Completing 30 Port Quotas (Biggest Issue in Ambitious Assignments)

Yes, it’s not the first item in the list, but it’s the one that causes the most issues, so I decided to tackle it first.

Some players will get this one out of the way very quickly, while others will struggle a lot. The reason is that the difficulty of meeting a Port Quota depends on the Rank of your Shipping in Kingsmarch. Players who interact with the League Mechanic during the campaign will often get close to finishing it by the time they get to maps. Players who only visit Kingsmarch after they reach maps and max out Shipping quickly will struggle, even high-volume players.

Unfortunately, there is no way to downgrade the Rank of your Shipping. There is, however, an easy but somewhat annoying alternative: starting a new character in another League. As long as you don’t pick Standard (doesn’t have Kingsmarch) or Ruthless (has different Challenges), your progress is shared. The easiest candidate is Solo Self-Found, but if you’re feeling adventurous, you can make a Hardcore Character, too.

When playing with this new character, leave your Shipping at Rank 1. Do, however, upgrade Mining and Farming (unlocks resources required for quotas) and optionally Smelting (1 bar counts as 5 Ore to meet quotas, though at Rank 1, the advantage is minimal).

Have at Least X Stockpile

This paragraph is about the following requirements of Ambitious Assignments:

• Have at least 10,000 Blue Zanthimum in your Kingsmarch Stockpile at once
• Have at least 5,000 Verisium Bars in your Kingsmarch Stockpile at once

The requirements for this are the following:

• Recruiting/City Hall Rank 2 (to establish Smelting and Farming)
• Mining Rank 6. Further upgrades will increase the amount and rarity of Ore you find, which is helpful to get there faster
• Smelting Rank 7. Further upgrades will help a little if your workers are having difficulties keeping up. The benefits are marginal compared to Mining and Farming upgrades, however
• Farming Rank 7, though increasing the Rank further will increase the crops you produce every hour

After you fulfill the above requirements, it’s just a matter of allowing your Stockpile to grow. In other words, don’t send out these goods in shipments (and, optionally, don’t use them in upgrades for other buildings when possible).

Be Careful When Upgrading Your Smelting Rank

I understand you want to complete Ambitious Assignments as quickly as possible, but there is a disadvantage to upgrading Smelting. When Smelters become idle, they will smelt any available Ores into Bars, even the ones you don’t assign them to. You will need some of these Ores (not Bars) when upgrading buildings, so your Smelters can sabotage you here.

Before you establish Smelting, consider upgrading:

• The Recruitment/City Hall to Rank 3
• Mining to Rank 3
• Shipping to Rank 3

Before upgrading Smelting to Rank 2, consider upgrading:

• The Recruitment/City Hall to Rank 4
• Shipping to Rank 4

Consider doing the follow upgrades before upgrading Smelting to Rank 5:

• The Recruitment/City Hall to Rank 6
• Shipping to Rank 5

Consider doing the following upgrades before upgrading Smelting to Rank 7:

• The Recruitment/City Hall to Rank 8
• Shipping to Rank 7

If you don’t pay attention to the above points, the issue isn’t as big as with Port Quotas. You can simply remove all Smelting workers from their jobs temporarily until you make the relevant upgrades. It will be a temporary hit to your Kingsmarch productivity, though.

Disenchanting 30 Unique Items

To fulfill this part of Ambitious Assignments, you’ll need to meet the following requirements:

• Smelting Rank 2 (required to smelt Petrified Amber Bars, necessary to upgrade Mining)
• Mining Rank 4 (required to mine Bismuth Ore, necessary to upgrade the Recruitment Office/City Hall)
• Farming Rank 2 (required to farm Pumpkin, necessary to upgrade the Recruitment Office/City Hall)
• Recruitment/City Hall Rank 5 (required to establish Disenchanting)
• Disenchanting Level 11

Upgrading Disenchanting all the way up to Rank 11 is going to require a lot of Gold and Thaumaturgic Dust.

The best way to get Thaumaturgic Dust, is to disenchant Unique Items, but that is not very helpful in the context of this Challenge. The best alternative is to disenchant items with high item-level modifiers. You can get these from Shipping out Bars (not Bismuth and Verisium) and as rewards from your Atlas Runners. You can smelt these if your Disenchanting is at Rank 2 or higher.

For the last upgrade, there is also the option of running Maps with Domination Scarabs of Apparitions. These will drop a lot of Influenced items, which give a lot of extra Thaumaturgic Dust if your Disenchanting is at Rank 10 or 11. You can also get some items that will help you for the final step of Ambitious Assignments.

Claiming Rewards From Atlas Runners

To complete this part of Ambitious Assignments, you’ll first need the following Kingsmarch upgrades:

• Smelting Rank 5 (required to smelt Bismuth Bars, necessary to upgrade Mining)
• Mining Rank 6 (required to mine Verisium Ore, necessary to upgrade the Recruitment Office/City Hall)
• Farming Rank 5 (required to farm Orgourd, necessary to upgrade the Recruitment Office/City Hall)
• Recruitment/City Hall Rank 7 (required to establish Mapping)

In theory, leaving your Mapping at level 1 is sufficient to complete this Challenge. Upgrading it to level 2 is very recommended, though. You can then have a level 7 mapper, a second level 5-7 mapper and 2 cheap miners/farmers/shippers/smelters run Scoured Level 1 maps at 100% Completion rate. If there is casualty, you’ll then have a 50% chance that one of the easy to replace workers will die instead of one of your mappers.

If you’re not short on Gold, I recommend upgrading your Recruitment/City Hall and Mapping to Level 8. You can then have a single level 8+ Mapper run Scoured Level 1 Maps, accompanied by 5 cheap workers without Mapping Skills. Your Mapper will then only have a 1 in 6 chance of dying even if the 1% casualty rate kicks in.

The above suggestions are mainly for those who want to complete Ambitious Assignments while not spending too much Gold. Those less concerned about Gold and looking to get 36+ Challenges, may want to consider working on Gear Grinding Goals at the same time. That Challenge has the requirement to “Claim Rewards from Rare T14+” maps. This will require at least 3 Lvl 10 Workers and some low-level workers or a similar setup to do at a low casualty level.

Feel free to check out this sheet to see which teams of Atlas Runners can tackle which content.

Final Step of Ambitious Assignments: Recombine 15 Item Level 75+ Items

The requirements to establish Disenchanting are the same as the for Disenchanting:

• Smelting Rank 2 (required to smelt Petrified Amber, necessary to upgrade Mining)
• Mining Rank 4 (required to mine Bismuth Ore, necessary to upgrade the Recruitment Office/City Hall)
• Farming Rank 2 (required to farm Pumpkin, necessary to upgrade the Recruitment Office/City Hall)
• Recruitment/City Hall Rank 5 (required to establish Disenchanting)

If you want to get Ambitious Assignments out of the way as quickly as possible, you now have all you need. You just throw together random weapons without caring about the outcome. This is relatively inexpensive in terms of both Gold and Thaumaturgic Dust. If you don’t want to pick up Rare Weapons yourself, you can ship out some Orichalcum or use weapons Atlas Runners bring in. 

If you want to make a little profit without spending too much time/resources, I recommend POEGuy’s strategy. Summarized, it works like this:

• Run maps with the Domination Scarab of Apparitions.
• Sort the Influenced Rings it drops by Influence.
• Get “Curse on Hit” on half of the rings for each Influence. Some rings may already have this modifier. For the others use Harvest Crafting – reroll item with a caster modifier.
• For the other half of the rings, use a Deafening Essence of Scorn to add Crit Multiplier. You could apply a few Essences until you get some other decent modifiers, but it is not required.
• Combine a ring with Curse on Hit with a ring with Crit Multiplier. Both Rings should be of the same Influence. Hope the item gets both. If not, odds are very likely it will have at least one you can use to try again.
• Finish the item with a cheap Bench craft such as Life or Resistance if there is room for it.

If the Recombinator hits, you can usually sell these items for close to a Divine at minimum, up to a bunch of Divines.

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What Competing Trades Are

Competing trades are trade orders by people doing the same thing as you are. For example, if you are trying to buy Scarabs for Chaos Orbs, it shows other people also wanting to buy the same Scarab for Chaos Orbs. These trades are mainly interesting for getting a better price for your items, as we’ll discuss further below.

In the screenshot above, we see that if we want to buy 10 Cartography Scarabs of Corruption immediately, we would pay 139 Chaos. By looking at the competing trades, we see that the closest price someone is willing to pay is 13 chaos per Scarab. We also see that he only has 27 Chaos orbs in stock, so his order will be fulfilled soon. That means that if we offer 118 Chaos Orbs, we’ll soon have the best offer available to those willing to sell this type of Scarab.

