Corruption Outcomes

The Vaal worshiped corruption, harnessing the Beast's power to create an item known as the Vaal Orb. These powerful Vaal Orbs modify items in unpredictable ways, leaving them irrevocably Corrupted in the process. Corruption can make your item better by adding special modifiers or enhancing affixes. It can also make an item worse by removing, weakening, or rerolling existing modifiers. Corrupting an item is always a gamble, sometimes you win, sometimes you lose.

Almost everything in Path of Exile 2 can be corrupted, this includes the equipment your character wears, the Jewels you socket into your Passive Skill Tree, and even the Gems you wield to gain access to powerful skills. In each case, Corruption modifies things in a different way.

Corruption is also final, as the items cannot be modified by currency items afterward. So make sure you finish crafting your items, increasing the quality, and adding sockets before you use a Vaal Orb. You can socket new Runes or Soul cores or level up a Corrupted Skill Gem.

The ancient Vaal worshiped corruption, and now many Exiles harness it to enhance their gear, empower their Waystones and destroy a good few items in the process.

Corruption

Using a Vaal Orb is always a gamble as the results (both positive and negative) are all equally likely. Unlike an Orb of Chance, the Vaal Orb cannot delete an item out of existence. But it can do a variety of things that greatly reduce an item's value such as;

• Randomizing 3 affixes on a Rare item.
• Rerolling a Unique affix to below the minimum value.
• Permanently lowering a Gem's level by 1.

Vaal Orbs can also add powerful upsides like:

• Adding a Corrupted Enchantment.
• Rerolling a Unique affix to above the maximum value.
• Transforming all of 6 affixes on a Waystone into Prefixes or Suffixes.

But above all, Vaal Orbs are unpredictable, so they can also do nothing. If you want your Corruption outcomes to be more interesting, use an Omen of Corruption to eliminate this outcome for most items. While the "Nothing Happens" outcome is eliminated, there are cases where an Omen of Corruption results in no visible change to an item. This can include;

• Divining a Unique affix, and hitting or rounding to the same value as before.
• A Corruption result that would be impossible like adding a Socket to a Gem with 5 Sockets.
• Randomizing an affix and by chance, adding the same one back. This is extremely rare but possible.

Rare Gear Corruption

There are several outcomes when corrupting Magic/Rare gear.

It's a bit hard to name a single best outcome, the real answer is; it depends on the item and your build. However, here are a few general gudelines. Adding another socket is a great outcome. This can be used to fix problems like Resistances, add damage and defenses, or increase your item rarity to get better loot as you kill monsters. Enchantments can also be a great Corruption outcome. Some enchantments are very powerful, such as rolling +20-30 Spirit on your Helmet. But others are less useful (or at least more niche) such as 10-20% reduced attribute requirements.

Because you can't get a socket on caster weapons, amulets, belts, or rings, these items are less desirable corruption targets. There's a lot more risk and less reward as you want a good Corrupted enchantment. Randomizing affixes is likely to make your item worse, but from time to time it can be beneficial, removing a low tier or undesirable affix in favor of something more useful.

Unique Item Corruption

There are several outcomes when corrupting Unique items.

Some items, like Mahuxotl's Machination greatly benefit from both an additional socket or an increase to the magnitude of a unique affix. You can get 3 sockets, allowing for even more Soul Cores to be amplified, or you can amplify the power of the 2 existing Soul Cores by up to 800%.

For most Uniques, a Socket is nice, but the best case scenario is increasing the magnitude of a unique affix. After all, you're probably using that item for its unique affixes so making them better improves the item. This also means reducing the magnitude of these unique affixes greatly reduces an item's value. An Ingenuity that gives +32% increased bonuses gained from Equipped Rings is far less powerful than the default minimum of 40%.

On the other hand, the Gain 20-30% of Maximum Mana as Extra Maximum Energy Shield affix on The Everlasting Gaze is unscalable. This means it cannot be increased or reduced by corruption, so the most desirable outcome is an enchantment like +1 to All Skills! On Unique Jewels and Uniques with powerful unscalable values look for enchantments (and Sockets when they can get them).

Jewel Corruption

Enchantments add valuable Attributes to your build or fix missing Resistances. This makes them a great Corruption outcome on Jewels, regardless of your build.

On the other hand, having an additional affix can be a great outcome for Rare jewels, when you roll a useful modifier. If you're corrupting Magic jewels to use in an Adorned setup they become Rare when gaining affixes.

Waystone Corruption

Waystones are among the most commonly corrupted items. When you have 6 Prefixes, you get all of the rewards with none of the difficulty increases! On the other hand, 6 Suffixes maximizes your Waystone drop chance making for an extremely lethal map while maximizing your chance at getting Fragments from Citadel bosses.

Adding random Affixes further enhances the rewards and the danger found in your Maps. With this Corruption outcome your Waystone can have 5 Prefixes and 5 Suffixes. These Waystones can be extremely rewarding, but you need to be able to deal with the superpowered monsters that just got buffed by 5 Suffixes.

Alternatively, when you Corrupt a Waystone (Tier 15), it can increase the Tier by 1, creating a Waystone (Tier 16). Higher tier Waystones are more rewarding, because you can farm only farm the most valuable item bases in the game by fighting level 82 enemies. The easiest way to do this is to raise the zone level to 82 through a combination of a Waystone (Tier 16), Irradiation and the Beast's Corrupted influence.

Misc Corruption

What else can you Corrupt and what are the outcomes?

Skill Gems

• Nothing Happens
• +1 Level/-1 Level (updates with gem level)
• +1 Socket/-1 Socket (cannot be modified further)
• -7% to +3% quality (cannot be modified further)

There are 2 valuable uses for Skill Gem Corruption. First up, early in a League or in SSF you can Corrupt your skills in hopes of adding a socket. This saves you from needing to use more expensive Socket Currencies like Greater Jeweller's Orb or Perfect Jeweller's Orb. However, you can't modify the quality or sockets after Corruption.

Alternatively, you can min-max your skills by raising their level from 20 to 21. This can help you hit skill breakpoints, or get a bit more damage on your main ability. You can use any level of Skill Gem for this as you're able to level a gem up to 20 after Corrupting it. The +1 Level Corrupted property stays with the gem as you level it! Remember to add quality/sockets before you begin Corrupting gems.

Charms & Flasks

You can Corrupt Charms and Flasks to modify the quality up to 23%, but this is usually not very impactful.

Glimpse of Chaos

Summary

• Use a Vaal Orb to Corrupt your gear, modifying it unpredictably.
• The item might gain a special Corruption-only enchantment, or an additional socket, ignoring the normal limit.
• Alternatively, the affixes could be randomized or have their magnitudes modified.
• It can also do nothing, though you can use an Omen of Corruption to prevent this for most items.
• Corrupted items cannot by modified further.
• You can Corrupt your Waystones to make them more rewarding, more dangerous, or both.

Credits

Written by: Tenkiei
Content Reviewed by: Crouching_Tuna