Anyone who's put serious hours into Path of Exile knows this kind of self-inflicted pain: you stare at your stash, you stare at the keys, and you tell yourself the next run will "fix" the last one. That's how the Twilight Reliquary Key experiment started—one full gross, 144 keys, purely to see what the ROI actually looks like. If you've ever weighed your options between hoarding and spending, you've probably compared it to other grinds like PoE 2 Currency, where at least you can track progress. Here, you're basically buying a feeling, then paying extra to keep chasing it.

What The Runs Feel Like

The routine gets mind-numbing fast. Portal in, zap the room, click the chest, portal out, repeat. No real thinking, just muscle memory and a timer in your head. You try to stay sharp, but after the first couple dozen keys, it turns into background noise. And that's the sneaky part: the speed makes it easier to ignore the cost. You aren't watching currency vanish one big chunk at a time. You're watching it drip away, run after run, while you keep telling yourself the streak has to flip.

The "Sample Size" Reality Check

The player running this wasn't cherry-picking a bad night. He'd opened roughly 450 keys total across attempts, so it's not some tiny anecdote. And the vibe was bleak: most chests might as well have contained scrap. He joked it felt like "chance shards" in spirit, because the value coming out was so low you'd struggle to even call it loot. It's not that every key is empty—there's stuff—but it's the kind of stuff you stop bending down to pick up once you've played long enough.

The Inventory Reveal That Hurts

After all 144 keys, the "big" payout was 14 Orbs of Chance. Two modest stacks. That's the moment your stomach drops, because you can do the math without even opening a spreadsheet. You traded pricey keys for pocket change. There's also something kind of cruel about it: you're gambling on an item that hands you currency designed for… more gambling. Like the game's giving you a tiny pat on the head and saying, go on then, roll the dice again, maybe you'll feel better next time.

Making It Look Better (It Doesn't)

To cope, he did what every tired grinder has thought about doing: unstack the orbs and spread them across the inventory so it looks fuller. For a second it's funny, because it's exactly how "look what I got" screenshots can lie without technically lying. Then it's just sad comedy—zooming in on the coin art, calling it beautiful, while you know the stash tab is bleeding out. If you're tempted to buy a pile of these keys, treat this as your warning label, especially if you're already thinking about value plays like poe 2 buy and trying to keep your bankroll alive.