Rare Socketed recipes need revision

General Discussion
1

Hello, I don’t know if this topic has ever been brought up before, but here are my two cents.

There are two Horadric recipes for Rare Socketed items. Both of them require a SoJ (Stone of Jordan). These recipes are a relic from a long gone era, when SoJ reigned as a currency and the market was flooded with dupes. It was long before ladder wipes were invented, and the dupes from D2 Classic carried on into LoD for some years. The recipes were meant to be a sink.

Rare items are not as powerful as they used to be in comparison to what LoD and later runewords brought in. Also, there’s no overabundance of SoJs. The formulas makes no sense anymore, nobody is going to waste a SoJ to add a socket or roll a new Rare. Most people probably don’t bother to pick them up.

Rare items could become a viable budget alternative by being given the option to be (relatively) easily socketable. This would be especially meaningful in single player. Get rid of the SoJ from the recipes and change it to whichever combination of runes/gems/skulls or so. I’m not suggesting anything in particular, it’s up for debate.

2 Likes
2

I’ve wanted exactly this since before D2R came out. I think there should be two recipes, Lesser socketing and Greater socketing.

Lesser one is El, magic jewel, normal skull: adds 2 sockets to magic items, 1 socket to rares.
Greater one is El, rare jewel, perfect skull: adds 4 sockets to magic items, 2 to rare and crafted, 1 to set and unique items.

Four sockets to magic is so you can make a cruel war pike with 4xShael. Two sockets to rare is so you can make a rare cruel war pike of quickness with 2xShael. I came up with these back before whirlwind was changed. But having those sockets would help many builds, especially melee builds.

3

The rare socket and 6 skull recipes are still used a lot in classic. They are mostly for those players I would argue. A new rare socket recipe for expansion wouldn’t be the worst thing but leave the old recipes intact for classic.