Early in a fresh Path of Exile 2 league, the market is a mess and your wallet feels it, so it makes sense to stretch every Chaos Orb and pick your upgrades carefully with tools like PoE 2 Currency for sale when you really need them. You are not aiming for some mirror-worthy monster here, you just want a Siege Crossbow that lets a grenade build chew through content without draining your stash. The Siege base is the one that stands out. Its implicit lines up perfectly with grenade damage and, because grenades do not care about attack speed at all, you can ignore one of the most annoying stats in bow crafting and focus all your budget on raw physical power instead.
Choosing The Right Base
The first real hurdle is getting a normal Siege Crossbow with item level 82 or higher, and this is where a lot of people try to cut corners and regret it later. If you drop below that level, you lock yourself out of the top physical mods like Merciless, and the whole project ends up feeling half baked. Once you have the base, you burn through Perfect Orbs of Transmutation and Perfect Orbs of Augmentation, rolling again and again until you hit strong percentage physical damage, ideally Tier 1 or Tier 2. Expect to bin most attempts. If you hit a juicy projectile skill roll but no good physical, do not force it; list that bow for someone else who cares about projectiles and use the profit to fund another base.
Turning The Magic Bow Rare
When you finally land that high physical% magic bow, you want to lock it in before greed ruins it. That is where a Greater Essence of Abrasion comes in, upgrading the bow to rare and guaranteeing a solid flat physical damage line that stacks perfectly with your existing percentage roll. You end up with a weapon that already feels decent for the amount you have spent. The next step is the Abyss layer. Grab a Preserved Jawbone, an Omen of the Liege, and an Omen of Sinistral Necromancy, make sure they are actually active, then use Desecrate until you hit the 101–121% increased grenade damage prefix. It looks a bit niche on paper, but once you see your grenades chunk bosses, you get why people chase it.
Safe Upgrade Or YOLO Slam
At this point the bow is already good enough to carry you, but there is still room to push it depending on how brave or broke you are feeling. If your currency tab looks healthy, you can protect the bow with an Omen of Dextral Crystallisation and hit it with a Perfect Essence of Battle for the guaranteed +5 to attack skills, which is boring but reliable and turns the item into a long term keeper. If you are low on currency or just like gambling, you can skip the safety net and slam Greater Exalted Orbs, chasing +5 or even +7 skill levels and accepting that you might also roll something completely useless. After that, clean it up with Blacksmith’s Whetstones for quality, fix your socket setup with Artificer’s Orbs, maybe toss in a Saqawal’s Rune of the Sky if it fits your build, and only then decide if you want to risk a Vaal Orb roll on top.
When To Stop Upgrading
The easy mistake is to keep pumping resources into the bow when the rest of your gear is still dumpster tier, so try to step back and check where your damage and survivability are really coming from before chasing that last 5 percent. Once the crossbow has strong physical%, flat physical, grenade damage, and at least one skill level upgrade, it is usually better value to fix flasks, resists, or jewels instead of chasing a perfect line up of suffixes. If you find yourself stuck or short on drops, that is often the moment players quietly tab out to buy game currency or items in u4gm PoE 2 Currency and then come back to finish the bow in one or two big steps rather than slowly bleeding Chaos on tiny upgrades.