u/fcain

The Recombinator is a terrifying destruction machine where your dreams go to die. You have two items with good mods, you think, why don't I just smash them together and see what happens? And what happens is they turn into a red powder and then you vow never to use the recombinator ever again.

But this is Ruthless, where we enjoy pain and stretch every mechanic to the breaking point.

##TLDR?

• the recombinator only works one way in Ruthless. The worse way.
• the chance of getting a good outcome isn't that bad for lower level items, lower level mods and being conservative.
• it works best if you're building up a backlog of exalts.
• you can blend mods across items in ways that might surprise you.
• you can craft insanely good gear if you're disciplined and willing to wait for the odds to end up in your favour.
• the gear you make is clean, only the mods you want, no junk. So lots of room to exalt slam.
• you'll burn transmutes, augments, and chance orbs like crazy. If you can't help picking them up, might as well put them to use.

##Who this Guide IS for

You need two affixes to be on the same piece of gear. You're patient, willing to set up a careful loot filter and can handle delayed gratification. You've also got a flow of exalts to take your good items and then make them great.

You have more time than currency, and it makes you sad to end the league with 3,000 transmutes in your stash, but you just couldn't help picking them up.

The recombinator is best for SSF, where you can't just trade currency for gear.

##Who this Guide ISN'T for

You've got two items, they have amazing affixes and you just wish you could bring them together into a single piece of uber-gear. You can't, it won't. The math does not favour you.

You're in a trade league. You farm maps, make currency, buy stuff from other players. That's more efficient, do that.

##The Ruthless Recombinator

In bench league, the Recombinator has two modes. Unpredictable Recombination and Predictable Recombination.

Unpredictable Recombination is amazing, and fun, with a higher likelihood of positive results. You'll see racers making insanely good gear using the recombinator. We don't get to use that mode, because this is Ruthless. We chose this life.

Predictable Recombination is worse. It gives you a tiny chance for donor affixes from two items to be forged into a single item with all the mods you choose. You can pick the mods you want, and see the outcome in advance, which will always be statistically insignificant if you go for your dream 6xT1 piece of supergear.

To recombinate, the items must be the same item class. 1H Axe, bow, helmet, etc. A staff and a warstaff won't merge. Armour's a little strange, some pieces will go together, others won't. Pure ES body won't merge with an Armour body, but an Armour body will merge with an Armour/Evasion hybrid. All rings can merge, so can belts and amulets. You'll figure it out.

Blue or yellow items can yield their mods. The result will be yellow.

Every recombination attempt takes 3-9,000 gold (rising with item level), and then 10,000+ dust. So, you'll need a regular supply of dust, but not a lot, because you won't be pulling the lever very often.

##Pushing the Odds in your Favour You've probably put an object in, looked at the 0.67% chance of success and said, "nope." And walked away. That was the right move. Two T1 mods from one item and two T1 mods from another item will give you a sub 1% chance of success (even sub 0.1%). Since you don't have a lot of them kicking around, the odds won't be in your favour.

But you can push things in your favour if you're willing to compromise.

• the item level. Your best possible affixes depend on your gear's item level. You need ilevel 86 for T1 Spell Suppression (20-22%) on Body Armour. But T2 Spell Suppression (17-19%) unlocks at ilevel 77. T1 Life (130-144 Life) unlocks at ilevel 64 for helmets, boots and gloves. If your gear doesn't NEED to be a higher level, target farm a lower tier location. T1 maps start at level 68, so... back to the campaign, and say hi to Kitava when you kill him over and over again.

• the mod tier. We want the best of the best. But do you NEED it? T1 Cold Resist (46-48%) unlocks at ilevel 84. T2 Cold Resist (42-45%) is pretty close and ilevel 72. T3 Cold Resist (36-41%) is still pretty great. Wouldn't you rather have a T1 Life and T3 Cold Resist/Fire Resist and then other stats compared to the random garbage you're wearing right now? Just don't tell anyone you're wearing level 66 armour to hide your shame.

• the number of mods you're trying to merge. One mod from one item and one mod from another item gives a surprisingly high chance of an outcome. Even the fanciest ilevel 84 T1 merger is in the 20%+, but an ilevel 66 with T2 mods can be 50/50 or even higher.

