help with chaos recipe rehabilitation

hi,ive been playing poe on and off for a number of leagues.

usually i make my first currency to upgrade the build with the chaos recipe almost entirely untill i get to the point the gear costs exalts and usually by then i can farm sirus/elder etc and i somehow get the currency(not that im very amazing at it)

the thing is im sick and tired of the chaos recipe and its boring, makes me not wanna play.

i see alot of people saying its not even worth it, so i looked into iti made my filter uber strict as suggested by some and honestly it made my experience x5 better,its fun to pick up everything that dropsim also speed farming the maps (sub 5 min per map id say),im suprised at how good the syndicate operatives are.

but the problem is im getting a very mininal gains if anything from it.

im currently doing tier 12/13 red maps sometems with full chisel and the vaal fragments to add quantitiy.

farmed it in valdo rest with points in harbinger and blight,

a reward in a map can be 1 fusing +1 scouring + 1 chaos and maybe some anulment shards

and the chaos is if im lucky.

i also had maps with literally 0 drops.

i literally gain nothing,so i tested and speed farmed like over 20 maps(i didnt count but it was alot )

and exilence next shows that my tab is worth 145 chaos but like maybe 80 is tradeable at the VERY best case and that is only because i got lucky and tropped the saint treasure div card.



the point of the post is not whining or something i just really wanna know how to make currency in a fun way when i map(fun for me is dungeon crawler gameplay,killing monsters having meaningful loot,i really enjoy doing sirus uber elder,enjoy delve alot this league but constantly gated behind the fuel thing which is super annoying)

but my gear cannot reach that level of content im literally playing with a tabula.

any help and guidelines will be really appreciated, im motivated to test stuff.



thank you very much

Harbingers were nerfed i think not sure didn't really farm them much. Try something else like harvest, syndicate, beasts, heist, delve, delirium, legion, incursion, breaches, blight.. Find what you like, buff it with atlas passives/craftable watchstones/scarabs = profit. Use sextants. Aisling tier 4 craft sells for ~3ex, beasts are good to farm and sell in bulk, temple double corrupt is 1-1.5ex, legion/heist just drops a lot of everything.. Do maven invitations and maven if you can as well as conquerors and sirus. Uncharted realms atlas passives are really good for faster sirus, more master missions, guardian maps if you can get that

I found the current league mechanic (Expedition) is pretty profitable as well. Probably I'm just lucky, but I feel every new league mechanic is profitable.

I've got few exalts and many chaos from Tujen alone.
Gwenn and Rog can be a thing too if you are lucky.

Heist is faster now and I think it can be a good source for raw currency as well.

Since it's a free market, the main goal is to find things that people surely want to buy. You have two options for finding profit (or you can try to do both):
1) an unsaturated market - this means if you took Econ 101, we have not yet reached Market Equilibrium yet, so you can still make positive economic profit by being an arbiter between the source of goods and people who want those goods.
2) a market serving the very richest players. The richer the player your target market is, the better. This works even in Market Equilibrium because your profit is equal to the rich players' opportunity cost, i.e. "it literally costs me exalts to run this content because I can make more exalts doing other activities."

Anything else is going to be low profit, basically taking the logic of #2 and lowering down the opportunity cost, like if you're trying to farm for gear upgrades for newbs the newbs don't know how to make money either so other players will be selling tons of that gear and price competition will lower it to where chaos recipe is "worth it" again.

So what strategies fit my above 2 bullet points?
Well, the exact answers will vary from league to league. But generally it seems that the fast track to finding a market that fits 1 and/or 2 is to think "farm alternative currencies, buy usual currencies." Roughly speaking a currency is something that is fungible (i.e. there's little to no difference from item to item) and liquid (in POE context, small inventory space/stackable). So think about things that don't take a lot of inventory space, are about the same from item to item, and either rich players want it or nobody is farming it.

Examples:

• Sell your Expedition Artifacts. The reroll currencies are hot right now (Astragali, Exotic Coinage, Burial Medallion). Astragali because people want Headhunters. Exotic Coinage because people like to gamble for cheap exalts. Burial Medallion to feed the other NPC vendors plus gamble for Logbooks. Also the Grand Artifacts seem pretty good too (at least Sun and Scythe - Dannig and Tujen), because you need Grand Scythes to buy cheap exalts.
  
