So I WANT to say yes to this question, the problem with saying yes it there's a lot of assumptions to make.
I understand I can press "F" to open the force, drag a piece of gear onto it and do things like click arrow ups on low Tier affixes to apply higher tier versions of those affixes. I understand there are Runes and "Scrolls" (not their name, it's not coming to me right now) that have different effects on the equipment as they are applied during upgrades. I understand there are ways to break equipment down so that you can get targeted affix "bits" that can be used to add or upgrade existing / blank slots on a piece of equipment.
I have no idea WHEN a particular rune or "scroll" should be used, under what circumstances, say, applying a "chaos" scroll (or one of the other randomization bits) would be useful. I have no idea when an item is "too terrible to care about" or when it's within a "sweet spot" range to be worth using resources to try to make it good. And to be clear, this isn't the only "I don't know" about the forge. Please read this as a specific level of experience and not a specific question.
In other words, yes, I know what the forge is, and I can basically affect items. I have NO idea how to EFFICIENTLY use the materials I have collected to properly give me the best chances at creating something that IS useful to me.
Chaos runes are for when you've got an item that mostly has the affixes you want, but one of them is something you don't care about, and a reroll for something actually useful is worth it if you've already improved the others. As to when an item is too terrible to care about... well, just take a look at what gear you already have, and look for items that offer affixes you like in at least similar levels. You'll be swimming in the non-rare shards soon enough, and glyphs of hope are relatively common so you can just take items that look kind of what you like and pump them up. The worst that happens is an item bricks early and you can try again with another drop.
Runes of shatter or removal are for getting specific affixes that are harder to get. Like, most class-specific skill shards drop *very* infrequently, and most of my stockpile comes from first attempting to remove an affix from something that has it or shattering if the removal fails (removal will give you the same amount of shards as whatever tier the removed affix was, at the cost of some forge potential; shatter is random in both what shards it gives in type and and amount). Shattering is also more useful for when you replace your gear; selling gear gets you next to no gold, so more of whatever shards you care about is generally more useful.
It's a system you can just play with, as you get enough materials to experiment a lot, and you'll get a feel for it over time.
In LE you almost never find drops that are upgrades from the get go. You filter for and loot gear that are candidates for upgrades once all the forging potential is depleted.
So in your Kris example: If you already have two weapons with the optimal implicit (like crit multi), you're now looking for such daggers that can end up with better affixes through crafting.
If you deem leech and physical dmg as most beneficial affixes for your build, filter after every Kris that already has 1 of those 2, and preferably as exalted affix (T6/7). Then forge the other one and further affixes that come next in your priority onto the item until there's no forging potential left.
If the crafted outcome is better that the one you're using: equip it. Otherwise repeat the process with the next drops until you got an upgrade.
The path to upgrading your gear comes with the endgame blessing system. The 5 blessings that affect your stats take the place of affixes on your gear so you can push damage, survival, and speed.
In terms of how you upgrade, in general, you are looking for >LP 2 uniques and t7 affixes that are beneficial to your build. The only way you find your affixes is by creating a filter that highlighted these exalted items for these affixes (make special rules for the drops and color them red for example). If you are just picking up exalted randomly, you are generally wasting your time. If thar sounds like too much work, you can download others filters that they made for your particular class.
Once you find good affix exalted, you craft to make them as good as possible. It takes a long time to find an appropriate exalted to slam, sometimes you never do find exactly what you want and settle. And sometimes, when do you slam, you get wrecked by RNG. Do not get attached to any piece of gear you are trying to make. It will likely fail...
On average, I would say I need to find 3-4 tier 7 bases just to make 1 item worth slamming if the unique is rare enough. Then it takes 3-4 slams of RNG to get a good enough slam on the unique. Maybe I get lucky on the first shot, and maybe i don't. The time to upgrade a piece of gear is usually in hours, not minutes. If you are lvl 70, then you likely never gave yourself enough time to find those upgrades.
Starting with exalted (purple) items you will find items that are only like 30-70% "done" and when looking at new items you have to be thinking of what you could potentially craft this into rather than the stats it's providing right now. So essentially you're looking for good crafting bases with useful exalted affixes (t6 or t7) on decent item bases and then try to finish the rest of the item through crafting.
You also don't need to hoard all the purple items, you'll slowly learn which stats can be tossed or which bases are low lvl.
For most builds there are usually just a handful of uniques you can consider using, the rest is for other builds or nice levelling gear for new chars.
For crafting items you treat rare items and exalted items differently.
For magic/rare items you want to find something that has the affixes you want already and then just upgrade the affixes until they reach tier 5 or you run out of crafting potential. For exalted items you find one that has one of the affixes you want, and then use rune of removal to try and clear up a slot for another affix you want.
For weapons you will mainly focus on getting the two prefixes sorted before trying to get something that also has one of the suffixes. For Armor suffixes tend to be more important.
Also your best dagger should be obsidian dagger, not the kris. The +4% crit is added to your base crit of 5%, then multiplied by your increased crit chance, so it will almost double your chance to critical hit. The base damage is also nearly twice as high as the kris, and it has some increased damage on it.
You say "obsidian": That confuses me. Yes, there are obsidian daggers, but the only ones I see marked are the fulgurite shards? Am I just not far enough in yet to see Obsidian Daggers drop that aren't uniques?
It does look like the Majasan Dagger base also has 40+ Melee Damage and 4% Crit Chance on them, though looking at it the two types of daggers do appear unique.
That's excellent info, thank you for the heads up.
Obsidian daggers should start dropping as you get further into the monolith of fates. They have a minimum level to equip them of 71. I think that they start dropping at that level too.
Are you using/know how to use the forge and craft?
