Essence League: Musing the Future Value of Chaos

Hola fellow Exiles,

So...

I got to thinking. The defacto currency for trading in POE has been the Chaos orb for quite a long time. The chaos effectively is the dollar bill and the exalt being the 50-100 dollar bill.

The essence league is introducing what effectively is a "controlled chaos" orb. A method of crafting that allows 1 fixed attribute in the roll of what you are trying to craft.

With this premise in mind, I started to ask myself a simple question: "Why would I ever craft with a chaos orb when I could craft with an essence?"

Chris stated that there are 7 tiers of essences. The first 5 tiers drop in maps and the other two tiers must be crafted up (3:1). Assuming that most players are targeting higher level mapping T13-T14, there should be a relative large output of essences in the league.

So to answer my question, I came to the conclusion that I would never craft without an essence. This realization then further led me to the conclusion that the chaos orb will now 99% of the time only be used to roll maps. The only other currency that is used solely for maps is the Chisel.

Chisels are roughly 1:4 with chaos orbs currently in PSC (10:38 on poe currency). If the chaos becomes more of a "mapping currency" vs a "crafting currency" do you think we'll see a similar drop in value?

So in an essence heavy market, how does a chaos orb hold value? Will it hold value in your opinion? Are we going to see 1ex = 100c this next league? Maybe more?

If a currency's purpose changes, how does that impact the value of trades? Will we see 30c uniques going for 80c? Will we see people trading way more often for essences over chaos? If so, how does having multiple different type of essences effect pricing?

To me it seems as if we may hit an all-time low for chaos:exalt values. At the same exact time, Exalts will be way more valuable in a league that is seemingly designed around it's crafting functionality. So chaos value may go down and exalt value will definitely go up?

This could be a rough league for the average player...


Anyway...just some interesting musings I had this morning.

I think essence use, popularly, will be only at the highest tier of essence. So even though it will seem like essences are dropping all over the place, really what's dropping is like 1/54 of the essence you will actually use to roll items. I expect T1 essences to be used like the Uber Lab - you save your good white bases, drop an essence on them, and hope RNG is on your side with the rest of the rolls. I say like the uber lab b/c you might be better off selling the item (for 6 to 8c), even with T3/4 other rolls, rather than overriding it with another expensive T1 essence (which will cost a lot more than 8c).

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innervation wrote:

I think essence use, popularly, will be only at the highest tier of essence. So even though it will seem like essences are dropping all over the place, really what's dropping is like 1/54 of the essence you will actually use to roll items. I expect T1 essences to be used like the Uber Lab - you save your good white bases, drop an essence on them, and hope RNG is on your side with the rest of the rolls. I say like the uber lab b/c you might be better off selling the item (for 6 to 8c), even with T3/4 other rolls, rather than overriding it with another expensive T1 essence (which will cost a lot more than 8c).

yeah i'm pretty sure as well that nobody will realy craft with the lower tier essences.

Any thoughts on how the exalt:chaos might be affected next league? I can't see a scenario where exalts aren't a 100c or more...but I could be missing something.

Nah the chaos wont drop in value. They'll still be 1:1 with chaos.

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Prisus wrote:

yeah i'm pretty sure as well that nobody will realy craft with the lower tier essences.

Any thoughts on how the exalt:chaos might be affected next league? I can't see a scenario where exalts aren't a 100c or more...but I could be missing something.

This topic is keyed in on what I think will be a small pull on the demand of chaos. I think a much bigger pull will be the map changes. We're hearing about this 100% map drop rate buff when you complete the Atlas. Assuming no other changes (or ignoring the other ones, like Sextants), what will this do to chaos?

It seems obvious that map supply goes up. Will map demand go up too? Probably. With an expansion focusing on the end game, it seems reasonable that more people than ever before will be hyped up to get there, and those who have been there before go farther, and those who went far before go that far again and stay there longer.

But let's say map supply goes WAY up, and outpaces the rise in map demand. Why would anyone chaos maps? We do it now because we need to run our high level maps yellow, to maximize our map returns, we chaos them so we don't die while doing them. If we're less pressured to run our maps yellow in the first place (because supply is huge), demand for chaos should go down.

That's assuming no other changes though. It could be that, when combined with Sextants, a map rolled with 7 or 8 tiers gives you unbelievably good returns. It could be that people still want to run yellow maps, but they actually have to use MORE chaos orbs to make sure their maps are easy - because the Sextants adding 1-3 random properties means you have to make sure the mods you CAN see aren't so bad.

There's also the possibility that they change how map properties reward you with IIQ, IIR, and packsize. I'm sure you can imagine how changing the way and/or amount packsize rolls on maps could drastically change how frequently players use chaos orbs on their maps.

So too many unknowns right now, but with the given information, I'd expect the value of chaos orbs to depreciate a bit relative to to other currencies, both because essences have replaced them for *some* crafting, but more because people might not feel the need to run yellow maps, and instead run more blues. But I don't think they'll be going in the tank or anything.

i also think that chaos will pretty much keep it's value, reason being that Sextant's might cause even more rerolling than now.

Also those Essences will be rare enough that if you wanna spam some 84 piece, getting 200 chaos is going to be way easier... ofc that 1% gonna 1% :D

I think that chaos orbs are going to go down slightly in value, but not much. There is going to be a pure upside chaos on the market, so demand will necessarily be down. The thing to remember though is that you can't spend essences on master mods, and rolling maps (at least not any of the spoiled essences do anything for maps) and honestly how many people spam chaos on gear anyway.

Also the thing to remember is that essences, other than the top tier ones, have an item level cap, while chaos do not.

Chaos orbs should be cheap as hell because we should not have to spend 20 of them to make a t14+ map have reasonably high Q and pack size only to have a 150/40 map drop a t1 map.

Really, there should of been an alternative map chaos orb from the start, separated from ones tht roll stats on gear.

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Nephalim wrote:

Chaos orbs should be cheap as hell because we should not have to spend 20 of them to make a t14+ map have reasonably high Q and pack size only to have a 150/40 map drop a t1 map.

Really, there should of been an alternative map chaos orb from the start, separated from ones tht roll stats on gear.

I don't disagree with you, but having a low value chaos means that getting uniques to support all of these "awesome rares" we will be crafting will be harder to do. if Chaos suddenly drop to even 100c per, then you are looking at 3ooish chaos for something like a Kaom's heart. Could break the bank for a lot of casual players.

If maps become easier to obtain, rolling them becomes less necessary so I believe the value does go down a bit but nothing too dramatic. It is still fun to spam chaos on high tier jewelery.