I hope that you know how Craftring works in Thea 2.
In general - materials with higher essence amount will yield better quality items.
Items have three grades:
To craft Elemental or Legendary items you usually need higher Tier materials that cannot be found on the starting island.

But that is not always the case.

If you spend advancement points on particular items - you will get bonus to the essence during crafting.
That bonus might be big enough to pass the "Elemental" threshold for the item.
Elemental weapons may add powerful damage modifiers or abilities to the items.






At the beginning I'll explain how different essences affect Elemental items and then show some cool Scrolls / Relics you can craft with just Tier 2 resources.

Different essences will modify damage of Elemental Weapons differently.
If you have 2 different essences - their damage effects will combine.
Here are the rules:


adds True Damage



adds Additive Damage - just a plain additional damage



adds Poison Damage



adds Shield Leech



adds Life Leech



adds Area Of Effect (better Splash)

By this time you recognized the pattern I believe. Icon of the essence is a hint for damage modifier you will get.
But color is important as well.
If all used essences have the same color - an item will be usable in challenges of that color, even if usually it doesn't.
For example if you only use Metal and Leather as your main Essence - Elemental item will be usable in Red challenges.
Here is a relic example to illustrate this rule:


This creates quite interesting combinations.
Hammer to use in Yellow challenges? Make it from Stone.
Sword for Purple challenges? Make it from Gems / Bones.

Scrolls and Codexes provide unique spells. Rules about damage types and essence color do not apply to them.
Here are some examples.

If your prime essence for a scroll is Wood or Leather and you have 20% bonus essence from Scrolls research - you can craft those with any Tier 2 Leather / Wood.


Illusive Bite is a great skill that can be used in Physical and Mental combat and it scales with Wisdom.
Scroll is one-handed so you can give decend Shield to your Zerca and he will start biting your enemies in combat.

Second Skin is a nice buff applicable to all challenge types.


This one is quite unique as it needs either Gem or Bone as primary essence and it might be hard to setup for Scrolls.
Bonus essence is cruical here. And also gem / bone slots might not be unlocked straight away.

Ghosly Axe is amazing skill for Hunters and Gatherers. It makes them useful in Magic combat.
Weakness is a must have skill if you dealing with hard hitting lone monsters.

All Elemental Codexes that can be created with Tier 2 materials has skills based on Mysticism.

With Wood or Leather as main Essence you will get Fireball and Random Blasts 3

Random Blasts 3 is amazing skill as it works in all challenge types.
Fireball has higher damage but different attack pattern and can be used onlly in Physical challenge.

With Gems or Bones as main Essence you will get Fiery Gaze and Drain Vigor
This is quite useless in Physical challenges.

There are no active skills for Elemental Artifacts that you can make from Tier 2 resources.

With Gem as a primary essence you get

• Increased Yellow and Purple Shielding
  
• Increased Destiny
  
• Increased Splash

You will have to use Mythical Leather or Ruby, otherwise you won't get enough essence even with 20% bonus.

With Shadow Bone as a primary essence you get Life Leech instead of Increased Splash. Other bones won't give you enough essence.


With Leather as a primary essence you get

• Increased Red and Yellow Shielding
  
• Increased Wisdom
  
• Ability to use this artifact in Physical challenges (scales with Perception)

You can use Dark Wood as primary material to get poison damage, but then artifact won't be usable in Red challenges.

Generally Relics gives you AOE attacks in Yellow and Purple challenges.
Elemental versions usually give you quite weak additional spells.

Here is a new guide that explains all the Relic skills
https://gtm.steamproxy.vip/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2704506718

Here I will describe a few just to give you an idea how it works.

You can make this with Steel, but it will have higher weight and delay.
This one is quite unique - to get Distract as second skill you need Leather or Wood as primary essence.
The only way to craft it with Tier 2 resources is to use Mythical Leather as Secondary Material and then use 20 metal or 18 stone as Primary Material. It is important to keep total amount of Leather essence higher than Metal (or Stone).
If you use Gold instead of Silver (or Steel) - your primary essence will be metal.
If you use Fur or Scaled Leather - you won't get enough essence.
So this is quite unique combination for Tier 2 materials.

Distract is amazing skill to slow specific enemies. It is better than Mass Lullaby as you can choose any targets.








Because both Essences used are Red - the relic will work in Red challenges as well:
It adds some flat damage which is nice if your character lacking one of those 3 skills.
True Damage hits armored targets for x1.5 damage.

Quite strange relic.
It gives you "Dinner For Two" skill. Only applicable to Red challenges. At the same time - relic won't give you a combat skill for Red challenge, so you'll have to rely on innate skills.

Gives you Brotherhood of Blood.
Looks like Inspire, but scales with Destiny instead of having fixed values.

All elemental armours provide Shielding for all 3 challenge types. Shielding bonus is approximatly 2 times lower than you would get from normal item, but normal armour only protects in Red challenges.

There are also various HP buffs you will get from different materials, but here I'll just focus on wild materials that will give you maximum shielding bonus for each armor type.
Crafting them will have a significant risk of getting trash item.