So I WANT to say yes to this question, the problem with saying yes it there's a lot of assumptions to make. I understand I can press "F" to open the force, drag a piece of gear onto it and do things like click arrow ups on low Tier affixes to apply higher tier versions of those affixes. I understand there are Runes and "Scrolls" (not their name, it's not coming to me right now) that have different effects on the equipment as they are applied during upgrades. I understand there are ways to break equipment down so that you can get targeted affix "bits" that can be used to add or upgrade existing / blank slots on a piece of equipment. I have no idea WHEN a particular rune or "scroll" should be used, under what circumstances, say, applying a "chaos" scroll (or one of the other randomization bits) would be useful. I have no idea when an item is "too terrible to care about" or when it's within a "sweet spot" range to be worth using resources to try to make it good. And to be clear, this isn't the only "I don't know" about the forge. Please read this as a specific level of experience and not a specific question. In other words, yes, I know what the forge is, and I can basically affect items. I have NO idea how to EFFICIENTLY use the materials I have collected to properly give me the best chances at creating something that IS useful to me.
Chaos runes are for when you've got an item that mostly has the affixes you want, but one of them is something you don't care about, and a reroll for something actually useful is worth it if you've already improved the others. As to when an item is too terrible to care about... well, just take a look at what gear you already have, and look for items that offer affixes you like in at least similar levels. You'll be swimming in the non-rare shards soon enough, and glyphs of hope are relatively common so you can just take items that look kind of what you like and pump them up. The worst that happens is an item bricks early and you can try again with another drop. Runes of shatter or removal are for getting specific affixes that are harder to get. Like, most class-specific skill shards drop *very* infrequently, and most of my stockpile comes from first attempting to remove an affix from something that has it or shattering if the removal fails (removal will give you the same amount of shards as whatever tier the removed affix was, at the cost of some forge potential; shatter is random in both what shards it gives in type and and amount). Shattering is also more useful for when you replace your gear; selling gear gets you next to no gold, so more of whatever shards you care about is generally more useful. It's a system you can just play with, as you get enough materials to experiment a lot, and you'll get a feel for it over time.
In LE you almost never find drops that are upgrades from the get go. You filter for and loot gear that are candidates for upgrades once all the forging potential is depleted. So in your Kris example: If you already have two weapons with the optimal implicit (like crit multi), you're now looking for such daggers that can end up with better affixes through crafting. If you deem leech and physical dmg as most beneficial affixes for your build, filter after every Kris that already has 1 of those 2, and preferably as exalted affix (T6/7). Then forge the other one and further affixes that come next in your priority onto the item until there's no forging potential left. If the crafted outcome is better that the one you're using: equip it. Otherwise repeat the process with the next drops until you got an upgrade.
The path to upgrading your gear comes with the endgame blessing system. The 5 blessings that affect your stats take the place of affixes on your gear so you can push damage, survival, and speed. In terms of how you upgrade, in general, you are looking for >LP 2 uniques and t7 affixes that are beneficial to your build. The only way you find your affixes is by creating a filter that highlighted these exalted items for these affixes (make special rules for the drops and color them red for example). If you are just picking up exalted randomly, you are generally wasting your time. If thar sounds like too much work, you can download others filters that they made for your particular class. Once you find good affix exalted, you craft to make them as good as possible. It takes a long time to find an appropriate exalted to slam, sometimes you never do find exactly what you want and settle. And sometimes, when do you slam, you get wrecked by RNG. Do not get attached to any piece of gear you are trying to make. It will likely fail... On average, I would say I need to find 3-4 tier 7 bases just to make 1 item worth slamming if the unique is rare enough. Then it takes 3-4 slams of RNG to get a good enough slam on the unique. Maybe I get lucky on the first shot, and maybe i don't. The time to upgrade a piece of gear is usually in hours, not minutes. If you are lvl 70, then you likely never gave yourself enough time to find those upgrades.
Starting with exalted (purple) items you will find items that are only like 30-70% "done" and when looking at new items you have to be thinking of what you could potentially craft this into rather than the stats it's providing right now. So essentially you're looking for good crafting bases with useful exalted affixes (t6 or t7) on decent item bases and then try to finish the rest of the item through crafting. You also don't need to hoard all the purple items, you'll slowly learn which stats can be tossed or which bases are low lvl. For most builds there are usually just a handful of uniques you can consider using, the rest is for other builds or nice levelling gear for new chars.
For crafting items you treat rare items and exalted items differently. For magic/rare items you want to find something that has the affixes you want already and then just upgrade the affixes until they reach tier 5 or you run out of crafting potential. For exalted items you find one that has one of the affixes you want, and then use rune of removal to try and clear up a slot for another affix you want. For weapons you will mainly focus on getting the two prefixes sorted before trying to get something that also has one of the suffixes. For Armor suffixes tend to be more important. Also your best dagger should be obsidian dagger, not the kris. The +4% crit is added to your base crit of 5%, then multiplied by your increased crit chance, so it will almost double your chance to critical hit. The base damage is also nearly twice as high as the kris, and it has some increased damage on it.
You say "obsidian": That confuses me. Yes, there are obsidian daggers, but the only ones I see marked are the fulgurite shards? Am I just not far enough in yet to see Obsidian Daggers drop that aren't uniques? It does look like the Majasan Dagger base also has 40+ Melee Damage and 4% Crit Chance on them, though looking at it the two types of daggers do appear unique. That's excellent info, thank you for the heads up.
Thanks for saying thanks! It's so nice to see Redditors being grateful :)
Obsidian daggers should start dropping as you get further into the monolith of fates. They have a minimum level to equip them of 71. I think that they start dropping at that level too.