This guide breaks down Path of Exile 2’s trading system into more manageable pieces and makes it easier to understand and use.
Trading In Path of Exile can be a complicated thing to learn, but it doesn’t have to be! We’ll break down everything you need to know from the very basics of Buying Items, Selling, and Exchanging currency.
Table of contents
Using the Offical Trade Site
Starting by breaking down the Official Trade Site. When we open the Trade Site we’ll be greeted by the UI below.
We’ll use almost all of these panels, but the most important ones to start with are the Search, Type Filters, Stat Filters, and Trade Filters.
Search
Search is the easiest way to find a specific Unique Item we’re looking for or to narrow what’s displayed down to a specific item type. We can type the name of the Unique or item type there and our next search will show only that item.
Type Filters
Type Filters are best used to limit what’s shown to Magic or Rares, via the Item Rarity filter. Item Category also allows us to limit our searches to a specific weapon or Armour type.
Item Level is useful for endgame crafting, as most affixes have roll ranges restricted by Item Level.
Equipment Filters
Equipment Filters are best used to do generic searches for gear. If there’s not a specific item type you have in mind, this is where you can at least filter to similar types.
An example of this is setting the minimum value of Armour, Evasion, or Energy shield to one for the stat we want on a base, and setting their max to zero for the ones we don’t want.
Trade Filters
Trade Filters are best used to set a price limit for searches, which will hide anything over what we don’t want to spend. This can be done by setting the Buyout Price to Exalted Orbs, the commonly traded currency, and setting the Max to our price limit.
These options also allow us to adjust the search to limit it to items listed recently and group items by seller. Grouping by seller is typically only useful for the Currency Exchange on the site, but I highly recommend not using that section.
Miscellaneous
Miscellaneous is also useful for a few things but is more niche overall. Its most common use case is for hiding Corrupted Items, as many people will gamble their unique with Vaal Orbs to try and improve them through the effects of Corruption.
Gem Level and Sockets are also useful if we’re looking to buy a particular skill gem with a non-default amount of sockets. However, it is far easier to cut our own gems and buy Jeweler Orbs as needed.
Stat Filters
Finally, the more complex part of the Trade Site, Stat Filters. This end tends to be tricky as we’re getting into very specific details.
Currently, the Stat Filters for POE2 are a bit more limited, but there are usually options for combined stats like Total Elemental Resistance which make it easier to search gear with High Resistances.
By adding Affixes to the list here, we’re looking for Items that have ALL of the chosen Affixes. We can also add Stat Groups like NOT to filter out stats we don’t want at all, like Thorns or similarly useless stats. We can also use COUNT to say we want some Affixes from a specific pool.
As an example, let’s say we want a piece of Energy Shield (ES) gear that has a decent amount of ES, at least 20% of two different resistances, and doesn’t have commonly unwanted modifiers with a price limit of 10 Exalted Orbs. We could set up a Trade Search that looks like the one below.
Buying Items
Let’s say we found an Item we want to buy on the Trade Site. How do we go about exchanging for the item we want?
First, we need to gather the currency from our Stash. Remember to Shift-Click to split the currency stack if we need less than a full stack, and to Ctrl-Click to withdraw full stacks at a time.
Then we go to the Trade Site and we can click on ‘Direct Whisper’ to instantly send an in-game whisper to the Seller. Three things can happen from here: They’ll Accept, Decline, or say they’re Busy.
if the item is listed for say 10 Exalted Orbs, and you happen to be one short, after sending the first whisper, you can see if the seller would be okay with that. Most folks will be fine with that, but they can still say no. It’s rare for most folks to take alternate currencies, as trading tends to use just a handful of currencies as a standard.
If they’re ready and willing to trade, they’ll invite you to their party. If they don’t invite you after a short time, they’re either busy or not able to trade right now.
Once they invite you to the party, in the upper left, we’ll see the party UI. From here, click the blue Icon next to their character Portrait. This will teleport you to their hideout or current zone if in the Campaign. Going to the Seller’s Hideout is considered Good Trade Etiquette, as it reduces the amount of time from their sale until they can resume their play.
Once in their hideout, wait patiently until they trade you. Once the trade is offered, accept the trade invitation and use Ctrl-Click to add the necessary currency. Make sure to double-check that the item being offered is the one you wanted, if it’s not tell them it’s the wrong item and they should correct it.
Occasionally, if the person is busy or not ready to trade, they will say so. This doesn’t mean they won’t trade, instead are typically asking you to wait a moment before. If they intend to trade, they may still invite you and ask you to wait for them to finish what they’re doing.
There’s nothing wrong with messaging multiple players to buy an item it’s quite common for some Unique Items. In the case that you get multiple sellers instantly, it’s better to trade the one that was messaged first, or whichever is cheapest if there are different prices. It’s also good etiquette to inform the other potential Seller that you bought a different one.
