A Guide To Embers and Exalting So You Don't Waste Them

Wicked Tips & Tricks
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Just thought I would share some of the things I learned the hard way so you don’t have to.

Fallen Embers

They either re-roll an enchant or add a missing one. In my opinion, these have exactly one use - re-rolling negative plagued enchants. Don’t waste them on anything else because you can easily spend upwards of 20 embers just trying to roll the specific plague enchant you want. The clearest way to counter plague enchants is corrupting a common item which has the indestructible facet, and then re-rolling the negative until it becomes unrepairable.

Because this is such a pain in the butt, and the wrong negative enchant can ruin an entire build, the chest piece is really the only plagued gear I run since it has some really good enchants that you can’t get on non-plagued gear. Everything else I use is not plagued since acquiring enough fallen embers for a full plagued set that doesn’t screw you takes ages, not to mention getting a specific piece as indestructible is a pain as well. Crafting it yourself feels like the fallen embers, where you may need to craft 10-20 items just to get the facet you want.

Essence Ember

This is the main way of creating a build since it lets you pull the enchantment off one piece and put it on another. DO NOT waste these on low rolled enchantments. For instance, armor penetration can go up to 10%. Wait to find an item that has an enchant near the max and do not waste precious essence ember on something like 5% armor pen.

Radiant Embers

These allow you to max out an enchantment. This is why you don’t waste essence embers on low rolls. Radiant embers improve an enchant about 10% and since they are just as rare as the others, having to dump 5 or more in to an enchant because it’s a low roll is bad business. Also keep in mind that you can use radiant embers on exalted items, so if your goal is to maximize a certain enchant via exalting, get that right first.

Exalting / Sublime Ember

Limited to four times, this picks a random enchant and buffs it around 40%. VERY powerful. VERY random. Of special importance is that once an item is exalted once, you cannot make changes to what enchantments are on it unless you disenchant it and start all over. Because of this, I recommend building out the item with close to max enchants before exalting. This will give you time to flesh out if it needs any tweaks before getting locked in. You CAN use radiant embers after exalting, so you don’t need to wait until the enchants are fully maxed before exalting. If the enchant you wanted buffed is skipped, you can use void embers to start over. You do not need to find another copy of the item with the same facet you want.

Plagued Downside Enchants

Downside enchants are enhanced through the empowerment gems. For example, a 25% reduction in max health turns in to 38% with 50% enchantment power at low health, so keep that in mind when building around downsides so you don’t waste fallen embers re-rolling downsides that brick your build when empowered.

11 Likes
You know what really sucks?
Armour and Enchantment Optimization
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Couple of additions:

Radiant Embers

Because rings are so rare and there is no other way to improve them other than finding a better one, it’s best to focus radiant embers on your rings first. This is the one case where I would not wait for stats to be closer to max since rings can have such a huge impact on your build.

Sublime Embers

It’s best to use the watcher for the first 2 exalts and then these for the last two exalts to avoid using 3 husks and 3 torn marrow.

6 Likes
Bad RNG or too hard an overcorrection
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Farming Embers

Always fish! Always dig!

For fallen embers, the best way to get a lot is to make a new character and realm. The drop rates are much higher for low level characters. I once got 4 fallen embers from one fishing spot.

Check bounties and challenges daily. They can reward embers.

Various vendors can sell them

  • Grinnich general goods (worth upgrading to lv 3)
  • Finley, the jailed npc in nameless pass that appears in sacrament between 8 and midnight after you free him
  • The vendor half way through the crucible

Plagued areas can reward them at max corruption. Burn 2 torn sinews to plague an area or more to max the corruption before the boss and only have 3 debuffs. The shallows, mariners keep, orban glades, and black trench can all be cleared very quickly. Feel free to do this on multiple realms.

Memorize where medium and large chests generally spawn. Grab them in a normal zone, plague it, and check again.

Fallen Ember Low Level Drop Rates

Fallen embers drop a lot more when you are low level. For example, fully clearing the shallows, mariners keep, and orban glades before moving to sacrament leads to 20-30 fallen embers. You can make this quicker and easier by creating a maxed out lv 1 armor set. For example, a fully upgraded lv 1 leather armor set gives you around 70% mitigation across physical and elemental damage, and will not exceed a lv 1 characters max weight. Throw 4 health gains gems in and you are essentially immortal. You can do the same with mesh, but will need at least 1 weight reduction gem to not be encumbered with weapons above 20 weight. Once you have created this set, you can simply make a new character, get it from your main realm, and then use it in a new low level realm to farm. Once your character levels up enough for the fallen ember drop rate to reduce, i.e. when you start seeing the other types of embers, just drop off your farming gear and make a new realm and character and repeat.

