Currency Strategies in Path of Exile: Challenges and Insights

Streamer currency strategies often fail due to increased competition and diminishing profit margins.

### The Challenge of Streamer Currency Strategies in Path of Exile
* 📈  Content creators often share currency strategies claiming high returns, but many players struggle to replicate these results, leading to **frustration and confusion**.
* 💰  Currency strategies involve "juicing" maps with items like scarabs or delirium orbs to **increase loot drops**, with the net profit calculated by **subtracting the investment from the total loot obtained**.
* 📹  When a streamer releases a video showcasing a profitable strategy, it can cause a surge in demand for the required "juice" items, **driving up their prices**.
* 💸  At the same time, the increased popularity of the strategy leads to a **surplus of the obtained loot in the market**, causing its **value to decrease**.
* 📉  This dynamic narrows the **profit margins** of the strategy, making it **less effective** for players who try to adopt it after it has been widely publicized.
* 🌐  Strategies that are less affected by this dynamic include **unpopular mechanics**, **boring but profitable activities**, and **content that is gated behind high difficulty levels**.
* 🎮  Players can improve their currency farming efficiency by **enhancing their gameplay skills**, **staying informed about new strategies**, and **adapting to changing market conditions**.
* 💪  The most effective long-term solution is to invest in **character strength and game knowledge**, enabling players to tackle **higher difficulty content** and access **more profitable farming strategies**.

currency strategies are an interesting topic in Path of Exile because, unlike build guides where within a league the power of the build typically stays the same, even if the cost and efficiency of it possibly don't. Currency strategies are constantly changing. There's this kind of theory that's going around that I've wanted to push back on a little bit, that tier 17s are pricing people out of being able to do strategies, and that tier 16 farming strategies essentially just don't exist, and you can't make money elsewhere. Even up to the last couple of days, I personally have been running some tier 16 strategies which still make plenty of currency, but of course, they aren't making as much as tier 17. However, I kind of think this is a good thing because tier 17s are significantly harder than tier 16s, and they're much, much more balanced this league. The thing that I want to talk about more is streamer or content creator strategies. A large portion, if not all, of the vocal

minority in the peer community is probably a very large consumer of pure content. They've followed or subscribed to essentially every single content creator that could ever post a video strategy about anything. And there's this one glaring issue with content creator strategies that I kind of want to go over in this video. If you're enjoying this content, make sure to give it a like so that you see more videos like this, and consider subscribing to the YouTube channel as well to stay up to date with all my latest content. Without further ado, let's talk about why streamer currency strategies don't work. Now, this is a problem that I've known about for a very long time, and I want to preface this by saying that I think there are very few, if any, content creators who are maliciously doing this. So let's not go on any witch hunts about, you know, like content creators ruining the economy or anything like that. They're just trying to help, but unfortunately, there's a problem with the help. Now, one

of the biggest things that I've noticed under like the comment sections on YouTube about currency strategy videos is a lot of people will see a video say hey 30 50 60 80 Divine per hour. They try it themselves and they get a fraction of that. So let's talk about what a currency strategy is. So every currency strategy is going to have two main components. There's the investment portion which is known as juice. This is going to be things like scarabs. This is going to be things like delirium orbs. So these here, this is juice that you're going to be putting into your map. Typically, the logic has always gone that you put more juice into your map and you get more out of it. That's not always the case, but if you are doing it properly, that is typically how it goes. And then the other half of a currency strategy is going to be the gross amount of currency that you made. When I say gross, I don't mean disgusting. I just mean the total amount of currency. This is the loot that you

get this is going to be things like raw currency or divination cards or things like that, right? There's some specific strategies that'll drop things like specific fragments or harvest juice or things. Now, when you take the amount of juice that you spend on a map and you subtract it from the gross amount that you obtained by doing the map, this is where you get your net or the actual profit that you're making. People assist as divines per hour U. Most of the time, they use a tool like Wealthy Exile. So, for example, this is my Wealthy Exile. I have just spent a ton of money, as you can see. Like, I was up at like 100 Divine, and it's kind of just like tanked, and I'm making a little bit back here. But people will track this. You can take snapshots and see how much currency that you're making per hour. It's a pretty common thing among content creators and such. This all is kind of the basics of what a currency strategy is. You put a certain amount of juice in, you get a

certain amount of loot, and when you do the math between those things, you get how much profit you're getting per hour or per map, however you want to go about it. So, here's where the problem comes in. So, a streamer makes a video, right? Like, say any content creator says, Hey, I'm doing this strategy, and it's working really well. I'm making 50 divines an hour. You should try it too. There's two particular kind of issues that happen whenever a content creator makes a video. So, as we said before, if we go and look at something like scarabs, there are going to be some particular scarabs that get these insane rise in cost that you can see here, ones that just suddenly skyrocket by 50%, 60%, 100%. And you'll see these really giant scales up like this. Typically, when this is happening, this is something that someone is saying, Hey, here's this cool new strategy. You should try it. And immediately, the desire for this currency or the demand for this juice goes way through the roof. Now, this

