Trading is a core Path of Exile feature, helping players exchange items. Currency is used as a universal term using in the context of trading. It can be differentiated into two broad categories: Raw currency and items with a trade value. Raw currencies are items like the Chaos Orbs and Divine Orbs, historically they have been considered the equivalent of what we call in the real world money.
Every item in the game has a “trade value”. This value fluctuates based on supply and demand, which are impacted by the popularity of the item. Game updates that change how useful an item is will also impact its value.
For example, a player that uses swords for their build finds a good staff. This item has no direct use for them but might be very good for another player. They can trade the staff in exchange for some currency and then use the currency to buy a better sword for themselves.
Trades that exchange an item for another item are obscenely rare and very risky. Suppose someone offsets you an item in exchange for an item you’re selling. In that case, it is unlikely that their offer is worth as much as your item (even if their item seems to be worth as much on trade sites, there is a good chance it is being price-fixed). Be sure to know exactly what every item in the trade is worth before accepting anything other than raw currency.
Most players sell their items through Premium Stash Tabs and trade-index sites like the official Path of Exile Trade website. This microtransaction allows you to set the price you want to sell an item for. This listing will be indexed by the trade sites and then appear as a result when other players search for it.
Path of Exile is a flexible game with a ton of features. Players do not need to trade at all to beat the game. In fact, there is the Solo Self-Found game mode or SSF, where trading items with other players is disabled. When creating a character, you can click a box at the bottom of the league banner to join one of the leagues. You can leave them at any time to their parent league by clicking the Migrate button next to it.
However, trading allows you to use items you did not find by yourself and help other players with items they may want. Some players create build guides for other players, including a list of gear items they are supposed to have or buy on the market to enable the showcased playstyle to be working as advertised.
Some players consider trading a fun meta-game by itself. They spend their time looking for bargain deals and list them for the value they expect them to fetch or buy items and improve them, so they are easier found by players looking for a specific item from a guide.
Many players like to buy six-linked items or Orb of Fusing, needed to create six-linked items to better deal with the game’s challenge. Most players buy rare items suitable for their builds. Some builds require using one or several specific unique items for them to work.
For example, energy-shield-based character builds require you to either find items with high energy-shield or buy from other players.
Again, players do not need to be involved in trading. It is just a popular game feature you can have fun with and achieve goals quicker.
The basic idea of making currency is: money made compared to the time spent. Every action in the game takes time: killing monsters, picking loot, movement, porting to map and back, trading with vendors and other players, putting items in the stash. So many players try to focus on making more currency in a limited time: hour, evening, weekend. As a new player, you should not worry about this too much. It’s more important to have fun than checking how much chaos/hour you are getting by playing.
The most basic ways of improving your “currency per time” rely on increasing the value of the map content you are playing. Here is a rundown of a few simple tricks.
Increasing map value:
Improving map clear time:
Almost all currency is created by killing monsters and opening reward boxes. Players kill a lot of monsters every day. Some players have a goal to reach a certain character level by killing enough monsters. Other players kill a lot of monsters to get rewards from mechanics.
A popular method to improve the value of collecting currency from monster kills is using a Item Filter to highlight currency items, highlight high-value items, and completely hide low-value drops. Picking fewer items is spending less time to get currency.
Arcanist’s Strongboxes drop raw currency when opened. Some players take their time to craft them before opening, to increase item quantity with Engineer’s Orbs and rarity changing currencies like Orb of Transmutation, Orb of Chance or Orb of Alchemy. There is a discussion in the community if this is worth the effort later on, but for getting some chaos if you really need them, it is definitely worth it.
The Vendor recipe system can be used to make currency. Here are some examples:
It is personal preference whether collecting and vendor trading items for the currency is worth spending time in terms of efficiency and currency per hour.
Loreweave is another vendor recipe.
Consider saving or buying 60 unneeded unique rings to vendor trade them for Loreweave and then selling it to other players. Perform trade search to find Loreweave price. Is it worth the time to collect or buy 60 rings? If there is a big gap between the ring prices and the value of a Loreweave, you might want to invest your time and currency into this exchange.
Some Divination cards are used for direct currency generation without trading with other players. Collect full stack of the divination card and trade it for currency with Tasuni or Lilly Roth.
