Making all items more useful, valuable, and liquid

[Spens]

As you get better and better items, fewer and fewer items become of any use to your character. You either have to mule, sell, or just leave behind the items your character doesn't need at all.

I think a system somewhat similar to WoW's enchanting would be interesting, where you can do something with an unused item in order to get something useful.

A crude example would be in crafting. The newly crafted item could have a random mod from the item it was crafted from. Using Diablo 2 terms, maybe you wanted +1 Fire Skills on a pair of gloves, so you use Mage Fists to craft your gloves and hope for the + 1 to Fire Skills to be on your crafted gloves.

Other examples could be enchants for items, temporary buffs, different abilities (e.g. Iron Golem), or anything Blizzard can think of.

So instead of leaving that mediocre item on the ground that you've picked up 4 times before and put on a mule, you could use it to benefit your character in ways other than just equipping it. This helps given weaker, unused items value when nobody wants to wear them anymore.

[Yuri The Barbarian]

Personally, I think when you get to Hell difficulty normal items just should stop dropping.

It's always disappointing to see that flash of green, only to realize it's a normal item.

[stillman]

But that would mean only exceptional and elite things drop. Every unique that drops in hell would be exceptional or unique, and thus, they wouldn't be of much value since too many folks would have them.

Spens, maybe something else they could do is have the vendor gold value of the items make more sense, unlike in d2 where there is a cap of 35k and we have godly uniques that cost only a few k. I don't think a suit of full plate should cost 35k while a pare of demonhide boots also costs 35k. So if were more sensible, you could simply sell your old stuff for lots of gold. Of course, gold would have to be made important...

[mkbush]

Gold would probably stay useless...

[zooply]

But that would mean only exceptional and elite things drop. Every unique that drops in hell would be exceptional or unique, and thus, they wouldn't be of much value since too many folks would have them.

Ya but you're assuming that if those are the only drops, there will automatically have high drop rates.

I feel the same on the items costing the same. A random junk blue armor is worth the same amount of gold as a shako? The vendors are sc4mmers!!1 The problem though I think is determining gold value. This would be easy enough with uniques and such where they have roughly the same stats, but what about rares? If they could implement it correctly it'd be great.

[Omikron8]

normal items should not drop in nightmare or hell difficulty

and low-quality items (eg. cracked) should definitely never drop later than early norm

[strongdwarvenale]

yeah, normal items in nm and hell suck, but its unlikely to find elite whites for soxing in normal. maybe all normal items hell should be eth or soxed.

it would be fun if you there were some npc in town that could turn magic waste items into a summon, with stats/abilities like the item. monster dmg and hp could be factored with the items ilvl char lvl and whatnot to make more valuable items and rares and uniques into more powerful monsters.

[Arbedark]

yeah, normal items in nm and hell suck, but its unlikely to find elite whites for soxing in normal. maybe all normal items hell should be eth or soxed.

it would be fun if you there were some npc in town that could turn magic waste items into a summon, with stats/abilities like the item. monster dmg and hp could be factored with the items ilvl char lvl and whatnot to make more valuable items and rares and uniques into more powerful monsters.

Effectively give everyone the Iron Golem skill? No thanks...

As for only having excep / elite drop in NM / Hell, Titan Quest did this and it turned out ok (but their unique system was different).

Maybe limit magic and below normal items dropping in NM and Hell? Can still find rare, set, unique normal items this way so you don't need to drop down diffi's if you're looking for a certain unique or whatever, but limits the number of useless magics (unless you LLD of course).

[Omikron8]

magical items overall just suck in 99%+ of drops and character builds (yes i know of +3 ammies and the rare godly circlet)

in diablo 1 you could buy in normal difficulty from griswold some random helm with +10 attributes or something, what do you buy from normal armor vendors in diablo 2, +10 % to a resist or +20% defense ? pathetic joke in comparison

i know that some magical mods have higher values than similar mods on rares (eg. AR bonuses) but the difference must be even larger, something like magical weapons with +500% ED

[phool]

HGL has a pretty neat system of ways of upgrading and obtaining new items. Not sure it'd work for Diablo though.

[deadbeater]

In Diablo 1 one can actually shop for godly stuff. Somehow, Griswald regularly make well-enchanted stuff. Charsi alas could do that once on every difficulty.

[mackemradge]

Hi guys,

Some great ideas on this forum but here's a blast from my past that may fit into the D3 wishlist regarding item usefulness.

Some years ago now I was engrossed by a game on the original Playstation called Vagrant Story. I don't know how big or obscure this game was, none of my mates knew (or cared) about it but I thought it was excellent for one unique element to the game.

For those who are unfamiliar with the game it was not unlike D2. A single player RPG, character based with specific skills relating to specific weapon choice. The element of game play that got me thinking about D3 was the ability to combine low level items and build them up to useful endgame eq.

For example, you start the game with a pair of leather gloves. Along the way you find another pair. At a point in the game you gain access to a workshop and can combine the two pairs into a pair of reinforced gloves with higher stats and so on.......

This system was in place for all items and weapons throughout the game and I played so obsessively that I produced armour and weapons that were untouchable, no boss in the game could damage my toon and the damage I dealt was massive.

I would love to see this system put into D3. It would solve the annoyance of useless item drops, possibly provide a new area of trading, you could bring gold into the equation with an NPC charging you for use of workshop or whatever.

Does anyone else remember this game? (or was it just me)

Comments, opinions welcome.

Peace :thumbup:

[kevink]

I'm pretty sure they have this in D2 already. You can do it using the cube + recipe.

[deadbeater]

Only on some of the items. We are talking about making every single rusty sword, broken mace, tiny health/mana bubble useful.

[mackemradge]

Thanks Deadbeater, thats what I meant. Cube recipes only cover some items.

Make everthing in the game useful, even if it is just as scrap iron for the melting pot.

[Runefang]

I think making every item useful is a flawed idea I think, there should be junk to separate it from the good stuff. I'd get tired of having to use the junk that drops and if I didn't have to use it then I doubt many people would either.

I think inherent in a drop system like D2 has and D3 will have, is that there are bad drops and useless drops.

[deadbeater]

I didn't say make every drop optimal, just make them useful for more than trading for gold.

[Sein Schatten]

Item stacking like 2 Worlds is a cool idea. If you stack them enough, your white crap might become blue and after you stack enough blue you get a rare.