Many people want immediate sales trades Path of Exile’s Currency Exchange has a lot of activity. That means orders complete fast using this strategy, especially items used by (almost) the entire player base, like Scarabs. After a single map, orders using this pricing method will usually already be completed. Often, your Chaos will even already be waiting for you after you run a lap around your hideout.

Using this strategy, you can spend less currency buying and earn more currency selling. In the example above, you would only pay 118 Chaos instead of 139 Chaos. As said before, it also wouldn’t take much time at all to do so.

For a more complete overview of pricing your items in the Currency Exchange, check out this article.

Market Ratios vs. Competing Trades

In the above screenshot, you can see a recap of the differences between Market Ratios and Competing Trades.

The main thing to pay attention to are what “Stock” means in both, as the difference is not so straightforward:

When buying items for Chaos/Divines, market ratios show the amount of items sellers have in stock. Competing Trades, however, show the Chaos/Divine stock of those wanting to buy the same items as you. If you’re buying items for Chaos Orbs, that means competing trades generally fulfill faster than you would expect (as each sale tends to make the stock go down by multiple units). If you’re buying for Divine Orbs, they fulfill more slowly (as your competitor can tend to get a bunch of items for 1 unit of stock).

When selling items for Chaos/Divines, market ratios show the amount of Chaos/Divine items competing sellers have in stock. Competing Trades show the number of items those wanting to sell the same items as you have in stock. This generally makes for easier estimations on how fast these orders will be fulfilled than when you’re buying items.

The post How Competing Trades Work in Path of Exile appeared first on Answers for Gamers.

Buy Items Quickly With Just a Few Clicks

To buy items quickly at the currently available market prices, follow the below steps:

1. Select the item you want to buy in the “I want” category.
2. Fill in the amount of items you want to buy.
3. Select the item you want to sell in the “I have” category. This will usually be Chaos Orbs, though Divine Orbs is an option for higher quantities and more expensive items.
4. The game will automatically fill in the amount of “I want” items at the current market ratio. This may not cover your full stock, however, so double the amount (no, this will not scam you, I’ll explain why in the next section).
5. Click “Place Order”.
6. Confirm the Unfavourable Trade Ratio warning.

Why This Method Does Not Scam You

The Currency Exchange always uses the most favourable available ratios even when you are offering a better deal. It will never give you more items in the “I want” category, but it may use less items in “I have”. So in this example, it will just buy items at the most favourable ratios until your order fulfills. It will return you any Chaos/Divine Orbs it didn’t use. This method doesn’t cost you extra gold, either, since gold fees are calculated on what you want to buy.

Who This Method Is For

Buying items quickly in this way is recommended for players who value speed and have plenty of currency. For buying heavily traded items such as Divine Orbs for Chaos, it also doesn’t cost you much. Ratios from players wanting to sell and players wanting to buy are very close together for those items. When you’re buying items that are traded for less often, your need for speed may cost you a bit more.

Selling Items Quickly

Selling items quickly is not quite as straightforward. If you are willing to deal with a little leftover stock, however, there is still a way.

The post How To Buy Items Quickly in Path of Exile’s Currency Exchange appeared first on Answers for Gamers.

My Recommended Currency Exchange Pricing Strategy: Undercutting Competing Orders

When you’re trying to sell something, there are 2 relevant ratios the game shows you:

1. Market ratios. Market ratios are from people who can fulfill your order. If you are selling items, they are the ones buying those items. If you are buying items, they are the ones selling those items. You can see the best current market ratio at the top. Hovering over it will show you the available stock at that ratio and the next best ratios.
2. Competing ratios. Competing trades are from people who are trying to do the same thing you are. If you are selling an item, they are selling the same item. If you are buying an item, they are buying that same item. You can see the current competing ratios by hovering over the current market ratio and pressing Alt.

Competing Orders you see are those that are not yet fulfilled. It means they do not match the current market ratio, but they will be the first ones to fulfill when someone prices items at a more attractive market ratio. Similarly, the current market ratios are also unfulfilled, meaning that currently no one is interested buying at that ratio.

Path of Exile has a lot of players who trade, especially now that the Currency Exchange is out. Many of them trade in large quantities and for many of them, speed is of the essence. That means if you price items at a slightly better price than the current competing rates, things will sell fast. We are not talking overnight fast here, we are talking a lap around your hideout fast. Depending on the type of item you are trading, this can give you a lot of extra currency.

You can use this strategy both for selling items and buying items.

Fast Versus Optimized Undercutting

The fast way of undercutting is to look at the highest competing offer and then offer a slightly higher rate. Taking the above screenshot as an example, if we want to buy 20 of these scarabs, we could do 20×13 = 260 + 1 = 261. It’s 17 Chaos profit compared to buying at the current market price of 20×13.9 = 278.

The optimized way, however, may ignore the best competing offers if they don’t have a large stock. Taking the screenshot as an example again, we see that the person offering a 1:13 ratio only has 27 Chaos Orbs in stock. That means he will only be able to buy 2 more scarabs at this ratio. That order will be completed in a matter of seconds. After that, the top ratio will change to 11.70.

When looking at the next ratio of 11.70, we do see a fairly decent stock of Chaos. It would be less wise to ignore this ratio, so we’ll undercut it instead. Undercutting that person, we can do 20×11.70 + 1 = 235 Chaos. That’s a profit of 43 Chaos compared to buying at the current market ratio. Even compared to the fast undercutting method, it’s still a profit of 26 Chaos.

When I say “fast” and “optimized” I am talking about the amount of thinking and clicks. There is a lot of activity in the Currency Exchange, so both methods are fast in terms of selling. Just doing a single map or even a lap around your hideout will often fulfill orders with both methods.

This method will work better with some items than others, however. It also depends on several factors, which we’ll discuss next.

Things To Pay Attention To

When trying to get the most out of your trades at the Currency Exchange, consider the following:

1. How much demand there is for items. The method detailed above works best for items that are traded semi-frequently, e.g., Scarabs, Essences, Fragments, Exotic Currency, Ancient Orbs. It doesn’t work as well for extremely often traded items such as Divines (where the difference between market ratios and competing trades is minimal) or Divination Cards (with exceptions such as Headhunter/Mageblood/Mirror Cards, these aren’t traded enough often to sell fast).
2. The stocks of competing trades. If there is a competing trade with a huge stock, you will want to undercut it every single time, even if it is the top ratio. Do note, however, that competing trades when buying things show their stock of chaos/divines. They do NOT show the amount of items they want to buy.
3. How large the gaps between ratios are. If the gaps are large, it is more worth it to ignore the top ratios and undercut the others. If there is only 0.1 difference, you probably want to undercut the highest ratio instead.
4. Gold cost per item. If you are trading items that cost a lot of Gold, it may be better to buy at market ratios. This is because an unfulfilled trade will not refund your Gold. This factor is only relevant for a limited amount of items such as Divine Vessels (low demand later in the league), jeweller orbs, chromatic orbs and orbs of fusing. The difference between the market ratio and competing trades is often large for these items, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will fulfill. Many people are opting to buy these through the traditional trade site to save gold.

Trading in Divines

When selling items for Divines at the Currency Exchange, Gold cost is less relevant. That is because trading for a Divine Orb only costs the Gold equivalent of 10 Chaos Orbs. When buying items for Divine Orbs, it is however still relevant. That is because the gold fee is based on what you’re buying.

On the other hand, don’t forget that the stock of competing trades shows their Divine stock when you’re buying for Divines. For most items that means the listed orders will be able to buy quite a few more items than the listed stock. It also means you should be more careful when ignoring them when determining your own price.

If you’re at or at least near the level of trading in Divines, where there is a little less trade activity (but more volume per trade), there are a few things worth considering:

1. Buying up competing trades. If there is a large difference between the highest competing trade and the next ratios, you can consider buying up that stock yourself. You can then combine it with your own stock and sell at a higher ratio.
2. If you don’t quite have the stock to sell for a Divine Orb but you’re getting close to it (75%+), you may want to consider buying some more of that item for Chaos, then sell for a Divine. This will save quite a bit of Gold compared to selling your stock for Chaos Orbs.

The Easy/Fast Way of Pricing Items at the Currency Exchange

The easy way of pricing your item means selling at a ratio that will immediately fulfill. It is not my recommended method for most items, but for many PoE players speed is vital. To sell your items quickly, do this:

1. First select the item you want to sell in the “I have” category and fill in how many items you have
2. Select the item you want to sell it for (usually Chaos Orbs, Divine Orbs for higher quantities/more expensive items) in the “I want” category

…and that’s it. The game will automatically fill in the amount of “I want” items at the current market ratio, so you can just click the “Place Order” button at this point.

You may need to repeat these steps if your trade cannot be fully fulfilled at this ratio. The game refunds your gold based on how much of your order is still unfulfilled, so you are not losing gold when this happens. We’ll explain why this happens a bit further below.

