Introduction

Hello folks, I'm u/agent0915 and I've been having a blast with Conner's Ancestral Commander Molten Strike of the Zenith build in Phrecia. I'm fairly new to PoE, starting in Necropolis and currently at 800 hours, but I have a crippling addiction to wikis and reddit info posts and have tried to learn PoE crafting, so I believe I'm fairly knowledgeable. I'm writing this post because I recently made another post here asking for advice on my build, and found myself mostly helping other people with reaching my tier. Therefore, I've decided to collect those tips and crafting guides here in case it helps someone else. I am neither an expert build creator nor a player that can farm multiple mirrors by week two, so I will certainly have made mistakes. Feel free to point those out in the comments and I'll correct any errors and include any advice. Also feel free to ask any questions about this guide and I'll try to respond.

What is this guide?

This is intended as a guide to bring your Ancestral Commander from early mapping with a leveling build to the point where you can consider saving up for Original Sin, Mageblood or a Simplex Amulet. Earlier leveling is well covered by campaign leveling guides like Alkaizer's Sunder guide from Settlers, so I'm assuming you've got a build good enough to farm up a modest budget of 5d. You can swap earlier (I did) but I wouldn't recommend it. The late game stage (Ubers and onwards) is also outside the scope of this guide, as I don't have much experience there and Conner's guides are quite comprehensive at that stage. Consider this to cover approximately investment levels 5d-50d.

Crafting tips are in a separate section at the bottom, but referred to throughout the guide.

What isn't this guide?

This is not a full build guide, but rather a companion piece to Conner's build. I expect you to have watched that guide and know how most of the builds core interactions work. It is also not the best, though it contains the best of my knowledge. Neither is it certified all content viable, though I've been able to beat Uber Shaper with it after getting mageblood. It can definitely do most t16 content, some t17s and all non-uber bosses, deathless at the higher end.

Links and POBs

My poe.ninja profile

My build one week later, with mageblood but no original sin. OSin sword is crafted but worse before ring.

My build at time of writing, having just finished what is covered in this guide

My build one week ago, having achieved most of what is covered here

Start-of-Guide Proof of Concept, Ninja deleted my week 1 logs

Conner's video, with two POBs in the description

Recombinator Guide

The Phrecia economy

Even moreso than Conner predicted in his pre-league video, many of the core items for strength stacking, most notably Replica Alberon's Warpath, are significantly cheaper than in previous leagues. The gold-standard early-game sword, Rakiata's Dance, is also incredibly affordable. Therefore, I recommend prioritising a little differently to Conner's POBs, though I don't mean to claim that they're poorly made, just that Phrecia is a very strange place. Luckily for us, it's strange in a way that perfectly suits this build.

Getting Started

Since Rakiata's Dance costs under a divine at this point, it's the obvious choice for a build that needs large amounts of flat damage. Given that we get tons of increased damage from strength stacking and tons of more damage from Zenith's fifth hit, it should be your first purchase.

After that, aim to increase your intelligence enough to equip Crown of Eyes. I recommend getting intelligence on your amulet and grabbing two +30 int notables on your tree. Jewels also help a lot and decent 3-mods can often be found for around 10c each. Make sure you allocate Iron Will so your strength actually scales spell damage.

With immediate damage problems sorted, there are two big tankiness upgrades available. The first is a small cluster with enduring composure, which should cost around 40c. The second is better flasks. I recommend 2+ charges when hit using all three elemental flasks and a silver flask. You should be able to get ones with decent suffixes for 10-20c each.

Make sure to grab immortal call as a panic button for massive tankiness and sniper's mark with mark on hit for a lot of extra damage.

At this point, you'll want to keep scaling your strength. Try to find a Lethal Pride with at least two "5% increased strength" nodes on notables that you already take, and ideally at least one "gain 1 rage on melee hit" which lets you drop the rage wheel.

Consider getting one or two large clusters, which can be crafted or bought depending on prices. Get Martial Prowess, Martial Mastery, and use cluster calculator to find a middle notable.

Finally, consider upgrading your rings for more resistances, as you'll be replacing several rares with 0 res uniques soon.

The Chaos Swap

Replica Alberon's Warpath is an interesting item in that it gives us a lot of flat damage, but removes all non-chaos damage which makes Rakiata's Dance practically useless. Your first priority will therefore be crafting a decent chaos sword, though Echoforge is a workable alternative before that.

You'll want to slot in Withering Step at this point, as wither is a massive dps increase. Ideally get an enhance support to pair it with for around 10 stacks. Sin's Rebirth can help you get the last few stacks.