• use sacrificial mods to move a perfect mod to a perfect base. Let's say you've got T1 Spell Suppression on a crappy body piece and you want to move it to an ilevel 86 top piece of gear to craft further. You can use the worst mod on the good base with the perfect mod on the bad base and the resulting outcome will be randomly chosen, including perfect mod, perfect base.

##The Stats

I'm going to give you a couple of examples, but just experiment a bit. The results will fall into: "almost guaranteed", "50/50", an "acceptably low chance" and "absolutely not, are you crazy?"

Let's start with a piece of level 66 gear, what you'd get from Ravaged Square in Act 10.

The odds. Mod count is everything:

Mods you demand	Measured odds
2	32–85%
3	7–36%
4	2.45%

Each extra demanded mod multiplies your odds by roughly ×0.3.

• Rarer mods give worse rates (check Craft of Exile for mod rarities).
• Gold is flat per attempt for a given class and item level (~3,000 at i66).
• valuable mods cost more dust. My i66 attempts predicted to cost 3,000–21,000 dust.

Now, let's move to endgame stuff, level 80+.

Here's the same ask — one mod from each parent — as the parents get fatter and the mods get rarer:

Parents	The ask	Odds	Cost per attempt
i83 rares, 4–5 mods each	2 T1 mods	5.63%	8,632 gold, 43K dust
i83 rares, 4–5 mods each	4 top mods (the dream)	0.07%	8,632 gold, 67K dust

Let's put it together with this handy, highly accurate guide:

😌 almost guaranteed (75%+) · 🪙 50/50 (40–65%) · 🎲 acceptably low (15–35%) · 💀 are you crazy? (<6%)

Mods you demand	i66	i66 rare mod	i70	i70 rare mod	i80+
2	😌	🪙	🎲	🎲	💀
3	🎲	💀	💀	💀	💀
4	💀	💀	💀	💀	💀

Now that you understand how the odds are stacked against you, here's what you can do.

##Strategy 1 - Be Realistic, Target High Success Combinations

You can get 2 really good mods on a lower level base with a perfectly reasonable chance of success. For example, grab a level 66 body with T1 life and another with T3 fire res and you're looking at 75% success. Or even T1 mods, no problem, your odds are totally fine.

It's like a really well-rolled blue item for some gold and dust.

Then add a third mod with T3 cold res and you're down into the 33% range. So, you'd need to mash a handful together to get the one you want, but if you set your loot filter and keep an eye out for bases to transmute, the parts keep flowing in on their own.

Now it's like a really well-rolled regaled item for some gold and dust (and your time). Replace it when you need, but it could serve you better than a piece with only one good mod and a bunch of junk.

And importantly, it has only the mods you want and no junk, so plenty of room to exalt it up to be even better.

##Strategy 2 - Be Strategic, Target Two Dream Mods and Room to Grow

Getting your hands on a high physical DPS weapon is insanely rare and difficult in Ruthless SSF. Even a T3 %Phys (135-154%) has a 0.201% chance of dropping as a mod. T1 Adds (34-47) to (72-84) Physical Damage is 0.403%. And to get both requires multiplying those odds together. It isn't going to happen often.

But if you set your filter wide to pick up every white, blue and yellow 1H axe, for example, you'll be filling up a quad tab with them. Transmute all the whites, augment all the 1-mod blues, and judge the yellows. If any give you mods you want, set them aside. Over time, you'll get all the mods you want, even super rare ones, like T1 chaos res, T1 spell suppression, and T2 flat phys (come on, has anyone ever seen T1 flat phys?).

Crappy bases with perfect mods need an extra step to launder them into better bases. This step is pretty safe, and you'll merely lose about 50% of your gear. You'll regret every swing with a Tyrannical %phys on a Woodsplitter, get that mod onto a Vaal Axe first.

But don't obsess about it, the high end weapons are surprisingly similar in DPS and you'd be glad to use any of them.

As soon as you get two pieces that go together, put them in the recombinator. Depending on the rarity, you'll eventually get a piece of gear with two perfect mods that you want. If it's 33%, then you just have to mash 3, but even 15% only means 6-7 tries. You'll get that faster than a 6-link.

