Chaos Orbs: The Backbone of Trading and Early Crafting
Chaos orbs are often considered the most fundamental currency in Path of Exile 2 due to their wide availability and versatility. They serve as the primary medium of exchange for mid-tier items and are essential for early to mid-game crafting. Players use chaos orbs to reroll rare items by upgrading normal items to rare orbs and to purchase crafting materials from other players. Chaos orbs are also commonly used in trading as a baseline price unit, helping players evaluate item values and negotiate deals. For new players, accumulating chaos orbs is a key step towards entering the player-driven economy and building a strong character through crafting and trading.
Exalted Orbs: High-End Crafting and Investment
Exalted orbs hold a much higher value and are primarily used in late-game crafting to add powerful modifiers to rare items. Their rarity makes them the currency of choice for serious crafting projects, such as perfecting endgame gear or creating valuable unique items. Players often invest exalted orbs in the most critical upgrades like adding a new affix to an item or rerolling corruptions to achieve desirable outcomes. Due to their high value, exalted orbs are also a popular form of investment, often saved or traded carefully to maintain or increase wealth. In the trading market, exalted orbs are seen as a benchmark for wealth and progress.
Divine Orbs: Fine-Tuning and Stat Rebalancing
Divine orbs are specialized currency used for rebalancing the values of affixes on rare items without changing their type or number. They allow players to fine-tune gear stats, making them ideal for optimizing builds that require very specific attributes. Divine orbs are valuable in endgame crafting, especially for min-maxing damage, resistances, or life values. Because of their targeted use, divine orbs tend to be rarer and more expensive than chaos orbs but less common than exalted orbs. They are highly sought after by players who want to perfect their equipment without undertaking a full reroll.
Vaal Orbs: Risk and Reward in Corruption Crafting
Vaal orbs introduce a high-risk, high-reward element to crafting by corrupting items with unpredictable effects. They can add powerful modifiers, transform items into corrupted versions, or grant alternate implicit properties. Due to the random nature of corruption, Vaal orbs are used by players willing to gamble for potentially game-changing upgrades. While they can create highly valuable outcomes, many corruptions also destroy crafting potential or add detrimental effects, making their use a strategic decision. Vaal orbs are typically saved for valuable base items or specific builds that benefit from unique corrupted properties.
Orb of Scouring and Orb of Transmutation: Early Crafting Foundations
Orb of Scouring and Orb of Transmutation serve foundational roles in crafting and upgrading items at early stages. Orb of Scouring removes all modifiers from an item, resetting it to a clean state. This is essential for crafting processes that start with a blank slate. Orb of Transmutation upgrades a normal item to a magic item, introducing one or two modifiers and enabling further crafting steps. These orbs are cheap and plentiful, making them ideal for beginners to experiment with crafting and build towards more complex item modifications. They are critical tools for shaping the gear progression early in the game.
Other Currency Types: Specialized Uses and Economy Roles
Many other currency orbs such as Fossils, Essences, and Catalysts have niche roles that cater to specific crafting styles. Fossils modify the pool of possible affixes during crafting, Essences guarantee certain modifiers, and Catalysts improve the quality of specific item types. Each of these currencies is used to target particular crafting goals or to optimize gear for unique builds. Understanding the best use of these specialized currencies allows players to engage more deeply with the crafting system and to produce highly tailored items. Their values fluctuate based on demand and league mechanics, contributing to the dynamic in-game economy.
