You notice pretty quick that Path of Exile 2's economy isn't built around a single "money" number ticking up in the corner. It's built around choices. Every orb you pick up is both buying power and a crafting button you might regret pressing later. That's why I keep a mental price tag on everything, from Chaos to Divines, and I'm always checking what's worth converting into PoE 2 Currency instead of tossing it into another random reroll. Spend too early and your gear barely improves; hoard too long and you miss the window when demand is hottest.

Passive Tree Reality Check

The passive tree is where people lose entire evenings. It's also where bad planning gets expensive. You can sketch a clever route, grab keystones, and feel like a genius, then realize your gear can't support it. Happens all the time. The tree pushes you toward certain breakpoints—crit scaling, ailment setups, defensive layers—but the item mods decide whether that plan actually survives a map. So your "build" ends up being two jobs at once: pick the right nodes, then fund the gear that makes those nodes matter.

Strongboxes That Actually Pay

If you want something steady, Ambush strongboxes are hard to beat. I like low-tier mapping when I'm warming up a league start: T3 to T5, one or two basic Ambush scarabs, no fancy quantity setup. It's simple and you're not gambling your whole stash on a single juiced run. The big habit is corrupting every strongbox. It feels wrong at first, like you're throwing value away, but you'll see the difference in drops and the occasional jackpot mods. When you step up into T11+ with the strongbox clusters and polished scarabs, the pace changes fast, and the income jumps with it.

Discipline, Recipes, and Temple Runs

Early on, though, it's the boring stuff that keeps you ahead. I run strict pickup rules and I'm stubborn about vendor recipes. The chaos recipe still does work if you keep two tabs for full unidentified rare sets and cash them out in batches. Same idea with six-sockets for Jeweller's Orbs and quality gems for Gemcutter's Prisms—trash becomes predictable progress. Then, once your character is comfortable, Temple of Atziri turns into a clean mid-league loop. Since the 0.4.0e connection fixes, it's been smoother, and you don't need a god-tier build—just enough damage for Atziri and enough life so the apostles don't delete you.

Keeping Profit Liquid

What makes these strategies feel good is how easy they are to liquidate: fragments sell, corrupt outcomes sell, and strongbox loot turns into stacks you can price quickly. I also try not to get sentimental about "maybe useful later" items; if it isn't part of my next upgrade, it goes on trade. And if you're short on time or you'd rather skip some of the early grinding, it's worth knowing that U4GM offers services for buying game currency and items, which can help you keep your build moving without stalling out on one unlucky stretch of drops.