You can do it in single player and on ladder, but not on non-ladder.Originally Posted by Valeli
Thanks - that's really cool to know. I guess it's like the "ladder only" items that still drop in single player, but I never made that link before. I have a whole bunch of stuff that might become useful to me and/or my merc now. Awesome to find out. You guys are the absolute best.
By the way - is there any convenient rule of thumb to figure out what /not/ to upgrade to elite?
I read this post about how if you upgrade a vampire gaze, for example, you have a good chance of ending up with lower defense. Is there any good way to know what things to avoid touching for upgrade purposes?
Look at the stats of the base (white) item as an exceptional, and as an elite. If the lowest defense on the elite is higher than the highest defense on the exceptional, then upgrading will always increase its defense. Upping a vamp gaze can decrease its def, it can also increase its def, because the ranges for grim helm and bone visage overlap a bit.
Weapons will never decrease in damage, although checking the stat requirements on the elite version of weapons is a good idea.
For weapons & defense both, the 'increased requirements' vs. 'what my expected end-game stats are' is a significant factor. As an obvious-but-impractical example, lets say you were considering upgrading an Undead Crown (unique Crown) all the way to up to a Corona... your required strength would jump from 55 for the Crown to 174 for the Corona. If your next heaviest item is a Spirit Monarch (156 str. required), is it worth spending the extra 18 stat points in strength? Likewise, don't forget the increased character level requirements (in this example, it would go all the way from 29 to 78). In this case, it's obviously not a very good candidate to upgrade.
Personally, the only defensive items I ever regularly consider worthy of an upgrade are belts to exceptional quality (so that they'll get 4 rows of potions). If I were making a defense-oriented build I might consider upgrading an item or two that I had planned for that particular character (or, of course, a kicker-assassin's boots for the extra base damage)... but for the most part defense is a moderately useless and ineffective modifier, and I'd rather have lower defense and lower strength and character level requirements than higher defense (which adds virtually nothing to most builds) and higher requirements.
As for weapons, that's a different story. Again, the changing requirements are something to consider, but if you consider the average damage of the different base weapons - and then any on-weapon damage modifiers - the extra requirements are sometimes worth it.
The classic example in favor of an upgrade is a Ribcracker Quarterstaff (a plain quarterstaff has 17 average base damage) to a Stalagmite (91 average base damage), then factor in the 200%-300% Enhanced Damage on top of that base, and you're looking at an extra ~300 base weapon damage (before any skill-modifiers, off-weapon bonuses, etc.). That's definitely worth an extra ~50 stat points. And considering you're likely to have (near) 63 in str and 35 in dex (for a Stalagmite) anyways, it definitely makes sense to upgrade - even though the character level requirement will jump from the low 30's to the mid-50's.
A different example against an upgrade would probably be something like a Blade of Ali Baba. 70/42 required stats aren't too far from what even a no-blocking character can expect, but the jump up to 142/105 required stats as a Hydra Edge may be much more of a stretch - especially considering the fact that you probably won't be whacking anything with it anyways. But even if you were planning to whack things with it, the jump in damage wouldn't be that great. That makes it a pretty bad candidate.
Last edited by TheWorkingBoor; 16-03-2012 at 03:57.
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