Unique items, their meaning and power.

Hello everyone.

Currently, the game has over 1,300 unique items (including drops and disabled ones). It's no exaggeration to say that half of them are unused or even unwanted. Regardless of the game stage, property rolls, or build, they don't evoke pleasant feelings, and aren't even worth the time to sell to a vendor. Sadly, these items are either uniquely useless or have negative unique value.

Back when I started playing, and even a couple of years later (roughly between 2.5 and 3.7), finding unique items was much more interesting. Character power didn't rely as heavily on influence items, and there were no mana cost changes. Tabula Rasa is no longer as desirable. Unique weapons generally deal 2-3 times less damage than weapons of the same tier. The defensive stats of unique items are either nonexistent or low (no life, no resistances, or no decent defenses). Some items actually take more than they give. Others contain nothing unique beyond their appearance, name, description, and the inability to change them excluding corruption and divining.

10+ new unique items are added from league to league, often including seemingly deliberately bad items that will have a 94-98% chance of dropping from the new boss. The old drop pool isn't being improved. The new one is being created with the assumption that out of 100 boss kill attempts, only 2-3 will yield a truly useful unique item, and even then, not always. Because of this, the average player sees no point in trying to kill a boss whose completion price is based on the item that drops with a 2% chance. In 98% of cases, this means a 100% loss. Flipping a coin and hoping it lands on its edge doesn't sound like a good idea. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

In my opinion, to increase interest in unpopular unique items, one or more changes are needed. Specifically:
Increase the numerical values ​​to competitive levels.
Redesign the item with a more modern vision and a more accurate match to the item's concept.
Add a wider range of rolls and an exceptional version to increase the chance of getting a better version of the item.

For example, Shaper's Touch gloves. They drop very frequently, and the only difference is the armor and ES value, which is too low initially to be of much importance (after all, high-level bases have appeared, allowing you to have three times as much). Otherwise, these gloves have found their niche, and the only progress they've made is the addition of crafted implicits. But you could make it more interesting by adding a little more randomness, for example, a random shaper explicit, or (since it's a touch) giving some effect on Hit. A bunch of mechanics are already in place, just waiting to be used.

I'd like to start posting my unique item rework ideas in this thread, to showcase new, unique variations that are more viable in today's environment. Just having ideas isn't enough; they need to be formulated and presented, which takes a lot of time, so I can't promise a large flow. I also can't promise that the options I've proposed are successful and balanced; some might find them uninteresting.

If anyone is interested in joining this event with their own ideas, I hope to see adequate proposals, without meme items or aggressive criticism of other people's proposals.

26.12.25



03.01.26

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Improving the concept of unique items will improve act progression, early and late-game mapping, bossing, divination cards, Valdo Maps, and Reliquary Keys. This is the same philosophy that led to the removal of dozens of unique jewels. This is a significant aspect of the game.