3 Likes
Ember drop rate extremely low
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So I can’t roll the negative on a plagued item anymore as soon as it is exalted?

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Correct. Once exalted, you can’t make any changes to an item, even the negative enchant. The only thing you can do is disenchant it with a void ember to start over.

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I wish I had seen this before I learned all of these details myself at a cots of many hours and hundreds of embers . . . lol

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Yeah I wasted a mega-ton myself. Learned a lot of things the hard way. Learning that negative enchants also get empowered was pretty costly after having thrown fallen embers at 4 plagued pieces to get the negative enchants I thought I wanted. I should probably add this to the guide oof.

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Oh yikes. Do you know if the enchants that do not have rolled values will get empowered? Good enchants like the hp regen on chest or execute low hp plagued enemies on gloves, or the negatives that disable a mechanic like no blocking on shields or unrepairable? I would assume not, since it would not make sense for them to be targeted by the divine embers just to waste the empower.

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I believe that the 20 health regen enchant does get empowered, so coupled with drain health in combat, they still cancel each other out while empowered. The others which are not scaler like no parry, heavy roll, etc are not empowered/affected as far as I can tell. Like my heavy roll isn’t MORE heavy with an empowered gem as an example.

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Alright, I was curious when I set up my chest piece. I’m glad the health regen works the way I was expecting it to. I guess I could reroll the negative though, empowered reduced damage resistance on my plate is a little silly.

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Could measure it to be double sure by playing around with 100% empowerment at low health. So at low health, it should be healing at one rate, and then slow down at half health. I didn’t test it, just noticed it was almost keeping up with two drain health in combat downside enchants, so assumed it had to have also been empowered.

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I am also curious about other fixed level enchants, like focus regen or the culling plagued enemies. It would be a real pain to test the latter one though.

I know the durability increase ones do not get empowered, since the item durability is visible. When I put an amethyst in my chest, the durability did not increase further than it already had.

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Yeah I wish low health for that enchant was the same as low health for the player, i.e. less than 50% hp. When I used it, I noticed it wasn’t really triggering until about 25% health. Terminology should really be consistent here.

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What enchantments are exclusive to Plagued chest armor that do not appear on normal chest pieces? Can you list them? thank you so much for the tips, it’s very helpul

1 Like
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There are quite a few. Here is the official doc: Full List of Enchantments - Google Drive

Some off the top of my head

  • 20 combat health gain
  • 40% barrier gain
  • 15% speed increase after shock
  • 20% increased damage after stagger
2 Likes
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Are you kiddin me!!! So this is why….
I honestly thought that enchant was just still bugged. Goofy devs, 101 of making an RPG, your ruleset needs consistent language and terminology.

Maybe i can now try using it again. Although i do not see as much use for it if it only triggers <25% HP. Perhaps on a ranged plague mage build.

Are they inconsistent in other terms too? For example, im not sure i fully understand the difference between increasing Poise and stagger resistance. Is it correct that Poise just increases your BAR size/value, while resistance to stagger actually applies resistance to the Poise damage? If so, why not call it “ +% resistance to Poise damage” (the same way facet on weapon can have “reduced poise damage”.

Other area they can improve specially for casual and new players:
-”Attack damage increased by %” = means both your regular swing attack, and charged attack, only = different than “Rune attack damage increased by %”
-Separated further into: “normal attack damage increased by” and “charge attack damage increased by”.

I figured this out quick enough, but i don’t think these are all obvious when a new player first comes across such enchants, perhaps it needs simplification, perhaps it needs more words in description, or perhaps all these problems would be better solved with an extensive character Stats sheet, where the player can see each individual modifier.
I think that’s just something that would benefit the game anyways. Would be nice to know everything in the sheet. Stamina/HP regen values, lifesteal values, total crit chance and crit dmg, movement speed. There are difficulties in this ofc, there are situational modifiers that wouldn’t show up in base stats. But any RPG that leans so heavy into numbers on the builds, usually benefits from an extensive stats sheet.

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While making this guide, did you realize something fundamental about this system. I imagine you might have had this Eureka moment when you realize this system is obtuse, grindy, and unnecessarily convoluted, and does not respect time or effort?

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I’ve had the luxury of having copious amounts of time to play, so I’d be the last person to feel like my time is not respected. Breach was more simple, but you had less control. I like this a lot more than fallen ember slot machine on every enchant. Loot is no longer automatic trash since you can pull enchants out. I can control if an item is magical or plagued. I like that it’s not easy to max out every enchant now, so I can start a build and it can increase in power as I keep playing. So while I admit it’s not perfect, it’s still better than what we had before.