Week one of Curse of the Allflame, and half of trade chat is dumping poe league start currency, mostly Chaos Orbs, at prices that would have seemed insane a month earlier, while Divine Orbs sit locked behind bosses nobody has geared up for yet. This POE currency guide exists because farming the wrong orb at the wrong point in a league wastes hours you will never get back, and the answer to what to farm changes completely depending on which week you are actually in.
Why This POE Currency Guide Splits Farming Into Phases
Chaos Orbs are the backbone of early trading, the currency practically every item gets priced against once you are past the first few days of a league. In the opening week, Chaos is what you farm almost by accident, from vendor recipes on identified level 60-plus items, from rare drops, from the basic loot pool everyone is already picking up while leveling. You do not need a dedicated chaos orb farming strategy in week one because the campaign itself produces enough.
That changes once you hit maps. A proper POE currency guide has to draw a hard line here. Past the campaign, passively picking up whatever drops stops being efficient, and deliberately running specific content for specific currency starts mattering. Chaos Orb farming in the maps phase means favoring high mob density layouts and rare-heavy content, since rares are what actually convert into Chaos through both direct drops and vendor recipes.
When Divine Orb Farming Actually Becomes Worth It
Divine Orbs reroll the numeric values of existing modifiers rather than changing what modifiers an item has, which makes them mostly irrelevant until you own gear worth improving in the first place. Farming Divine Orbs before you have any items where a numeric roll actually matters is currency-farming theater, effort spent on a resource you cannot productively use yet.
This POE currency guide draws the honest timeline: Divine Orbs become worth prioritizing once your Chaos-funded gear has stabilized, typically once your character can comfortably clear the maps you are running without dying repeatedly. At that point, boss encounters and unique monster farming become the efficient route, since Divine Orbs concentrate heavily in pinnacle and semi-pinnacle boss drop tables rather than showing up at a meaningful rate from general map clearing. In Standard League pricing, a Divine Orb is typically valued at around 40 Chaos Orbs, though that ratio shifts noticeably league to league depending on how quickly the playerbase burns through early Chaos supply, one of the more reliable poe economy tips for judging where a league actually stands.
Exalted Orb Farming and the Currency Most Players Chase Too Early
Exalted Orbs add a new affix to an existing rare item, which means they are only valuable once you already have a rare worth improving rather than replacing, the same logical trap that applies to Divine Orbs but one week further down the progression curve. Early league, an Exalted Orb is frequently worth more sold for Chaos Orbs than used, since most gear at that stage gets replaced entirely rather than incrementally upgraded.
Exalted Shards, the fragment version, accumulate from general play and convert at a fixed rate, twenty shards per whole Exalted Orb, which makes them a reasonable currency to let accumulate passively rather than something worth detouring to farm directly. This POE currency guide treats Exalted Orbs the same way it treats Divine Orbs: hold off on actively farming either until your build has reached the point where incremental upgrades, not full replacements, are what your gear actually needs.
Building an Actual Week-by-Week Farming Plan
Poe league start currency is almost entirely Chaos Orbs. Week one belongs to Chaos Orbs almost entirely, generated passively through normal campaign progression and vendor recipes, with zero need for dedicated farming routes yet. Weeks two and three shift toward deliberate Chaos Orb farming through high-density map running once you are geared enough to clear maps efficiently, since this is the window where your build still needs broad, cheap upgrades rather than precise ones.
From roughly week three onward, once your gear has stabilized around a defined build rather than whatever rares you happened to find, pivot toward divine orb farming through bosses and pinnacle content, since this is when numeric rerolling starts producing real, felt upgrades instead of marginal ones. Exalted orb farming fits in alongside Divine farming from this point forward, picked up opportunistically from the same boss content rather than farmed as its own separate activity.
Any POE currency guide worth following will say the same thing here: selling high-value finds, uniques like Headhunter or Mageblood-tier belts, for direct Chaos or Divine value remains one of the most efficient single actions in any given week regardless of phase, since a single lucky drop can fund weeks of intentional farming in an instant.
Quick Checklist — What to Farm and When
- Let poe league start currency, mostly Chaos Orbs, accumulate passively during week one campaign progression; no dedicated farming needed yet.
- Shift to deliberate high-density map running for Chaos Orbs once you reach maps and need broader upgrades.
- Hold off on farming Divine Orbs until your build has stabilized and numeric rerolls actually matter.
- Target boss and pinnacle content specifically once divine orb farming becomes your priority.
- Treat exalted orb farming the same way as Divine Orbs, useful only once gear needs incremental upgrades.
- Let Exalted Shards accumulate passively rather than farming them as a dedicated activity.
- Sell high-value unique drops immediately for Chaos Orb or Divine value rather than hoarding them.
- Recheck the current Chaos-to-Divine ratio periodically as one of the simplest poe economy tips available; it shifts meaningfully as a league matures.
The mistake this POE currency guide keeps coming back to is farming the currency that mattered last league instead of the one your character actually needs this week. Match the orb to the phase you are actually in, and the grind stops feeling random, which is really the only poe economy tip worth remembering out of everything above.
