Path of Exile 2 Trading Guide: Player & NPC Trade Tips

Path of Exile 2 is filled with many non-obvious mechanics and intricacies related to trading. An average player may require tens or even hundreds of hours to figure out all the tricks on their own. To save you time, we have prepared a guide that thoroughly covers all possible aspects related to trading.

In Path of Exile 2, trading can be divided into two categories:

In this section of the guide, we will share various tricks and tips that will help you quickly understand the mechanics of trading with non-playable characters in the game.

After the first boss, we arrive at Clearfell Camp, where we meet the main story characters.

These same characters act as merchants. There are three of them, and each has their own special assortment. Click on the character and select "Trade". To purchase, simply drag the desired item from the merchant's window to your inventory, to sell, drag the item from your inventory to the merchant's inventory.

Each act begins with the opening of a safe zone like Clearfell Camp. Characters in new zones will be different, but in each of them, you will still meet three merchants with a similar assortment as at the beginning of the game.

Now let's move on to the nuances. For example, let's consider the trading window with Finn:

To understand what a random item purchased from the merchant will provide, you can use the following tip. For example, we need boots that give an evasion bonus:

Equipment can have 4 types of rarity. We will distinguish them by the color in the item's name:

Note that unique items are not always more expensive than rare ones when selling to a merchant. And when trading with real players, a yellow item with a successful set of modifiers may cost dozens of times more than most uniques.

Buy items with enhanced quality to then dismantle them at the dismantling bench. For this, we will receive items for improving equipment quality.

Click on the hammer icon in the bench window and select the equipment to dismantle. As a result, you will receive items for quality improvement. To enhance your equipment's characteristics, right-click on the obtained item and apply it to the desired gear element.

The game's difficulty mainly depends on the character's equipment. If any item is inferior in characteristics, it's worth looking for a replacement from merchants. Gold is not used for trading with real players, so it quickly accumulates in your inventory. There's no point in saving it, especially until the sixth story act. After completing it, the endgame will open — the final stage of the game, where gold will be useful, especially for purchasing waystones.

Collect gold and trophies from defeated monsters. Don't worry about accidentally selling quest items — all others can be safely sold to merchants.

In the first act, we recommend picking up all equipment for sale, except for normal quality gear. From the second act, focus on your need for gold. For example, we avoided collecting magical items that take up a lot of inventory space to avoid returning to merchants too often.

After completing the last act, the final stage of the game will open for you, along with the opportunity to get your own hideout (personal safe zone).

On the final stage maps, you will randomly encounter three different merchants (Rog, Gwennen, Tujen). By completing their quests, gamers can obtain a separate type of currency (artifacts), specific to each of the 3 merchants.

After completing the map where you met the merchant, they will move to your personal hideout. There you can exchange the earned currency for items.

We left this question for last because it's truly a complex topic to understand. At first, you will find it hard to grasp the value of the items you find. Initially, a few tips will suffice:

If you are a beginner, to save time up until the last act, we advise selling any equipment that you have replaced with newer ones. The exception will be unique and rare items that have more than one elemental resistance modifier. Such items can be really valuable or help you gather elemental resistances for a boss fight, so store them in the stash.

What is the value of low-level items? It's easier to explain with an example. We have excellent boots for level 1. We leveled up the character and replaced them with level 35 boots, which have the same characteristics but are higher in numerical values due to the high level requirement. Does this mean that level 35 boots will be more expensive among real players than level 1 boots? Not necessarily.

The fact is that any other player, having completed the game once and gathered a lot of currency, can start the game again with a new character. They will create a new character and want the best possible boots for the early stages of the game. Fortunately, we have such boots. And now we are 60 exalted orbs richer, instead of the 100 measly coins we would have gotten by selling the boots to a merchant. Such a situation can occur at any level of the game.

Conclusion: you cannot accurately determine how much another player is willing to pay for equipment if you haven't gained enough gaming experience. Additionally, consider that you might also create a new character, and then you would need those very level 1 boots that you unknowingly sold to a merchant.