how to craft stuff

how to get bases with low effort:
1. gamble the basic/exceptional base item, either: till you get a rare, or a magic one then alch/diffuse till rare
2. use lesser/greater arcanist so its elite
3. diffuse to magic or white
also: some elite bases can just be shopped
also: for alching low level basic uniques, sometimes you can just buy white bases from a1/a2 normal, alch once, then throw away. For example: arcblade (sabre from a2)

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basics of alching for uniques:
1. use alch on white item
2. use diffusers till its white again (this lowers the ilvl)
2.1 if you have no diffusers, you can cube an alch by itself to turn it into a diffuser.
3. aslong as the ilvl is still high enough, repeat.
bonus: edit your bh to mark white bases for the unique you want, and alch those too to save on diffusers

alch ilvl trick:
alching an item has a chance to make it unique, the base items ilvl must be higher than the ilvl of the unique though
you can abuse this to give yourself a higher chance of alching certain items, by excluding high ilvl uniques.

good examples are:

cains ring (ilvl 40) gambling silver rings on a lvl 45, then alching till its less than ilvl 40. The only uniques it can roll are kaganring, kaganband, and cains. Way better chance than alching a high ilvl silver ring.
Melancholy (ilvl 3) If an agate jewel rolls unique, between ilvl 3-14, its a garunteed melancholy. Not as abusable as cains rings, since you cant gamble jewels.
headhunters (troll belt) is garunteed, if it rolls unique at ilvl 77 or 78.
Probably some others too, cains ring is most useful though since its such a powerful item.

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what to do with a good rare or craft:
1. augment
2. corrupt
3. add sockets

how to make runewords
0. double check on the armoury your item can get the right # of sockets
1. repeatedly use mechanic runestones till its the correct # of sockets
2. corrupt
3. if corruption turns it rare, diffuse to white and restart
3.1 if corruption has no change, or an undesirable corruption, you can go back to using mechanics.
4. add your runes. You can still take them out later with a strange cube.
bonus: for items that roll +class skills, you can roll till you have +3 and the correct socket, making some very strong cheap items. A good example is +3 arcane weave, plague runeword, giving +5 arcane weave in total.

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ilvl vs alvl:
alvl determines what affixes can roll on an item, its based on the item base in combination of the ilvl. The actual calculation is too complicated so I'm not going to explain it. if you add %ALVL% to a bh line, you can see what the alvl for an item is easily.

the most notable thing about this, is that any ilvl of diadem will always roll like its ilvl 99. dont roll it below ilvl 42 though, since below that it wont be able to be 3 socketed. This also applies to diadem crafts, theres no reason to use a regal crystal, since a blessed crystal will roll the same.

example diadem using this: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/148765370461847552/730372504748687420/unknown.png

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high level rares:
rare items when they have a high ilvl will have the restricted mod pool just like crafts. The only ways to obtain ilvl 99 rares is: gambling on high level characters, drops from sanctum of despair bosses and corrupting uniques you upgraded with diviners. Some items are way more likely to be gg when they are rare, since having 4-6 affixes is more useful than having 4 affixes and the craft modifiers.

in my experience this is most useful on gloves & circlets. Physical weapons are also ok, since they are much more likely to roll decent, but crafts have a higher maximum potential. there might be some other bases I haven't noted.

Gambling has the notable dissadvantage of typically being normal/exceptional items, which when upped wont gain the elite automod. If you do have a high level character though, gambling a bunch of gloves is really easy and quick. You'll get some good tri res + life gloves pretty fast.

example gg gloves I got via gambling: https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/148765370461847552/730366923350605824/unknown.png

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ilvl thing for class specific amulets:
the required alvl for all the class specific amulet mods is 1. This is very useful, since as you reroll an item using sacred prisms, it gets closer and closer to ilvl 1, which gradually removes more affixes, giving you a higher chance of the exclusive mods. The dissadvantage of this is no +2 class skills, no +3 tab skills. Also below certain ilvls you wont get + individual skills.

example good amulet abusing this (5 class specific mods): https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/148765370461847552/730366752516603925/unknown.png

sacred prism oddity: at a certain point these only lower the ilvl by 1, instead of 2. I think its when the item is below ilvl 50.