The problem with exalted orbs, and currencies in general

When I first reached the endgame, around map tiers 1-10, I had some struggles with map sustain because I couldn't spam Exalted Orbs on every Waystone I had. I had to repeat a lot of lower-tier maps to slowly build up higher-tier Waystones. Now that I've been grinding T15+ maps for a while, I've realized that Exalted Orbs are basically useless.

Let me explain: In the early endgame, Exalted Orbs had a big impact because any combination of usable mods could make me stronger. But now that most of my gear has 2-4 high-tier usable mods, it's nearly impossible to keep exalting every random base. Before, I would exalt a lot of potential bases, but now, if I find a really good base with two mods, I'll use a Regal Orb and maybe an Exalted Orb, though those moments are very rare.

I've come to realize that Exalted Orbs are mainly used on my Waystones. To make things worse, I barely even use them there, since I rely on Alchemy Orbs instead. In 700 hours of playtime, I've never used an Alchemy Orb on a base item. At this point, I have way too many currencies that hold no value for me, they exist purely for trading (I'm SSF). This is why Divine Orbs have been increasing in price: they're rarer and actually useful for improving uniques and late-game items.

Even Vaal Orbs mostly end up being used on Waystones, yet they drop far more frequently than I can actually use them. Sure, you can use them when trying to improve a specific unique or go for a potential upgrade, but those moments are far less frequent than the number of Vaal Orbs you accumulate from grinding for example.

My conclusion is that Exalted Orbs have a period where they matter, and during that time, you have to use them carefully, even struggling a bit. But once you reach a more stable point, you no longer need them other than Waystone crafting, and their drop rate increases significantly with higher-tier Waystones and rarity bonuses.

Currencies don't have practical uses at the same rate they drop. In the late game, you're only interested in Tier 5 items. There's no reason for a player to gamble on common bases, and even reforging starts to becomes a waste of time. The problem comes down to the fact that you need a combination of high-tier mods, and the odds are so miserably low that it's not worth the effort. Instead, you just keep grinding and hoping to drop Tier 5 items and valuable currencies, or specific items from other league meachanics.

What I see is that the majority of the currency I have, or the crafting process as a whole, has been dedicated towards Waystones because there is no realistic or proper engagement in 'crafting' base items. As a result, currencies become more and more useless without a proper sink or meaningful ways for players to use them to improve their characters. This is not about how crafting works in general, finding gear on the ground and slamming it with currencies rather than relying on other crafting methods. I'm specifically talking about the current major lack of balance in that process. I have a few solutions in my head, but this post is mainly to raise awareness.

TL;DR: 99% of currencies have no use in the endgame other than highly specific situations and Waystone crafting, meaning you only grind for currencies that don't add to your progress and are mainly used for general trading instead. Since Divine Orbs are actually useful, they dictate the price of other currencies.

exalted orbs are not good as a base currency as they have limited uses so the moment you drop more than 3 on average per map their value fast approaches 0

>You gotta problem?

My biggest problem with "crafting" (?) is once you get gear with 5+ useable mods at useable tiers the odds that you will either find a ground item and/or craft with non-mirror-tier methods anything better is close enough to zero that it's not worth your time to try ... at least in trade league.

What needs to happen is there still needs to be a sense of progression that spans the gap between "RNG tinkering" and "mirror-tier" crafting as we currently know it.

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KingAlamar#4071 schrieb:

My biggest problem with "crafting" (?) is once you get gear with 5+ useable mods at useable tiers the odds that you will either find a ground item and/or craft with non-mirror-tier methods anything better is close enough to zero that it's not worth your time to try ... at least in trade league.

What needs to happen is there still needs to be a sense of progression that spans the gap between "RNG tinkering" and "mirror-tier" crafting as we currently know it.