Alternative Fast Way To Avoid Unfulfilled Orders

To avoid having to go through the above steps multiple times, you can do this instead:

1. Select the item you want to sell in the “I have” category and their quantity, just like before
2. Select the item you want to sell it for in the “I want” category. Overwrite the amount the game suggests by a slightly lower amount. E.g., if the game suggests a 1.35 ratio (such as 100 chaos orbs for 135 Gemcutter Prisms), put something like 95 instead.

But wait Maverick, you say, am I not getting ripped off doing it like this? The game even gives me a warning for it. The answer is no, you’re not. The Currency Exchange will still use the best available ratios, even if you are offering a better one. It will however never give you more than the amount you put in the “I want” category.

What will happen in this case is that you’ll get 95 Chaos Orbs right away, but you’ll have some leftover Gemcutter Prisms you’ll get back. You can then sell those right away (small trades are very unlikely to not get fully completed) or sell them next time.

Why Orders Sometimes Don’t Get Completely Fulfilled

Orders can get partially fulfilled when, after completing a trade at the best available ratio, the ratio you selected is no longer valid. Let’s say we want to sell our 128 Vaal Orbs for 52 Chaos Orbs, which is what the Currency Exchange suggests. This will show as a rounded ratio of 1:2.46, but the actual ratio is more like 1:2.461538….

There is someone who wants to buy 60 Vaal Orbs for 25 Chaos Orbs. This is a ratio of 1:2.4, which means this person is offering more Chaos Orbs than what we are asking. We fulfill this person’s order, so now we have 68 Vaal Orbs remaining. This does not match any amount of Chaos Orbs at a ratio of 1:2.46 or the non-rounded ratio, so you will just get your leftover Vaal Orbs and Chaos Orbs back.

As said before, we also get the Gold back for the unfulfilled part of our trade (52 – 25 = 27 Chaos Orbs worth of gold). You can either accept this scenario and the few extra clicks it brings or you can put items up for rounder ratios. E.g., you could have sold 125 Vaal Orbs up for 50 Chaos Orbs. In that scenario, the trade at 2.4 would still be fulfilled, but you’d have 65 Vaal Orbs remaining at a ratio of 2.5. This still matches 26 Chaos Orbs, so your order would remain open.

The post How to Price Your Items in Path of Exile’s Currency Exchange appeared first on Answers for Gamers.

In the next section, we’ll start by discussing the main takeaways that can have some use for min-maxers. After that, you’ll only want to keep reading if you’re interested in the workings of the system for the sake of knowledge and curiosity instead of gameplay advantage.

The Main Takeaways

• Level 1 workers are the most efficient across all jobs. This information will not serve most players, however, as Level 1 workers will not be able to keep up with what you are trying to achieve post-campaign.
• Level 2-9 workers seem more or less equally efficient, with Level 10 seemingly (not enough data to be 100% sure) being somewhat less efficient. Players not swimming in Gold may find this information handy, as e.g., fields full of Level 9 farmers will produce 77.7% of crops Level 10 farmers do but only have 68% of the cost.
• Since the difference isn’t that significant and being too picky will cause you to spend more on rerolling, you likely still want to pick up any high-level workers you see. When rerolling to replace Shipping/Mapping casualties, you can, however, keep this in mind for upgrading your Farming/Disenchanting team. For min-maxing workers of specific levels, loopuleasa’s sheet is the way to go.
• The one thing to be careful of is when employing workers skilled in multiple jobs, as they charge the price of their most expensive job. A worker with Level 9 in Farming and Level 7 in Mapping may look attractive, but costs almost double as a “normal” Level 9 Farmer! On the other hand, using that worker for Mapping is fine. Multiple skills don’t increase the wage cost for the most expensive job.
• For Mapping, there are some advantages to min-maxing, depending on what you are trying to achieve. Without doing so, you may be spending more Gold than is necessary or having more casualties than you are expecting. If you don’t feel like a long read but still want to min-max, jump straight to this sheet. If you do want to find out more, then feel free to read the Mapping section below.
• Map mods do not directly increase the difficulty of running a map for your workers. Item Quantity and Map Tier do.
• While the strongest possible team of mappers can potentially fully clear even the highest T17 you throw at them, they cannot do so at minimal risk and are far from being guaranteed to do so. They can “only” clear T17 maps with a 1% casualty rate up to 127% increased item quantity. On the other hand, they can clear any 6-mod Guardian/Conqueror map with minimal risk but have up to 4% casualty rates on 8-mod versions. They can only get guaranteed clears up to rare T9s and scoured (non-guardian/conqueror) T16s.
• You don’t actually need a full team of Level 10 Shippers to send max-value shipments to Riben Fell/Ngakanu. 9 different team compositions will work, the cheapest of which is generally three Level 10s and three Level 9s.
• For Pondium/Te Onui, you can get by with five Level 10s and one Level 9. For Kalguur, even a full team of Level 10s will not get you below 10% risk.
• If you don’t need to fill all 6 slots of your Shipping/Mapping team to achieve what you want, adding unskilled workers to your empty slots is always a good idea. That is because they have an equal chance of dying/deserting/starting a new life as your high-level team members but they are much easier to replace.

The Power System Explained

Most of this was already figured out by other community members such as loopuleasa quite a long time ago, but this article adds data for Level 0 workers and details on the shipping and mapping system.

All workers have a Power Level that allows us to compare them to workers with a different Level:

¹A Level 0 worker is a worker unskilled in a certain job. E.g., when you assign a Level 2 Miner to Disenchanting or Mapping.

As you can see from the table, a Level 10 worker is 31.5 times as efficient as a Level 1 worker, but I decided to start at 100 to have nice round numbers across the board. There is a missed opportunity for an “over 9000” joke in my scaling system, but oh well. 

This Power Level system holds up for all jobs. For all jobs except Shipping, strength and output scale almost perfectly linearly. For Shipping, it still applies but output scales more exponentially. Each doubling of power allows you to send more or less 4.6 times as many goods.

You can calculate your own team’s power level and fiddle around with various settings for Mapping and Shipping in this sheet.

The Ratio Between Power and Gold

Although the Power Level for specific Levels is the same across jobs, the Gold cost per Power is not. Using my own data and data available through loopuleasa, /u/998999 and ThisIsProphet I have come up with the below table for how much hourly Power you get per Gold (meaning higher values are better – values show how much you get for 1 Gold). Note that this combined data is still not conclusive, since the amount of data per worker level for a specific job is limited.

¹A Level 0 Worker is, as said, a Worker unskilled in the job you assign it to. That means we can, theoretically, use a Level 1 of a cheaper job (Mining, Smelting, Shipping) in a more expensive job (Farming, Disenchanting, Mapping) to get more value for our buck. For farming, this can help during the campaign, but you’ll quickly be disappointed by the output. For disenchanting and mapping there are some scenarios where you may be able to use this strategy (see below), but it’s not something that is handy for general use.

There is fairly strong evidence that Level 1 workers are more efficient than higher-level workers in all jobs. This is likely to allow the system to be usable even when a player starts out. During the campaign, an army of Level 0s/Level 1s will be more efficient than a few higher-level workers. Once you reach the later acts and maps, you’ll likely want to start replacing them. If you are a casual player, however, who doesn’t need a full high-level team, having a few higher-level workers and filling up other slots with Level 1 workers will still have a slight positive effect on Gold costs.

Level 2 to 9 workers seem to be fairly equal in terms of efficiency. Fluctuations are likely due to low sample size. There is some weak evidence that Level 10 workers are a little less efficient than Level 8 and 9 workers, but even if true any advantage you try to get from this is likely offset by the reroll costs you spend on it. There are also large fluctuations between individual workers, so even if the average Level 9 tends to be more efficient than the average Level 10 worker, it’s not going to be the case every time.

Mining, Smelting, Farming

The system is easy enough to understand for these jobs. Double the Power means double the output. Since all level 2+ workers are more or less equally Gold efficient on average, however, and the costs of rerolling for cheaper wages are quite significant, opportunities for min-maxing are limited.

The best way to min-max your costs for these jobs is to keep an eye out for workers with higher efficiency/low wage rolls while you are rerolling to replace Shipping and Mapping casualties. loopuleasa’s sheet does the job just fine, so I don’t see the need to create my own version. Just remember that more efficient is not always what you want, as you’ll still want to make sure your team is of a high enough level to achieve the output you want.

On a separate note, each crop you can farm is equally efficient. You produce some crops more quickly than others, but in terms of shipment/value per hour they are identical. If you’re short on one type of crop I recommend changing your middle 2 fields to that one while having one crop each on the other 4 fields. If you’re interested in a strategy where you produce equal amounts of each crop each hour, you should check out ThisIsProphet’s sheet.

Disenchanting

Power Levels also work linearly for disenchanting. Double the Power means items are enchanted in half the time.