isn't really that big of a deal because typically you can supply the juice pretty easily. Like, yeah, the price is going to go up, but people are going to be like, Oh well, I need to go farm those things, right? Say delirium orbs get super expensive. People are like, Okay, well, I'm going to go farm delirium orbs and sell them to those people, so it kind of evens out a little bit. Say, for example, the juice to start a map starts at like 20 chaos per map or so, and that content creator releases a video, and it spikes up to 40 chaos after a few days. It'll probably start to come back down a little bit, and it'll land somewhere in like the 25 to 30 C per map, right? A little bit higher than it was previously 'cause more people are aware about it, but not the huge, giant spike that it was at. This is typically what you'll see with situations like this where you have this giant upward curve, and then it just

kind of slowly goes down over time. The problem is on the other side. The problem is on the loot. So, what ends up happening is that not only does the demand for the juice increase, the supply of the loot actually increases quite a bit as well. There's a lot more people running that strategy, and depending on what that loot is, you can have situations where the loot supply is suddenly massive, and there's not really anybody to buy it, so the price just keeps going down, down, down, down, down, down. Now, in the most extreme circumstances, we've seen currency strategies absolutely tank the cost of just generic items in the game. Like, it's tanked the cost of divine orbs before. It's just completely tanked the cost of basically all scarabs except the ones that people were using at the time. Like, right now, Ambush scarabs are the big thing. Right now, Ambush scarabs are way up here. Like, if we look at just Ambush 170, 209, these three scarabs are super useful, and you can see that these

giant spikes are happening 'cause people are starting to realize it. So, the problem you run into is that this huge supply, if it's not of just generic currency, if it's certain fragments or it's certain like League mechanic stuff, like there's just going to be this falloff in the actual amount of loot that you're getting. And what it does is it kind of moves the two sides together of like the amount of loot that you're getting and the cost of investing in it until it gets to the point where it kind of prices everybody out. And something that's happening here is that people are thinking that tier 17s are the problem, but realistically, the issue is that the sides are coming closer and closer, and the only thing that's keeping them from meeting is the fact that doing the strategy in tier 17s tends to be a little bit better because, in general, tier 17s are more rewarding. So, yeah, some of the most extreme examples are only going to be profitable in tier 17s, but

that's not everything. For example, a strategy that I was doing a couple of days ago involved delirium orbs. What a lot of people don't realize is that these divers delirium orbs, they changed these when they did the Stacked deck change a little bit ago. And no longer do they just give you a random amount of things. These always give you one stacked deck per delirium orb that you use on a map, every single time. So, the idea is that you can set up something where you're doing tier 16 Maps, whatever they might be, and you are just trying to Brute Force as many rewards as you possibly can and get out of the map. There was a setup that I was doing with four divers delirium orbs, and I was putting breaches and Beyond on my map device, zooming through the map, killing as many things as I could, as quickly as I could, getting to like 17 rewards, and then just dipping, just trying to get my maps per hour as high

as I possibly could, and I was making a ton of money in tier 16s. Yeah, they were 80% delirious, but you know, I was doing it on just a random bow character. It wasn't that invested, and I could zoom through those maps. Currently, Diner's delirium orbs are about 5 chaos. I was buying these for 15 to a Divine, and when I was buying them at 15 of these to a Divine, I was making a pretty good amount of currency, like 3 Divine per map. And the problem that we run into now is that a bunch of you are like, Oh, I kind of want to try that strategy. Can you show me? Even by me just talking about this diver's delirium orb, there's probably going to be a noticeable uptick in the price of this just for making this video, depending on how popular it gets. So, the problem here is that I could give you that strategy, and maybe I'll make a video about the strategy, but the problem is that it immediately is going to be

worth less, but this is kind of the effect that I think a lot of people are seeing: the demand for the juice is going up, meaning that the cost of it's going to go up, and the supply of the loot is also going up, meaning the cost of that is going to come down. It moves those two sides closer together, and it makes the strategy less viable. The margins, which is what that's called, like the amount that you can make, the profit that you can make, are getting slimmer and slimmer and slimmer. This is what pushes people into these tier 17 strategies because, just in general, tier 17s drop more currency, they drop more scarabs, they drop more loot. I've talked a lot about what the actual problem is, and let's talk about some ways or some strategies that you can fix it. First off, strategies that aren't affected realistically here. These are things that are kind of insulated to that giant swing. There's really only three things that I could think of. One is just going

to be the mechanic itself is unpopular. Think about how many Heist videos that I've made, and I've never seen the price of heist-type loot, like the currency per hour, fluctuate very much at all, 'cause people try out the heist mechanic, and they're like, Man, I really just don't like this, and then they stop, and that's all there is to it. Something like rolling flasks, where you're just sitting in Hideout, being a hideout Warrior, are absurdly boring. No one really wants to do this, so yeah, the profits are going to be huge because you're sitting there doing something awful and boring. And then last one, this is also the most interesting one, is that very difficult content gates some people out of doing it, which means that there's more profit to be had there because there's less people doing it. There are a couple other reasons that you're probably not making the same Divine per hour. It's not always the content Creator's fault, and I'm going to put these under something I

