The Best Item Ever Crafted
#1 Bow, Most Expensive Item, and Longest Craft EVER
Cost of Craft
Total Cost of Craft: 241-243 mirrors
-Cost of implicits: 2 mirrors
-Cost of crucible tree: 75 divines
-While crafting prefixes, I hit t1t1t3, I traded this + 2 mirrors to Sushi for his 3t1 implicit base
-Cost of Prefixes at time of 3t1 was 96 mirrors
-Tempering Cost 11 mirrors
-Divining Cost 176 divines
-Suffix Cost ~129 mirrors
-Duration of craft (days) 31
-Duration of craft (time) 345 hours
Source of Funding
-Belton: 42 mirrors
-Initial Investors: 16 mirrors
-Prepaid Mirror Fees: 86 mirrors
- “Community Funding”/Donations/Handouts: 99 mirrors
Financial Disclosure
-First 110 hours of craft were on Youtube. This resulted in $212.
-Once unbanned on twitch, noticed ad revenue was much much more lucrative than any other for of payment twitch had. Kept my stream on 24/7, playing ads at their maximum while Afk or sleeping. This accounted for 95% of earned revenue over the month (the light purple bars below) On days where I played for 24 hour streams (no afk, as seen the first stream on week of June 22nd), actually playing the game was a net loss. This monetization model makes no sense to me, however, this was the same amount of money I had earned from twitch since Jan, 2022 over 4000 hours of streaming. The unbanning, bow, and diablo 4 exodus all contributed to much higher viewer numbers. I was transparent with viewers throughout as to why I was running ads while I slept. This was the first month ever where I earned enough to support myself while streaming. A large portion of which, certainly, had to do with the bow.
Previous 16 month stream schedule/earnings
The Base
Prefixes
-Prefixes evolved over time, eventually boiling down to 4 different strategies which each had their own merit– this was relative to material cost, personal preferences, and time constraints. I will list each method used with the pros and cons for each.
As a baseline, rolling merciless with alterations was needed. This takes a while but only has to be done once so grand scheme was not a big deal. Once it was rolled, I divined the merciless roll to be perfect (179). The reason for this is that flaring has a very wide spread in lower and upper rolls, and is by far the most likely second mod to hit (200 weighting vs dictator’s which is 25). If you were to regal into a good flaring roll, by already having a perfect merciless roll, you would not really need to worry about the result of Dictator’s if you hit it on 2nd augment, as it only has a range of 75-79. This early divining might seem premature– but it could , in effect, save you thousands of divines later. A good cost/benefit.
Method One
Method Two
-Craft “Can have 3 crafted mods” while item is magic and imprint several times– again , we did batches of 144.
-Regal
-Annul whatever the regal is unless it is flaring or a high hybrid.
-If the annul removes the meta mod, and then the unwanted regaled mod, thats fine, recraft 3 crafted mods and continue.
-Craft Mana leech and phys leech. Both are suffixes when benched, but block the prefixes.
-Augment phys. This will guarantee either flat phys or hybrid.
- Since there is no prefixes cannot be changed applied, there is a 25% chance augmented mod will remove merciless.
-You will never have to annul a 3rd prefix, it is rather efficient, and can be more cost effective than method one.
Method Three
Method Four (s.o to Radar)
-This method involves crafting “cannot roll attack mods” when the item is magic and imprinting it several (144) times.
-Regal. In most cases this will hit a suffix.
-Exalt twice more, hitting 1 more suffix, and +1 gems prefix— which is the only non-attack mod.
-Change bench craft to Prefixes cannot be changed
-Reforge Phys
-This will eventually result in you hitting either flaring (t1 flat) or a high hybrid roll. Since Merciless and +1 gems are already both on the item, you will now have 3 prefixes.
-HOWEVER, since the +gem modifier is a NON-ATTACK mod, you will ALWAYS be able to remove it via “cannot roll attack modifiers” and annulling.
-This essentially works like step one, except you forego having to do a 33% annul to clear unwanted prefix, in favour of a guaranteed removal.
- Since Prefixes cannot be changed was cheaper than the cost of a Craicic Chimeral at the time, this was not only better on the ones that “hit” but net cheaper overall.
-In some situations, it is possible that the reforge fully mods out the item, requiring a “yolo” annul to be able to craft the Cannot Roll Attack Mods necessary to remove the +gem prefix.
The Enchant
There are limited options when it comes to viable enchants vis a vis tempering orbs. The standard play is to get 8% phys, no drawback no fuss.
Alternatives do exist but are burdened by rather punitive drawbacks– all red, green, or blue sockets— 25% decreased value of speed mods, 25% decreased value of critical mods, -3 Sockets, or 200% increased attributes (this would give a spine bow a min. Dex. requirement of 636– or an omni req of 2500+, neither of which are realistic. Wanting to get the high pdps possible, decreasing the amount of local ias was out of the question. Single colour sockets too. This left really only 2 options– lose 3 sockets, or crit reduc. If one were to aim for DD as the 3rd mod, this would have 0 downside, and even if one did opt to still craft crit chance either local or local + str/int– the downside would be somewhat mitigated by the fact that Critical strike chance is hard capped (cannot exceed 100) and is generally considered to be very easy– even when using a base spine— which has 6.5 % crit only. This is what we would aim for. �
I had not prepared myself mentally for the journey that lay ahead. Tempering orbs went from 12 divines to 25 divines. We searched far and wide. We were bled by those knowing our aims. 296 tempering orbs, and 11 mirrors later we hit it. Within 5 minutes of doing so, the price of tempering orbs would drop down to 9 divines. I do not believe this to be a sinister plot– simply those reacting to a moment of leverage in a surging market with a very finite supply.