List of divination cards granting currency
Six-linked items can be sold to a vendor for 20x Orbs of Fusing. Most of the time six-linked items have a higher value to players because they can be crafted to or already good stats. Six-linked items provide the opportunity to increase active skill power with up to five support gems. The most famous six-link item is Tabula Rasa. You can get it as a unique item drop, divination cards like Humility and Vanity. Humility is an uncommon drop in the Act 9 Zone [The Blood Aqueduct] and endgame maps like Waterways and Channel.
Delve or delving means exploring the Azurite Mine.
Finding loot in delve requires sulphite. It is a reward for Niko map missions. How to get more sulphite:
Once enough sulphite is accumulated, players can start delving.
There are several ways to get currency from delve, either by direct drop or trading valuable items with other players. The direct method and azurite farming are good for beginners because they can do it on any comfortable depth level and without much skill and risk.
There are currency nodes with currency icons and descriptions. Just travel there and collect the reward. Also, reaching any node has will reward drops for clearing all monsters, just like on maps. Special nodes, like Vaal Outposts, have currency chests. So it might be worth checking them out as well.
Players need to farm azurite to improve their character’s stats in delve, like darkness resistance. However, it is possible to trade azurite for Resonators with Niko. Check resonator prices on the market and pick the one with the most value per azurite. Players may wish to buy them in larger packs for crafting. If it is profitable enough, target farm azurite nodes in delve, convert it to resonators and sell it on market.
Players tend to buy fossils on the market in large packs. So it is worth farming them in delve. There are nodes with fossils explicitly visible on delve map, but they are rare. A more common way to find fossils is to explore darkness in side-passages or behind breakable walls. Use flares to avoid the darkness damage on the way and blow up walls with dynamite. Such side passages with fossils behind walls are common in long delve corridors and sometimes visible from the path of the crawler.
This method is a bit more advanced and requires practice with understanding delve layouts. The Azurite mine map is a grid. All grid points contain something, either marked on the map or not. If the map has empty space in place of the supposed node, it means there will be a long corridor next to it, in turn, meaning must be hidden something there behind a wall.
Players interact with Immortal Syndicate members by doing Jun missions. There are several different approaches to organize Jun’s syndicate “map”. They all have pros and cons. Learning them, understanding, and implementing them requires advanced game experience and separate guides.
Beginner players do not have to involve with all syndicate manipulating details. Here are the basics. Choose several members with good rewards. Try to increase their ranks by executing them and promote them to lead their safehouse. Run safehouse for rewards when they are ready, as this type of encounter will not spawn while the safehouse intel is full. Sell rewards to other players or use them. Choosing members is based on rewards. Refer to Immortal Syndicate page. Here are some high market demand ones:
All members of the Intervention provide chests with different scarabs. Check scarab prices on the trade website.
Bestiary is Einhars master mission mechanic. It rewards players with beasts in the menagerie. You can itemize them with Bestiary Orbs and sell to other players.
There are several different ways to get Einhar’s mission: daily mission, killing map boss, opening a map with no other missions, and using a Bestiary Scarab.
Players help Einar to capture beasts by reducing enemy HP to a minimum. Then you can visit Menagerie, buy Bestiary Orb, find your beast in the menu (default H)>Bestiary>Captured Beasts, itemize it, and sell to other players. Some beasts reward currency by killing in the arena directly.
Actual market prices are based on popularity and change with time and game updates. Usually, players like to buy beasts for crafting and for opening portals to bestiary bosses. Here are some examples to check prices:
The Temple of Atzoatl is a temple with many rooms.
Alva will open portals to it after a player completes enough missions for her. Minimum is 4 missions, 3 incursions each, 12 incursions total. The same room can not occur twice in the same map, so some players prefer to delay Alva quests to manipulate room incursion probabilities.
If nothing else, Alva provides a lot of additional monsters on each map. It increased the total quantity of item drops, including currency. Atzoatl itself is a free map.
Direct currency rooms are:
Some players prefer to target farm other room for a small chance of very valuable reward.
When a temple is complete you have to option to either open the temple for yourselves, or itemize it into a Chronicle of Atzoatl which can be traded with other players. On the trade site, you can select the major room you have in your chronicle and see how much they are getting sold for.