Selling Items
Now for the opposite side of Selling Gear, this is unfortunately made MUCH easier with Premium Stash Tabs. If you plan to sell items, this is essentially a mandatory purchase, but it’s also genuinely helpful for general use as well.
Without a Premium Tab, we’re limited to manually putting items into trade chat in-game by Ctrl-Alt-Clicking them and listing their price there. This is slow and tedious, but manageable if we’re not selling items often.
Listing Items
With a Premium Tab, we can quickly and easily list our Items. To do this we need to set the Premium Tab as a public tab. This will index the items we put into it with the prices we set on them and list them on the Trade Site.
When making a tab Public we can choose between Setting a price for all items in a tab or pricing them Individually.
Pricing the whole tab the same is often the easiest. Unless an item is worth far more or far less, setting a price of 1 Exalted Orb on the tab as shown below is a safe bet. You’ll know if something doesn’t belong at that price if you get spammed with whispers.
Price Checking
Let’s say we want to list prices individually, what’s the best way to go about that? Well, we start by searching for similar items using the Trade Site. We’ll only want to pay attention to relevant mods on the item. Let’s use the boots below as an example.
The main mods we’ll look at are the Movement Speed and Resistances, so let’s search those up. As we can see from the search below, there are multiple being sold for 1 Exalted Orb currently.
With dozens of results all at 1 Exalted Orb, it’s safe to assume these are worth about that much. Being a low Item Level does make them less likely to sell compared to others, but it’s still a solid price.
If there were very few, it’s possible it might be someone trying to “price fix”, or get people to list items cheaper than they’re worth to buy and resell. It’s shady and underhanded, but it happens. Just do not engage in doing it yourself so, or with folks who do.
Then with the item priced out, we can list it by placing it in the tab, then Right-clicking it to set the price accordingly.
Exchanging Currency
Exchanging Currency can be done in two ways, directly messaging Buyers or Sellers or using the in-game exchange. While we can use the Trade site to exchange currency, it’s far more approachable and safer to use the In-game exchange. The in-game exchange works largely the same with less room for errors or scams.
We can access the Currency Exchange by Speaking with certain NPCs, typically the “Gamble Vendor” in the town of whatever Act we’re in. Once we do we’ll be greeted by the UI below.
To begin exchanging Currency, we’ll need to select the currency we wish to receive by clicking the plus button under ‘I Want’. This opens the menu from which we can select any currency in the game to buy.
This Menu contains all the Currencies in the game. This includes special currencies like Omens from Rituals, Soul Cores from Trial of Chaos, and many others that come from or are used in various endgame activities.
Then we repeat this same process for the ‘I Have’ section, selecting the currency we wish to exchange for the one we previously selected. As an example, let’s say I want Exalted Orbs and wish to exchange my Vaal Orbs for them.
After selecting both, the Exchange Ratio and value will auto-populate with the current Market Ratio and the exact ratio as whole numbers. We can then select these amounts and either keep them as they are or change them to any ratio we wish.
If we manually set a ratio, the game will display the ratio and it can be compared to the one at the top to see how far off from it we are. If the number in the middle turns gray, it’s below the current Market Ratio.
If we don’t mind a wait, setting a value below the current rate is usually a good idea, but it won’t exchange until someone makes a similar offer in the opposite direction, so we don’t want to be too far under Market Ratio.
If we hover over the Market Ratio in the UI, it will list the Current offers at each exchange Ratio. This only highlights for us how much of a currency it listed at a given ratio, which can help determine whether it is just one seller or multiple.
Community Trading Tools
Instead of manually price checking with the site or exchange rates at the vendor, there’s also a very helpful community tool for Path of Exile called Awakened POE Trade. Thankfully, it has very quickly gotten a POE2 Version called Exiled Exchange 2.
Currently, the Currency exchange portion of this tool isn’t set up yet for POE2. Until it is, we’ll need to rely on the vendor.
As a word of caution, never use any third-party app to log in to the POE2 site. While the tool itself may be safe, it’s much harder to say the same about a third-party browser.
This powerful trading tool can let you quickly look up items based on their stats in a much more condensed format that looks like the version below. All this is doing for us is helping us to price-check similar items without having to do the same manual search we just did.
To avoid price fixers when price checking with this tool, look toward the middle of the listed item’s prices in the list, as they’re listed in order from the lowest price to the highest. This is important for high-demand and valuable Uniques especially!
We can also customize the Hotkeys and chat macro option to make it easier to invite and other common trade tasks as shown below.
Once we set the Hotkey for Price Checking, we can just hover and item, and press our chosen Hotkey to display the Stat and price UI.
