The new season and Challenge League are here with the latest patch, 3.19, called the Lake of Kalandra. While most regular people will look at the new mechanics as a breath of fresh air, die-hard fans are speculating over why Divine orbs are the new currency as we advance and whether it will hurt the game or take it towards a new bold direction. Let's find out.
What Is the Difference Between Divine Orbs and Exalted Orbs in PoE?
If we talk about different currencies in the game, Chaos Orbs have been the regular currency in the game for a long time. The trading was always done using exalted orbs. Players used divine Orbs for rerolling modifiers to get powerful and cost about 10 Chaos Orbs. Exalted Orbs were rare and were used for meta mods and crafting powerful modifiers.
Exalted orbs have been the top currency in Path of Exile for quite a few years, mainly due to their requirement to craft powerful unique, and low drop rates. Many people don't realize that Divine Orbs are rarer due to a much more limited source of loot than Exalted Orbs.
So, even though the drop rate may be the same from slaying mobs and enemies, Exalted Orbs aren't just available from monsters. You can acquire exalted Orbs via Vendor recipes to farm efficiently by the players, which is why they are tradeable.
On the other hand, Divine Orbs can only be either gotten from The Sephiroth Divination card or if you sell a 6-link unique item to a Vendor making it rarer to find this gear.
Are Divine Orbs the New King of Currencies in Path of Exile?
By making the Divine Orbs the premium currency, GGG has made it sought after and will be traded by players more. We think the Devs did this primarily to balance the power imbalance across the board. This sudden change dropped the prices of Exalted Orbs down to 10c per piece while 100c or more for Divine Orbs.
GGG has also made them rarer to drop by making several changes, and the 6-link sale to Vendors now gives Orb of Fusing. These changes leave the players farming it through regular play or The Sephiroth Divination cards. GGG also changed to make Divine Orbs necessary for meta crafting on the Crafting Bench.
Why Was the Exalted Removed as the Defacto Trading Currency in PoE?
As you know, the Exalted were used for powerful gear crafting to add powerful affixes to your gear; players traded it a lot more often. According to the Devs at Grinding Gear Games, Exalted Orbs were meant to enhance gear and not a trading currency it was becoming. GGG wants to bring back the Exalted Orbs as the primary theory or meta crafting to enhance the gears and not as a trading currency.
Devs want to improve Unique items, so now you will have fewer chances to improve your unique gear and, therefore, will be more impactful.
What Impact Will This Change in Currency Have on the Game?
Players are worried as they could have used Exalted Orbs to enhance their uniques and reroll for perfect stats. As the Divine Orbs have become rarer and more expensive, players will have limited chances to reroll their stats to their desired ones.
Casual gamers were generally happy with meta crafting uniques and gear using Exalted Orbs and had lots of fun theory crafting. Casual gamers can't spend more time farming Divine Orbs to get the gear at the quality that was easier before.
For more serious players, trading will now be limited due to the expensive cost and inflation caused by this change. The Devs removing the recipe of Divine Orbs further hampers newbies' chance of competing. Getting fusion orbs from the Vendor is now useless; according to most, they are just trash items.
What Is the Talk on Social Media for This Change?
Many players are saying that now there won't be a reasonable way to reroll different mods to enhance your gear. Due to their rarity and expensive trading, most players won't be using divine orbs for modifications unless the gear is super important.
Many players pointed out that Exalts can be used to add the mod to rare equipment, allowing them to spam to get the best value instead of going for the unique and meta crafting. Players will use the Divines to add numerical value to unique items, but the 6-piece vendor trade is improperly removed.
A few others commented that the inventory at one time could hold a maximum of 600c and each Divine going for 300c per transaction, making the trade really low for some.
Is The Change Going to be Bad for the Game?
With every patch, GGG pushes the game towards new heights with good intentions and keeps balance in all things of the game, but it might not work as intended. In the present scenario, the change will take effect immediately, but players might take some effort to understand, and the change will hit casual players the hardest. The primary reason behind this is that casual players will have more difficulty farming and looting great gear, especially during the early stages.
As the patch was just released and the season is still fresh, there might be some hotfixes a couple of weeks down the line to address it fully.
Conclusion
Major changes are welcome so long as they add QoL changes over a few months or even a year to support and address the players. More content added to every subsequent season is also welcomed as it keeps the game fresh. Sudden changes, no matter how well-intentioned, can harm some player base who aren't grinding or have other things to do besides playing the game for more than a few hours. The best thing to do is to see how players react and how well GGG adjusts to these changes and changing landscape.