Path of Exile has a currency system that is based around orbs and scrolls. These orbs are insanely valuable, because they provide a lot of value to your character’s development and equipment and are rare drops.
To understand the rarity of certain orbs, such as the Eternal Orb, the chance of receiving a drop is around 0.001%.
In this article, we’ll explore certain uses of orbs, how they are priced, and what affects their pricing.
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What can orbs be used for?
Orbs are an essential part of the game. As you know, Path of Exile has one of the most complicated skill trees of any game. As such, when you progress, you might want to reinvent your character - entirely. It’s not uncommon to want to basically rebuild your character to better suit your desired playstyle.
The Orb of Regret is something that facilitates that. By using it, you will have an additional refund point in the area of passive skills. With enough of these orbs, you can redesign your character to your will.
Another example would be the Exalted Orb. It adds a random trait to any rare item, boosting its value even further. Now, consider that rare items can have up to six ‘modifiers’, and you can imagine how much a rare item can be developed. As previously stated, the chance of receiving it is around 0.001% - by no means a common drop!
Now, consider that the Exalted Orb provides a modifier you don’t like. Random means you really don’t know what you’ll get. The chance of being lucky is actually not as equal to the chance of being unlucky. We expect things to be a coin-toss: fair-RNG, but that’s not how video games work at all. When you’re getting drops, you get a ‘random item’ but the chance of the best items will be 0.0001 compared to an average item having a weighting of say, 0.2.
However, the Exalted Orb doesn’t mean your item is ruined. There are other orbs that can counteract bad modifiers. For example, the Orb of Annulment will remove a random modifier from an item that is of magic/rare tier. The emphasis being on random though - it could remove your best modifier with an equal chance of removing your worst, newer modifier unless you also use a catalyst.
What influences the prices?
Orbs are gained from defeating monsters or chests. Some can even be bought from certain vendors. However, the more powerful an orb is, the more unlikely it is that any vendor will ever provide it.
The Orb of Transmutation has a 20% chance to drop - hence, it has a low value. Many orbs are even sold in packs in the hundreds, rather than in sole collections, as the rare ones are. All it does is upgrade a normal to a magic item. As it has such a weak effect, you can understand the correlation towards its low value and high drop-rate. A normal to a magic item isn’t much different, as it isn’t really useful for the endgame, is it? The item will have more upgrade tiers and need more modifiers to be of any use - you really only just started the first step of a long process. You’ll also gain items that are naturally more powerful and interesting, that are more worthy of your upgrades and your modifiers, rather than progressing a normal item to rare status.
