What held value in 0.5 (and what crashed)
One number explains the first 36 days of Runes of Aldur: the exalted orb lost about 87% of its value against the divine (Divine 78.4 → 598 ex). If you banked profit in a pile of exalts, you lost roughly half of it versus holding divines. Everything below is measured in divine terms (real purchasing power) so the inflation illusion is stripped out. All numbers come from our own price tracker, 51 liquid items tracked across the window.
01 Read this first: nominal prices lie early league
When a currency base inflates, every price quoted in it goes up even if the item itself did nothing. Over this window the Divine climbed +662% in exalts, so an item with a flat exalt price quietly lost ~87% of its real value. That is why we denominate in divine. The "Real" column is what your purchasing power actually did; the "Nominal" column is the raw exalt sticker price for contrast.
02 Held or gained real value
Items that kept up with, or beat, the divine. The pattern is consistent: scarce, supply-constrained currency and crafting materials that endgame players need and cannot mass-farm.
| Item | Real (in divine) | Nominal (in exalt) | Price now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Essence of Alacrity essence | +6686% | +51608% | 2.30 div |
| Refined Sibilant Catalyst catalyst | +1833% | +14629% | 4.62 div |
| Kulemak's Invitation fragment | +1347% | +10926% | 1.24 div |
| Faded Crisis Fragment fragment | +1016% | +8405% | 8.84 div |
| Hinekora's Lock currency | +940% | +7825% | 1.5k div |
| Victorious Fate fragment | +909% | +7587% | 7.78 div |
| Fracturing Orb currency | +820% | +6910% | 12.2 div |
| Refined Reaver Catalyst catalyst | +576% | +5049% | 3.02 div |
| Mirror of Kalandra currency | +397% | +3687% | 6.5k div |
| Deadly Fate fragment | +388% | +3615% | 4.02 div |
| Cowardly Fate fragment | +355% | +3366% | 3.72 div |
| Aldur's Legacy rune | +346% | +3298% | 303 div |
Top of the board: Essence of Alacrity at +6686% in divine terms. Note how the Nominal column runs far higher than Real on almost every row, that gap is the exalt inflation, not extra profit.
03 Bled value: the worst things to hoard
These fell even in nominal exalt terms, before adjusting for currency inflation, so the real-terms loss is brutal. Almost all are consumables: distillates and one-shot reagents that every farmer produces and every player burns.
| Item | Real (in divine) | Nominal (in exalt) | Price now |
|---|---|---|---|
| Concentrated Liquid Suffering distillate | -95% | -65% | 0.108 div |
| Concentrated Liquid Isolation distillate | -92% | -37% | 0.628 div |
| Cadigan's Epiphany rune | -89% | -17% | 0.740 div |
Concentrated Liquid Suffering was the sharpest drop at -95% real. The lesson holds across the category: consumable supply outruns finite demand, so they only bleed. Sell them the day they drop.
04 Three things the data actually teaches
1. Bank wealth in divines, not exalts. Holding divines beat sitting on exalts by ~87% over 36 days. The moment you have a meaningful surplus, convert it. A stack of exalts is a melting ice cube early league.
2. Scarce beats farmable. The winners were all things that cannot be mass-produced: high-end orbs, top runes, niche crafting mats. The losers were things every map drops. Hoard what is structurally scarce, not what is merely expensive today.
3. Consumables are a sell, never a hold. Distillates and reagents lost value in absolute terms while the rest of the economy inflated around them. Cash them out fast and roll the proceeds into something that holds.
05 Put it to work tonight
Sitting on loot? Value your stash against live prices and see what to sell now versus hold. Swimming in exalts? Convert to divine before the next inflation leg. Want the daily version of this page? The League Pulse posts a fresh movers-and-bait digest every morning, or grab the RSS feed. Run a site or guild page? Embed a live price badge so your readers always see the current Divine.
06 Methodology & honest caveats
Numbers are computed from our committed price snapshots between 2026-06-03 and 2026-07-09 (27 snapshots, 36 days). We only include items with real liquidity (meaningful exchange volume or listed quantity), 51 of them across the full window. "Real" change divides each item's exalt price by the Divine price at each end, so it reflects purchasing power rather than nominal exalt inflation.
Caveats: this is the opening fortnight of one league, a small sample, and early-league economies move fast and do not predict the mid-league or endgame economy. These are listing-and-exchange snapshots, not a complete record of every trade. Past movement is not a forecast. Use it to understand the shape of the early economy, not as a buy or sell signal on any single item. We would rather under-claim than mislead.
Restatement (2026-07-04): we found that aggregated feed prices blended cross-currency exchange pairs at unrealizable rates, inflating many items 25% or more versus the in-game exalted order book. All prices now come from each item's direct exalted pair (real traded units), and this page's full history was restated the same way. A reader caught it in game; if our numbers ever disagree with your trade window, tell us and we will chase it.