Disenchanting looks more expensive than it is. At higher Levels, you will not be able to keep the disenchanting inventory filled at all times and idle workers don’t charge gold. Still, if you’re really strapped for Gold (e.g., you’re a Sanctum enjoyer) you can replace Gold with currency or effort: 

• The rarest tier of unique items convert into a lot of dust, especially at the highest item levels. Rare doesn’t necessarily mean expensive, although people have caught on so no items at the rarest tier are truly cheap this league. At the moment of writing Lioneye’s Glare, Bino’s Kitchen Knife and Essentia Sanguis are the cheapest items that can get you over a million dust at high ilvl.
• Less rare unique items still net a lot more dust than average rare items. High item level influenced rare items can nearly compete with them (which makes it not a bad idea to run a Domination Scarab of Apparitions in combination with the Recombinator). You may want to make your filter a bit less strict for these categories.
• Vaal Temple maps are particularly interesting this League, as they drop a lot of Unique items with double implicits (which give double the dust compared to the same items without corrupted implicits). 

Since higher-dust items do not take vastly longer to disenchant, using either tactic can save you some Gold. You can also use loopuleasa’s sheet to find the most efficient Disenchanting workers.

Shipping

Shipping workers are cheap, and they don’t even charge you anything while they are not out at sea. The time (mining/smelting) and funds (farming) you spend on it are a lot more significant. That makes min-maxing shipping of limited use. This section is mainly for those just curious about how the system works.

An exception may be when you are rerolling to replace a casualty and are wondering if a lower-level shipper will also work. Because of this, I also included a tab for it in the Calculator Sheet I created.

Shipping and Power Levels

At first sight, it seemed like the Power Level system did not apply to shipping. 6 level 1 shippers (1200 Power) could ship vastly more than 6 separate level 1 shippers. But then it turned out that a team of 6 level 1 shippers were able to ship an identical amount as a single level 5 shipper (also 1200 Power). 

This is because how much you can ship scales more aggressively than linearly. Each doubling of power allows you to ship roughly 4.6 times as much. This makes every shipper you add to your team more valuable than the last one, making it much more efficient to have full teams instead of spreading out your manpower. When using the same level of workers in your team, the amount you can ship goes up like this: 

Maximum Shipment Values for full teams to Pondium and Te Onui¹ are as follows:

¹I admit it would have been better to record numbers for Riben Fell instead, considering its popularity. To be honest, I didn’t have any port selected and only noticed the numbers were for Pondium/Te Onui later. Luckily, it’s easy enough to convert the numbers for other ports. For Riben Fell (and Ngakanu), multiply the values by x1.33. For Kalguur, multiply the values by x0.8. Kalguur matches up fully, Riben Fell does not but the error margin for any value over 1000 is much lower than 1% (the actual ratio they seem to use for “one third more difficulty” is around 1.33333299, so using x1.33 will slightly underestimate how much you can ship).

²Using the scaling of previous Power Levels, you should only be able to ship around 6.83 million, but it seems that a team of Level 10s can ship any amount as long as you’re not sending them to Kalguur. We’ll talk more about those caps later.

Power Needed for Common Strategies

¹This is the minimum value you can ship. Doing so as one Verisium Bar + 36 dust to Riben Fell will allow you to get back 3 random scarabs and 2 random runes. This strategy actually earns you gold as your shipment will occasionally be commandeered by Admiral Valerius, who drops close to 50,000 Gold as well as runes.

²According to the research done by content creator ZiggyD, Carmonaaa and the rest of their community, this is the point where you will get a Divine Orb back at least half of the time. These results are contested and other factors may be at play as well. Some evidence suggests sending Blue Zanthimum to Kalguur will get you better results. In any case, send only crops and dust, not ore, if you’re looking for currency. 

³According to the same research as above, this is the upper limit for getting consistent Divine Orb returns. If you go higher than this, you will often get Sacred Orbs instead of Divine Orbs, which, while rarer, are worth less. These results and the conversion theory are still contested, so you shouldn’t necessarily blindly follow them. In any case, send only crops and dust, not ore, when looking for currency. After this threshold point, you’re better off skipping all the way to 50 Million, where you’ll start getting Mirror Shards consistently.

Risk Level Caps

Grinding Gear Games implemented Risk Level caps for different Power Levels. That means that for a specific team composition and destination, the risk level will not go past a certain number, no matter how many goods you add. This is likely because the formula only accounts for shipment values of slightly below 7 million, while they wanted to allow shipments of up to 50 million. An overview:

Maximum Shipment Values for Higher Risk Levels

The way the risk meter level scales is the same for all levels. When you set up a shipment at the threshold level for 0% risk, then you:

• Can send approximately 78% more at a risk level of 25%
• Can send approximately 4 times more at a risk level of 50%
• Can send approximately 16 times more at a risk level of 75%

Using this data, we could come to the conclusion that sending at a risk level of 75% is more advantageous. You can send 16 times more value for the same Gold cost. Doing so, your shipment will go through without issues 25% of the time. That’s 16 x 0.25 = 4 times the value. Heck, even in the other 75% of cases, running into trouble usually doesn’t mean losing your whole shipment.

But that would be if Gold costs of Shipping were the limiting factor, which definitely isn’t the case in 3.25. Not only does most of your Gold cost from shipping not come from actual shipping but from farming, but time spent farming and collecting ore is a significant factor, as well. That is why I would never recommend sending a shipment with any risk level.

Dust Multiplier

This doesn’t actually have anything to do with the strength of workers at different levels, but if you came this far, you are likely interested in crunching numbers, so you’ll want to know this too. The way dust works since the 3.25.1 is that up to your base shipment value (this is the value without dust), every dust adds 1 value. To get a multiplier higher than that, you need to:

• Subtract 1 from the multiplier you want (e.g., to get a multiplier of 4, do 4-1 = 3)
• Square that number (so in our example, 3×3 = 9)
• You need this times as much dust as your base shipment value to get the multiplier you want

That gives us this overview:

In practice, it is not likely you’ll ever want to go for a higher than 1x multiplier with these numbers. But you’re welcome to prove me wrong, in which case you can use the Dust calculator here.

Mapping

The Power Level system applies to Mapping as well. Two teams of the same Power Level have the same success metrics when running the same map, regardless of their exact composition (e.g., three Level 10s and three Level 0s vs. 3 Level 8s and 3 Level 7s – both with a Power Level of 19200).

Map mods don’t directly influence your team’s odds of success. Only Map Tier and the Increased Item Quantity of the Map do (with Guardian/Conqueror maps being slightly harder than “normal” maps of the same tier).

Depending on what you’re trying to achieve, you can use this information in multiple ways. Feel free to keep reading to get a general idea or to jump straight to the Calculation Sheet to fiddle with the numbers yourself.

Mapping Strategies

When you have a specific team doing a specific map, there are 3 metrics:

• How much of the map they are likely to clear
• How likely it is that one of your workers will die
• How much time it will take them to run the map

Stronger teams clear maps faster, but the decreased time does not compensate for the extra cost of higher-level workers much at all, so stronger teams will always be more expensive.

Based on this, there are roughly 4 strategies you can apply:

• Potential Clear: Employ the cheapest team that can potentially fully clear a map. This is the absolute minimum I would consider if Gold would be in very short supply, but it’s not recommended. The chance of a full clear isn’t very high and your runners can clear as little as 33%, so you’re leaving a lot of rewards on the table. The casualty rate is also around 10%, so the Gold you do save will be spent rerolling to replace fallen workers.
• Minimal Casualties: This is the strategy I would employ if I am being careful about how I am spending my Gold. Teams at this level are not guaranteed to clear, but they have a good chance of doing so and even if they don’t, they’ll still clear a decent amount of the map. Since they don’t die often, rerolling costs are fairly low. It’s not impossible that the 1% that displays at this level could be as high 1.49% rounded, however, or that the 1% at higher Power Levels is actually less than 1% rounded and is rounded to 1%. It would require a large amount of maps to verify this.
• Guaranteed Clear: This is the strategy I would employ if Gold upkeep isn’t a huge problem, but I also am not swimming in Gold. Teams of this level will always completely clear a map but at the cost of more Gold spent per map than the above strategies.
• Overkill: The strategy for those with more Gold than they know how to spend. Simply choose the kind of maps you want to run and stick your strongest team on them. The main advantage here is a faster clear time, which means more maps per hour. There is potentially also a lower casualty rate, assuming 1% isn’t always 1% but can be 0.5-1.49% (which is unproven). Even when employing this strategy, your team will not be able to clear every map out there so you may still want to check the calculator and/or the below overview to make sure they can.