Then exalt to put on the other 4 mods (Allflame lets you choose the best out of 4 each time, which is insanely good).

##Strategy 3 - Be Patient, Better and Better Gear Accrues Over Time

You've mastered the low-level combos and the perfect 2-mod item. Now put it together and try to make a 3-mod item that's high level and "pretty great." Steer clear of the extremely rare mods that will tear your chances down. Settle for T2 life or T2 resist instead of trying to get the T1s.

Gather your parts as you're mapping and whenever you have two pieces of the puzzle. Usually you'll destroy them, but occasionally (5-10% of the time) you'll get a recombination to stick and you're set for that slot, pretty much through end-game once you see how the further exalts land.

I measure the number of projects I should be working on by the number of Orbs of Transmutation in my stash. If they're building up, I need to be rolling on more bases.

After a while, you're getting more and more pulls at the lever, and your gear slots will fill up with perfection one by one.

Once you've got 3, don't get greedy and try to get 4. Did you see where I mentioned 0.07%?

Good luck!

How do you spend the least gold to get the most value out of Kingsmarch? Especially for Ruthless, where gear and currency are hard to come by.

##TLDR?

• An L1 miner, L1 Blacksmith. 18 L1 farmers, a L1 disenchanter, 9 L1 sailors.
• Send three crops totalling 50,000 value + 200 value (not bars) ore to your chosen ports (reroll if it's not giving you a bonus).
• You can use dust for half the shipment if you don't need it for the recombinator
• Check all gear with Rog, dust anything above 5,000 that doesn't have a purpose, otherwise vendor. Even check blues. If you don't use the recombinator, the minimum is 15,000. Use whetstones/scraps to boost the quality of gear to get more dust.
• Your total town expenses should be around 2,500 g/h at full bore. Mine is 2,181 when I'm not mining or smithing.
• 6 shipments a day x 3 ship ships gives about 100 items and 18 currency every day. Gives items at 1/10th the price of gambling with Faustus.

##Who this guide IS for

You want to save your gold for other things, but get as much possible value, progress your gear, get currency, use the recombinator, gear up alts.

##Who this guide ISN'T for

You've specced your Atlas tree for maximum ore and you're running huge shipments looking for mirror shards. This is Ruthless, I'd take an exalt over a mirror shard or divine any day.

##Why go the budget route?

I've done extensive testing this league and here's what I've learned about maximizing Kingsmarch. The gist is that you get a surprising amount of gear on the low end of farming/shipping, especially once you're in your 80s since the gear you get will match your level. You'll be getting the best bases and T1 affixes. Almost everything I'm wearing came from Kingsmarch.

You can send a trickle of ore/bars to trigger minimum currency rewards, but I've gotten chaos, alchemies, fusings, etc. But just vendoring the items gives 1-2 transmutes and a few alch shards every boat.

The strategy is that you want to send the bare minimums to trigger a reward. You need to send a shipment of at least 50,000 value to a port. If you send 50,000 of one crop, you get 3 items back. If you send a shipment of 150,000 with 3 different crops, you'll get 9 items back. If you send 250,000, you'll get 15 items. But you can also go cheap, if you send a total of 50,000 with 5 crops, you'll get 2 from each crop for a total of 10. From what I can tell, the absolute minimum is just over 200. So, if you send a crop for 200, you'll get 1 item, 10,000 gives 2 items and 50,000 gives 3. It's a rough estimate. The 200 minimum also works for ore. So, if you send 10 orichalcum, that's worth 220, which beats that minimum.

I've got a STR character, so the only crops that matter for me are corn, orgourd and blue zanthimum. Wheat gives DEX, and pumpkin gives INT. But if you just want lots of gear for alts, or you want to sell them for transmutes and alt shards, 5 + ore is most efficient.

For me, a typical 50K ship looks like:

• 10 orichalcum bars (or whatever is the most in stock): one currency item
• 1200 corn: 2 STR armor items
• 800 orgourd: 2 random items depending on the port
• 700 blue zanthium: 2 random jewelery

PoE Wiki gives the different rewards from various ports.

