Crafting your gear:

The final step in any version of these bows is to enchant it with harvest with an "Quality doesn't increase physical damage, grants 1% attack speed per 8% quality instead" popularly called "Enchant weapon attack speed" or "Enchant quality attack speed" on discord

To get the most out of this enchant you'll need to boost your bow to 24% quality later with Hillock as a leader in transportation or if you're crafting one of the non starting versions of the bow simply use a couple of perfect fossils

Boosting this beyond 24% quality has no bonus whatsoever because the following thresshold point for extra 1% attack speed is 32% quality and you don't and shouldn't craft any quality boosting bench crafts on it

This attack speed is considered Local so it boosts the base APS of your bow, therefore multiplying all the other increases to attack speed you get, it's a fairly substantial dps boost for a craft that's very common and you'll get a few of these yourself, even if you don't they cost around 30c on discord

Bow

Starting bow:

Shrieking Essence of dread ilvl 50 6L bow that comes from card Porcupine cards

You'll get a +2 to bow gem levels bow, that's good enough for white maps and probably even yellow, don't bother investing much yet,

this a bow you'll use on your miner so you don't care about attack speed yet or level of socketed gems that much since you don't use empower

you can craft regular damage over time from crafting bench if you have an open prefix

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Great bow if Deafening essences of zeal and annullments are cheap:

Getting this bow costs a fair bit if you're a casual player and even if you're not you should have around 8 exalts of spare currency prepared for it

This is basically your endgame weapon for the build so only invest in this when you're sure this is a build you want to keep playing a lot

Get a set of porcupine cards or buy an ilvl 50 6l short bow or any 6l bow that has 1,5 Attacks per second base(Short, thicket, grove)

if they're not expensive try to get an ilvl 82 bow so it can possibly roll damage over time multiplier suffix, but it's not a priority, getting an affordable 6l base is more important

Step 1

Use deafening essence of zeal

Step 2

If annulment orbs are cheap as they were in ritual(couple of chaos early on) you should just try annuling until you get rid of all prefixes and have an open suffix

if you annul an item down to 1 prefix and attack speed suffix, use a beastiary beast(Farric lynx alpha) that removes a prefix and adds a suffix, these beasts are usually 10-15c thanks to bestiary nodes on the atlas and you might even get one or two yourself

You now have a bow that has no prefixes and 2 suffixes, it needs to have 2 suffixes for this next step to work correctly or you would need to waste another exalt

Step 3

Craft cannot roll attack mods(1ex) from the bench(buy a service on discord if you don't have the craft)

Step 4

Cheapest next step is to go on discord and buy one of the following:

Leo Tier 3 syndicate bench(augments a rare item with a new mod) these are usually much cheaper than exalts, sometimes even half the price
Harvest craft that says Augment an item with a new modifier(Popularly called Augment any mod) usually around the same price as Leo bench

If you don't want to hassle with that simply exalt slam the item yourself

You now have an item that has following:

17-18% attack speed
random suffix
+1 to level of socketed gems
Cannot roll attack mods

Step 5

Craft Can have up to 3 crafted modifiers(2 ex + 1 scour) on the bench replacing the cannot roll attack mods
Craft +2 to level of support gems(2 ex)
Craft tier 1 Chaos damage over time multiplier(4 chaos)

This is a pretty fucking good bow, total cost needed for crafting is 5ex + 4chaos for all bench crafts + 1 ex for adding a mod to your base earlier +
whatever you paid for essences and annuls, even if you were extremely unlucky you shouldnt need to spend more than a total of 1 ex to get your base
with essence of annuls so total cost would be around 7ex, but you should have 8 ex ready just in case you're the unluckiest player in the world

services on discord usually cost 20c per craft so the cost of services shouldn't be more than half an ex

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Great bow if essences and annulments are for some reason expensive:

Step 1

get a ilvl 50 6L bow from porcupine cards, this highly reduces the amount of affixes it can roll and will nearly halve the amount of alt/augments it needs, you are only looking for attack speed here

