them, the essence they drop can be used to upgrade normal items to magic items with a guaranteed mod from a category.

For example, we use this one on some boots to ensure a movement speed mod.

Rarely, essences will also drop that allow you to upgrade magics to rares, adding the guaranteed mod.

This is incredibly powerful since it allows you to get a second deterministic mod in your crafting projects.

Combining these with the currencies that are commonly found in Wraeclast for modifying items, and we can get a very nice pair of boots indeed.

Essences are a type of currency item dropped by essence encounters. Essences will add a modifier to an item, guaranteeing a modifier of a specified type.

Essences can appear starting from Act 2.

Rise of the Abyssal Update

Essence Rework

• Essences now have 4 tiers: Lesser, Normal, Greater, and Perfect.
• Instead of adding a modifier of a certain tag, Essences now add a specific modifier, depending on the Tier of Essence and type of item it is being applied to.
• Lesser, Normal, and Greater Essences can upgrade a Magic item to Rare, adding a guaranteed modifier.
• Perfect Essences and Essences obtained through Corruption remove a random modifier and augments a Rare item with a new guaranteed modifier.
• Added 7 new types of Essences.
• Essences of Torment have been renamed to Essences of Abrasion.
• Essence of Hysteria now augments different guaranteed modifiers based on the type of item it is applied to.

Mechanics

Base tier essences will upgrade normal items to magic items, while Greater essences will upgrade magic items to rare.

Using a Vaal Orb on an imprisoned monster will corrupt it and modify the essences it's holding in unpredictable ways. Outcomes include:

• Add a random essence
• Reroll all essences into the same type
• Upgrade regular essences into their Greater versions
• Transform Greater Essences into a Corrupted Essence