A fresh ARPGARPG. Action RPG — an RPG with real-time combat rather than turn-based fights. economy is its own small game, and the first three days of any new league or season decide whether you climb or crawl. Path of Exile 2, Diablo IV, and Last Epoch all run seasonal resets, but they reset in completely different shapes: a full player-driven trade market with currency tiers, a curated seasonal track with deterministic gear upgrades, and a self-found-friendly ladder with target-farming factions. Comparing them is not a tier list — it is a translation table, because the same word (“currency,” “shardshard. A separate copy of a game world running on its own server; players on one shard don't share the world with another.,” “idol”) means three different things in three games.
What changed
Path of Exile 2 launched the Runes of Aldur league on 29 May 2026 alongside the Return of the Ancients content update, with a confirmed fresh economy and a new league-exclusive Remnant crafting system, per the official GGG FAQ. Diablo IV entered Season 13 in mid-2026, with the Pit of the Artificer system as the primary endgame ladder and seasonal renown as the catch-up mechanism. Last Epoch continues to run shorter seasonal cycles built around the Monolith of Fate and the active season’s theme, with a factionfaction. An in-game group or nation players can align with or fight against, with its own goals and reputation system.-based target-farming system. The three launches share a window, but the design of their first-week economies diverges sharply.
How it works
Path of Exile 2’s league-start economy is the most volatile and the most lucrative if read correctly. The Exalted Orb is the base trading currency and the unit almost every early listing is priced in, with the Divine Orb as the high-value reserve currency used for endgame-tier rerolls. Per the patch 0.5.0 official notes, the patch also added 13 new Alloy currencies earned through Remnant encounters, plus Verisium as a Remnant reward currency, which means the first week of a new economy is not just the standard Exalted-and-Divine ladder — it has a parallel crafting-currency ladder sitting on top of it. The official 0.5.0b hotfix post also confirmed the addition of controller-friendly currency-exchange UI changes, signalling that GGG expects trade volume to spike in the first days of a fresh league.
The first three days of a PoE2 league follow a documented curve that community guides broadly describe the same way. Day 1 through 3, supply is thin and prices are high on items nobody has farmed yet; by day 3 through 7, a handful of dominant builds emerge in the public build-guide indexes, and demand for the same gear pieces concentrates — items that listed for a few Exalted on day one commonly trade for many times that by the end of the first week. Beyond day 7, supply catches up and prices on most items normalise, narrowing the window in which target-farming is profitable. Standard community first-week advice is to hold a meaningful share of starting currency liquid for crafting flips in days 2–3, then spend the rest on build-defining gear by day 3 at the latest.
Diablo IV’s Season 13 economy is the most curated of the three. There is no player-to-player currency market, so the “value” question reduces to time spent per drop rather than Chaos-per-listing. The Pit of the Artificer is the primary endgame ladder, scaling up to Tier 150 and rewarding Masterwork materials (Obducite up to Tier 29, Ingolith Tier 30–59, Neathiron Tier 60+) and Ancestral Legendary drops at Item Power 925. Per the official Maxroll and Blizzard-sourced endgame guides, the season also gates certain builds and uniques behind seasonal content and the Seasonal Journey, which functions as a soft progression track rather than a market. What this means in practice: in D4, the first-week economy is a time economy, and the move is to identify the highest Masterwork-material-per-hour activity (typically high-tier Pit runs once unlocked) and to bank materials for the Tempering and Masterworking window at the end of the week.
Last Epoch’s seasonal economy sits between the other two. There is no auction-house currency tier, but there is a healthy player trade for specific item bases, exalted items with the right implicit, and Idols. The Monolith of Fate drives the long-tail progression, and the current Season 4 cycle (“Shattered Omens”) layers in Omen Windows, Echo Chains, Timeglass Fragments, the Rune of Corruption, and the new Vision of the Observer pinnacle as its target-farming hook; earlier-cycle systems such as Woven Echoes, the Weaver Tree, and the Woven Faction remain in the economy on top of that. The faction system (Merchant’s Guild, Circle of Fortune, and the endgame Forgotten Knights and The Woven factions) is the closest thing Last Epoch has to a “what to value” guide: pick a faction at the start of a cycle, commit to it, and the rewards that drop are the items you should care about for that cycle. Self-found and trade players use the same Monolith, but trade players convert their target drops into a build they want to play, while self-found players convert them into the build they already have.
Build path
The first-week decision tree is sharpest in PoE2, softest in Last Epoch, and most mechanical in Diablo IV.
In PoE2, the official first-week playbook the community has converged on is: pick a build with a community guide (the official build-guide system added in 0.5.0 plus the major community build indexes are the standards), identify the three to four non-negotiable gear slots, spend the bulk of starting currency on those slots by day 3, and keep a meaningful share liquid for crafting flips. The flip categories that recur across build-guide primers are energy-shield body armour with open sockets, rings with two premium mods and an open prefix, and resistance belts with an open affix — items that are common on day one but transformable into saleable pieces by day three once the meta settles.
In Diablo IV, the first-week decision tree is closer to a quest log than a market. Renown catches up alts, the Seasonal Journey unlocks the Pit and key crafting slots, and the highest-value activities in the first 72 hours are the ones that unlock Torment tiers and the Pit at high Tiers. The first Masterwork materials (Obducite) drop from Tiers 1–29 of the Pit and can be burned on Ancestral Legendary upgrades immediately. The shift point is around Tier 30, when Ingolith becomes the binding material and the Pit runs needed to sustain it become longer.
In Last Epoch, the first-week decision is the faction choice. Once that is set, the loop is to push Standard Corruption on a single timeline to the 50 cap, transition to Empowered, and let the catch-up system (added in v1.1.3, per the official patch notes) compress the second-and-third-timeline climb. The Monolith guide is explicit: Standard timelines cap at 50 Corruption, Empowered starts at 100 and has no cap, and the catch-up system activates once any one timeline hits 300. The implication for a first-week player is that you do not need to fully gear through Standard — you need to clear it once to learn the Shade, then move to Empowered as fast as your build allows.
What it means
The honest answer to “what should I pick up in the first hour” differs by game. In PoE2, the answer is anything that matches a build-defining mod for a known meta, plus any jewellery or weapon base with two good implicits — because flipping requires liquidity, and liquidity requires starting inventory. In Diablo IV, the answer is anything that drops at Item Power 925, anything that contributes to a Tempering recipe, and any Obols you find, because Obols are the only spendable reward for gambling on a slot upgrade. In Last Epoch, the answer is the reward of the echo you just completed — the Monolith is designed so that the echo’s listed reward is the right thing to pick up, and chasing random drops instead of the reward tiles is the most common first-week mistake.
What to skip: in PoE2, do not pick up normal-rarity items even if the base looks promising — the transmute-to-rare gamble is not worth the inventory slot in the first week, and the community is already running magic-find characters to bulk-process them. In Diablo IV, do not over-craft at the Workbench before Torment 4 is unlocked, because the materials you spend early become vendor trash once the higher-tier tempering recipes open up. In Last Epoch, do not chase exalted items in Standard timelines — the rarity curve favours Empowered, and the time spent pushing Corruption is more valuable than the time spent alching rares in a 0-Corruption timeline.
The common thread across all three: identify the bottleneck in week one, not the dream item. In PoE2 the bottleneck is build-defining gear; in D4 it is unlocking the Pit at a high Tier; in Last Epoch it is the first push into Empowered. Currency and items are just the medium of exchange for clearing that bottleneck, and the player who clears it fastest usually finishes the week with the most stash value, not the one who farms the longest.