Step 2
Alteration + augment orb on any prefix until you hit tier 1 attack speed

Don't use augment orb on suffixes, especially not in case you hit tier 1 attack speed

craftofexile predicts around 100 alts + 30 augments needed, however standard deviation is 100, and streaks of couple of hundred alts are possible,

so you only do this if combined cost of Deafening essence of zeal and 3 annulment orbs exceeds around 30 chaos which it shouldnt unless they seriously gut the haewark hamlet essence nodes and there's no harbinger of any kind to farm

Step 3

You need a rare item with 2 suffixes(1 that is tier 1 attack speed) and no prefixes, so if you have it skip this step

If you have 1 prefix and one suffix(attack speed) use Farric Lynx alpha for beastiary recipe of remove prefix add suffix to get a 2 suffix rare

If you have 2 suffixes and 1 prefix, first annulment orb

if you annuled the attack speed, revert to step 2

If you annuled the other suffix thats not attack speed use Farric Lynx Alpha recipe to switch the prefix for a suffix

If you annuled the prefix go to next step


Step 4

you now have a rare item with 2 suffixes, one which is t1% attack speed

Craft cannot roll attack mods(1ex) from the bench(buy a service on discord if you don't have the craft)

Step 5

Cheapest next step is to go on discord and buy one of the following:

Leo Tier 3 syndicate bench(augments a rare item with a new mod) these are usually much cheaper than exalts, sometimes even half the price
Harvest craft that says Augment an item with a new modifier(Popularly called Augment any mod) usually around the same price as Leo bench

If you don't want to hassle with that simply exalt orb the item yourself

Step 6

You now have an item that has following:

17-19% attack speed
Random suffix
+1 to level of socketed gems
Cannot roll attack mods

Step 7

Craft Can have up to 3 crafted modifiers(2 ex + 1 scour) on the bench replacing the cannot roll attack mods
Craft +2 to level of support gems(2 ex)
Craft tier 1 Chaos damage over time multiplier(4 chaos)


My personal recommended version of a bow because of price per performance :

Step 1
Get a 6l bow base(short, thicket or grove bow) of above ilvl 64(level need for +2 bow gems) but not higher than ilvl 78, there's a reason for that i'll explain later

Step 2
Use the following fossil combination:

Corroded + Metalic - this combo blocks all prefixes except +1 gems and +2 bow gems

On average it takes 4 tries to get +2 gems and +1 gems since bow gems have 2 tiers and you can sometimes only roll one of these mods

Corroded fossils are around 15-20c early league and Metallic are very cheap around 1-2c so you need around 80 chaos or less to hit this

One important thing to note is that this fossil combo also always gives you an open prefix since the 2 prefixes you want are the only prefixes they can roll which is very valuable

If your bow is for some reason over ilvl 82 in addition to using Corroded + Metallic you need to add Jagged fossil to block added chaos damage to attacks mod but i would never recomment doing it on a higher lvl bow, there's a reason for that leater

Step 3
So now you have a +3(albeit slightly worse than a +1gem +2 support version) bow with open prefix but you most likely have no attack speed which is bad, since you really want to craft chaos damage over time multiplier on your open prefix

if you managed to hit attack speed in combo with this, gratz, you have a weapon that's usable all the way to endgame

If you however aren't lucky but you want some attack speed, it's not the end of the world and the item can be improved for fairly cheap

Step 4

If you have a bow with only 2 suffixes:

Craft any suffix from your bench that's not attack speed, literally any

Now either way you have an item with 3 suffixes and your desired +1/+2 prefixes so you proceed with next step

Step 5
Buy Harvest craft Removes a non speed modifier and adds a speed modifier or whatever it's exactly called, on discord people will call it Non speed to speed

Since speed modifiers are only suffixes, and you have all 3 suffixes filled, it can only replace a suffix with a new speed suffix, if you had 1 open suffix
it was possible to remove a prefix and replace it with a new suffix