Ideal Team Compositions

Since there are multiple compositions to reach the same Power Level for a team, this has strategic implications. E.g., for a Power Level of 19200, you could have:

• 3 Level 10s and 3 Level 0s 
• 3 Level 8s and 3 Level 7s

When the system rolls a casualty, which of your workers gets a visit by the Grim Reaper is randomly determined. That makes the first team composition superior. After all, you get Level 0s (workers not skilled in mapping) every reroll. Replacing higher-level workers is a lot trickier. You’ll only need to go through that half of the time in the first team composition. 

This is an extreme example and this team example can only clear up to Scoured T16s. Still, the same principle applies for higher-level compositions, where you can use the least amount of 7+ members possible. This is because you can get Level 6 workers and below fairly easily from the cheaper reroll. It also means that if you don’t need all 6 slots for your team, filling the extra slots up with Level 0 workers is always a good idea.

Mapping Casualties

Casualty rates are for your whole team, not for separate members. I tested this multiple times by sending a bunch of innocent miners and smelters along with a Level 10 Mapper on a few Maps that have a 1% casualty rate for the Level 10 Mapper (when sent alone) and a 70%+ casualty rate for the Level 0s (also when sent alone). They got out unscathed (physically, at least).

That being the case, quite a few people are still of the opinion that a listed of Casualty Rate of 1% is actually higher. It could be, as discussed above, that 1% is actually a range of 0.5%-1.49%. But apart from this, I don’t think the number is wrong (though again, a lot of data would be required to prove either way). 

What I think is more likely to happen is that people check one map in the queue and assume it applies to all of them. But a 70% increased item quantity map of a certain tier at 1% casualty may go up to a casualty rate of 3-4% at 90%. A T14 Guardian Map you checked may have a casualty rate of 1% for your team, but a T16 may not.

Casualty rates go up quickly if you’re working with teams that can barely manage a map. That is why it is always better to benchmark to the highest version of the map you are planning to run so you don’t have to check each and every map. This is what I have done in the below overviews as well.

Another factor is that it is easy to underestimate the odds of dying for a full set of maps. If you’re running all 3 Map Devices, you still have a 30+% chance of losing a worker even if you do benchmark against the hardest maps. Things get worse quickly from there, as you can see in the table below:

Thresholds for different maps

Next, we’ll look into which kinds of teams are able to meet objectives at various map tiers.

White and Yellow Maps

¹ Scoured means the Map has a normal rarity without any increased item quantity bonuses.

²IIQ stands for Increased Item Quantity Percentage. For the purpose of White and Yellow Maps, I made sure all of them were above 101%. It is quite rare to get above this IIQ percentage on rare maps, but not impossible. In that case, you have the choice between rerolling your map, throwing it away, adding a bit more Power to your team or accepting slightly worse metrics.

³Use this Calculator Sheet to calculate the Power Level of your own team and get some quick references of Power Levels for Common Team Compositions.

⁴Calculated as 0.4 Gold per hour per Power, which is the average I reached for Mappers. Depending on how lucky you were with the wage rolls of your workers, you may reach a slightly lower or higher number.

⁵A full team of Level 10s gets close, though, with an expected clear rate between 97 and 100%. At Tier 9 they can get a guaranteed clear.

Red Maps (non-guardian/conqueror)

¹ Scoured means the Map has a normal rarity without any increased item quantity bonuses.

²IIQ stands for Increased Item Quantity Percentage. For the purpose of Red Maps, I made sure all of them were above 103%. It is quite rare to get above this IIQ percentage on rare maps, but not impossible. In that case, you have the choice between rerolling your map, throwing it away, adding a bit more Power to your team or accepting slightly worse metrics.

³This is the highest possible IIQ when using my method for the easy completion of the Gear Grinding Goals Challenge requirement “Claim Rewards from Rare, Tier 14 or higher Maps” from Atlas Runners. It involves Scouring a T14, then making it Magic using an Orb of Transmutation. If it has only a prefix or a suffix, apply a Regal Orb. If it has both, use Orbs of Alteration until it does not, then apply a Regal Orb.

If the map dropped with quality, you can use a single Maven’s Chisel of Procurement to replace the Item Quantity quality bonus (which determines the difficulty for your workers) with a rarity bonus (which does not increase the difficulty for your workers). These Chisels are quite cheap (usually 2 Chaos or less). The Calculator Document also has a sheet dedicated to help with this strategy.

⁴For the purpose of an 8-mod T16 (which is a possible outcome of using a Vaal Orb on a map people who want to heavily juice maps use), I bought the highest IIQ map available on the market at the time at 148%. Yes, it was quite overpriced – all for science. While it is not impossible you’ll get an even higher percentage, it is quite unlikely.

⁵Use this Calculator Sheet to calculate the Power Level of your own team and get some quick references of Power Levels for Common Team Compositions.

⁶Calculated as 0.4 Gold per hour per Power, which is the average I reached for Mappers. Depending on how lucky you were with the wage rolls of your workers you may reach a slightly lower or higher number.

Conqueror and Guardian Maps

Shaper Guardian, Elder Guardian and Conqueror Citadel maps have the same difficulty. I only recorded data for T16 maps, although these maps also often drop as T14 and T15. That is because it’s a pain to get/buy only T14 ones to run. A team meeting the requirements for T16 can obviously also run T14s and T15s without issues.

¹ Guardian Maps usually drop superior with a certain amount of quality already on them. You can, however, use a single Maven’s Chisel of Procurement to replace the Item Quantity quality bonus (which determines the difficulty for your workers) with a rarity bonus (which does not increase the difficulty for your workers). These Chisels are quite cheap (usually 2 Chaos or less).

² For those who don’t want to bother with Maven Chisels and will just use a single Orb of Scouring on their maps. We should assume 20% quality in this case, as we are always benchmarking against the hardest map we want to run.

³This is for those who want to complete the Gear Grinding Goals Challenge requirement “Claim Rewards from Rare, Tier 14 or higher Maps” from Atlas Runners. It is easier on normal T14s than Guardian Maps, but this way is still quite easy and will net you a lot of fragments/crests you can run or sell to recoup your costs.

It involves scouring your maps, then making them Magic using an Orb of Transmutation. If it has only a prefix or a suffix, apply a Regal Orb. If it has both, use Orbs of Alteration until it does not before applying a Regal Orb. Then use a single Maven’s Chisel of Procurement to get rid of the Item Quantity Bonus. My Calculation Document has a sheet dedicated to helping with this strategy.

⁴This is a benchmark for the same purpose as above, but without needing to bother with Maven Chisels.

⁵For the purpose of Shaper/Guardian Maps, I bought a 107% increased item quantity map. It is very exceptional to get above this IIQ percentage on rare maps, but not impossible. In that case, you have the choice between rerolling your map, throwing it away, adding a bit more Power to your team or accepting slightly worse metrics.

⁶For the purpose of an 8-mod Guardian Map (which is a possible outcome of using a Vaal Orb on a map people who want to heavily juice maps use), I bought the highest IIQ map available on the market at the time at 144%. Yes, it was quite overpriced – all for science. While it is not impossible you’ll get an even higher percentage, it is also very unlikely.

⁷Use this Calculator Sheet to calculate the Power Level of your own team and get some quick references of Power Levels for Common Team Compositions.

⁸Calculated as 0.4 Gold per hour per Power, which is the average I reached for Mappers. Depending on how lucky you were with the wage rolls of your workers, you may reach a slightly lower or higher number.

Tier 17 Maps

I am not sure why you would want to waste T17 on your Kingsmarch workers, but the data is here for completion’s sake.

¹ Below 100% Increased Item Quantity. This involves deliberately rolling for low IIQ. You’ll get this approximately once every 8 rolls.

² Between 100% and 135%. You’ll get this more often than not. A full team of Level 10s can run up to 127% with a 1% Casualty Rate.

³Between 136% and 154%. This includes deliberately aiming for a high roll. You’ll get this roughly once every 10 times when rolling a fully chiseled map. Kind of a waste to have these go to Atlas Runners rather than selling or running them if you ask me, however.

⁴Up to 190%, which was the highest available Increased Item Quantity Map on the market at the time. Yes, it was overpriced. No, I don’t know why you would want to give this to your Kingsmarch Workers. All for science.

⁵Use this Calculator Sheet to calculate the Power Level of your own team and get some quick references of Power Levels for Common Team Compositions.

⁶Calculated as 0.4 Gold per hour per Power, which is the average I reached for Mappers. Depending on how lucky you were with the wage rolls of your workers, you may reach a slightly lower or higher number.

⁷As mentioned above, a full team of Level 10s can run up to T17 maps with 127% Increased Item Quantity with a Casualty Rate of 1%.

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The Keys to the Vault

The locked Vault in the Reliquary is a new addition in Path of Exile 3.25, Settlers of Kalguur. It’s a core feature, meaning this article is still relevant if you’re reading it during a later update.

