My main is a Frenzy Barb and I am enjoying playing him. I can farm hell with some difficulty, but I recently was looking for a mid grade upgrade for his chest armor and read in some guides and forum posts that the runeword Treachery is pretty good and since my primary annoyance was Baals decrepify in the throneroom I thought this would be nice for the Fade curse reduction.
However I quickly found that a single Baal run can lose me around 500,000 gold in repair costs? not 50k, the cost of reviving your merc, but 500,000… ten times that. This includes me picking up every item that I think might sell for 35k including white items.
I found this extremely shocking and disappointing and am even disheartened bc I was looking to save up for the high-level runewords Fortitude/Enigma, Grief/Doom/BOTD, but now I’m kind of ignoring all that and only setting my sights on BOTD since it is indestructible. Im also afraid that since Treachery is only a level 43 runeword those higher ones will be even worse? Can anyone confirm?
I also understand there is a cube recipe to repair an item but I will be running through those runes quick at the current rate I’m going… It seems like bad design to me, I don’t understand why this would be considered ok, this is the worst “upgrade” I’ve ever found for a character which is a shame because it was a nice upgrade in terms of killing/survivability.
I desperately wish that I was joking, it seems to be related to how much damage I take, so if there is lots of elemental damage it is greatly elevated.
im almost inclined to say that your problem is related with the base you choosed to put your runeword in. The type of armour and quality (is it superior?) make the repair costs go high.
Some armours and weapons can get really, really expensive to fix (im looking at you, Passion runeword).
Today i dont have this problem even using a Fortitude. The thing here more expensive to fix now is the belt (thundergod).
Little tip for you that worked for me:
When you get a base dropped, most of the times is semi-broken. Take it to the vendor and look what will cost to repair only that item. Divide the number of points broken by the total cost to fix it. Will give you a notion of the amount you need to fix every point. With that in mind you can make your choice if is sustainable or not for you.
Edit: Forgot one thing. Runewords that have skills charges also costs more to repair the charges.
That is good advice, I will pay attention to this but I still feel this price is really not sustainable for anyone. Also, I cannot envision myself putting endgame runewords in non endgame items. That just feels wrong. I had heard runewords have high repair costs, but this is just insane to me. I use hell (elite) uniques/rares all the time and those repair costs are a fraction of runewords. I think it just makes obvious sense to me that the repair cost of a runeword item should be brought in line with everything else in this game, especially when the max sell price of items is capped to where I’m losing money.
For melee characters you do NOT want to use superior bases for runeword armor. Instead you want to use the highest defense NON superior base you can get, 524 archon plate, 457 dusk shroud, etc. The loss in stats is negligible for most any runeword, but instead of being 100k per repair point for your shiny new chain of honor archon plate in sup 15/15 armor, its 900 gold per repair point for your just as good 524 base archon plate. It’s a big mistake i see people make over and over and over. If you have a barbarian or fury druid or the like, do NOT use superior bases for runewords.
Gotta fix your definition of end game items, then. A 3 or 4 open socket non-superior dusk shroud with 460+ defense, IS an endgame item (base). Superior does not mean what you think it means, in many/most cases. The benefit is negligible at best, and the drawback is, well, as you’ve seen/experienced. Live and learn
Thank you all for the replies, I see the superior armor is the mistake, however, no one thinks it’s just crazy that this is the way it is? It almost seems like a developer oversight that must have been not technically simple to fix.
I can only imagine if I had done this before I could quickly farm hell for gold/runes for repairs.
A good way to counter this since you are a Barbarian is to add Travincal to your farming rotation. Get a gold farming set and run Travincal as this will net a good amount of gold. Point is that gold is easy to acquire if you know how to efficiently run through locations. Balance your farming spots to support the cost it takes or gold farm until you have no more need for gold and can focus solely on item farming.