With the sword finished, you now want to focus on getting more strength, as you get both flat and increased strength from it. Try to get a belt and amulet with synthesised strength, the max tier is 13-15% before catalysts. If you're lucky you can buy them from someone switching to Mageblood or a Simplex, otherwise the craft costs around 5-10d each.

After this you should buy or craft a better pair of gloves with attack speed. This costs around 2-3d to craft.

You can consider getting Iron Fortress if you have enough resistances elsewhere to not need them on your body armour. Aim for 100+ strength.

Once you're situated with the chaos version, aim to slot a third cluster jewel and re-path your passive tree to optimise for two split personalities in the bottom right cluster. You'll probably want one with str+int to relieve some pressure from your amulet and +30-nodes, and the best other option is probably str+life. Consider starting with something cheaper though, str+any is under 10c.

Moving On

This is the point where my guide stops, but I'll cover one last sword upgrade which should be a 20-30% dps increase for 25-50d. This is the sword I'm using in the latest POB. After that, you can save up for Original Sin, Mageblood, a Simplex or whatever else you fancy. Consult Conner for this as I'm not experienced at this kind of budget.

Crafting

Large Clusters

Since Martial Mastery and Martial Prowess both have the speed tag without the mana tag, we can use shuddering fossils to roll for them effectively. There are several viable middle notables, but Graceful Execution is probably what you'll get since it's also speed tagged. You want an 8-passive two handed damage base with ilvl 50-67, as that is the lowest level which allows all our desired mods with the least extra mods in the mod pool. These bases cost around 1,5d and we'll want to roll them with three-socket resonators with shuddering fossils and pristine and dense fossils to block unwanted mods. This has around a 1/7 success chance at ilvl 50-67 and costs around 20c per try, so consider buying the clusters if the price is comparable or cheaper.

Starter Chaos Sword

We'll aim for a multimodded sword with flat chaos damage, t1 strength and t1/t0 attack speed, crafted chaos pen and crafted spell damage. Going for crafted strength and essence spell damage may be better, check your POB. Look for a base with fractured chaos damage or strength, or attack speed if those are too expensive. The best bases are reaver sword for attack speed and lion sword for strength, but try to find a base for 50c or less. Then spam essences, either:

Woe essence if you want non-crafted attack speed

Rage essence if you have fractured attack speed and want crafted spell damage

Zeal essence if you have fractured strength or chaos damage and want crafted spell damage

Roll until you get flat chaos damage and annul until you only have flat chaos and your essence mod (and the fracture). Then multimod and craft your desired mods. This should cost under 5d: 50c for a base, 50c-2d for essences depending on annul luck, and 2d for multimod.

Synth Belt and Amulet

These two crafts are largely similar and therefore grouped. You'll want to aim for life, t1 strength, chaos res and a third good suffix, which is probably all attributes or int on amulet and another res on belt. Roll rage essences until you get the third suffix, with an open prefix and suffix. Craft suffixes can't be changed and reforge chaos to get a random tier of chaos res, restarting or trying to annul if you're unsatisfied. Finally use a bristle matron to lock suffixes and reforge life. Assuming you don't fill prefixes, the last step can be repeated until you get your desired tier of life. The minimum cost is around 5d if you settle on the first chaos res and life rolls.

Gloves

Get a fractured base with t1 strength or t1 of any resistance. Roll zeal essences until you get the mod you're missing, then bristle matron -> reforge life until satisfied.

Influenced Sword

We're aiming to recombinate a shaper/elder sword with the following four modifiers:

Socketed Skills Deal 20% More Damage (prefix, shaper)

Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 10 Endurance Charge on Melee Stun (prefix, elder)

+1 to Maximum Endurance Charges (suffix, shaper)

26-27% increased Attack Speed (suffix, native)

To recombinate, we'll make two bases, one with both prefixes and one with two suffixes. Make the prefix base first as you can reuse a brick to make the suffix base.

For the prefix base, we're aiming to awakener's orb a shaper sword with the shaper prefix and an elder sword with the elder prefix, hoping that we don't fill prefixes or suffixes in which case you need to yolo annul. If both are open, you can lock prefixes and scour. If you miss and annul a desired mod, you'll have to awakener's orb again but can reuse the brick as a suffix base. If you already have a suffix base or two, it's much cheaper to use the Hinekora's Lock on a magic item beastcraft on an alt-spammed base, resetting with chromes or whetstones until you get 2p/2s for a safe lock-scour. After this, craft multimod, an exclusive prefix and an exclusive suffix, then beastcraft an aspect mod. There are many exclusive prefixes, look in the guide but most mods originating from Betrayal should work. The final item should have six mods of which two are desired on the final item, three are crafted exclusive mods and one is an aspect.