To open it, you need 2 keys:

• Key of Devotion
• Key of Strength

Both keys drop from Chests spread around the Reliquary. These chests do not show up on your minimap. What’s more, they don’t look any different from normal chests – even their name is the same. That means you’ll simply need to open every chest you find.

I managed to find the keys with a moderate amount of effort. I had to try quite a few chests but it was not as extreme as having to scour every chest across the area.

Once you found both keys, click both Vault keyholes. After that, click the keys again to turn them and the Vault will open. It is guarded, but the monsters in it aren’t very strong. It’s not likely they will pose a threat to you unless they catch you by surprise.

What To Expect in Terms of Rewards

Once you enter the Vault, you’ll see a Vault Hoard and a handful of Treasure Piles. About half of the rewards are in the Hoard, while the other half are spread out over the Treasure Piles. You’ll mainly find Gold, Flasks and Rare items. In total, the reward tends to be similar to what the new miniboss in Fellshrine drops.

It is possible to load a new version of the Reliquary to repeat this side adventure. When you do so, however, the Vault Hoard will no longer spawn. Doing it just for the Treasure Piles likely isn’t worth your time, but of course that’s up to you.

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The Devotional Statues Lead to an Optional Miniboss

The Devotional Statues in Fellshrine Ruins are a new addition in 3.25, Settlers of Kalguur. They are a core feature, meaning this post is still relevant if you’re reading it during a later league. In other words, they are a permanent feature in all feature leagues as well (unless the devs decide to remove them at some point).

If you landed on this page, you likely already found a Devotional Statue. There are 3 Devotional Statues in total, so you’ll need to find and activate 2 more spread out over Fellshrine Ruins. Just look for Stairs going down on the Minimap to find them relatively easily.

Once you find and activate all 3 of them, head to the right of the area, in front of the area leading to the next area (the entrance to The Crypt). If you activated all 3 statues, the Forgotten Daughter will be waiting for you there.

This optional miniboss has elements of both Vorana and Xenathar (Floor 3 Boss) from The Forbidden Sanctum. She is a bit tougher than other minibosses at this point of the game, but will not take an incredibly long time to take down. Although she does not seem to have any guaranteed loot, she tends to drop quite a lot more than other minibosses, especially rare items.

The post What the Devotional Statues in Fellshrine Ruins Are For appeared first on Answers for Gamers.

Is the Currency Exchange a Permanent Feature?

Currently, the Currency Exchange is a feature specific to 3.25, Settlers of Kalguur. This means it will not be available in the Standard Leagues.

It is extremely likely that it will go core at the end of the league. Game Director Mark Roberts has acknowledged that they know the backlash would be significant if they were to take it away. He also said that it would be easy to enable it for the core game.

The reason it’s currently a league-only feature is to allow tweaks and, in the worst case, an out if the system ends up having significant issues. In that case it may disappear the next league, to then make its return the league after.

Once Grinding Gear Games announces the Currency Exchange will go core, likely at the end of 3.25, it will become a permanent feature that is also available in the Standard Leagues.

How to Access the Currency Exchange

You µopen the Currency Exchange interface through Faustus. You can access him when visiting Kingsmarch. There will be an NPC from Kalguur (Johan) who can take you there as early as Lioneye’s Watch. Faustus is hanging around the Tavern, which is available from the start.

Once the Currency Exchange goes core, assuming Settlers of Kalguur does not go core right away, it’s likely you’ll only get access to it in Act 6. This is when you unlock the Rogue Harbour (after finding a Rogue Marker and talking to Kurai in Lioneye’s Watch). This is where Faustus hangs out when he is not in Kingsmarch.

You can invite Faustus to your Hideout when visiting Kingsmarch. After that, you will be able to access the Currency Exchange directly from there.

The Basics of the Path of Exile Currency Exchange

Mark’s video above shows the basics in just a few minutes, but the very short summary is this:

• Open the Currency Exchange by talking to Faustus.
• Select the item you want.
• Select the item you offer in exchange. The most common items traded for the one you want are shown at the top of the interface.
• The system will suggest a ratio. This is the best ratio currently available for your trade. If you proceed with this ratio, at least part of your trade will happen right away. You can choose a better ratio, but there is no guarantee your trade will happen quickly or even at all. Note that if you accept the suggested ratio, you will need to click the suggested number in both the “I have” and “I want” windows before you can confirm your trade.
• Confirm the trade. You will need to pay a cost in gold. The more items you want and the more valuable those items are, the higher the gold cost. Note that the Gold needs to be in your inventory. Gold in Kingsmarch’s treasury cannot be used in the exchange. You can talk to Johan and select “Manage Town” to extract Gold from the Treasury back to your inventory.

Handy Commands

There are a few commands you can use to improve your experience with the Currency Exchange that are not so obvious at first sight:

• You can press i to open your inventory while you have the Currency Exchange open (or before you open the Currency Exchange).
• Ctrl-clicking an item in your inventory with the Currency Exchange interface open will put the item directly in the “I have” field.
• Ctrl-clicking an item in the “I have” or “I want” field will swap both items.
• Hovering over the ratio will show the available trades at the moment and their stock. Note that these stocks represent the items you want, so if you are trying to sell something for chaos orbs it will show the amount of chaos orbs they are willing to trade away at that ratio, not how many items they want to buy.
• Pressing alt over the current ratio will show the competing trades. That means checking the ratios of people who want to do the same trade as you. E.g., if you are trying to sell scarabs for chaos, it will show other people doing the same and the ratios they are offering. It is often a good idea to price your items slightly better than this ratio rather than at the current available ratio. For commonly traded items your trade will fulfill by the time you finish pricing your other trades or run a lap around your hideout
• Ctrl-clicking an item after a completed trade will move a stack into your inventory. Ctrl-right clicking will move all stacks into your inventory (providing you have room). These shortcuts also work when trading with players using the classic system or moving items from and to your stash.

Why Didn’t My Trade Order Get Fully Fulfilled?

This happens when someone buys a portion of your order and it is impossible to fulfill the rest of it.

You can avoid this by using rounded ratios.

When a trade is unfulfilled, you will get the untraded resources back, as well as a portion of the gold (depending on the portion of the trade that was unfulfilled).

Gold in Path of Exile

Gold is a new currency that only drops in the Settlers of Kalguur League, not in Standard Leagues. Most monsters that drop equipment have a chance to drop Gold (the exception seems to be Sanctuary), though not all content drops as much. . Once the Currency Exchange goes core, Gold will also drop in Standard. The further you get into the game, the larger the Gold stacks that will drop.

Whenever you place an Order in the Currency Exchange, you will need to pay a Gold cost.

You cannot trade Gold with other players. You can only get it by actively playing the game.

Currency Exchange Gold Costs

The more items you put an order for from the Currency Exchange, the more gold you will pay. Items that are individually more valuable will also cost more (in general, not always, e.g. placing an order for Orbs of Fusings costs more than placing an order for Chaos Orbs). Gold makes it harder for bots, hideout warriors/currency flippers and price manipulators to have a large effect on the market.

Below are some examples of Gold costs you need to pay to place an order.  Remember that you don’t buy Orbs directly with Gold. You also need to put up currency of your own (e.g., Chaos Orbs) up for exchange at a ratio other players are willing to part with the currency you want:

• Orb of Transmutation: 5 Gold cost per Orb
• Chaos Orb, Orb of Alteration: 25 Gold
• Orbs of Fusing: 40 Gold
• Divine Orb: 250 Gold
• Mirror of Kalandra: 25,000 Gold
• High-tier Essences: 75 Gold
• Scarabs: 75-350 Gold, depending on rarity
• Divination Cards: 15-1850 Gold, depending on rarity
• Lifeforce: 0.25 per unit (which can add up quite quickly!)

What You Can Trade for in the Currency Exchange

You may have noticed I talked about Divination Cards earlier. The Currency Exchange counts just about everything that can be stacked as currency, not just what is in the Currency Tab. That means you can trade:

• Items in your Currency tab (duh)
• Essences
• Fossils
• Resonators
• Scarabs
• Runes (3.25-specific currency)
• Divination Cards
• Delirium Orbs
• Simulacrums
• Blessings and Breachstones
• Legion Emblems
• Fragments (Atziri, Shaper, Elder, Elderslayers, Maven, Uber, Ritual)
• Oils
• Catalysts
• Scouting Reports
• Omens
• Tattoos
• Expedition Reroll Currency
• Lifeforce

What You Cannot Trade for in the Currency Exchange

• Gold
• Equipment (including Jewels and Flasks)
• Maps (including Invitations, Memories, Logbooks)
• Gems
• Beasts
• Temples
• Incubators (they can technically stack, but only if the ilvl is the same, I guess it would be too convoluted. If you don’t care about the kind of Incubator and the price is good, you can put an order in for the Parasitic Passengers Divination Card. 8 of those give 10 random Incubators)
• Contracts and Blueprints (3 “Something Dark” Cards give a fully revealed Blueprint, though)
• Forbidden Tomes that give access to the Forbidden Sanctum.