If you rolled attack speed great, if not do the exact same craft again, non speed to speed, now you're guaranteed to get attack speed

Non speed to speed crafts are usually 1 exalt, but remember this is an ilvl 64-78 bow which means any tier of harvest will work on it, and lower tier of
non speed to speed crafts are up to third to half a price of a max level one, people predominantly use these on max tier boots for a chance at tier 1 movespeed, or on high level phys/ele weapons because those require high ilvl for their relevant prefixes

Total cost of crafting is about 100c for fossils to get base +1/+2 prefixes and roughly 1 exalt total for 2 harvest non speed to speed, 2-2,5 ex for a pretty damn good bow, if you hit at least t2 attack speed from your non speed to speed you shouldn't even worry about upgrading it until much much later and that's only if you really want to

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"Hey 6l ilvl 64-78 Short/Thicket/grove bows are either non existant on the market or fairly expensive, like more than 2,5 ex expensive, there's only ivl 50 ones and ilvl 79-100" Version of the recommended bow

Step 1
Don't you worry, porcupine cards to the rescue, once again, either get a set of porcupine cards or just buy an ilvl 50 6L short bow

Step 2

Force +2 bow gems on it by using a Shrieking essence of Dread

you want to get an item that has only 2 suffixes(irrelevant what they are) and only +2 bow gems as it's only prefix

Step 3

use couple of annuls and repeat with Shrieking Essence of Dread, shouldn't be more than few essences and annuls

Once you have a bow that looks like this:

+2 to level of socketed bow gems
Random suffix
Random suffix

proceed to next step

Step 4

Put cannot roll attack mods on it from crafting bench(service on discord or some other trusted service provider)

Step 5

Harvest augment any mod, Leo syndicate bench or Exalt the item to get +1 to level of socketed gems

Step 6

Replace cannot roll attack mods with any suffix that's not attack speed

Step 7
Harvest craft Non speed to speed once, if it doesn't roll attack speed do it again


Step 8

craft max tier of + to chaos damage over time multiplier from bench
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Which of these methods is better, depends entirely on the cost of your base item, to get +2 bow gems +1 socketed gems on an ilvl 50 bow you need to use
a couple of essences of dread, couple of annuls, craft a 1 ex bench mod(cannot roll attack mods) and exalt(or some other method of adding a mod to a rare item) an item,

making the base cost on average about 2,5-3 ex which is at least 2ex higher than using the fossils on a porcupine card bow

so only do it if the base 6l ilvl 64-78 bow costs more than 2 ex higher than an ilvl 50 6L bow or there simply aren't any for sale

Porcupine cards are about 4-5c during the first 3 days so getting your ilvl 50 6L bow is never gonna be more than 30 chaos

If you're not happy with the tier of attack speed you rolled with your non speed to speed and you'd like to try for a higher one there's a possibility to do exactly that in my following section

Retrying for a better attack speed roll:

There are several ways of how you could go about doing this, but i'm going to recommend this one

VERY IMPORTANT STEP 1
If you haven't crafted chaos damage multiplier as your prefix before Craft any prefix on your item for now, just any cheap one, your item needs to have full prefixes or it will add a random prefix in the next step rendering you unable to craft chaos multiplier later

Step 2

Reforge keeping prefixes from Harvest

If you rolled a high tier of attack speed, great, if not proceed to next step

Step 3

Reforge keeping prefixes until you have at minimum 2 suffixes

Step 4

If you have only 2 suffixes craft any cheap suffix

Step 5

Non speed to speed until you get attack speed, if the tier of attack speed isn't good, go back to step 3

I wouldn't be attempting to do this too many times, if you're willing to spend a bit of time and money, you can get a much better bow for not too much money later on, this is only incase you get a lot of these crafts yourself and you want to try to improve your bow a bit


Big brain deterministic best in slot bow crafting(WARNING: EXPENSIVE!)