Absolutely, I expect diminishing returns when it comes to crafting and finding gear. My point is the fact that currencies become obsolete too quickly, and if you don't trade, you have no reason to care about them, which is weird, because if you don't trade, you are the one who is supposed to care about them the most, simply because you want to try to forge your own items. In PoE 1, the currencies were useful for the player at all times, if you reached the point where they weren't, it was because you had pretty much beaten the game. I don't feel like PoE 2 is the same regarding currencies, because you have this weird dynamic where you need a billion base items, and they don't bring any realistic chance to become upgrades. The tiered items are a true blessing because once you see one, you have the hope that it can be an upgrade, and that's the thing, not even those items use currency as well. You never use currency past midgame, at least nowhere nearly as much as you find them. And another thing is that they can't become rarer because Exalted Orbs still have to be useful for the midgame, and you shouldn't be discouraged from using them. At the same time, you still use them for Waystone crafting. One possible solution is to let the blue orbs serve as the early-game generic currencies, then the yellow orbs for the midgame general currencies, and then we'll need currencies aimed for the late game, where they hold value for the player and you feel encouraged to attempt crafting. For now, those are kind of omens and essences, but they feel separated from the base game drop table. If they were the main crafting methods for every late-game item, they'd need to feel a little bit less annoying to obtain. Or another solution is changing gear drop tables as a whole. Whatever they end up doing, the game still has to reach fine-tuning where currencies feel usable, you care about them, and they end up being actual good attempts to make better gear.

Loot in general has a problem with trade league, rarity, and quant scaling. The game is basically pre-nerfed assuming that your character is taking at least "average advantage" of all of those effective loot multipliers.


When taken to it's logical conclusion then the odds of any one piece of equipment that's dropped being an upgrade past L85 is diminishingly low.

When you combine the above with relatively low powered crafting system for anything below "mirror tier" then the natural result is that most crafting currencies [that aren't mirror tier useable] will feel like a waste of time and have little intrinsic value when most people are L85+.

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KingAlamar#4071 schrieb:

My biggest problem with "crafting" (?) is once you get gear with 5+ useable mods at useable tiers the odds that you will either find a ground item and/or craft with non-mirror-tier methods anything better is close enough to zero that it's not worth your time to try ... at least in trade league.

What needs to happen is there still needs to be a sense of progression that spans the gap between "RNG tinkering" and "mirror-tier" crafting as we currently know it.

And that's good. These items shouldn't be easily obtainable. Especially in SSF. If you're playing SSF you should only have access to mid tier gear. You should never have high end gear unless you invested ungodly amount of time by the end of the league and even then it should be nowhere close to mirror level gear.

Use the currency exchange to sell off stuff you don't need or have in abundance.

Yes some drops like augmentation and vaal are a bit common by late levels.

But since the game is on a 60 day timer IMO, there's always going to be those fluctuations.


I am in my second character and I'm still exalt spamming random rare items hoping to make something good. I guess it is fun to me even if it's like gambling at a slot machine...the house wins usually but I've had a few great results slamming items.

Vs maps, yes , there comes a point where you realize, the map is bricked in the sense of, it doesn't need more mods, it has bad mods, lets move on to another map.

So I'm spending less exalts on maps but I literally have 0 exalts...I think I'm a gambler...

You don't have to use Exalt on maps in order to sustain, Vaal orbs do a better job at that. Exalts are best used on rares with good stats with free slots.

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Warrax#2850 schrieb:

You don't have to use Exalt on maps in order to sustain, Vaal orbs do a better job at that. Exalts are best used on rares with good stats with free slots.

Yes, I understand, that's part of the midgame, when you have currency, but not enough to spam them, and base items can still be potentially an upgrade. It's only after that all currencies become completely obsolete, as they have no engagement whatsoever in gear crafting. The exception is the Divine Orb, and even then, they are applied to specific circumstances, not as a general crafting process. I'm trying to avoid mentioning Essences and Omens at the moment. I'm not sure if the intended method of crafting for the endgame should directly push those items, as I assume they exist purely as extra helpful utilities.

In the core drop pool as it stands right now, you'll never craft anything once you get a few good pieces of gear on your character. You'll just be grinding either to sell stuff in bulk or to get lucky with a dropped item. You have a 0.0001% chance to craft an upgrade item, which means it's not worth the effort to even waste your time on that process. One of my main arguments is that the game doesn't have enough reasons to use Exalted Orbs in the first place, you'll have hundreds/thousands with no use, this is they just drop in value, people farm them and have no use for them. Since there are quite a few unique items being chased by players, Divine Orbs retain their value.

I just want a reason to use my currency items to become stronger without trading because I believe trading should come at a cost. You trade a useful currency to someone, and in return, you get a piece of gear. As it stands, people just trade useless currencies (in the late-game) because it's the go-to default money, like real-life paper money, it doesn't hold any value by itself. It should be something closer to PoE 1: "I need that" and "you need this", so "let's trade!".