This Guide is about Path Of Exile Orbs in general. Pretty much everyone knows how they work, as it is in their item description, but knowing what to do with certain Orbs or using them in a sensible manner is something worth taking a closer look at. From our experience, most of the players that are still new to the game have no idea what to do with certain PoE currency (PoE Orbs used to modify items are known as Currency Items). With the Path of Exile looting system it is highly unlikely, but nonetheless possible, for low-level players to loot extremely valuable items like Divine Orbs and misspend them by “upgrading” their worthless equipment. A lot of players may unwittingly dispose of currency that's worth more than all of their equipment combined tenfold. Here we'll list all of the Currency Items, their purpose, and ways of acquiring them. We won’t get into meta-crafting as it's too complex of a topic to cover here. We also won't cover the "Endgame Currency", "Tainted Currency", "Expedition currency", "Exotic Currency", or other such unconventional Orbs - those should be covered soon in a separate Guide/Article.
|
Scroll of Wisdom |
Scroll of Wisdom is the most common currency item. It's used to identify items. Unidentified items cannot be equipped or tampered with in any way. It will be needed throughout the entire game by every player. |
Usage/Spending |
Identifying looted items. There are, however, items you may not want to identify before selling. Some vendor recipes require items to be unidentified. Watcher's Eye Jewels from The Elder are worth mentioning here too. After such an item is identified, it becomes clear if it's worth a fortune or nothing. Some people like to test their luck by buying them as they drop and checking for themselves their worth. |
Acquisition |
The most efficient way to obtain them in bulk is to sell Orbs of Transmutation or Armourer's Scraps to any vendor. |
Portal Scroll |
They are worth around 4 times more than Scrolls of Wisdom. You should always have some of them at hand no matter the stage of the game. That is unless you're using a Portal Skill Gem, but that's rarely seen. |
Usage/Spending |
Keeping up to a stack of them in your inventory is a common practice, it teleports you back to town or hideout. |
Acquisition |
Purchase some from Nessa in Act 1 by spending Scrolls of Wisdom. |
Armourer’s Scrap |
This orb is used to improve the Quality of an armor piece, meaning it will gain slightly more Armour Evasion, or Energy Shield - depending on its base type. At the very early stages of the game, they're too scarce to use on all of your items, but later on, they're abundant. |
Usage/Spending |
Use them only on the items you're actually wearing. If, during leveling phase, you've found an item with high base stats and just the right sockets, but no good modifiers whatsoever, we suggest Scouring all the mods from it, then applying four Armourer’s Scraps, and only then trying to craft something on it with Essences or Orbs of Alchemy. Normal (white) items' Quality is upgraded by 5% with each use, while Rare items require five times as many of these orbs for the same effect. The Quality goes up to 20%. It's used on a Crafting Bench to craft low-level extra Attribute Crafts. Upgrading decent gear you find, that you want to sell for a better price. It will give you the edge in the market as some customers filter out offers with too low base stats. Additionally, items with higher Quality have a higher Chance of a better outcome when using Orbs of Fusing. |
Acquisition |
If you've found a gear piece at 20% Quality already, you can trade it for one Armourer’s Scrap at any vendor. You can also buy it from vendors by trading one Blacksmith's Whetstone. |
Blacksmith’s Whetstone |
This orb is used to improve the Quality of a weapon. It shares many parallels with Armourer’s Scrap, but is slightly less common, as you have more armor pieces than weapons to upgrade. The weapon's Quality is quite important, but for Spell-casters it's actually of no use, only Attack builds benefit from the base weapon's damage. |
Usage/Spending |
Use it on the Weapons you're wielding to increase their base damage. You can be smart and apply them to normal items first - we've described the process in the Armourer’s Scrap section. Store them until you are able to loot low-level maps. It's most efficient to upgrade Normal rarity hammers (Stone Hammer, Rock Breaker, Gavel) with 4 Blacksmith's Whetstones, and vendor it with a random map (only normal low-level ones, you do not plan on running). You will be getting Cartographer's Chisel for every Hammer traded that way. You can use them in a vendor recipe. It is possible to deterministically craft a magic weapon with Increased Physical Damage or Increased Spell Damage. Sell a Weapon, one Blacksmith's Whetstone, and one Magic, Rare, or Unique Rustic Sash Belt for a weapon with increased Physical Damage. It preserves Sockets and Crucible Passives. This technique is used for many Swords or Bow builds that rely on Physical Damage, or ones that just don't have good Unique Items to level up with. Swap Runic Sash for Chain Belt and you'll get a weapon with increased Spell Damage - it's great for Spell-casters. Upgrading decent gear you find, that you want to sell for a better price. It will give you the edge in the market as some customers filter out offers with too low base stats. Additionally, items with higher Quality have a higher Chance of a better outcome when using Orbs of Fusing. |
