This applies to relatively new players or players who want to know how to buy the necessary items for a particular build. Experienced/already rich players may not get anything new out of it. The reason I’m writing this article is that many other currency making guides seem to either (a) too focused on people who already had big currency stashes to do stuff like advanced crafting or (b) want to focus mainly on making currency by flipping items, etc., rather than playing games.
My point: I want to participate in the trading system as little as possible, but still get everything I need to complete my build. This is all you can do, starting with building the built-in map and gear it up to wherever you want to be. This is from the perspective of the softcore trade league. HC may be different.
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.
I had this experience many times: my build felt “meh” going into red maps, so I re-rolled. Spend a day leveling, but that’s a day of getting zero valuable items and so the next build was also “meh” because it was under-geared. Re-rolling characters are the surest way to not make currency.
If you get a message within 1 minute of listing your item, chances are you underpriced it. Not obligated to sell to someone just because you triggered their trade alert!
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 Exalted 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.
You’d do better to sell your fuses and jewelers for currency and buy a 6 linked item or prophecy. Buy a Jeweler’s Touch prophecy for 15–20c and you have your 5L starter gear all set, and it’s 99% of the time cheaper than linking yourself. Attempting to 6-link items myself was another way I killed my wealth in previous leagues.
Some of the hardest items to price/sell. Early in a league, life and some resists will get 10c. Around now in the league, those are worth maybe 5c and hence not worth selling usually.