Crafting & currency
The most copied-but-never-replicated PoE design move: there is no gold. Every "currency" is a consumable that performs a specific operation on an item.
Core currencies (sample)
| Currency | What it does | Drop tier |
|---|---|---|
| Scroll of Wisdom | Identifies an item | Bulk |
| Orb of Transmutation | White → Magic (1–2 affixes) | Common |
| Orb of Alteration | Re-roll a magic item | Common |
| Orb of Augmentation | Add an affix to a magic item | Common |
| Regal Orb | Magic → Rare (adds one mod) | Uncommon |
| Chaos Orb | Re-roll a rare item entirely | Uncommon (the de-facto small unit of trade) |
| Exalted Orb | Add a single random affix to a rare item | Rare (large unit of trade) |
| Divine Orb | Re-roll the values of an item's existing affixes | Rare |
| Annulment Orb | Remove a random affix | Rare |
| Mirror of Kalandra | Duplicate an item exactly | Mythic (single-item value) |
Plus dozens more: Vaal Orbs (corrupt for unpredictable upside/downside), Orb of Scouring, Orb of Alchemy, Blessed Orb, Cartographer's Chisel, Bestiary Orbs, Eldritch Embers and Ichors, Sextants, Scarabs, Fossils, Resonators, Essences …
The currency-as-crafting design move
Every currency has intrinsic utility — it modifies items. Trade prices are denominated in these same currencies. So when you receive a Chaos Orb from a monster:
- You can spend it on your own gear (re-roll a rare item).
- You can spend it acquiring someone else's gear (buy something on trade).
- The two uses compete — the same Chaos Orb cannot do both.
This produces:
- Built-in inflation control. Every transaction is also a sink. Players who hoard currency to buy later still spend it to craft now. Currency leaves the economy through sinks every time someone uses it for its intrinsic purpose.
- Real opportunity cost on every drop. "I just got a Divine — do I divine my own ring or sell it for 60c and buy a better ring?"
- Denomination as game design. Chaos = small unit, Divine = mid unit, Mirror = the asymptote. Players think in tiers naturally.
vs Diablo: D2/D3/D4 use gold + materials. Gold is a pure trading abstraction with no item-modifying effect, so monsters are infinite gold faucets and the only sinks are repair / vendor gambling. Inflation is structural. PoE folded the sink directly into the gameplay verb.
Item affixes
Items have prefixes and suffixes (max 3 each on rare items), pulled from pools weighted by item base, item level, and tags. Each roll has a tier (T1 best, T7 worst); T1 rolls are intentionally rare. Above the rare tier, the affix system layers on:
- Influenced items (Shaper / Elder / Conqueror / Crusader / etc.) — exclusive mod pools, accessed by farming specific endgame content.
- Fractured items — one mod locked permanently; you craft around it.
- Synthesised items — implicit mod combinations; mid-tier crafting.
- Veiled items — one slot reserved for an Aisling craft (deterministic mod choice).
- Eldritch implicits — top-tier implicit modifiers from Searing Exarch / Eater of Worlds.
- Corrupted items — one final lottery; can brick or transcend.
The endgame target is usually a 6-modded rare with 4 influence-exclusive mods at T1–T2 tiers — a single such item can require dozens of crafting steps and tens of thousands of currency.
Crafting subsystems — the recurring family
Across leagues GGG has shipped a family of bolt-on crafting layers:
| System | What it adds |
|---|---|
| Essence | Guaranteed one mod from a list |
| Bestiary | Split / imprint / add modifiers |
| Harvest | Targeted reforge / augment by tag (extremely powerful, repeatedly nerfed) |
| Fossil / Resonator | Weighted pools for specific mod families |
| Eldritch | Implicit slot influencer |
| Recombinator | Mod-mixing between two items |
| Aisling (Veiled) | Removes a mod and adds one in a chosen mod family |
| Bench / Master | Deterministic but limited mods |
Each subsystem trades randomness for specificity in a different direction. GGG calibrates each layer's "deterministic ceiling" against what they consider the appropriate average time-to-perfect-item for the top 0.1%.
The Harvest cycle is the canonical case study: shipped in 3.11 (2020) as extremely targeted crafting, drove a wealth boom in the top 1%, and was nerfed in 3.13/3.14. Chris Wilson explicitly named the tension:
"We were concerned by how deterministic some Harvest Crafts are and how easily players can craft near-perfect items." — GGG, Harvest crafting changes manifesto
The Reddit revolt that followed is the cleanest single example of the friction-between-GGG-and-its-community that defines PoE discourse.
Aspirational crafting as design philosophy
GGG has stated repeatedly that crafting should be aspirational, not guaranteed. A perfect mirror-tier item exists; reaching it should require real effort, not just gold. The 18-month "ship deterministic system → nerf it" cycle is the design pattern, not a bug.
Whether this is right is contested. The community position: deterministic crafting solves a real new-player problem (RNG walls), and removing it pushes crafting back into "buy from the top 1%, craft is for nerds." GGG's position: a frictionless craft removes the chase, and the chase is the game.
Patterns this exemplifies
currency-as-crafting— the canonical example. No gold; every currency does something.aspirational-crafting— perfect items must be reachable but rarely reached; deterministic crafting is repeatedly nerfed to preserve the asymptote.random-perfect-roll-economy— same shape as Warframe's Riven mods. Affix RNG creates per-item uniqueness; perfect rolls become market commodities.