Rebalancing Internal Unique Item Rarities (Locked June 16)

We're generally happy with the overall drop rate of Unique items, but want to improve the ratios between the four different internal tiers of rarity that Uniques are classified under.

The four tiers of uniques are internally known as:
  • Common: Straightforward uniques that are useful for twinking and are very impactful when levelling. Shiversting is a good example.
  • Uncommon: Somewhat more complicated or build-defining uniques like Facebreaker or The Three Dragons.
  • Rare: Specialised and end-game uniques that aren't meant to drop often, like Bino's Kitchen Knife.
  • Super-rare: Chase uniques like Shavronne's Wrappings, Kaom's Heart or Song of the Sirens.

At the moment (in 1.1.3b), most of the uniques that players find are common. You'll occasionally find uncommon uniques but it's honestly pretty hard for casual players to find the rarer uniques.

We want to improve the chance of finding rarer uniques to achieve the following goals:
  • We want players to find a greater variety of uniques, especially if doing boss runs.
  • We want to see more availability of interesting uniques for all players.
  • We want build-defining uniques to become more available than they previously were.
  • We still want the early experience with uniques to be with easily understandable unique that are hopefully powerful for your level.
  • We don't want to be too disruptive to the existing in-game trade value of uniques.

Instead of finding so many common uniques, we will be increasing the chance of finding other rarities. We will be roughly doubling the chance of finding Uncommon or Rare uniques. The chance of finding Super-rare ones will be increased by roughly 20%.

We'll be re-evaluating the rarity tiers of our uniques to make sure that they fit the above rules. For example The Blood Dance is probably too complicated for its current Common slot.

We're expecting to apply this change in content update 1.1.4 (late May).
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Last edited by Chris on Jun 15, 2014, 9:16:32 PM
Hype!

Edit : after reading this my conclusion is :

Unique's will be the build enablers they where always designed to be, while top end-rares will be the truly "unique" end game goals.

Very nice for theory-crafters that are not aiming for that rare item end-game. Very happy with this change since so many unique's have been added, yet the drop-rates did not seem to reflect this.

Peace,

-Boem-

Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes
Last edited by Boem on May 16, 2014, 12:05:34 AM
Looking forward to that.
Spiffy. I've had incredible luck in the last 4 month league when it came to unique drops and it was refreshing and quite nice. As normally all I find is garbage over and over.
"Danger is like jello, there's always room for more."
http://www.twitch.tv/vejita00
Greater availability of build enablers to the detriment of alch shards (from vendoring crown of thorns one too many times) is a plus in my book.

Also, are you not updating the droprates to counterbalance the influx of new uniques anymore (with a larger unique pool, the chance of finding any particular one is lowered every time new ones are introduced)? Or is stuff like singularity boxes, nemesis mod that guarantees unique drop and so on enough?
Omg +10000000000000

Time to dedicate my life to MF
Last edited by mimivirus on May 16, 2014, 12:30:41 AM
How do you feel about drop rates of very rare build-defining uniques? An example is Shavronne's Wrappings (though there's now that also-very-rare plate armour) which was the only item to reasonably allow low-life energy shield-based builds to operate. Kaom's isn't a build-defining unique - it just gives a lot of health.

I feel as though extremely rare items that define a build should open up builds which are uniquely different. Low-life Shavronne's builds just mean your build is energy shield based, while a build defining super-rare could do stuff like cause you to flicker strike on critical hits or kill enemies extremely quickly but revive them 10 seconds later.
IRON MAN
That sounds like a great improvement to help others try builds that might require some of the rarer unique items.
Beta Member Since 0.9.0 | Current Character : ExExCorpse
Creator of Prismatic Rings AND Unique Thief's Torment Prismatic Ring
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I love this!



Personally I like the idea of merit based unique drops. Sort of like mini-Atziri bosses who are destined to drop a smaller pool of uniques. Still making it a challenge to get high rarity uniques, while also making them more common. Just look at Atziri's Step. It's a GREAT unique item, but since it's more directly farmable than uniques such as Bino's the price dropped on its own over time. At the beginning it cost several exalt to buy an Atziri's step, by the end of Ambush a guy sold me one for 1.5 chaos. =p Not because thats the actual going rate, but because he just knew that the supply chain was healthy enough that he wasn't actually losing much currency by being generous.
Huh maybe I'll mf for 12 hours again.
Dys an sohm
Rohs an kyn
Sahl djahs afah
Mah morn narr

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