For suffixes, we're using shrieking essences of zeal. Since "essence mods" are exclusive some think that this means any mod from essences is exclusive, but several essences actually add mods that can roll on the item normally. Any mod named "Essences" or "of the Essence" is exclusive, such as the one from deafening zeals, but shrieking zeals add the t1 attack speed modifier "of Celebration", which isn't exclusive. We therefore roll shrieking zeals until we hit +1 endurance charge and annul down until we have an open prefix and only desired suffixes. If you need to scour, you can save 1d by crafting multimod first before scouring, since suffixes are then full and you can use a bristle matron for suffix lock. Finally craft multimod if needed and two exclusive prefixes. Since all aspects are suffixes, we'll have to stop at five mods.

You can now recombine the two items, which has around a 70-75% success chance if my math is correct. It's a 50% chance to select suffixes first, in which case we have 72% chance to select three mods (instant win) and 28% for two mods, which is followed by a 1/3 to not get a crafted suffix. Then it's a 57% chance for three prefixes (win) and 43% for two prefixes followed by a 1/3 for no crafted prefix. In total around 75-80% success chance if suffixes are picked first. If prefixes go first, it's 57% for instant win and otherwise 43% followed by 1/3 for no crafted, then 72% win on three suffixes and 28% * 1/3 win on two. This totals to around 67%. The total for both comes to roughly 70-75%.

5-mod Sword

For those with Original Sin wanting a sword upgrade, it's possible to craft a 5-mod sword with the same mods as the 4-mod as well as the Shaper str stack mod for around 100-150d, excluding the return proj runecraft. This is significantly cheaper than mirroring a sword, and only around 9% worse than Steve's mirror sword or 10,5% worse than the synthesised mirror sword (Torment Needle), according to my POB. If you sell the 4-mod bases you make along the way, you're likely to come out richer than you began. If you're not too fond of crafting I would consider a mirror sword, but for me this was a fantastic "project of the league", making an item "worthy" of the 100+d runecraft. I would not recommend attempting this unless you have a budget of at least 150d and already have or are certain that you will get original sin.

The crafting process is very similar to the 4-mod sword so I'll assume you've read that. You'll want to start by getting a 2p/0s and 0p/2s sword. Fill both with exclusives, which should give 6 total suffixes and 5 total prefixes. Then recombine them, and if you hit 4 mods, sell it. Keep going until you get unlucky and roll 3 mods, and then consider which mod is missing. Ideally, this will be either Endurance Charge on Melee Stun or Attack Speed. If this is the case, you can easily make a 2-mod base with that mod and shaper str stack by either awakener's orbing with Endurance Charge or essence spamming with zeals. Regardless of which of the two you have, you should be able to fill it to 6 mods with an aspect. Fill up your bricked 3-mod base as well, then recombine for 26% chance at success. If you miss, you're very likely to hit a 4-mod item which can often be resold for more than it cost to make. If you're very unlucky you'll get another 3-mod and need to start over.

If you're unlucky and missing one of the shaper mods, there's no easy way to create another 2-mod item since both missing affixes are shaper tagged. In this case I would recommend listing the item for sale at 20-30d while you get to work recombing until you get another 3-mod base, this time with the two shaper mods you're missing. If you're lucky, it sells and you can craft another 2-mod to recomb with your new 3-mod item, which will always be possible since your new 3-mod has at least two shaper mods. If it doesn't, just recombine the two 3-mod items. Either way it's another roughly 26% success chance.

Once again, this craft will likely require you to invest over 100d, and though you're likely to more than recoup the crafting cost, you're also likely to be stuck for days sitting on valuable 4-mod swords that you're trying to sell for more budget. Try to let them sit for at least 24h before considering slamming them back in the recombinator. I personally hit the final 5-mod sword twice in 10-15 recombs, getting unlucky with keeping the aspect the first time. The satisfaction of making my own "mirror tier in any other league" item was incredible though. It even rolled an alliterative name! https://imgur.com/a/OJ9vPi2

Thanks

First of all, thanks to everyone who read this post and especially all of those who left appreciative comments. You've really motivated me to keep engaging with this league and community, and I'll definitely consider making another post like this for my next build. Thanks for important edits go to u/Mcfuck123 and u/Beblar.

Particularily, I would like to thank u/Internal-Departure44 for adding several useful crafting recipes, a ton of great tips and advertising this guide to everyone in this subreddit asking for zenith advice.

Edits

Edit 1: Added the whole bloody guide past the introduction, which Reddit wasn't very keen on including.

Edit 2: "exclusive prefix and prefix" to "exclusive prefix and suffix" in crafting steps for 2p/0s base and Hinekora's Lock beastcraft tip.

Edit 3: Added section for 5-mod sword and general tips and tricks.