Acquisition |
If you've found a weapon at 20% Quality already, you can trade it for one Blacksmith's Whetstone at any vendor. You can also buy it from vendors by trading three Armourer’s Scraps. |
Orb of Augmentation |
This Orb adds a new random modifier (Affix) to a Magic (blue) item. Magic items are limited only to two modifiers, while Rare (yellow) items can have up to six of them, so it's not very useful at crafting actually good items. |
Usage/Spending |
Use them to craft affixes on Magic Flasks. Flasks are limited only to two affixes - one from the Prefixes' pool and the other from Suffixes'. It's a great introduction to crafting, just spot the two modifiers you want, and if you roll only one, apply this Orb and hope that the second is good as well. It's also used when Crafting Cluster Jewels, especially Medium and Small ones for similar reasons. One of the most useful tools for upgrading gear via vendor recipes. It increases the tier of a specific affix by one, resulting in a Magic item. You can create a pair of Boots with up to 30% increased Movement Speed by trading Boots, Quicksilver Flask, and this Orb at any vendor. You can also make a magic weapon with a very high tier of "Added Damage" mods by using other Flasks. It's used on a Crafting Bench to craft low-level Crafts |
Acquisition |
Trade an identified Rare item with six affixes for one such orb at any vendor. You can also trade Normal, Magic, and Rare items of the same base type at any vendor for one Orb of Augmentation (it's two if they're unidentified). |
Orb of Transmutation |
Used to improve Normal items to Magic items. Has multiple uses, but is rather irrelevant on low levels. We suggest storing them until later on when you can craft good magic Flasks. |
Usage/Spending |
It's used mostly on Flasks and Jewels. It can add one or two Affixes, but you need to have a Normal Flask first. Be sure to have a good foundation for the item you want to craft. The highest-tier Affixes can only be present on items with a high enough Item Level. For example, "(56–60)% increased Armour during Effect", the highest tier of an Affix for increased Armour, requires a Flask at at least 84th Level. It's not recommended to use them on items that can be Rare, or on items you aim for more than one or two very specific mods. Vendor Recipes (rarely) and Bench-Crafting. |
Acquisition |
You will gain a lot of them just by selling any unidentified items to a vendor, which usually ensures a steady stream of these. You can buy them at a vendor for Portal Scrolls, but it's not very efficient. |
Orb of Alteration |
Changes all the Affixes on a Magic item. Vis-à-vis of the Chaos Orbs but for lower-grade gear or Flasks. These are the most valuable Orbs up to this point in the list. |
Usage/Spending |
Trade them for Chaos Orbs with other players. You could, of course, sell any of the Orbs previously mentioned too, but only now it's actually worth the hassle. This can also be traded with vendors to get 1 Orb of Fusing for 16 Orbs of Alteration. Use them to reroll affixes on magic Flasks, Jewels, and possibly low-level blue maps. Normally you would have to use Orb of Transmutation and Orb of Scouring in an altering fashion to re-roll a Magic item, but since Orbs of Scouring are often too expensive for this endeavor, we recommend using these Orbs instead. Implement Orbs of Augmentation into this method if you've rolled only one good modifier. In Bench-Crafting. |
Acquisition |
You can purchase one for four Orbs of Augmentation at a vendor. It's not the best value, but compared to buying them from other players, it may save you a lot of time. You can also sell identified Rare items and be rewarded with Alteration Shards. |
Chromatic Orb |
Use it on an item to randomize its sockets' colors. There's a huge demand for them as getting the right colors is often quite hard. Don't use too much of them during leveling, definitely not to get off-color sockets. |
Usage/Spending |