Suffixes
-Suffixes are a rather straightforward process, with respect to methodology, once desired mods are decided upon. Step one, in any process really, is to get +2 arrows— hereafter simply deciding on either an Aisling mod (14% DD, 15% ias, 32% crit with str/int being the “winners) – or a naturally rolled mod. IAS and +2 arrow will be on any version of the bow— the 3rd mod is where there is some wiggle room/maleability.
-Originally, the ambition was simply to make a bow better than that of TFT— and claiming the “best bow in league title”, however, after failing 4 consecutive 66% success rate Aisling attempts— I decided we might as well go balls to the wall, and get the perfect weapon. This would require T1 IAS, +2 arrow, and a crafted mod– however, would make the bow unmatched and head and shoulders above all others – not only in the league, but in the game.
Suffixes Cont.
-There are 3/4 basic ways in which one can go about pursuing suffixes with this goal in mind, and they each have some points of merit, as well as drawbacks. It should be noted, however, that the bench mod, exalt, exalt, meta, scour method is almost always going to be the most cost efficient. There are some non tangibles with this method that I personally am somewhat weary of– such as repetition fatigue, monotony , and zoning out. (think alteration spamming when you roll over a rare mod youve spent 2000+ alts looking for, without thinking). Furthermore, since the craft used scours, and the sheer volume of currency items (7000+exalts ~), I initially avoided this as I was already several hundred hours into the craft, mentally and physically drained, and somewhat skeptical of my personal abilities as a crafter to not make a single mistake. This was done conscientiously , and in spite of being fully aware of the objectively superior efficiency of this method.
Suffixes Cont.
The Next Method then, it stands to reason– would be augmenting. There are several practical advantages to this…on paper it is much faster (less clicks, more “action”, and you also have to swap between crafting and harvest benches constantly. This may seem trivial but that small movement and darting of the eyes , for myself, keeps my brain fresh and engaged. I can craft without hesitation and without fail doing this for hours— at very high speeds. There were times when I would be spending 3-5 mirrors an hour doing so. This brings us to the major drawback of this method- cost. Initially it was calculated to be ~30-40% less cost effective than exalting, this was deemed acceptable as the craft , funding, and interest in the bow had far exceeded capital requirements at the time, and any liquidity issues were easily solved. Several factors ended up exacerbating this cost however, increasing the gap between the two methods— until it became indefensible to continue with the augmenting swaps. Sacred life force had gone up 450% in 2 days. Vivid and wild were not subject to such insane multiples – but had marked rises in price in kind.
Suffix Cont.
When Augmenting, you could either choose Pure attack, pure speed, or speed attack— which , as the name suggests, is simply a hybrid of the two.
Augment attack can hit both T1 ias and +2 Arrow– the two “desired” mods— and in this respect was valuable, however, these were not weighted strongly and variance can really derail this strat.
Augment Speed, similarly, suffered from inefficiency of its singular use- there are only 2 mod choices, Proj. Speed, and Attack speed. If there were ever a non-t1 IAS roll on the bow, it would be useless to augment speed- as this would guarantee proj speed, and waste 5-10 divines of lifeforce. To remedy the issues suffered by both, we simply combine them.
Augment speed had a relatively high chance to hit t1 ias— a mod that was often accompanied by proj speed, which could be deterministically removed via CRAM and an annul— leaving itself open to a mod block+ exalt, CRAM/PCBC, annul cycle until (hopefully) +2 arrows is exalted. The average amount of ex to accomplish this is ~570. We used 1750 to no avail, hitting t1 ias +1 arrow 30 times without a +2
Augment attack was used in cases described above in the augment speed paragraph— simply, it was a way to remove sub optimal attack speed rolls while providing a small chance at hitting +2 arrow, and the overall augment cost was significantly cheaper per augment due to the discrepancies in how the market values wild vs vivid LF.
Suffix Cont
Despite the intended benefits of these courses of action coming to fruition— we simply could not “close” — hitting T1 IAS 334 times, +2 arrow 23 times, and exalting upon the former over 1750 times as mentioned earlier. Once the craft became public knowledge, opportunist bulk buyers, currency flippers, and likely some bad actors began hoarding and upselling lifeforce. This is a natural result of supply and demand. There were extreme instances of price gouging that were rather obvious, when an individual would buy 150-250 sacreds, and constantly overprice the market by 0.5-1 divine, regardless of its movement. These people were clearly accumulating to sell to us , knowing the financial means we had through communal effort. Jenebu (head of TFT) at one point had purchased over 1000 at 4.5-5 divine range. This is when there were 20-30 elsewhere on the entire market. When I saw this, I decided to change my stream title to “switching to exalted method” and went to bed. When I awoke, the market had crashed 40%, eventually going from 4.5-5 div to 2 divines in less than 36 hours. Jenny would have lost a couple mirrors in the process. A small dent, assuredly, but a fun thought nonetheless. �
Here on out we went for the generic, most cost effective method of old. Tried, tested, true— and boring as fuck. In approximately ~4500 exalts we hit our 7th +2 arrow— and upon so doing, attempted our 25th augment speed on +2. It hit. Best Bow Ever had been made.
Divining
There is little to say here other than it is the only part of the craft whereby we were “lucky”... and that is a bit of an undersell. The average amount of divines it takes to roll 100% perfect prefixes on a phys bow (assuming phys/flat/hyb, and not including the accuracy range) is 1/9100. That would have translated to roughly ~17-18 mirrors
….we hit 100% in 167.
The Undisputed GOAT – 24 Hours out
Plans for the future