  This requires you to pick synergistic Remnants. If you get Runic Monster Remnants, make sure you go for big skulls in the ground. I personally just go for big skulls in the ground no matter what Remnants I get because that maximises chance of Logbooks dropping, which you can either sell for big money or run for massive money.
• Bossing: Shaper is guaranteed to drop an Uber Elder fragment. Rich players hate the Shaper fight because it takes such a long time, so they would rather pay a premium to buy Uber Elder fragment than run normal Shaper. Buy Shaper sets and run them then sell the Shaper half of Uber Elder fragments. Any cool Shaped items you get is a bonus.
• Bossing: Shaper/Elder Guardians. This works best if you can allocate the Uncharted Realms passive for chance at bonus drops. You get tons of fragments which you can funnel into the first bossing suggestion or just sell the excess once you get so many you can't run them fast enough. Make sure Maven witnesses it and you run the Formed/Twisted Invitations for bonus fragments, shaper/elder scarabs, and crescent splinters to sell the Maven's Writs.
• Building Alva Temples. Spec the Alva nodes in Glennach Cairns. Shoot for double corrupt room (-max res Tier 3) and double corrupt gem room (gems Tier 3). Double corrupt rooms sell for a lot, usually 1 ex or more. This is a little bit RNG, though. If you play a lot of hours per day and don't diversify your profit strategies then you will likely need Titanium Watchstones that give you extra master mission chances/extra chance for missions to be Alva.
  
  Note: For above 4 bullet points, I'm sure about them as I've gotten tons (by my standards) of profit from selling Artifacts and running Logbooks, bossing is likely to always be profitable because of my market logic #2 (rich players need the ingredients but incur an economic loss by farming the ingredients themselves), and I've sold a few nice temples which should always be profitable because rich players need a TON of double corrupts to expect anything good. In contrast, next few bullet points I'm not 100% sure about because they rely on what other people are farming and I haven't tried them this league. And I haven't even checked market prices much for the outputs.
• Breach. Spec the breach nodes in Lira Arthain, get 4 Platinum Watchstones that all have as close to 100% increased chance for breaches to be Chayula as possible (cheaper strategy: Uul-Netol). You can do this in Lex Proxima too but it is more of a gamble and eats more Atlas passives if you want Breach full spec. You probably don't want to use any Scarab costing more than 2-3c if you haven't gotten the full 400%-ish (more realistically like 360%+) chance for Chayula/Uul-Netol. Juice the maps as much as you can to help (sacrifice fragments, sextants, infused mapcrafts, etc. to taste)
• Legion. Spec the legion nodes in New Vastir, get 4 Platinum Watchstones that all have as close to 100% increased chance for breaches to be Templar or Maraketh as possible. You can do this in Glennach Cairns too but it only seems worth it there if you're really, really good at clearing Legions. You probably don't want to use any Scarab costing more than 2-3c if you haven't gotten the full 400%-ish (more realistically like 360%+) chance for Templar/Maraketh. Juice the maps as much as you can to help (sacrifice fragments, sextants, infused mapcrafts, etc. to taste)
• Delirious Maps. Spec Lex Ejoris or Tirn's End (not sure which is better, probably Lex Ejoris), use 1 delirium orb on a Map, and throw as much other juice on the maps as you can to help (sacrifice fragments, sextants, infused mapcrafts, etc. to taste).
• Red Beasts. Spec the beast nodes in Lira Arthain, collect beasts, sometimes they'll be the really good ones (split, imprint, prefix/suffix transfers). https://poedb.tw/us/Bestiary_league#BestiaryRecipe for the beast names. I have never tried this myself but it is highly likely that it is only profitable if you multibox (run a second client, manually click the second character to be next to your main, this way I believe you can capture 2 copies of each beast. Note that any more than 2 clients at once and any form of automation such as 1 click sent to 2 clients is against TOS and is bannable last I checked).
• Harbingers. Cost of entry seems to have gone down a ton as they patched out the old Nemesis basic currency hyperjuicing method used by rich players to print mirrors. Should still get a few exalted shards here and there if you spec the king node in Valdo's Rest and speed run Maps.
• Betrayal. Spec Betrayal in Valdo's Rest. Intervention is almost all scarabs now so target the ones people want to buy. It That Fled in Research gives you the ability to flip normal Chayula's Breachstones into Pure Chayula's Breachstones for a profit.

If you're willing to rely on third-party trust-based tools (aka The Forbidden Trove Discord channel, aka TFT), then this also opens up the following options:

• Harvest. Spec Harvest nodes in Haewark Hamlet. Mildly rare crafts are usually pretty good income, like armour/weapon enchantments, resist flips, harvest divines, and influence flips. Obviously if you hit a money craft it's big money, most commonly reforge keep prefix/suffix. If you don't spec for harvets you'll probably never see any of the ultra money crafts like remove/add, synthesise item, reforge influence, etc. Either way it helps a ton to get 4 Mature Platinum Watchstones (groves have additional chance to grow higher-tier plants).
• Betrayal. Sell T4 Aisling in Research, T4 Vorici in Research, T4 Leo in Research, and T4 Hillock in Transportation or Fortification (Weapon or Armour respectively). Leos usually don't seem to sell very well, not sure what the state of Aislings is but still seems quite valuable. Hillock is the only way to 30q equipment in the middle of the crafting process (since Perfect Fossils reroll modifiers) so should be fairly popular at all times. You get T4 Syndicate members by raising them to T3 and then running Catarina. You probably need Titanium Watchstones to get more Jun missions/increase chance of Jun; you can put these in Valdo's Rest or Haewark Hamlet if you spec the Jun node(s) in Haewark Hamlet.