Different Gems require different socket colors or else they won't fit. The chance of getting specific colors varies from item to item. For example, items that require Strength to use will be much more likely to have red sockets. The color green is associated with Dexterity and blue with Intelligence. The higher the requirement is, the more likely you are to get the expected colors. That's why it is hard to get these so-called "off-color" sockets on your end-game gear while rolling 6 red sockets on a Mace is likely to happen with just one Chromatic Orb. Instead of relying on luck, you can use Crafting Bench to just get the sockets you want, but in most cases, the price of doing so is too high. It's only viable on rare occasions to get off-color sockets. Trade them for Chaos Orbs with other players. |
Acquisition |
A lot of those can be found during leveling and farming, from direct drops as well as from selling 3-linked R-G-B (red, green, and blue sockets) items to vendors. Unless you play a very niche build you should have a lot of those lying around. You can buy one for 3 Jeweller's Orb at a vendor. |
Glassblower's Bauble |
Used to improve the Quality of a Flask, which increases its duration or the amount of Life/Mana recovered if applicable. |
Usage/Spending |
It's advised to only upgrade the finished Flasks/Unique Flasks you bought with already good Affixes on them, or use them on a Normal Flask first, and then start crafting - that will only require you to spend 4 Glassblower's Baubles instead of 20 to get the 20% Quality. The only Flask that you may not want to upgrade is Vorana's Preparation, but that's an oddity. Trade them for Chaos Orbs with other players, but keep in mind no person has a good reason to buy more than 100 of them at a time so it may be troublesome. |
Acquisition |
You can trade 8 Blacksmith's Whetstones for one Glassblower's Bauble at a vendor, or sell them a 20% Quality Flask you've looted. |
Orb of Alchemy |
Used to transmute a Normal item into a Rare item (that has always four to six Affixes) in a similar fashion to the Orb of Transmutation. These are always regularly used, but most players manage their own demand so it may be hard to sell them. |
Usage/Spending |
We suggest using them to quickly create Rare maps, it's a technique called "alch & go". If you're not happy with the result (there may be a build-disabling mod on them) use Orb of Scouring and once more Orb of Alchemy, or simply one Chaos Orb. It depends on which Orb is more valuable at the moment as Scouring and Chaos Orbs are worth roughly the same. Can be also used to improve the rarity of Strongboxes in higher-level areas if you have them at hand (especially Diviner's Strongboxes). As for regular gear pieces, you may use them once or twice during the early leveling phase, but in most cases, Essences or vendor recipes are a better alternative. To buy cheap leveling gear and gems, it's the lowest denomination that some players will still use as a proper currency, especially at the start of a new league. In Bench-Crafting. |
Acquisition |
The vendor's recipe for them is to get three of the same item, each with a different rarity (Normal, Magic, and Rare). Selling Rare or Unique items with specific Affixes will grant you Alchemy Shards. |
Orb of Chance |
Used to transmute a Normal rarity item into a random rarity item - Magic, Rare, or even Unique. Note that a lot of Unique items cannot be "chanced". |
Usage/Spending |
Trade them for Chaos Orbs with other players. In Bench-Crafting. If you're feeling lucky, try to roll an expensive Unique item with it. Get an equally large amount of Orbs of Scouring and a desirable base item with a high enough Item Level, or simply a lot of Normal base items. It's gambling in its purest form, but due to the relatively high price of Orbs of Scouring the odds are against you most of the time. Be sure your Item Filter is set up to highlight a good base item with Normal rarity and high Item Level if you want to use them. |
Acquisition |
Selling Normal, Magic, Rare, and Unique items of the same base type to a vendor will grant you 4 Orbs of Chance. Selling a full set of items with their Item Level up to 59 will get you one such Orb, two if they're unidentified. You can buy them for 1 Orb of Fusing from vendors. |
Orb of Regret |
Adds an extra passive respec point on use. You will probably need some of them when you re-specialize your leveling Passive Skill tree at a level of around 60 to 80 (depending on your chosen build). You may need them later to fix some of the mistakes you've made, but if you're sure that decision won't come back to bite you, sell them. |
Usage/Spending |
Trade them for Chaos Orbs with other players. Respec passives. Trading one Gem and one Orb of Regret will downgrade it to level one. It's used very rarely in specific builds which need low-level alternate-quality Gems. To obtain the Book of Reform - if you want to change the outcome of a quest "Deal with the Bandits" from Act 2 you can do so with 20 Orbs of Regret and a specific Amulet. |
Acquisition |
You can buy them for two Orbs of Scouring at a vendor. |
Jeweller's Orb |
Changes the number of sockets on an item. During your leveling phase, we suggest storing those Orbs. It will be much cheaper to loot or buy suitable 3 or 4-linked gear than crafting it with Jeweller's Orbs and then Orbs of Fusing. |
