Orbs: Buying > Crafting

It does suck that one of the more fun aspects of the game, crafting with orbs, is stupid and just screws you over in the long run.

You are almost always better off just trading. I mean, you can play around with a really good rare armor or something occasionally, and 6 socket/5 link it up, but overall most of the time you are just hoarding orbs all day in hopes of trading for something instead of doing the fun thing and just using them.

Even wasting alterations trying to roll a good blue weapon to regal is stupid. I think the overall inflation of prices is one of the main culprits. I remember back in closed beta most people used the shit out of their orbs; you didn't have to trade 10-30 exalts for a good item. I know it was a different culture and game then, but most people traded rares for a chaos or 2, and spent most of their time crafting things up. It was a lot of fun.

Nowadays, even blowing a stack of alterations is retarded, and item prices are extremely high, even for junk. Like I was looking at armors this morning, and some guy wants 4 exalted for an armor with 1 socket. Its good, but my buddy just traded a better armor for 4 exalted, and it was 6 socket/5 link. How could you possibly ask for 4 exalted for an item that might take a few exalted just to make useable? Why not just buy one already linked up, or a unique armor. It was like, a couple good resists, and high life. Good, but 4 exalted with no links? Really?

Anyways, yes you are always better off just holding onto your currency, and you are always better off just trading for good stuff becuase people have a huge disconnect between mediocre and good item prices. Good item: 5 exalt. Mediocre: 4 exalt. Thats not how it should work. Mediocre more like 1 exalt. The curve is exponential, not linear. Thats just a pet peeve of mine. If you search and the top item on poexplorer is 5-6 exalt for that subsection, and your item has 1-2 properties of it only, u dont get to charge 4 exalt because its "close." Its not close.

If you don't want to trade you can stop doing it now. No one is forcing you to trade. If the trade option is closed, you still can't afford to craft good items. I think what you want is better loot or better orb drops.

In either of the cases, the rich players will get richer faster and have more orbs to craft even better items. The rest of casual players will still struggle to get the new top items.

Just my 2c - casual -- 10 ex in total :D

If somebody is charging 4 exalt for a mediocre item it is the result of somebody not knowing what they are doing, that is in no way the average price. You can easily get to and do early maps with 1 exalt worth of gear total.

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NebulousFury wrote:

If somebody is charging 4 exalt for a mediocre item it is the result of somebody not knowing what they are doing, that is in no way the average price. You can easily get to and do early maps without trading at all.

Fixed this for you.

If an item takes anywhere from 1 (extremely lucky) to 20 (extremely unlucky) Chaos orbs to craft, odds are it's going to cost around 5 Chaos to purchase. Upping the droprates won't help since the crafting mats are also the currency. It will only inflate prices.

The RNG exists to serve a purpose - create anticipation. If there was a vendor recipe to make an item 6-linked for 1000 fusings, you would just grind mindlessly until you reached that objective. It's the same mechanic behind loot. If you knew what a boss was going to drop there would be no excitement. It would simply be a grind, but with RNG it adds the flavor of risk/reward vs a linear progression curve that could be charted easily based on your daily output of map grinding.

And just so you know, I don't know that I've had one really amazing crafting experience, but I know it's possible, so it keeps me doing it. It's not fun wasting tons of currency with nothing to show for it (look up Krip's video on how to waste currency on Youtube for a good laugh), but I understand why the mechanic exists the way it does.

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NebulousFury wrote:

If somebody is charging 4 exalt for a mediocre item it is the result of somebody not knowing what they are doing, that is in no way the average price. You can easily get to and do early maps with 1 exalt worth of gear total.

The point I was trying to make is people try and price their items on a linear model, when in reality its exponential. People search poe.xyz or explorer and see the top items in that category. The top item will be some amazing item, like 5 link, 2-3 resists, 100 life, lots of armor, and its like 6-7 exalt or something, whatever.

So they see that, and they look at their item with 100 life and 2 resists, and they go, well my armor is really close to that! And they put it up for like 4 exalts, when it doesnt have the high armor, or any links, or whatever, and anyone that actually buys it is going to have to dump untold amounts of jewelers, fusings, and chromatics into it just to make it useable.

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arkiver wrote:

If an item takes anywhere from 1 (extremely lucky) to 20 (extremely unlucky) Chaos orbs to craft, odds are it's going to cost around 5 Chaos to purchase. Upping the droprates won't help since the crafting mats are also the currency. It will only inflate prices.

The RNG exists to serve a purpose - create anticipation. If there was a vendor recipe to make an item 6-linked for 1000 fusings, you would just grind mindlessly until you reached that objective. It's the same mechanic behind loot. If you knew what a boss was going to drop there would be no excitement. It would simply be a grind, but with RNG it adds the flavor of risk/reward vs a linear progression curve that could be charted easily based on your daily output of map grinding.

And just so you know, I don't know that I've had one really amazing crafting experience, but I know it's possible, so it keeps me doing it. It's not fun wasting tons of currency with nothing to show for it (look up Krip's video on how to waste currency on Youtube for a good laugh), but I understand why the mechanic exists the way it does.

The funniest thing was my friend spending like 1400 chaos in CB crafting wands when he was quitting the game, and getting like 6 that were even useable, and NO amazing ones. That thread is still around here in the archives or something.

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deshaboo wrote:

You can complete the game and start mapping with 1 ex worth of gear or even less, people need to stop comparing themself to others who have 300 ex gear sets.

I think this is a really valid point.

There seems to be a general consensus that when you hunt/trade/craft for gear, you have to hit all the optimum stats and only accept a monumental upgrade for everything you own.

You can literally get gear for 2c a piece and map.

Watching players like Kripp, Nugi, Etup etc etc etc is not going to give a very well-rounded idea of what the game is going to give you. And their gear and builds are often expensive and very specific.
Kripp in particular has recognised many times how he has a huge advantage being a popular streamer. He only has to drop a scroll fragment and people are offering their right testi for a touch.

He finds something, says the words "wow Bro, i just found a sick chest" and his whisper channel goes nuts!!!! Exhalt offers fly in from the far corners and he trades there and then.

Man Im jealous :( lol

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Zanixx wrote:

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deshaboo wrote:

You can complete the game and start mapping with 1 ex worth of gear or even less, people need to stop comparing themself to others who have 300 ex gear sets.

I think this is a really valid point.

There seems to be a general consensus that when you hunt/trade/craft for gear, you have to hit all the optimum stats and only accept a monumental upgrade for everything you own.

You can literally get gear for 2c a piece and map.

Watching players like Kripp, Nugi, Etup etc etc etc is not going to give a very well-rounded idea of what the game is going to give you. And their gear and builds are often expensive and very specific.
Kripp in particular has recognised many times how he has a huge advantage being a popular streamer. He only has to drop a scroll fragment and people are offering their right testi for a touch.

He finds something, says the words "wow Bro, i just found a sick chest" and his whisper channel goes nuts!!!! Exhalt offers fly in from the far corners and he trades there and then.

Man Im jealous :( lol

You hit the nail on the head.

For better or worse, it's easy to see what's available with the best possible setup, and this makes it hard to play with less for some people.

This is further compounded by most builds being written by people with experience and currency - just look through the builds and try to find one that doesn't have a single piece of gear that costs 2 exa+ that they recommend. They exist, but I think they're in the minority - a lot the builds I've seen recommend insane gear or use insane gear themselves.