Currency

The currency system in Path of Exile revolves around a variety of different orbs and scrolls. Each currency item serves a specific function in the crafting and enhancement of a character's equipment, or allowing restructuring of the character's passive skill tree in the case of the Orb of Regret.

Currency items are used to pay for items in player trading.

Currency items
Currency items can be found as drops from monsters or chests, bought directly from different vendors in town, or received through the use of the vendor recipe system by trading specific configurations of items to any town vendor. Currency items play a large role in the player to player trading system, with rare orbs able to be traded for powerful equipment, or even other types of orbs that a player might need at the time for crafting.

Basic currency items are those that have no specific drop restrictions (in-game wording: non-league), such as which areas or monsters they can drop from. Some examples of basic currency items are, and.

Functional currency
These currencies have a direct purpose and can be consumed in most cases. This category includes items that tend to be common and well known, such as orbs or scrolls.

Shards and fragments
Shards and fragments are obtained by selling items to vendors or dropping from Harbingers. They can be combined to form certain currency items by stacking them.

Essences
Essences are items that upgrade a normal item to a rare item with predetermined modifiers.

Prophecies
Prophecies are given out from Navali in return for Silver Coins. They can be sealed into Prophecy items.

Vials
Vials drop in the Temple of Atzoatl and can upgrade specific unique items to make them more powerful.

Harbinger currency
These shards are dropped by Harbingers or Harbinger reward chest of other mechanics. Some currencies are dropped from such chest only or by combining shard

Perandus coins
Perandus Coins can be used to buy items from Cadiro Perandus.

Delve currency
Fossils and Resonators can be found in the Azurite Mine or bought from Niko, Master of the Depths.

Oils
Oils can improve Blighted maps, amulets, rings and certain unique items.

Catalysts
Catalysts increase the quality of jewellery. They are exclusive to the Metamorph leagues.

Discontinued currency items
The following currency items no longer drop in the game (in any league).

Currency exchange resources
Exchange rates between different currency items is largely dependent on the item's scarcity and the demand for it by players willing to trade. Due to the continuously fluctuating nature of the Path of Exile economy, it is too impractical to keep an updated table of currency exchange rates here. Instead, please refer to these tools and resources:


 * currency.poe.trade
 * pathofexile.com/trade
 * poe.ninja (single-page overview and value-over-time tracking)

Vendor prices chart
A number of orbs are purchasable at vendors, and can thus be ranked like coins in normal currency. There are several progression tables below showing who sells what and what their equivalent value is in Alts.

Currency items that have shards are italicised. Act 3's Clarissa and Act 4's Petarus and Vanja have all the Main Progression recipes.

Some Masters sell currency in bulk:

Vendors and player economy
Vendor prices are a base value for comparisons, player market value will vary. Since players can't downgrade one Orb of Fusing into eight Orbs of Alteration, they may be willing to sell them for less. High-level players will tend to accumulate rarer currencies, and when they begin rolling maps and running them, may run out of smaller denominations such as wisdom scrolls and orbs of alterations.

Don't forget that barter trading is not just what it is worth, it is also what you are willing to pay.