Usage/Spending |
Use them on a gear piece to randomize the number of sockets on it. It cannot exceed 6 sockets on a 2-hand weapon or body armor, 4 on the rest of the armor pieces, and 3 on one-hand and off-hand items. You won't be able to use them on an item with an already maximum number of sockets. Note that increasing the item Quality will also increase the Chance of getting a higher number of sockets, so don't forget to use Armourer's Scraps or Blacksmith's Whetstones first. You should have plenty of them to use on various items or trade them at a vendor for Orbs of Fusing at a good rate of 4 Jeweller's Orbs for 1 Orb of Fusing. It's worth doing even if you plan to sell them later, which is an exception. |
Acquisition |
Selling an item with 6 sockets to a vendor will get you 6 of these Orbs. We recommend picking up such items. |
Orb of Fusing |
Changes the number of links between sockets on an item. It's a rather expensive Orb that at some point you will either sell in bulk or use yourself. Linking 4-socket items will cost a handful of them, but linking six sockets on an item with 20% Quality (which increases the chance for more links) is much more expensive, around 1000 of them will be probably needed. |
Usage/Spending |
Most of the builds use an item (Body Armour and/or 2-hand Weapon) with six sockets that need to be linked. Having only 5 sockets linked is often enough, but having one more is the easiest way to improve your damage. Accumulating enough Orbs of Fusing to link your first item yourself is not a good idea, you can buy cheap rare items with 6-links for a few Chaos Orbs instead. If you have over 1000 Orbs of Fusing, try to 6-link an item you plan to use or flip later for currency, as the price difference between fully-linked and any other item (which is good) may be greater than the amount you'd get by just selling these Orbs. Trade them for Chaos Orbs with other players. In Bench-Crafting. You can spend 1500 Orbs of Fusing to fully link an item after unlocking the recipe. 150 for a five-link. You can choose these options if you don't like gambling or clicking. There are quite a few various vendor recipes including this orb you may want to take a look at. |
Acquisition |
Selling an item with 6 linked sockets to a vendor will get you 20 of these Orbs. We recommend picking up such items. Trading 4 Jeweller's Orb for one Orb of Fusing at a vendor is a good deal, as mentioned earlier. |
Gemcutter's Prism |
Improves the quality of a gem. Unless you are starting your adventure in a new league, most of the gems with high quality will be cheaper than Gemcutter's Prisms required to improve their quality to corresponding levels. |
Usage/Spending |
Trade them for Chaos Orbs with other players. Improve the Quality of some of the Gems you're using. You can also trade level-20 Gems with one Gemcutter's Prism at a vendor for a level 1 such Gem with 20% Quality. We would recommend using this trick - leveling Gem to level 20 takes only a day or two. |
Acquisition |
Selling looted superior Gems (Gems with Quality above 0%) to a vendor will get you these Prisms. For every 20% of their shared Quality, you will get one Gemcutter's Prism, so it's a sound idea to pick every single superior Gem. |
Orb of Scouring |
Removes all properties from an item. Basically turns the item into a Normal rarity item with no properties, just the Implicit mods. However, sockets and links are not considered properties of an item so those will stay there untouched. There are many uses for this Orb, especially in crafting. |
Usage/Spending |
Trade them for Chaos Orbs with other players. As mentioned already in the Orb of Alchemy and Chaos Orb sections, you may want to use them on maps that have a debilitating mod. The "alch & go" technique is, in reality, more complex - "alch & check if the map is ok, if not re-roll with Chaos Orb or Scour it and apply Orb of Alchemy again & go". Choose the latter if you have more Orbs of Scouring than Chaos Orbs. In Bench-Crafting - to remove modifiers. Decrease the level of a Gem by 1. Trade this Orb and a Gem you want to level down at any vendor. |
Acquisition |
You can buy one for 4 Orbs of Chance at a vendor. |
Regal Orb |
Upgrades a Magic item into a Rare item. There are no efficient uses for this orb early in the game. |
Usage/Spending |
It can be used in meta-crafting. It might not be a bad idea also to craft Rare Jewels (and Rare Cluster Jewels) with this, as long as you happen to find a decent Magic Jewel with two good Affixes and want to try your luck to get something valuable (usually it won't be, but it's hard to find a better use for this orb). Trade them for Chaos Orbs with other players. |
Acquisition |
There is a similar recipe to that for Orb of Chance and Chaos Orb. Selling a full set of items with their Item Level between 75 to 100 will get you one such Orb, two if they're unidentified. |