##Hiring your workers

You want level 1 workers. They're almost always the best bang for the buck. A T2 worker is 50% faster than a T1 worker, and generally twice the price. You can get T1 farmers for 100, so a T2 farmer costing more than 150 isn't worth the price. (I have 1 unicorn T2 farmer for 108, so they're out there). Lock your farmers in early. They can't die and the savings accrue for the whole season.

Base T1 farmer:100 g/h

• T2: 150
• T3: 205
• T4: 250
• T5: 300

If you can find a T5 farmer for 300 hire them, but anything more than these prices is lower value in gold/hour. If you need to scale your farm up to the full 250,000 shipments, you'll need higher tiers to keep throughput, but that's on you Mr. Moneybags.

A T1 miner and a T1 blacksmith are all you need to handle almost any amount of ore you'll find in Ruthless and their cost is negligible. And 1 T1 disenchanter (which we'll talk about below)

You'll want 3 T1 sailors on each ship. That gives lowest risk for the runs. Keep restocking them when you find them since they can die. If you're going to send bigger shipments, you'll need better sailors. A T2 and T1 sailor has a higher risk than three T1s.

##Disenchantment

It's mostly bait.

You can use dust to match crops in your ships, but it all depends on how much the dust costs you. If you have a disenchanter burn through blue items at 300 dust each, you're paying a fortune for dust. You could have spent the money on farmers. But if you're dusting T1 uniques for hundreds of K dust, it's a much better value to fill your shipments with dust. So where's the break even point?

Every hour your disenchanter works is an hour of farmer wages you could have spent on crops instead. So an item is only worth dusting for shipping if its dust beats what the same gold would have farmed:

• Dusting one item costs: your disenchanter's hourly wage × 3.7 (items take ~3h42m each, regardless of size)
• Farm wages buy roughly 25 shipment value per gold (measured: a 100g farmer grows ~2,500 value/hour)
• So the item must yield: dust ≥ wage × 3.7 × 25

Shortcut: dust floor ≈ 92 × your disenchanter's hourly wage.

Disenchanter wage	Only dust items above
100 g/h	~9,200 dust
165 g/h	~15,200 dust
200 g/h	~18,400 dust

My best L1 guy is 165 g/h. So I'm paying 610 gold per item to dust. His wages only make sense if I dust items above 15,200 value. Not many of those come along. I run the recombinator quite a bit, so I need more dust, so I've set the bar down to 5,000 dust, which takes about 3 hours, 42 minutes to dust a single item. Some of these are blues, so check them directly in the disenchantment window.

Remember that increasing the quality of an item gives a huge boost to its dust value (it feels around +50% dust for +20% quality). So, if you find something that's worth 10,000 and you increase its quality by 20%, it could be worth more like 15K dust.

I don't bother sending any dust in shipments, just crops, but if my crops are running low and "those boats need to go out... TODAY!", I throw in dust to cap the shipment and then adjust my farmers (throw in a sprinkling of T2s). If your hopper is filling up, add another disenchanter. But I'd be surprised if you ever need more than 1.

Resist trying to get your dust throughput to match your farmers. Just hire better farmers. Unless you're T5s across the board. Then you'll need T5 disenchanters to keep up with your 4 million ore shipments, McDuck.

##What About Mapping?

It's probably bait.

I'm starting to do initial testing. 10 T1 maps vendor into a few transmutes and a chance at gems, other stuff you might not want to farm. T1s seem to be 7-12x less efficient than farms/shipping (roughly on par with gambling). Blue T2s are 3-5x worse, but I just haven't done a lot of testing. I'll do another post when I'm doing rare T16s. But the numbers are just terrible.

Instead of feeding your spare maps into mappers, it's probably better value to 3-1 vendor to get a higher tier, or target the Allflame charts in the map, get them and zone out to do the boat. You want to spend as much time as you can on Voyages.

##The Missing Experiment

P.S. One experiment I haven't run yet is the hypothetically perfect ship. 5 crops at 2,500 each, 5 bars at 2,500 value each + 25,000 dust for a total of 50K. In theory, this should return 5-10 items and 5-10 currency items, but I haven't gotten any amber yet because I've still got a maps specialized Atlas tree.