Exalting should not increase level required beyond character level

This is never explained in the campaign (no crafting is explained well, to be fair).

You can take an item you are using, and Exalt it to add an affix, hoping for something useful, and just brick that item by rolling a high tier affix. Why?

Why doesn't it just roll affix additions that are in your level range, with your level being the maximum?

Then, at least, I can then keep using the item - even if I get a bad/great roll.

I've had items go from cLvl 16 to cLvl 52 with one random Exalt roll, completely removing those items' useabiliy. Why?

The explanation is quite easy. You have exalted an item, which had a higher item level, than your current level. Press Alt and hover with the mouse over the item. Then you can see its item level.

The affixes on items have break points. THis means, that an item has to has a specific item level, to have a certain affix tier. For example: You want to get a T1 prefix on a bow of increased % phys damage, the item level has to be 82+. If oyu want to get the prefix increased flat physical damage xy - yz, you only need a bow with item level of 75+.

Check Poe.db for that:

https://poe2db.tw/us/Modifiers

When you click on the bow like in my example and the prefixes I've mentioned, you will see the numbers right next to the tier. That's how crafting works in this game.

Long story short: I guess you've just exalted an item, which you have found with a higher level character or have bought an item in the market, without knowing, that its item level is too high for you.

GGG will never change that, because this is the core of the crafting system.

Greetz

Cow

Level requirements should not even be a thing for gear.

The most soul crushing moments on a new league start is when you spend your last piece of currency on trying to make your best item better and weather that worked or not it levels the item hours later into your playthrough leaving you weaker and forcing you to grind to get somewhere aproaching where you previously were and worse by the time you can use that crafted item you find somthing better.

Just remove level requirements on items it will make the game smoother more fun and speed up subsequent playthroughs.

It wouldn't be just smoother, if level requirements would be removed completely. The second run would be a mere joke, that even casual D4 players would dream about. I think, it's fine as it is. No need for a L1 character to run around with a multi T1 bow.

As a HC player I could be fine with something different on a second rund after death. But it still has to be a task to finish campaign. I don't want something like in D4, where death doesn't mean anything, because you can get to the endgame within half an hour.

Running through the whole campaign with 10k ES and a hell of dps, everyone would open posts with "Why not skipping campaign at all?".

Remember that stat requirements would still exist so its not like you could just automatically slap anything on a level1 you would have to do some stat shenanigans and if you do that you should be rewarded for it.

Stat requirements wouldn't be that much of a dealbreaker. Quite easy to do it in two or three steps with + stat items and lower weapons/armour... Would still trivialize everything.

And you can do the campaig way easier already as normal by wearing levelling uniques. Just not that powerful, what you have in mind.