Heyo! Before you start reading the entire guide, let me remind you that essences are only available in your game if you have the Dungeon Siege III: Treasures of the Sun DLC installed . If you do not have the DLC installed, this guide is useless to you.

Essences are special items that can be applied to your equipment to provide additional statistics or improve existing ones.

Essences can be looted from enemies. Sometimes you will receive an essence when transmuting your items, with more powerful items having a greater chance of creating an essence when transmuted.

Essences exist for the following statistics:

Chaos: Vampire
Doom
Retribution
Stagger
Warding

You can only receive a particular essence by transmuting an item with the associated statistic on it to begin with. It is possible to receive more than one essence when transmuting.

Why should I even bother using essences? Well you should care if you are struggling in Hardcore difficulty and especially if you have The Treasures of the Sun DLC installed. Without the DLC, enemies are static. They do not scale to your level. That means you can just grind to a higher level and sweep away the enemies easily. Once you add the DLC in, level scaling gets added. Imagine being level 35 and watching as the bosses tank literally every move you use against it. They have so much health and they can swat you in 1-3 moves. You think to yourself, what can I do? I already maxed out my level and I have really good gear. What else can I do?


The solution: Collect essence!!!

Take a look at my Hardcore Lucas character.



He has 623 Doom, 420 Vampire, and 386 Stagger.

That means his crits hit like a truck, he has a very high chance to life steal with every hit, and he will stun any non-boss with ease.

People usually call Lucas a wimp with his poor ranged capabilities and his slow abilities. But with essences, I deem him Chad Lucas. Wind shear can consistently stun all enemies in a straight line. Heroic Charge becomes your solid go to boss killer with that extra critical damage with doom. With every attack you will drain life for survivability. You are still made out of glass though, but you are now a glass cannon.

If you remember, there are only 5 stats that are available as essences. Let us go over what those statistics can do.

Doom - Grants you additional damage when you critically hit monsters. The amount of damage is increased with slower attacks.

Retribution - Grants your character a high chance to deal damage to enemies that attack them. The amount of damage dealt is equal to your character's total Retribution number. Retribution will also take effect even against blocked attacks.

Stagger - Grants your attacks a chance to stun your enemies. The chance is determined by the value of your Stagger number. As you gain levels, your enemies will become stronger. Therefore, it will require a higher Stagger value to have the same chance to stun an enemy.

Chaos: Vampire - Grants your attacks a moderate chance to drain life from your enemies, returning that life to you.

Warding - Warding grants your hero a low chance to stun enemies that attack them. The chance of the stun is increased with more points to warding. As you gain levels, your enemies will become stronger which means it will require a greater warding number to have the same chance of stunning enemies. Warding will also take effect with blocked attacks.

Since we went over the stats, let me tell you right away to not focus on Warding or Retribution. Warding and Retribution requires you to get hit to proc. You do not want to get hit and especially in hardcore difficulty. Doom, Stagger, and Vampire are the way to go since you don't have to endanger your life to actually proc the effect.

If you somehow have the gold and want to mess around with retribution and warding, go right ahead. There might be some really cool strategies that can be explored, but I never really bothered since I spent most of my gold on the other stats.

My guide is simple but effective. Hoard essences until you get a good endgame item. Then shove all your lovely essences into it. I usually wait until I get an Orange item from the areas in the Aranoi Desert (DLC area for Treasures of The Sun).

For example, take a look at my Chad Amulet :

Since the Phylactery of the Usurper is an endgame amulet and I know I won't replace my amulet with anything else, I can freely go even further beyond with adding an insane amount of doom, stagger, and vampire. It also looks like there is no upper limit to how many essences I can shove into one item, but be careful not to cause any integer overflow errors.

I recommend that you wait until the towards to end of the game to use your essences since using any essences in the early game is wasted because you will replace the gear that you used your essences on. If you feel like you hit a wall and need to use your essences early, go right away ahead. You can always farm for essences, but it will eat up more time.

I ran out of essences! What do I do?

Simple. You can farm essences. But how do I farm essences? Essences can only be obtained in two ways: From murdering your enemies and hoping they drop essences or transmuting your items and hoping they give you essences. Great! RNG! You might be annoyed at this stage but remember. You have a sly trick up your sleeve. The good ol' save/load trick.

Remember that you can gain essences by transmuting. What if I transmute an item and don't get the essence? Just load your game bro and try again. You can easily farm essences if you have the right items. Just load your game and transmute until you finally get the essence and then save.

Note that you can only receive a particular essence by transmuting an item with the associated statistic on it to begin with. It is possible to receive more than one essence when transmuting.

As you can see, I ripped that sentence off straight from the game. It should be easy to understand, but I will explain it further just in case.

Take a look at this item, the Steadfast Agni of Brutality.


As you can see, this item has the doom statistic. If you transmute it, you have a chance to gain the doom essence. If the item did not have the doom statistic. You have zero chance of gaining the doom essence from transmuting the item.

What does it mean by it is possible to receive more than one essence when transmuting? Well when an item has two essence related statistics, you can get two essences. For example: if an item has 69 Retribution and 69 Warding and you transmute it, there is a chance you will get an essences for both Retribution and Warding. Sweet right?

What if I don't have any items with statistics that can be essences?

Buy them from the shop. You can easily get an item with doom, stagger, or vampire. If the shop doesn't any items that you want, do the good ol' save/load trick to refresh the shop items.

I mention "chance" of getting an essence from transmuting a lot but what are the odds???

Unfortunately, I do not know the exact odds, but I can estimate using my experience in the game.

White Items - 0%

Green Items ~ 25%

Blue Items ~ 50%

Orange Items - 100%

I think it is safe to say White items don't have any of the statistics that can be essences. I could be proven wrong in the future though. Orange items will always give me an essence if the item has any of the stats that can be essences. As for Blue and Green, those are my estimates. I am too lazy to go through the game files to find the exact amount and you probably don't even need the exact percentage since you can just use the save/load trick.

In conclusion if you are playing on Hardcore difficulty, the essence spam will help you a lot. It made my life easier when I got stuck at High Priest Molochi (DLC Final Boss). They made the boss immune to bleeding so it was a rough ride until I got my Doom stat to around 400.

If you are playing on Casual or Normal, this may be overkill for you. If you want the game to feel like a walk in the park, go ahead and spam those essences.

Hopefully I have made your Dungeon Siege III adventures much more fun! Peace Out!

Dwight