Essence

This page is about the currency item. For the league, see Essence league.

An essence is part of a complex group of currency items used for crafting equipment. All essences can be used to upgrade a piece of normal rarity equipment to rare and apply one guaranteed affix. Some essences can also be used to reforge the affixes of rare equipment.

Table of essences

See also: List of essences

The name of an essence consists of three parts: the tier of the essence as a prefix, the word 'Essence', and the type of the essence as a suffix. For example, has the prefix 'Whispering' and the suffix 'of Woe', which means that it is a tier 1 essence of the Woe type. An essence's type determines which guaranteed modifiers it can imbue to equipment, while its tier determines the magnitude of bonuses granted by those modifiers.

Natural essences

Groups A–E include all types of essences that can appear naturally with essence monsters. These essences come in seven tiers, each distinguished by a prefix word. An essence's tier can also be recognized by the number of lines in its 2D art icon. Note that not all types of essences exist for every tier. Lower tiers include fewer types of essences.

				Group A				Group B				Group C				Group D				Group E
	Tier	mLvl	Reforge	Greed	Contempt	Hatred	Woe	Fear	Anger	Torment	Sorrow	Rage	Suffering	Wrath	Doubt	Loathing	Zeal	Anguish	Spite	Scorn	Envy	Misery	Dread
Whispering	1	1+						N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Muttering	2	12+										N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Weeping	3	30+														N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Wailing	4	48+																		N/A	N/A	N/A	N/A
Screaming	5	68+
Shrieking	6	N/A
Deafening	7	N/A

Corrupted essences

Group F includes the corrupted essences, which have no prefix word due to the fact that they exist in a tier unto themselves. These do not appear naturally with essence monsters, and can only be obtained by corrupting an essence monster with a . (See § Corrupting essence monsters for details about this process.)

			Group F
Tier	mLvl	Reforge	Insanity	Horror	Delirium	Hysteria
8	N/A

Mechanics

Obtaining essences

Monsters trapped in essence crystals can occasionally be encountered in most areas. Activating the center essence crystal three times will break the crystals, freeing the trapped monsters. The essence item can be obtained by killing these monsters, which are also enhanced by special monster modifiers on the essence.

Some types of essences only exist at higher tiers. This forms a progression in which more types of essences become available in areas with higher monster level.

Tier 6, 'Shrieking' essences can be obtained by upgrading lower tier essences through the vendor recipe system or by corrupting tier 5 essences using a .

Tier 7, 'Deafening' essences can be obtained by upgrading lower tier essences through the vendor recipe system.

Harvest exchanges

One of the random Harvest crafting options granted by Vivid Watcher upgrades an essence by one tier.

One of the random Harvest crafting options granted by Wild Homunculus changes a stack of essences into a different type of the same tier.

Corrupting essence monsters

Main page: Remnant of Corruption

Essences can be corrupted by using a on a monster trapped by essence before releasing it.

This will result in one of the following outcomes chosen at random:

• Mobs are broken free with empowered stats.
• All contained essences have their tiers increased by 1 (e.g. 'Screaming' upgraded to 'Shrieking'). Note that the base essence type won't change, and this can't occur with "Deafening" essences.
• Monster may gain one additional essence.
• Transform essence types to random ones from the next type group. E.g., 'of Fear' transformed to 'of Wrath'.
  • Note that this can also increase the tier of the essence if the original is at a lower tier than the minimum for the next tier.
  • Essence of Hysteria, Insanity, Horror and Delirium can only be obtained by corrupting monsters with an essence of tier 5 (MEDS: Misery, Envy, Dread, Scorn).

The "Remnant of Corruption"-possessed monster has a monster aura that deals physical damage over time as well as slow the player character.

The player character cannot leech life from the "Remnant of Corruption"-possessed monster.

On slaying the "Remnant of Corruption"-possessed monster, the remnant is dropped just like normal Essences. Additionally two Fleshmonsters spawn on the drop location.

These possessing effects were in fact due to the essence adding the mods , to the monster.

Crafting

All essences can be used to upgrade a piece of normal rarity equipment to rare, similar to an , and apply one guaranteed affix. Essences of tier 5 (Screaming) and above can also be used to reforge the affixes of rare equipment, which is similar to a ; however, in addition to applying one guaranteed affix, using an essence this way will ignore and override any meta-crafting modifiers.

