The Instilling page does two things: it costs out instilling recipes against the live market, and it tells you whether the materials are already in your stash. Open it from Scanners → Instilling, or bind a hotkey under Overlays → Hotkeys.
Costing a recipe
Pick the outcome you want and the page lists what it takes, then prices each component at the current market rate and totals it. Two numbers come out:
- What the recipe costs you in your display currency.
- What you already have, joined against your stash so you can see what you would actually need to buy.
The second number is the one people forget to check. Half of "this recipe is too expensive" turns into "I own most of it already" once the stash is counted.
The decision, not the number
A recipe total is only half the comparison. The other half is what the finished result sells for, or what buying the equivalent outright would cost.
Three cases, and only one of them is a good idea:
The recipe costs less than the finished item sells for. Do it. This is a real margin and it is usually where crafting money comes from.
The recipe costs about the same. Do it only if you need the item *now* and the market has none listed. Otherwise you are working for free.
The recipe costs more. Buy the item. This happens more often than people expect, particularly in the first weeks of a league when materials are scarce and finished goods are plentiful.
Ctrl+Alt+D on the target item takes two seconds and settles which case you are in.
Reforging
Reforging combines items into another item of the same class. It is a way to convert a pile of things you cannot sell into one thing you might be able to. The important qualifications:
- The input matters less than people hope and the output is random within its constraints. It is a currency sink that consolidates junk, not a way to target a specific item.
- Value goes down, not up, on average. Reforging is worth doing when the inputs are genuinely unsellable — the alternative is vendoring them — and not worth doing with anything that has a listed price.
- Check the inputs' prices first. The single most common reforging mistake is feeding in an item somebody would have paid for.
So: use the bench to clear dead stock, not to gamble with stock that has value.
Practical workflow
- Open Instilling, pick the outcome you actually want for your build or to sell.
- Read the total and the "already own" figure.
- Price the finished item with
Ctrl+Alt+D. - If the margin is not clearly positive, close the page and go buy it.
- If it is, check the Crafting Calculator for the multi-step cost before committing to the whole plan.
Where prices come from
Component prices come from ePOE's market data for your selected league. That means they are aggregate values, not a quote — a thin-volume component can be listed far above its shown value, or be unavailable entirely. For anything expensive, confirm with a live price check before you budget around it.