You can still get these through the Traditional Trading system.

The Costs of Using the Currency Exchange

Earlier we gave some examples of Gold Costs for putting items up for trade. This ranged from 5 Gold per Orb of Transmutation to 25,000 Gold for a Mirror. That doesn’t tell you much, however, if you don’t know how common Gold is.

According to Grinding Gear Games, Gold costs are balanced around the midgame. It is difficult to “entirely unreasonable” to use in early game and should be “fairly trivial” at end game. After playing around with it a bit, that’s a fair assessment, but it assumes:

• Your Kingsmarch workers, the recombinator and Faustus’ Black market are not eating the vast majority of your Gold income.
• You are mapping regularly instead of doing side content, preferably at higher tiers. Side content such as Blight Maps and Simulacrums don’t give a lot of Gold, The Forbidden Sanctum gives none.
• Most of your Orders are to sell the loot you find and to buy items you need. You are not heavily flipping items or doing large crafting projects.
• You don’t need large amounts of unreasonably priced currency items, such as Chromatic Orbs, Jeweller’s Orbs (25 Gold, same cost as Chaos Orbs) or Orbs of Fusing (40 Gold, more than Chaos Orbs)!
• You have already completed the Challenge which requires you to have 250,000 Gold in your Kingsmarch coffers and have already completed all upgrades in Kingsmarch (or you are not interested in doing so).

If some of these assumptions do not apply to you and you are not doing Tier 17s (which drop a lot of gold) to compensate, you may want to be careful on how you spend your Gold.

Tip for Saving Gold

1. Focus on Quality of Life

The traditional trading site remains. When trading for non-stackable items, equipment or when playing on Standard, it will be the only way to trade. On top of this, however, it will also remain functional for items you can trade in the Currency Exchange.

Remember also that:

• You will be able to use the Currency Exchange to check the current ratios for the trade you are trying to do. Simply enter the items you want to buy and which items you want to give in exchange but then don’t confirm the trade. This will give you an idea on the current going rate and avoid price fixers with listings they are not actually willing to sell.
• It is now possible to shift-right click a currency to move as many as would fit your inventory from not just the Currency Exchange but also your Stash. You can also put items in your Stash in the same way. This will make the traditional trading system more convenient as well.

With this in mind, if you’re not swimming in Gold, you will still want to use the Traditional system for expensive, quick trades (e.g., buying or selling a big stack of Lifeforce) or for items that have a high Gold cost if you need many of them (Chromatic Orbs, Orbs of Fusing, Jeweller’s Orbs). On the other hand, even if you would rather use your Gold on other things, you may still want to use the Currency Exchange for smaller, frustrating trades (e.g., Instilling and Enkindling Orbs, Catalysts).

For selling full tabs at once (e.g., all of your Fossils if you’re delving a lot), you may also want to consider using a service such as the “The Forbidden Trove” (TFT) Discord Server.

2. Price your items reasonably

If you don’t have Gold to spare, you will want to make sure you choose a ratio that will actually fulfill your order. Remember, cancelling your trade does not refund the Gold cost, so is effectively flushing Gold down the drain. You don’t necessarily need to price your items at the current going rate, but you will want to at least offer a better rate than the best competing trade.

3. Trading for Divine Orbs is cheaper

A Divine Orb only costs 250 Gold. This is the equivalent of 10 Chaos Orbs, while Divine Orbs are always worth well over 100 Chaos Orbs. That means trading for Divine Orbs is cheaper than trading for Chaos Orbs.

If you are dealing with items which you are often gathering (e.g., Lifeforce if you’re specced into Harvest), you may want to wait until you have enough Lifeforce to trade directly for Divine Orbs.

If you have a good portion of a Divine and don’t foresee getting the rest anytime soon, you may want to buy some extra. E.g., if I have 0.8 Divine Orbs worth of Lifeforce, I may trade some of my Chaos Orbs for more Lifeforce so I can sell all of my for a Divine. Since Lifeforce doesn’t cost a lot of Gold and is traded frequently, it will be a cheap and fast transaction.

On the other hand, consider putting up items you wouldn’t have bothered with in previous Leagues. E.g., if a Sentinel (they can spawn randomly in T16s and T17s this League) gives you some Expedition currency and you’re not specced into Expedition, just put it up for sale. Earning 5 Chaos here and there adds up quickly if you can get it instantly without having to go through the traditional trading process.

4. Don’t go overboard with your workers

Level 2 workers work about 50% faster than Level 1 workers, but cost 100% more. That means you can get 3 Level 1 workers for the same speed as 2 Level 2 workers, but they will cost you 25% less in total. The same is true when comparing Level 2 and 3.

Timers keep going while you’re offline. If you’re a casual player who isn’t that far along yet in your progress, Level 1 workers can be enough at the start for mining, smelting and farming. For shipping and disenchanting this tip is less advisable, unless your shipments can keep up with your excess stock (mine could not). More and higher-level workers allow you to send larger shipments.

As you get further into the game, you’ll have to upgrade workers to keep up with what you’re gathering, regardless of their lower cost efficiency. At that point all levels from 2 up to 9 are about the same efficiency, with a small drop in efficiency for Level 10. Simply hire the workers you need to get the job done at that point, but remember that you’re not forced to have a full army of Level 10 Farmers to still send shipments regularly.

Also, make sure you don’t assign unqualified workers (e.g., a worker with Farming level 3 to Smelting). They will be even less efficient than a Level 1 worker but still charge their higher level wage! Also be careful of workers with multiple skills, as their Gold cost will reflect their most expensive job.

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What Is a Path of Exile League Starter?

A League Starter is more than just the character you start a league with. At a minimum, a Path of Exile League Starter:

• Requires a minimum amount of investment to function
• Is able to reach a high enough level of content to gather currency for more advanced characters

Beyond this, definitions on the exact requirements will differ. Some people will require a League Starter to function only magic (blue) items, others will allow some rares and cheaper uniques. Some people are fine with a League Starter stranding in yellow (mid-level) maps, others want them to clear all non-uber content.

Do You Need To Use a League Starter?

Yes, I highly recommend you start each league with the concept of League Starter in mind. I fell into the trap of starting with a too-advanced concept a few times. It felt like hitting a wall. It is really demotivating if you aren’t making progress and can’t turn the situation around.

However, keep in mind the minimum definition above. A League Starter does not necessarily limit you to just a few builds. The main goal is to avoid building a character that requires expensive items to function without the means to gather the currency for it.

If you don’t have very strict expectations, even your own build can be a League Starter. You only need to avoid using builds using very expensive interactions. Total beginners actually have an advantage here, as they will not know about interactions that only exist with heavy investments.

If you want some basic tips on starting with your own build (and if this is recommended for you), check out my other article: When You Need a Build Guide To Play Path of Exile (And When You Don’t)

Using a League Starter Does Not Mean You Need Multiple Characters

The main reason players dread using a League Starter, is because they don’t want to make multiple characters. But they don’t have to. There are plenty of way for your League Starter to be the only character you create that league:

Option 1: Choosing a League Starter with room for growth. A lot of League Starter-focused builds have suggestions for gear upgrades. Once you have the currency for it, you can turn your existing build into a more advanced version with these upgrades.

Option 2: Picking a League Starter that is capable of clearing most content. As said, requirements for League Starters differ between players. As such, some League Starters can clear just about all content just fine with minimal investment.

You can study which content options you are considering can clear before making your final decision. Just be aware that builds in this category tend to be very “meta”. Some players don’t like playing what “everyone” is playing. This option may not be enjoyable for those players.

Option 3: Choosing a League Starter with the same Ascendancy Class as your final build. If you have a more expensive build in mind as your main character for the league, you can choose a League Starter with the same Ascendancy Class (e.g., Deadeye, Juggernaut). A different ascendancy class from the same base class (e.g., Berserker if you’re a Juggernaut) is OK, too.

Using this option, you don’t need to create a new character and keep your leveling progress. You simply respec to a new build on the same character. Make sure you gather the necessary currency (Orbs of Regret to respec and funds for your new gear) before you switch.

How To Determine if a Build Is League Start Friendly

Most build guides will simply tell you. But some build guides can also be quite clickbaity with their claims, so it’s good to check for yourself. Take a look at the unique items the build requires and check them out at PoE Antiquary:

• First select the category of your item on the left (e.g., Unique Weapons)
• Then select the previous League from the menu on the top right

In regards to non-unique items, you can be less restrictive. Just avoid the following:

• Extremely rare mods such as +Frenzy or +Power charges. Just anything you know does not drop often for you when you are playing.
• Characters that have 6 high-tier affixes on most slots on their starter gear. League Starters should work with just a few strong affixes per rare item.
• League Starters that require you to already have implicit modifiers (modifiers that are not part of the normal gear affixes)

League Starting Later in the League

Some Unique Items in Path of Exile remain expensive throughout the league (Mageblood, Voidforge, Progenesis, …). Many Uniques, however, start out expensive due to lack of supply but drop off significantly after the first week. That means that starting a league with some delay will make more builds fit the definition of League Starter.