WARNING: Despite the similar wording to , using an essence on an item with a meta-crafting mod ( or ) will ignore that mod and overwrite existing prefixes and suffixes ignoring any restrictions.

Tier	Prefix	Obtainable through	max. level of original item	Min. Level of reforged item	Item reforge
1	Whispering	Lv. 1+ zone drop	35	1	✗
2	Muttering	Lv. 12+ zone drop	45	8	✗
3	Weeping	Lv. 30+ zone drop	60	20	✗
4	Wailing	Lv. 48+ zone drop	75	33	✗
5	Screaming	Lv. 68+ zone drop	N/A	46	✓
6	Shrieking	Upgrading or corrupting tier 5 essences	N/A	59	✓
7	Deafening	Upgrading tier 6 essences	N/A	65	✓

Essence possession effects

Essences are encountered in the wild as a monster 'possessed' by an Essence, mechanically similar to possession by a talisman or tormented spirit. Essence can only appear on a rare monster and the monster can have more than one essences possessed. When the monster is killed, the essences will drop as an item.

Essences	Possession effect
Hatred	Shoot out a nova of projectiles.
Woe	Summon Energy Locus that cast .
Greed	Create a red bubble around the enemy and it explode into 3 projectile that does Corrupted Blood on hit, similarly to Malachai's TriBomb.
Contempt	Periodically cast an ice version of . At 'Screaming', it summon 3 spirits that looks like ice version of but without the totem chasing toward player, apparently they are invulnerable to get hit.
Sorrow	Summon Totems that cast at player's location.
Anger	Shoot out a nova of fire version projectiles.
Torment	Periodically cast at the player's location.
Fear	Summon 3 Charging Corsair, which is a unique Spectral Corsair.
Suffering	Periodically cast , then summon Arctic Golem when died.
Rage	Create fire runes that trigger when stepped on, dealing fire damage, similar to Malachai's Fire Traps.
Wrath	Shoot out a nova of lightning projectiles that behave like 's projectiles.
Doubt	Summon Essence Tarantula that does and .
Anguish	Summon Fiery Rubble that fracture into smaller size on death, which is a unique Cinder Elemental.
Loathing
Spite	Summon Totems that cast and leave patches of Shocking Ground
Zeal
Misery	Shoot out pulses that inflict a chaos damage over time debuff on the player.
Dread	Cast a chaos version of . Summon Guardian Golem, which is a unique Chaos Golem.
Scorn
Envy	Summon a grasping hand (looks like ), that teleports the player to the monster's location. This can be evaded by moving.
Hysteria
Insanity	Cast and summon invulnerable Spectral Spirits that attack the player.
Horror	Monster cast a chain reaction of ice explosion, similar to one of the Mutewind Leader Warband skill.
Delirium	Summon monsters that looks like Carrion Minion, it casts chaos version of that uses MTX's.
Remnant of Corruption	Enemy has a physical damage over time and slow aura, cannot be leeched from. Summons 2 Fleshmonster when killed.

Vendor recipes

It is possible to upgrade essences in tier through a vendor recipe.

Result	Recipe
1x essence of the same type one tier higher	3x essences of the same type and tier

The Essence Stash Tab provides the means to upgrade essences from within the tab itself. This has exactly the same outcome as the vendor recipe, but saves time spent moving items around.

Divination cards

The following divination cards can be exchanged for essences:

Version history

Version	Changes
3.14.0	Screaming Essences can now be used to reforge rare items, in addition to upgrading normal items to rare. This brings them into line with Shrieking and Deafening Essences. Extensive balance changes to essence modifiers. (See Version 3.14.0 § Essence Balance for a complete list of changes.)
2.4.0g	All corruption only Essence mods (of Delirium, Horror, Hysteria and Insanity) now have a minimum level of 50.
2.4.0e	The Essence upgrade recipe now returns surplus Essences when you vendor four or more essences.
2.4.0c	The Essence of Hysteria boots mod now has a level 60 requirement. Fixed some prison rooms where Essences could spawn in bad locations. Fixed a bug where the Energy Locus summoned by Essence of Woe could be hit by skills such as Arc.
2.4.0	Introduced to the game in Essence leagues.