Currency Basics — Gold vs Orbs
PoE2 runs two currencies with completely different roles. Treating them as the same thing is the most expensive beginner mistake there is. Bring the usual “money” mental model from other games and you will lose value at least once.
The short version: gold is what you spend, orbs are your materials and your trading currency.
Gold
This is the closer analogue to money in most games. You get it from killing monsters and selling items to vendors.
The decisive detail is that gold cannot be traded between players. No matter how much you accumulate, you can’t use it to buy good gear from someone else.
It has three main uses:
- Vendor purchases — surprisingly useful during the campaign for patching an empty slot in a hurry.
- Passive respec — you pay gold to The Hooded One to undo allocated passives.
- Listing items on the trade site
Respec cost is the one people underestimate. Tweaking a build burns through gold faster than expected, so avoid buying things you don’t need from vendors early on.
Currency orbs
This is PoE2’s real economy. Orbs are consumables that modify gear, and simultaneously the unit of account for player trading. They fill the role gold plays in other games.
The ones you’ll see constantly:
- Orb of Transmutation — Normal item to Magic
- Orb of Augmentation — adds one modifier to a Magic item
- Regal Orb — Magic to Rare
- Exalted Orb — adds a modifier to a Rare item
- Chaos Orb — removes one modifier, adds one
- Divine Orb — rerolls modifier values
Exactly what each one does, and the order to use them in so you don’t waste anything, is covered in Basic Currency Crafting.
The one thing never to do
Don’t sell valuable orbs to vendors. Converting orbs into gold because your inventory is full is a straight loss. Orbs sit far above gold as an asset — they buy things gold simply cannot.
For the same reason, don’t discard an orb because you don’t recognise it. Park it in a stash tab and look it up later.
What to spend freely and what to save
Campaign gear gets replaced wholesale once you reach maps, so it’s easiest to sort orbs by tier and treat each differently.
| Tier | Orbs | Use during the campaign |
|---|---|---|
| Common, cheap | Transmutation, Augmentation | Spend freely |
| Middle | Regal, Alchemy | Use when needed |
| Valuable | Exalted, Chaos, Divine | Save for the endgame |
Transmutation and Augmentation Orbs should be spent throughout the campaign to fix whatever is blocking you right now — a weak weapon, a missing resistance. Putting an Exalted or Divine Orb into leveling gear, by contrast, is the spend you’ll most regret later.
The currency exchange
There’s a facility for trading orbs with other players. When you end up with a pile of one orb and none of another, this is where you fix that.
Exchange rates aren’t fixed — they move continuously as a season progresses. How to handle surplus currency without losing value is covered in Currency Management.
The takeaway: gold is for spending, orbs are for keeping and trading. Getting this one distinction right removes most early-game losses.