Even starting after the initial weekend can mean that items have already halved in price or more. If you’re starting out a little later, I recommend you check out current prices and their trend through poe.ninja.

Do keep in mind, however, that powerful Uniques usable by many builds tend to go up in price, rather than down. That is because demand stays high and players have more currency to spend later in the league. This can cause issues for some builds you have your eye on, as well. These problems can also be identified through using poe.ninja.

Finding League Starters

Here are some suggestions on where you can find your own League Starter:

• Zizaran‘s channel. Around the start of a new league, he always highlights League Starters with different strengths. This gives you a lot of choices. He mainly features builds by other creators, but also mixes in some of his own at times. His videos serve as a good introduction to the strengths and weaknesses of each builds. He also gives information on where to find the full build.
• Maxroll has a lot of written guides, many of which are League Starters. They do also have some outdated guides, though, so make sure you only check recently updated ones.
• Pohx’ site on Raging Fire is very beginner friendly. It goes very in-depth, though, which can be a positive or negative depending on your playstyle. Look for the builds section once you reach his page.
• The Path of Exile Builds Subreddit is a very good resource for League Starters. Follow the link, then ctrl-F Current League Start Build Index (the URL differs from league to league). This section features many different creators. Although it’s mostly a lot safer from clickbaiters than YouTube, you should still check if your chosen build really is league-start friendly.

The post What a Path of Exile League Starter Is and if You Need One appeared first on Answers for Gamers.

Do You Need a Build Guide To Play Path of Exile?

It depends. Yes, I know it’s a dreaded answer. Yes, I also know you would like a quick answer. So, in this first section, I’ll try to be as concrete as possible, in as few words as possible, before diving deeper into the subject.

In general, I recommend new players follow a build guide when playing Path of Exile. It is, however, not a requirement. If you fit these criteria, then you’ll be fine without one:

• You like figuring things out for yourself and/or get pleasure from making your own ideas work.
• The idea of not being able to clear all content is not a problem for you

Why It Is Generally Recommended To Follow a Build Guide in Path of Exile

If you are familiar with games such as Hearthstone: Battlegrounds or the more recent Balatro, this will be fairly easy to understand. A 20% bonus here and there does not seem like much, but it adds up very quickly. Many such small bonuses, applied repeatedly, in many aspects, end up making a huge difference.

Path of Exile has many such bonuses through its many systems. Equipment, passive trees, jewels, ascendancies flasks, skills, supports, enhancements of your equipment, debuffs to enemies, synergies between all of these things, …

All of these elements multiply on top of each other and end up making a tremendous difference to your character’s power. These bonuses over many years of development mean that an average player following an expert’s build guide can treat the game like a walking simulator with some investment. A veteran who is above average at making his own builds, in the meantime, may struggle with mid-tier content.

As a beginner, you will simply lack the knowledge to apply all of these things effectively. Even if you tend to be pretty good at coming up with your own strategies in other games, you will need to bridge this knowledge gap first.

…But Why You Can Still Manage Fine Without a Build Guide

Although Path of Exile has many systems that synergize to build huge bonuses, these only open up gradually.

Many of the systems are not available during the campaign. On top of that, veteran players tend to rush through it. They don’t have the time to invest in accumulating all the bonuses that are available. The difficulty of the content takes this into account (general content, anyway, you may struggle a bit with league-specific content depending on the league you start).

In other words, if you want to figure out your own build, you’ll very likely be fine during the campaign. Preach did it. Darth Microtransaction did it. You can do it too. But you don’t have to.

If you prefer a smoother gaming experience, there is no shame in following a build guide. Path of Exile has many things to learn even excluding how to build your own character. Your skill and ability to adapt will still make a difference.

Tips for Your First Path of Exile Build

As you likely gathered by now, you’ll be fine using your own build, as long as you accept you’ll likely hit a wall somewhere in your post-campaign adventure. These basic tips focus on delaying that wall while still giving you the freedom to go your own way:

• More damage is always tempting, but do not neglect life on the passive tree. Many new players end up being way too squishy.
• Start paying attention to your resistances when you hit Act 3. Focus on them even more when you hit Act 5. Try to build them up to 75% as you go but make absolutely sure you get there by the time you finish the campaign. For Chaos Resistance, 0% tends to be enough for most content unless you focus on energy shield rather than life.
• Check the tags on the skill that you are using. If you’re using a fire attack, then ice damage or spell damage or projectile damage is not going to help. Put the skill gem in an item that links to support gems that do help your skill.
• Do not neglect crafting. You don’t need to craft your own items. However, most yellow items you find on the ground allow you to add an additional prefix or suffix. These can help you fill up your resistances or give you a bit of extra life.
• Do not forget to pick up your Ascendancy by running the Labyrinth at the end of Act 3 and Act 8. If the boss there is too tough you can do them at the end of Act 4 and 9 instead, but the bonuses there are huge boosts to your character’s power.

What To Do When You Do Hit a Wall

Don’t be discouraged when you do hit a wall. Your experience will surely help you make a better new character, but that’s not the only option you have. You can also switch to a build guide after you hit the wall.

It’s not even a must to create a new character to do so. You can just find a build guide for your existing class. The same Ascendancy class is the easiest to do, but a different Ascendancy from the same base class (e.g., from Inquisitor to Hierophant or Guardian, all Ascendancies of the Templar class) is not that much harder.

Switching to a Build Guide

Hopefully, you managed to build up a bit of currency or reached a level where you can fairly easily gather some. To make a smooth transition to a League Starter character (click through for more information about those) you will need:

• 50-120 Orbs of Regret (depending on your character level and if you want to change Ascendancy class or not)
• 5-10 Chaos Orbs per equipment slot to buy

If you were fortunate enough to find one or more Divine Orbs during your own journey, you’re already at that level. You can trade your Divine Orb(s) for Chaos Orbs using the Path of Exile trade site. You can also trade your Chaos Orbs for Orbs of Regret and equipment for your new build there.

• Each Orb of Regret can undo one Passive Skill Point
• It takes 5 Orbs of Regret to refund an Ascendancy Point. You will need to refund all of your Ascendancy Points and then run the Labyrinth again to choose a new Ascendancy

Although it is not an immediate must, you can also respec your Bandit reward using 20 Orbs of Regret. You need to sell these to a vendor, together with one additional item. Sell them with:

• An Onyx Amulet to get Eramir’s favour (most popular choice)
• A Lapis Amulet to get Alira’s favour (a niche choice somewhat more common in starters)
• An Amber Amulet to get Oak’s favour (almost never used)
• A Jade Amulet to get Kraityn’s favour (used even less).

You can buy these amulets from Vendors or simply find them on the ground.

Where To Find Path of Exile Build Guides

There are many, many places you can find Path of Exile Build Guides. These are my main recommendations for beginners:

• Zizaran always has a good selection of build guides available at each league start. He regularly throws one of his own builds in the mix, but mainly features other creators excelling at different aspects. This gives a varied selection and allows you to find something that suits your own playstyle.
• Mathil is a good choice if you’re looking for very varied, solid builds outside of the obvious meta. It’s likely he’ll have recent featured builds in his recent videos, but I recommend his latest reviewing video of his own builds. He does one after the end of each league. Just make sure you don’t pick something that was heavily nerfed in the new league (you can just ctrl-f the latest patch notes).
• If you prefer written guides, give Maxroll a try. Just make sure the guide you pick is updated for the current league.
• Looking for a super in-depth guide that will teach you not just a build but many aspects of Path of Exile itself? Then you’ll want to take a look at Pohx’ site, specifically the builds section. The disadvantage is that Pohx only focuses on one build, Raging Fire, but it’s the most in-depth beginner-friendly guide out there.
• Once you get used to the basics of following Build guides, the Path of Exile Builds Subreddit is a very good resource. Just ctrl-F Current League Start Build Index once there (the URL changes every league, so I can not link to it directly).
• Looking at some meta-breaking, screen-melting builds once you have gathered some (read: a lot) of currency? Check out Jungroan’s channel.

Following a Build Guide

Simply watching/reading the above resources will sometimes only explain the basics of a build. To really follow them for yourself, you will need to download Path of Building. After that, simply copy-paste the Build Guide code that the Build Guide provides you with into Path of Building. This will allow you to view recommended equipment, the skill tree of the build, notes and more.

You May Also Be Interested in Reading

All You Need To Know about League Starters in Path of Exile

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