Glossary

Path of Exile has a private language, and PoE Ninja assumes you already speak it. This is the translation. Every term is defined plainly, and the ones that hide a trap come with a short warning, because knowing what a word means is not the same as knowing when it will mislead you.

Currency And Trading Economy

Chaos Orb

The most common trade currency and the effective baseline for pricing cheaper items. When something is said to be worth thirty chaos, it means thirty Chaos Orbs.

Divine Orb

A high-value currency used to reroll the numeric values on an item, and the anchor for pricing expensive things. The rate between Divine and Chaos is the number the whole market watches.

Watch out. That rate moves across a league, so a Divine is not a fixed amount of Chaos. Read it fresh whenever it matters.

Exalted Orb

Once the premium currency of Path of Exile, now a mid-value orb. Its role and worth have shifted a great deal over the game's history, so old guides that treat it as the top currency are out of date.

Mirror of Kalandra

The rarest trade currency, which creates a copy of an item. It sits at the very top of the value scale, worth many Divine Orbs, and prices for the best items are often quoted in Mirrors.

Exchange Rate

How much one currency trades for in another, most often expressed as Divine to Chaos. It is the figure most of PoE Ninja's economy hangs off.

Watch out. It is a live, moving number, not a constant. A rate remembered from last week is often wrong today.

Listing

A single item or currency offer posted for trade by one seller. PoE Ninja builds its prices by aggregating many individual listings into one figure.

Listing Depth

How many comparable listings sit behind a price.

Watch out. The single most important thing to check. A price with thousands of listings is solid. One with a handful is barely a rumour and can swing the moment a seller logs off.

Bulk Price

The rate for buying or selling in quantity, which usually differs from the single-unit price.

Watch out. A price that holds for one orb may not hold for a stack of fifty. Bulk and single are two different numbers.

Spread

The gap between the price you can buy an item at and the price you can sell it at.

Watch out. On large trades the spread is real currency. The single word "price" is really two numbers with a gap between them.

Flipping

Buying items or currency below the going rate and reselling them higher to profit on the difference. A legitimate trading strategy that lives or dies on reading the market correctly.

Price Fixing

A handful of sellers posting artificially low prices to distort a market, often with no real intention to sell at that number.

Watch out. A classic reason the very lowest listing lies. Read the cluster of genuine listings, not the bottom entry.

Data And PoE Ninja Reading

Economy Overview

The part of PoE Ninja that aggregates currency and item prices from live listings. This is where you go to price something or judge a market.

Build Overview

The part of PoE Ninja that shows what characters near the top of the ladder are playing, down to their skills, items and stats.

Ladder

The ranked list of characters in a league, ordered by level or experience. PoE Ninja's build data is drawn from the characters on it.

Ladder Cutoff

The limit on how many characters the ladder returns.

Watch out. Characters below the cutoff never appear, so budget and Solo Self-Found builds are invisible here rather than absent from the game.

Most-Played

The builds the largest number of characters are running.

Watch out. Most-played is not the same as best. Popularity often tracks funding and streamers rather than raw power or how well a build suits you.

Snapshot

A single point-in-time reading of live data.

Watch out. Everything on PoE Ninja is a snapshot that starts ageing the moment you read it. Re-check anything fast-moving close to when you act.

Leagues And Modes Where

League

A temporary challenge league that resets every few months with fresh content and a fresh economy. This is where most players are and where most trading happens.

Standard

The permanent Softcore Trade league that characters and items move to once a temporary league ends. Its economy is deep but far less tied to current content.

Softcore

The default mode, where dying costs some experience but not the character. Most trading and most guides assume Softcore unless they say otherwise.

Hardcore

A mode where a character's death is permanent, sending it to Standard.

Watch out. A smaller, more cautious economy with prices and strategies that drift from Softcore. Do not carry Softcore numbers across.

Solo Self-Found

A mode with no trading at all, where you use only what you find yourself. Often shortened to SSF.

Watch out. PoE Ninja prices in Solo Self-Found are academic, since nothing can be traded. The data there is for builds and rarity, not for buying.

League Start

The first days of a new league, when the economy is thin and prices swing fast. Early-league figures are the least stable ones you will read.

Pinnacle Boss

The hardest endgame bosses, which carry extra resistances and penalties that make them far tougher than a standard enemy. The realistic target to test a build against.

Builds And Characters Power

Path of Building PoB

The community calculator that models a build's damage and defence in detail. Almost every build guide is built on it.

Displayed DPS

The damage-per-second figure Path of Building reports.

Watch out. A best case that assumes many ideal conditions at once, often well above what a real fight delivers, especially against a lone boss.

Effective Health Pool EHP

An estimate of how much damage a character can absorb before dying, combining life, energy shield and mitigation.

Watch out. Also inflated by buffs that may not always be up, so a defensive number can promise more than you have in the half-second it lapses.

Charges

Power, Frenzy and Endurance charges, temporary stacks that boost damage or defence while active. Generated by various means and lost over time.

Ailment

A status effect such as shock, ignite, freeze or bleed. Shock, for example, raises the damage an enemy takes, which is why builds like to keep bosses shocked.

Curse

A debuff placed on an enemy that weakens it, for instance by lowering its resistances or raising the damage it takes.

Watch out. Bosses take reduced curse effect and some resist being cursed, so a build's mapping damage overstates its boss damage.

Fortification

A buff that reduces the damage taken from hits, a large slice of physical mitigation for any build that can keep it running.

Onslaught

A buff granting increased movement, attack and cast speed. Sometimes permanent from an ascendancy, sometimes fleeting from a flask or a kill.

Ascendancy

A specialised subclass chosen for a character that grants powerful, defining bonuses. It shapes how a build plays more than almost any other single choice.

Sockets and Links

Sockets are the slots that hold skill and support gems. Links are groups of connected sockets that let a skill and its supports work together, and how many are linked is a major driver of a build's power and its price.

Corruption

An irreversible change to an item made with a Vaal Orb, which can improve it, ruin it, or add unpredictable outcomes. A corrupted item cannot be modified further in most ways.

Modifiers

The affixes on an item that determine its stats, also called rolls. Which modifiers an item has, and how high they rolled, is usually what separates a cheap version from an expensive one.

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This glossary is an independent educational reference and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Grinding Gear Games. Path of Exile and Path of Exile 2 are trademarks of Grinding Gear Games. Game mechanics change over time, so terms are reviewed as the game and the tools around it evolve.