For this you'll need an ilvl of preferably ilvl64-78 (it is mandatory to not get higher than item level 82 base) 6L bow base first, since these can cost a bit, you simply get one base and use Fenumal plagued Arachnid to split it,

3.14 introduced changes to how splitting an item works, you can now only split the item once into 2 items, so if you don't get the right fracture on your first 2 tries, you'll need to rebuy the 6l bow base again

Step 1

you alch the bow, go into your bestiary and use the recipe to split it

Step 2

You now use a Deafening essence of Zeal on one of your copies

If it has 3 suffixes, it's ready for next step,

if it has 2 suffixes you craft any suffix from your crafting bench,

if it has 1 suffix, use Deafening essence of zeal again until you get 2 or 3

Step 4

Divine your attack speed to 18%(it rolls only 17-18% so a couple of divines will do)

Step 5

Now you go on discord and buy Fracture Random suffix on an item with at least 3 suffixes, if you listened and you got a base that's not higher than item level 78 any tier of harvest will work on this bow so these fractures are going to be much cheaper per attempt compared to max harvest tier fractures

These fracture crafts were about 50-60c in ritual for a max level one, i can't imagine a tier1 of these costing more than 30 chaos

Step 6

If you fractured the attack speed mod go to next step, if you didn't fracture the attack speed mod, go back to step 1 and split the base again
and repeat previous steps until you fracture the attack speed

Expected cost to finish these 6 steps is

2 6l bow base - estimated cost of 200c, maybe cheaper, this all depends on the market, but i highly doubt much more than that
2 Fenumal Plagued Arachnids - 50c each in ritual league will probably drop in price with new changes to how splitting an item works
3 Fracture harvest crafts from discord - prediction of arround 30 chaos per craft
Couple of essences of zeal - no more than 50c most likely

Total cost around 700 chaos for average amount of tries

Step 7

Now that you have a rare bow with fractured 18% attack speed suffix use following fossil combination:

Faceted + Corroded + Metallic

The ideal combination you're looking for here is

+2 to level of socketed bow gems
+1 to level of socketed gems
+1 to level of socketed dexterity gems
+1 to level of socketed strength gems

This combination would give you in total +6 to level of your main skill(+1 to level of socketed gems double dips since it works on both toxic rain and empower)

However to get this would take about 15 tries on average which could be fairly expensive(presuming faceted fossils are pricey it could be more than 15 exalts) so i propose the next solution

Until you farm more currency to try again settle for a +5 to your main skill bow, this can be achieved by 2 different combinations and costs about 5 tries on average:

for example

+1 to level of socketed gems
+2 level of socketed bow gems
+1 to level of socketed dexterity OR +1 to level of socketed strength gems

or

+1 to level of socketed gems
+1 to level of socketed bow gems
+1 to level of socketed dexterity gems
+1 to level of socketed strength gems

Step 8

Craft max tier +to chaos over damage multiplier from the crafting bench

either of this bows will give you almost 10% more damage over an 8 ex multimodded bow, it has potential to be cheaper depending on fossil prices but it also has potential to be much more expensive, but since this version is fairly RNG i don't recommend it unless you have currency to spare, the multimodded bow is sure and guranteed essentially and rng variation it is meaningless because you're gated by fairly cheap essences and annuls, 8exalts will gurantee you that bow, while 8 exalts could give you nothing here

you are gated by expensive faceted fossils here so with bad RNG cost can go through the roof

Until you get enough currency for at least 10 faceted fossils keep the +5 bow and attempt + 6 again later, additional 6th level to your main skills is roughly another 10% more multiplier so for min maxers out there it's definitely worth it


This method should only be used if you're absolutely sure you want to invest into the build and should be one of your last upgrades, don't get fooled and hope you'll get lucky and get everything on first try, i would prepare at least 10 exalts to even try for a +5 version and around 20 exalts to try for a +6 version

UNLESS Faceted fossils are as cheap as they were in Ritual league, if they are less than 50c a pop, i would honestly SKIP the 8ex multimodded version of the bow and go straight for this