Legion is league mechanics included into core Path of Exile. Occasionally players encounter Timeless Monoliths. After activating they start Legion encounter. There are several ways to generate a timeless monolith:
Some legion monsters and chests with Chaos Orb icons drop currency directly. A common reward for each legion encounter are timeless splinters. Collect 100 splinters to assemble a timeless emblem. These emblems usually are in high demand on the market.
Legion generals are special mini-bosses at the very edge of the encounter. You know that one of them spawned when a beam indicates their position from the monolith. They drop a bigger stack of splinters when defeated.
Legion encounters can randomly reward players with incubators. They can be sold well to other players. Check market prices. Fine incubators and Ornate incubators generate currency directly. Other popular incubators are:
You will meet Blight encounters in maps. After successfully completing a blight encounter players are rewarded with chests of items. Common blight rewards are oils and blighted maps. Blighted maps are just a giant blight encounter. You can sell blighted maps and oils to other players. Blighted maps usually have a relatively high value. If the player is capable of doing a blighted map successfully, they are rewarded with many blight chests. Upgrade oils with the 3-to-1 vendor recipe until you get good enough oil, worth spending time trading. Oils are used in augmenting amulets, rings, and blighted maps. Check prices of the following oils:
Players encounter Metamorphs in maps. It involves collecting monster organs and assembling a metamorph, mini-boss enemies. Different organs have different rewards. There are direct currency reward options and rewards from other leagues: oils, incubators, scarabs, fossils.
Metamorphs, killed in maps, while having full difficulty bar, drops unique organs of map bosses. Assembly the 5 different types Metamorph organs to fight metamorph boss in Tane’s Laboratory. The rewards of this Metamorph are determined by the organs used. Many players look for organs with the most “drops additional currency items” mod on them when assembling a monster.
Catalysts are the special metamorph league rewards, used to increase jewelry quality. Players can sell catalysts to other players.
Players can encounter Delirium mirrors after defeating Innocent (High Templar Avarius) in all areas after The Torched Courts (Act 5). After going through the mirror, delirium empowers existing and adds new monsters to the map. Kill as many as possible while in the fog and go further away from the mirror as the fog slowly dissipates. The reward type is shown during the encounter at the bottom of the screen. There is a direct currency reward, looking like a Chaos Orb. Other league rewards are also found in delirium: oils, incubators, scarabs, fossils.
Harvest is a mechanic, allowing players to harvest plants in the groves spawning in maps. When encountering a grove you will fine three to four plots of two fields right next to each other. You choose one by clicking on it, causing the other to wilt. Clicking again starts the encounter.
To easily make currency, you want to be on the lookout for the exchange crafts, swapping essences, fragments and delirium orbs. You buy/have a maximum stack of the worst item in the category and use the exchange every time until you have something you feel like selling. Crafts can easily be used on large or medium cluster jewels, getting two passives on mediums and three on large is worth checking the price for.
Some players level gems in weapon swap to sell on the market. The rarest and the most valuable are awakened gems but they are hard to find for most beginner players. Drop-only gems may be easier option to start with. This should be done by players that have upgraded all their own gems already, other players might want to achieve this goal for themselves first. Once the gem reaches level 20, sell it with one Gemcutter’s Prism to get a level 1 gem with 20% quality. Level them again to get a level 20 gem with 20% quality. You now have three options:
There is also a Harvest craft that allows you to try to awaken a gem with a corresponding awakened gem (See Awakened Support Skill Gems There are also Harvest crafts that allow you to sacrifice corrupted gems to either gain Gemcutter’s Prisms or Facetor’s Lenses
Players must complete The Lord’s Labyrinth to progress in the ascendancy tree of their characters.
Izaro’s Treasure at the end has a chance to give multiple currency items. Also, some assorted chests in the labyrinth itself drop currency as well: Labyrinth Trove, Emperor’s Trove, Emperor’s Treasury, Emperor’s Vault.
When farming the Labyrinth for currency, you want to get as many Silver Keys as you need to open all Silver Doors on your way through the lab. You don’t want to go out of your way to get these, as the rewards from the final room are most of the time better. This in turn means you want to collect all 4 Treasure Keys, 3 from gauntlets and puzzles, and 1 from Argus.
Killing bosses for loot is a natural popular concept of all RPG games, including Path of Exile. This requires some decent gear investment and is not easy for the most part.