The problem with Exalted Orbs

Anyone playing in Warbands knows that the price of Exalted Orbs has been rising significantly and currently hovers in the 70 Chaos range, double its value from a month ago.

This price inflation is due to several inter-related factors:
1) Exalted Orbs are extremely rare. (I have only had one drop all league and I play a lot.)
2) There is no way to Vendor upgrade from lesser currency into Exalts.
3) High-end items are almost exclusively bought and sold using "pure" Exalts (i.e., cannot be bought with "equivalent" Chaos Orbs).
4) Trying to trade lesser currency for Exalts (with the possible exception of Divines) is an exercise in patience and usually disappointment.

These factors result in a market which is very illiquid -- a market where trading between currencies is difficult. Perhaps calling the market asymmetric rather than illiquid would be a better term.

Note that real-world currencies don't work this way at all. I have no difficulty exchanging twenty $5 bills for a $100 bill or vice versa. Currency exchange rates for different world currencies such as Euros and Yens do fluctuate, but within a much smaller band -- and is also a very liquid market. Even Diablo 2 with its Runes had currency bounds due to the Rune upgrade mechanism (you could convert Ists into Guls into Vexs, etc).

One result of this is that very few people actually use Exalted Orbs for their stated purpose: "Enchants a rare item with a new random property". I think this is a bad thing. I would gladly spend 30-50 Chaos Orbs to add an affix to a really nice item, but there is no way in hell that I will spend an Exalted Orb to do the same given that it restricts my ability to purchase end-game items -- even if I have plenty of Chaos Orbs.

I feel like the only possible fix that doesn't involve increasing the drop rates by a noticeable amount is to introduce Vendor recipes for higher tier currency. At the very least, this approach would put a ceiling on the relative prices of currency. I think something along the following lines would be reasonable:
2 Chaos = 1 Regal
2 Regal = 1 Blessed ( = 4 Chaos )
4 Blessed = 1 Divine ( = 16 Chaos )
4 Divine = 1 Exalted ( = 64 Chaos )

You will notice that most of these exchanges are more expensive that what you can currently achieve on the open market. Once again, the primary goal here is liquidity.

Perhaps 32 Regals is "too cheap" for one Exalted given the level 75 Rare Item recipe. These numbers could be tweaked; perhaps making the last tier 5 Divines (40 Regals) is a better balance. This would mean 80 Chaos which is higher than the outrageous price of 70c today! However, the big difference is that common folks today have an assortment of Regals and Blessed which they can use to tier up. And being able to upgrade with a mix of lesser currency gives you a lot more flexibility.

PS: Zana needs to start selling Chisels at a more competitive market price!

I agree.

+1

that still does not replies to the question of ''Why is this not affecting Tempest and standard but specifically warband?''

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andreicde написал:

that still does not replies to the question of ''Why is this not affecting Tempest and standard but specifically warband?''

Could be several reasons:
* A group of players stocked up on exalts early on and are inflating the price now so they can profit
* Multi modding is in more demand
* Bigger demand vs lower supply (tho doubtful)

My money is that it is being inflated artificially so that a group of players (or one player) can cash out somewhere mid-league and after that i guess we will see the price crash down.

Well said.

There is no cap on exalt value because it cannot be crafted from lower currencies.

Adding what you suggested would set a value cap on exalts.

Great D2 rune reference as well.

Personally I think chaos orbs have just temporarily lost a lot of value because people aren't willing to use them on low level maps, and most people don't have access to high level maps.

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Nasreth написал:

Personally I think chaos orbs have just temporarily lost a lot of value because people aren't willing to use them on low level maps, and most people don't have access to high level maps.

This is actually very possible as well. a lot of chaos in the past was used to roll maps in order to get decent loot. Unfortunately, many times you cannot progress to a certain level and as seen on the forum, there has been a lot of frustration concerning map drops and wasted currency to the point where people just stopped bothering. It's possible this inflation is happening warband since in tempest people play more carefully and are not as willing to go for map quantity/pack size since death there is permanent. Meanwhile standard is unaffected since the population on it is extremely low (most people being in War/tempest). This is just a theory btw, so it might or might not be true.

Exalt doesnt increase much in value, you are wrong, that's only chaos that are decreasing, because market is flooded by them ( high drop rate + easy recipe ). Same for fusing and all currencies that are easily 'farmable'.

Exalt is the best currency for that reason, low drop rate and no ( usable ) recipe, so its value is stable.

By the way, economy in temporary league has always been shit, rate are lower in standard and almost stable.

@OP: Everything you wrote has always been true for PoE, and doesn't explain why it's happening now. There might be another reason which I have written in a different thread:

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My guess is: people who do have lots of exalteds (the wealthy) want chaos orbs for their maps. People who don't have lots of exalteds (the middle-class and the poor) want exalteds to buy better gear, but don't need as much chaos orbs because they can't yet run difficult maps anyway.
So since the demand for better gear among the whole of the warbands players is greater than the demand for chaos orbs, the people who do have the gear and the exalteds can demand more for their exalteds, i.e. the currency with which to buy better gear.
This doesn't happen in standard because people already have tons of good gear, and not in hardcore because the playerbase and their willingness to push map affixes to the limit is much smaller.

But that's really just a guess. It's odd, and that's the only explanation I can come up with.