Yes, you open/close until you get the quest to do that cave; otherwise, you’re going at it blind which takes much longer.
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I find the process if going to Keywardens and doing the ubers incredibly tedious so if I had a choice I would much rather just reforge one even if it was more costly or time consuming
True, nothing seems to be free in game and IRL 
Farming keys and ubers on T16 should at least provide one with souls for one of the crafts (in the batch of four). So it’s still incredibly cheap compared to reforging.
It’s not my intention to tell people if they are wrong or right in their feelings about some of the activities/chores in the game of course.
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Ah, that triggered a memory… the lack of forgotten souls was the bottleneck for me getting an ancient HFA this season. That’s why it was quicker for me to farm the Staff of Herding.
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And the fun part? Consistency is not a thing here. Technically upgraded rares that were crafted at the blacksmith or jeweler turned into legendaries are crafted, but you can reforge those.
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I’d say thankfully we can’t reforge crafted set pieces. In a previous season I was getting tired of not seing ancient Aughild’s stuff (probably bracers) from numerous tries at Haedrig. So I thought; why not give it a go at the cube and “re-force” an ancient bracer? When it was not possible I realized that it would be stupid of me to waste souls on that when, because of abundance of bounty runes from Visions, I could craft Aughild’s bracers almost all day long at the blacksmith!
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It shows how much thought that’s been put into the game (meant in a positive, non-ironic way).
I’m not sure that what Strix says is verbatim in the game guide (and his comment is probably only directed at some of the crafted items). Besides: going through the process of crafting a sovereign item, upgrading it and then reforging it is a lot different than just trying to reforge a crafted item that already has a legendary power.
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This is another case of Blizzard’s vague description. Items that cannot be altered in Kanai’s Cube are not just “crafted items”. They’re crafted-only items.
Items like Hellfire Jewelry (Amulets and Rings) or Sets like Captain Crimson’s are items that cannot be upgraded in Kanai’s Cube because they are “crafted-only” items.
Every Season I craft a Rare Sovereign Amulet for my Follower and then upgrade it in Kanai’s Cube to a Legendary, hoping to get the “cannot die” version. (Edit: Oh, and I forgot to mention, I can Reforge them too). I can do that because Follower Amulets are not “crafted-only”. They can also drop anywhere in the game.
However, since crafted-only items have a chance of being Primal, I don’t see why the Cube Recipe, Curiosity of Lorath Nahr wouldn’t work. (Although, I haven’t tested this yet).
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You are correct. It is tedious but my point stands as everything in the leveling process is tedious. You might as well do things you need to do anyways. Like farming an ancient hellfire amulet while leveling.
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True, there are some tedious things. I think we all have some things we find more tedious than they probably are. Like I feel about nightmares, man they feel like such a chore for some reason.
I do leave some of the altar nodes for a while though. The ones that require some “side activity” that isn’t part of the regular grind progress things, like the amulet, I rather get a proper T16 build set up before spending too much time on those.
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I’m going to go out on a limb and say you were RNG lucky. Took me near 45 runs this season. I wrote down the stats somewhere. icy dungeon spawned more than caverns, although on such a small sample size, this could just be variance that evens out on a longer run.
I noticed the past 2 seasons that it took around 40 runs for the gem to drop.
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I actually enjoy farming it. One of the best amulets in game yet easily replaced. I usually prefer a decent Overwhelming Desire over Hellfire amulet at early game but it makes you quite sturdy around TX when you most need it.
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That’s not bad at all.
Mine this season was really weird. I got the rainbow on my second try, but the shinbone took at least 30 to get. Overall it was still like 3 hours if I have to guess, did some of it in between visions but I did do about 2 hours only farming for it.
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Consoles only need to find the plan, the gibbering gemstone, the mushroom and buy wirt’s bell.
It takes some time to make Hellfire amulets but you can easily make a lot of them all at once. Keys are quick to farm and you don’t have to make a new game anymore when you do the ubers.