like to call a skill issue. There is a pretty big chance that you are not playing the game as efficiently, as fast, or as well as the content creator is. They probably do it for a living; they probably play 12 to 16 hours a day, and they most likely are just going to be better than you. So yeah, your div per hour is probably not going to be the same. Maybe you've got the wrong atlas tree, you're not using the correct juice, or you're just doing it wrong, like you're only getting five maps per hour instead of the 10 that the content creator is doing. Or maybe you don't know how to sell your items properly, or you're spending too much time selling items instead of just like bulk selling all of them at once. There's a bunch of different things that you could be doing wrong, but if you improve your skills a little bit, there's a pretty decent chance that you could get some better currency. And the last thing is I kind of want to talk about how you can actually

make more currency even with using these strategies. Be aware of what's going on. This one is a little hard because you have to kind of be like terminally Poe brained, but if you check a video or even better see the streamer doing it before they make a video about it, you've got a big head start on starting that strategy where you have enough time to be able to make a whole bunch of currency from it. So if you get in early, you're going to have a better time. Even 6 to 12 hours after a strategy goes live, you can lose a lot of the potential margins that you would have had before. And on the flip side of that, you got to know when to stop doing a strategy if the margins get too slim. If you're trying one strategy and all of a sudden you're like making only one or two Divine per hour, cu the margins have just gotten so razor thin, stop and look for something else. And what you can do in those moments is you can try to find an older strategy that

isn't as popular anymore. Go think of all the league mechanics that you liked doing in the past and see if there's anything that you can figure out, like maybe I can do rituals or maybe I can do some delirium stuff or harvest or anything else that's not like the current meta strategy of farming strong boxes in tier 17 content. And then, as I said, improving your efficiency, just getting more Maps per hour done. This is just going to get you more currency almost no matter what you're doing. If you just play faster and play more, you're obviously going to make more money. And then the last thing, and this is the one that I want to talk about the most, is actively trying to get better at the game and actively trying to improve your character or earning currency for a better character is going to allow you to do harder content. This is the number one thing. If you've watched this entire video and you want to take away one point that's going to make you just significantly better at making money, is

you need to just invest in your character. You need to make your character stronger, and you need to learn how to play more difficult content. You would be surprised how straightforward it is that you can go from absolutely nothing to doing Giga Juiced tier 17 maps. You could do it in a couple of days, absolutely. It's possible. You just have to work on making your character stronger and actively trying to improve yourself at the game, not just playing and, you know, like seeing what happens. Try to figure out why. Why are you dying so much? Why are you not doing enough damage? Is there something I can do to make my character stronger? If you figure those things out, you're probably going to have a better time, and that's going to be it for the video. Notes are always down in the description, and remember, boys, if you enjoy this content, make sure to give this video a like, subscribe to the YouTube channel, hit that notification bell to stay up to date with all the latest videos, and stay safe out there in Ray class, and I'll see you guys in the

Why Streamer Currency Strategies Don't Work

Big Ducks

The Dynamics of Currency Strategies in Path of Exile

Currency strategies in Path of Exile are constantly changing, with tier 16 farming still being profitable despite the dominance of tier 17.

Content creator strategies often lead to unrealistic expectations, as viewers may struggle to replicate the high currency gains shown in videos.

The two main components of a currency strategy are the investment portion (juice) and the gross amount of currency made from the loot.

The Impact of Content Creators on Currency Strategies

Content creators often share successful currency strategies, leading to a surge in demand and prices for specific items.

This sudden increase in demand can cause the prices of items like scarabs and map juice to skyrocket.

While the initial spike in prices may be significant, the market typically stabilizes as more players farm and supply the demanded items.

The Impact of Loot Supply on In-Game Item Prices

The demand for in-game currency increases, leading to a surge in the supply of loot as more players adopt the same strategy.

This excess supply can cause item prices to plummet, creating a cycle of decreasing costs.

The situation is exacerbated by the common use of certain items, like Ambush scarabs, which see price spikes as players realize their value.

The Impact of Strategy Sharing on Currency Making

The speaker was making significant money from tier 16 maps using Diner's delirium orbs, but the demand for the strategy is causing their price to rise.

As more people try the strategy, the profit margins are decreasing, pushing players towards tier 17 strategies for better loot.

The speaker suggests that unpopular mechanics, boring tasks, and difficult content can provide more stable and higher profits, as they are less affected by the influx of players.

Improving Your Currency-earning Skills in Gaming

Content creators often have an advantage in gaming due to their extensive playtime and experience.

To improve your currency-making skills, focus on optimizing your gameplay, using the right strategies, and being aware of timing.

Actively working on your character's progression and efficiency will ultimately lead to better currency gains and the ability to tackle harder content.

Investing in your character's strength and learning to tackle more difficult content can lead to rapid progress, potentially reaching Giga Juiced tier 17 maps in just a few days.

It's crucial to analyze your gameplay, identify reasons for dying or not dealing enough damage, and take steps to strengthen your character.

Actively working on improvement and understanding the game's mechanics will enhance your overall experience.