Vaal Orb |
Corrupts an item. While able to completely ruin a valuable possession, it can possibly enhance it with new powerful properties. It may change some sockets to white, reforge an item to a rare one with random Affixes, sockets, and links, add a special Vaal Implicit, or have no effect at all. If the outcome of such Corruption is undesirable, the item is considered broken, or "bricked". It's very hard and expensive to modify a Corrupted item, but it can be done using rare Tainted Currency, which we won't cover in this guide. |
Usage/Spending |
This Orb is mainly used to corrupt high-tier (red) maps for the Atlas progression. You will use it regularly for this purpose until you've completed all the red, Rare, and corrupted maps. Corrupting Rare Strongboxes is a great idea as it will increase the rarity and quantity of items inside of it. It can increase the level or quality of a Gem. By Corrupting level 20 Gem, you may increase its level to 21 (there is a 1 in 8 chance for that), which is a substantial improvement for Spell Skills. Enlighten or Empower Gems can be Corrupted too for an immensely expensive level 4 variant (note that if you want to increase the level AND get the Vaal variant of a Skill Gem (if it has such a variant) you must use Lapidary Lens instead). Corrupting Jewels may result in Unique Jewel, some of which are valuable. There is also a Corrupted Implicit available only for Jewels that grants immunity to Corrupted Blood that a lot of players desire. For a full list of special Vaal Implicits, check "List of item corrupted implicit modifiers" on a Wiki. You will rarely use this orb on your gear pieces as the chance of bricking them is too high, and the special Implicits are not worth taking that risk. Trade them for Chaos Orbs with other players. In Bench-Crafting. |
Acquisition |
You have to rely on luck to randomly loot it from slain enemies.
|
|
Blessed Orb |
Not a very popular Orb because of its very limited usage. It randomizes the numeric value of the implicit properties of an item. Considering their drop rate, these Orbs are usually not worth much but still, don't use them on your leveling or temporary gear. |
Usage/Spending |
Use them on your gear pieces to roll a better implicit. Trade them for Chaos Orbs with other players. |
Acquisition |
You have to rely on luck to randomly loot it from slain enemies. |
Cartographer's Chisel |
Used to improve map quality. Commonly utilized by high-level players to improve high-tier maps quality for more and better loot. There is a high demand for Cartographer's Chisels so it's rather easy to trade them away, but using them yourself on tier-16 maps is recommended. |
Usage/Spending |
Trade them for Chaos Orbs with other players. Use them on Normal tier-16 maps. Doing so will only cost 4 Chisels. Upgrade the rarity of these maps after Chiseling. |
Acquisition |
Sell a 20% Quality map to a vendor for one Chisel. Do so with low-tier or Corrupted maps that you can't run. Selling multiple maps with greater than 0% Quality. For every 40% of their shared Quality, you will get one Cartographer's Chisel. As we've mentioned in the Blacksmith’s Whetstone section, you can combine a Normal rarity hammer (Stone Hammer, Rock Breaker, Gavel) with any map, and sell them to a vendor for one Chisel. You can buy them from Kirac using Chaos Orbs, but they're usually worth half of that on the market. |
Divine Orb |
Randomizes the numeric value of all Affixes within their tier range. It's the second-most popular currency item, used in trading for valuable items. Do not use them on your items. |
Usage/Spending |
Trade them for items. One such Orb is worth hundreds of Chaos Orbs. The other use is to re-roll extremely important affixes on an extremely expensive (often Unique) item. A good example is a Mageblood Belt that works best if it affects 4 Flasks, but the numeric value of this specific affix ranges from 2 to 4. Selling three Unique Items to a vendor will serve the same function as a Divine Orb, but, of course, a single Mageblood is worth much more. |
Acquisition |
To increase your chances target-farm specific Divination Cards that drop on particular maps or from certain monsters. We recommend running a Cemetery Map for Brother's Gift Cards. |
|
We hope you liked this article, and thanks to it you can remove some of your bad habits when casually playing PoE. Also if you are a more experienced player and have some other ideas and efficient usages for the PoE Orbs above please let us know in the comments. Please also make sure to visit the marketplace section to find out what is the real-life value of Path of Exile's currency, or simply start trading if you would like to find more joy during the time you spend in the game world itself.
Pictures used in this article are the intellectual property of Grinding Gear Games.