Can i shop for non-magical wands with +3 for a skill?

[Monkeypimp]

I ask that because i plan on making a bonemancer, and want a wand to make white, so i'm looking for one with +3 to either bone spear (preferably) or spirit. If they are indeed sold, do they have enough ilvl to get 2 sockets with either larzuk or the socketing recipe?

If you can't buy any of those, could you get one with +2 at least? and if even that is out of reach, any ideas where to look for one? i was thinking about act 3 with as little MF as possible, what would be the best difficulty? Nightmare?

[realjeep]

yes it is possible to shop one but I don't think you will be able to get one that has the +skill for a skill of that level. Possibly bone spear but I would be surprised if you found a vendor selling a plain +3 spirit wand.

IIRC, the vendors are based on thier act/difficulty vs your character level. You can see the effect of this by using a high lvl char to shop act 1 vendors in a normal game. Akara in act 1 and i forget his name in act 2 normal will give you pretty much solid vendor inventories of plain wands, though the disadvantage is that they will be + to lower lvl skills (firebolt and such). The guy in act 2 *might* pop up with a +3 bone spear since it is only lvl 18, but it will probably take several runs in and out of town.

By the time you go to act 3 most all of the for sale items will be magical.

As far as I know, using the larzuk quest will socket maximum sockets for a plain item, so as long as Arreat Summit says that wand type can have 2 sockets you're good to go.

Hope this helps, post if you have success or find a better way.

realjeep

[Thrugg]

You can buy a non-magic +3 Bone Spear wand but not a Bone Spirit one.
However, it will not be easy to find.

You need to be shopping items of ilvl 19-24. This is high enough to get level 18 skills like Bone Spear, but low enough to still be non-magic. Items of level 25 or higher will always be magic. Items of level 18 or lower can only spawn level 12 or lower skills on them.

The items you buy depend on your character's level. It is usually ilvl = clvl+5, but there are caps in normal difficulty (12 in act 1 and 20 in act 2).
So you need to shop either with a level 14-19 char in later difficulties, or any high level char in normal act 2.

Just to give you an idea of the odds you face, only 7/10 wands have +skills at all, only 1/5 skills on wands of that level will be a level 18 skill, only 1/5 level 18 skills will be Bone Spear, and only 1/10 skills will be +3. Altogether you will expect to see around 360 wands for every +3 BS one. But, if you get a map where the gate is right next to Drognan, you can probably manage that in less than an hour.

Now, sockets. Drognan sells Wands, Yew Wand and Bone Wands. But the first two can only ever get 1 socket. Happily though, Bone Wands can get 2 sockets regardless of ilvl. That means that larzuk will always give you two, or the cube recipe will give you two 5/6 of the time, which is a pretty good bet. So you have to restrict yourself to Bone Wands. If it takes you a really long time to get the wand you want, you might want to make sure of 2 sockets with Larzuk, but you could use the cube with a very good chance of success if you don't mind the small chance of having to go shopping again.

[Monkeypimp]

thanks, i'll try to get one from drognan now, will post back when (if) i get it

[Monkeypimp]

Ok, found it, tooke me about 40 minutes with the door right next to drognan, but i was quite unlucky, i found one with +3 to bone spear but only a single socket (wich meant i couldn't give it to larzuk) and another one with both a +3 to bone spear, +2 to corpe explosion and 2 sockets. Sadly, those sockets were due to the "mechanic's" affix. Finally found a superior bone wand, with +3 to spear and +1 to CE, cost me about 250k the little bastard, but hey, that's a small price for a +8 to bone spear wand, right?

And thanks again for the help guys.