The Enchanting system in the upcoming 'Reaper of Souls' expansion will let a player choose the new stat on an item that is enchanted. In some recent Blizzard Blues posts, Diablo III developer Wyatt Cheng provided new information about how the Enchanting system will work, provided by the Mystic artisan.
Enchanting System Details
Posts by both Lylirra and Wyatt Cheng delved into the Enchanting system, currently under heavy development. The system is designed so a player can take an item to the Mystic, and have a specific stat rerolled for a gold cost. There will be a list of stats that can be chosen, to replace the current stat on the item, and the player can choose which of those randomly rolled stats he wants to put on the item. Like much of the Reaper of Souls system content, this is under development and may be changed before it is released.
The way enchanting works right now (which, bear in mind, may change as we continue internal testing and receive feedback) is that you'd get to choose which affix you re-roll. So the process would be something like: visit Mystic --> select affix to re-roll --> get randomly-generated list of new affixes --> chose single affix from list --> pay material cost --> old affix replaced with new affix --> profit. The plan, at the moment at least, is to make an item account-bound if it's enchanted.
We're still tinkering with the actual costs and mechanics, as well as some remaining niggly details (like can you re-roll the same affix over and over? should the costs scale with each affix you re-roll? if yes, how much? etc) which is why we haven't done a grand reveal of the Mystic just yet.
We are still iterating heavily on the system, so the exact details may vary from what we talk about today, so let's talk about our values. By focusing on our design values, even if the exact implementation changes, you''ll be able to see our intent and what's important to us. Here are some of our design values for enchanting:
Value: It's important for the actual hunt for the loot to still matter
How enchanting supports this: As currently designed, you are only allowed to reroll ONE property on an item. In this way, each item can only be changed so much from it's original state. This allows enchanting to feel meaningful, while still allowing lots of room for players to resume hunting for an even better "base item" to enchant into an even better item.
Value: We want this to be a meaningful end-game sink
How enchanting supports this:
- As previously mentioned, all items that are enchanted will be bound to account
- Even though you are allowed to reroll only ONE property, you can reroll that property over and over. For example, suppose an item has 200 str, 200 vit, 80 res all, +1200 Life on Kill and +400 Life on Hit. You might choose to reroll the +1200 Life on Kill and get +87 Hitpoints per second. You can then reroll the +87 Hitpoints per second and get +4 gold pickup radius. You can reroll the "mutable" stat as many times as you want, but the other 4 stats (200 str, 200 vit, 80 res all and +400 Life on Hit) are now "locked in" and cannot be rerolled.
- We want to ensure enchanting is meaningful on Legendary items. We are working hard to make sure Legendary items are awesome. If we want enchanting to be a meaningful end-game sink, it needs to work on the best items in the game. It has not yet been determined whether this means you can enchant the "guaranteed" properties of a Legendary, or if you can only reroll the "random" properties of a Legendary. This aspect of the design is still under iteration but at the end of the day we want enchanting Legendary items to be worthwhile.
Value: We want to avoid "Buyer's Remorse"
How enchanting supports this: Have you ever played an RPG with an enchanting system that sometimes randomly made the item worse? Since we're allowing the result to be random, it's possible that your choices for enchanting are worse than the property you're replacing. Oftentimes this can lead to a feeling of dread when you begin the enchanting process. Or maybe you re-enchant the item over and over hoping to at least get something better than what you started but you get unlucky and run out of money or reagents before you get a good roll! To mitigate this, when we present you the list of options one of the options is ALWAYS the original property. So if you don't like the new options you can always choose to keep the old one. Now you can enchant with peace-of-mind.
Standard disclaimer. Enchanting is a work-in-progress. Expect it to change before it's done, but this is a glimpse at the current state.
The drops on the console version of Diablo III are generally better than the PC version, with both higher stats on the items, and more class-appropriate drops. Lylirra talks about how the two systems compare, and the changes that are still under development for the massive Loot 2.0 patch. The console version may seem better right now, in that regard, but the PC version is still the lead platform, and will see big improvements with that eventual patch.
The Loot 2.0 patch will bring a lot of new and revamped legendary items. Going into the expansion, there might also be new crafted legendaries, and Vaeflare asks what type of crafted legendaries players would like to see.
We’ve certainly discussed the possibility of adding in some new craftable Legendary items into the expansion, but we don’t have any concrete plans just yet.
What kind of Legendary items would you like to be able to craft? If you had full control over the system, how would you want that process to work?
