How to Trade Safely in PoE 2 0.5
Most "scams" in Path of Exile 2 are not clever. They work because you are tired, it is late, and the deal looks too good to walk away from. The fix is boring and it always works: know the honest price before you whisper, buy through the asynchronous Merchant's Tab instead of standing in a hideout, and read the item in the trade window before you click accept. Do those three things and the rest of this page is just detail.
01 The short answer
Three habits stop almost every scam in 0.5 trade:
- Know the price first. Check the cluster of listings, not the one cheap outlier at the top. Use our live market and per-item price pages as your honest reference before you ever open the trade site.
- Prefer async buyouts. Buying through a seller's Merchant's Tab is a fixed-price, hands-off transaction. There is no live trade window for them to mess with. Stand-in-the-hideout trades are where the manual scams live.
- Read before you accept. When a manual trade window is open, read the actual item and the actual currency amount on both sides, every time, before clicking confirm.
Everything below is just the why behind these three.
02 How trading actually works in 0.5
There are three lanes, and the safe one is built in.
Currency Exchange handles stackable currency: orbs, runes, essences, omens. You set a ratio, the system charges a gold fee, and your order fills when someone posts a matching order. No human on the other end means no human scam. This is the safest trade in the game.
Asynchronous trading through the Merchant's Tab covers gear and non-stackable items. The seller lists an item at a buyout, and a buyer can secure it and teleport to the hideout even when the seller is offline. The price is locked when you buy. Nobody can swap the item or bump the price mid-transaction.
Manual, in-person trading is the old way: whisper, party invite, teleport, open a live trade window, both sides place items, both confirm. This is the only lane where the classic scams below are even possible, because it is the only lane where a person is moving things in real time. Note that gold cannot be traded to other players, so any "send me gold first" pitch is a lie on its face.
0.5 also tidied a few things in the trade interface: there is now a button to swap the currency pair while editing a listing, and a copy-trade button for relisting more of the same item. Fewer fat-finger errors, fewer fake-scam accusations.
03 Scam 1: price-fixing with fake low listings
This is the one that costs you the most and feels the least like a scam, because nobody ever messages you.
Someone posts an item far below market with no intent to sell. The fake low listing sits at the top of the results and makes the item look like it crashed. Two things happen. Honest sellers panic and undercut to match the fake floor, and the price-fixer quietly buys up those genuinely cheap listings. You, the seller, just gave away value chasing a price that was never real.
How to spot it: the honest price is the cluster, not the outlier. If five or six similar items sit in a tight band and one lonely listing is half that, the cheap one is bait. Listings that have sat for a long time with no movement are also suspect. How to beat it: price against the cluster, and price against our live market rather than against whatever is on top of the trade site this minute. When you are selling, do not reflexively undercut a single suspicious floor.
04 Scam 2: the item swap and the last-second price change
These only happen in a live, in-person trade window, which is exactly why async buyouts dodge them entirely.
The item swap: the trade window shows the item you came for, then at the last moment the scammer pulls it and drops in a similar-looking item with worse rolls, hoping you confirm on autopilot. The price change: a high-demand item is listed for a trivial amount, but when you arrive the seller demands far more than the listing, betting you will pay the inflated price rather than walk after teleporting.
How to beat both: in any manual trade, read the item in the window before you confirm. Hover it, check the mods, check the currency type and the exact amount on both sides. The price on the listing is the deal. If it changes when you arrive, that is not a negotiation, that is a tell. Close the window and leave. There is always another listing. Better yet, if the item is available as a fixed buyout through the Merchant's Tab, take that and skip the live window completely.
05 Scam 3: ignore-after-invite and the social pressure plays
Not every scam takes your stuff. Some just waste your time or rush you into a bad confirm.
Ignore-after-invite: a listing pulls you in, you whisper, you get a party invite, you teleport, and the seller goes silent or AFK. Sometimes it is a real away-from-keyboard seller, sometimes it is a stall designed to frustrate competitors. Either way, do not wait around. Rushed confirms: a chatty seller who suddenly hurries you ("quick quick I have another buyer") is trying to get you to confirm before you read. Speed is the scammer's friend, never yours.
How to beat it: set offers before you party up so you are not negotiating after teleporting. If a seller is unresponsive, leave and buy elsewhere. And never let someone else's urgency set your pace at the confirm button. The deal you walk away from costs you nothing.
06 A safe-trading checklist
Tape this to the inside of your skull for the late-night sessions:
- Price-check on our live market and price pages before you whisper.
- Default to Currency Exchange for orbs and runes, and Merchant's Tab buyouts for gear.
- For currency, sanity-check the rate with our currency converter before you commit.
- In any manual trade, read the item and the exact currency amounts on both sides before confirming.
- If the price changes on arrival, walk. If the seller rushes you, slow down. If the item swaps, leave.
- Nobody needs your gold up front. Gold is not tradeable. That request is always a scam.
07 Quick FAQ
Can I get scammed using the Currency Exchange or a Merchant's Tab buyout?
Not in the manual sense. The Currency Exchange fills at the ratio you set with a gold fee, and a Merchant's Tab buyout locks the price when you purchase. There is no live window and no person moving items in real time, so the item-swap and last-second-price-change scams cannot happen there. The realistic risk is paying a bad price, which you avoid by checking our live market first.
Someone listed an item way below everyone else. Is it a deal or a trap?
Usually a trap. The honest price is the tight cluster of similar listings, not a single lonely outlier far below it. Fake low listings are bait used to drag prices down so the lister can buy up genuinely cheap items. If you whisper and the seller goes silent, changes the price on arrival, or swaps the item, you found the trap. Price against the cluster and against our price pages, not against the cheapest line on the screen.
A seller is asking me to send currency or gold first. Should I?
No. A normal trade puts both sides into one window at the same time and both players confirm together. There is no legitimate reason to hand over currency before the trade window is open and confirmed. Gold specifically cannot even be traded to other players, so any 'send gold first' pitch is a lie. Anyone asking you to pay up front is setting up a scam.
How do I check an item is the real one before I accept a trade?
In a manual trade window, hover the item the seller placed and read it before confirming: the mods, the rolls, the item type. Confirm the currency on both sides is the right type and the exact amount. Only click accept once both the item and the numbers match what you agreed. If anything changed between the listing and the window, close it and leave.