Chromatic Orb

A Chromatic Orb is a currency item that can be used to re-roll the colour of sockets on a weapon or piece of armour.

Item acquisition

Like most currency items, Chromatic Orbs can be dropped by slain monsters, chests, and destructible containers. They also drop from Arcanist's Strongboxes.

One can also obtain Chromatic Orbs directly from vendors. The first town NPC who sell the orb is Yeena of Act 2.

Chromatic Orbs can also be obtained by vendoring an item with one socket of each colour (red, green, blue) linked together. This is one of the most common ways to obtain Chromatic Orbs. In particular this means you can get some Chromatic Orbs cheaply (typically for about one Orb of Transmutation each, or less) by buying such linked items from the Vendors.

Spending

Chromatic Orbs are primarily used to change the colours of sockets on an item. Sockets are more likely to roll a colour corresponding to the attributes of the equipment being altered. The higher the attribute requirements, the more likely it is to roll the relevant color: red sockets for Strength, green sockets for Dexterity, and blue sockets for Intelligence. It's only possible to get red, blue or green sockets using this orb; for white sockets it's necessary to use a Vaal Orb.

If one either wants to avoid randomness, or wishes to obtain a specific colour combination that is unlikely on a certain item (e.g. getting all red sockets on an item requiring high intelligence), one can instead use the Crafting Bench recipe found in the Delve mine. When obtaining socket colours that an item is already biased towards (e.g. obtaining red sockets on a chest piece requiring high Strength), using Chromatic Orbs manually is less costly than using the Bench. On the other hand, for obtaining a socket colour that an item is biased against (e.g. obtaining green sockets on a chest piece requiring high Strength), using Chromatic Orbs manually is typically much more costly than using the Bench.

These recipes can also be applied to corrupted items at the cost of using one Vaal Orb for every Chromatic Orb required. This is currently the only way the colours of sockets on a corrupted item can be modified.