Items

Items are objects that have various purposes. They are the mainstay that helps the player customize his/her character. Many types of items can be equipped by the player character as jewelry, weapons or armor. Weapons can be melee, ranged or thrown.

Characteristics

Items have the following in common:

• They can be traded with trading NPCs (with the exception of Quest Items);
• They can be held in a character's inventory;
• They can be dropped by killed monsters on the ground or by opening chests and breaking containers;
• They can be put on the ground;

Items are the various tools and trinkets that can be found, collected, used and sold by the player character. They are found by:

• Killing monsters
• Opening chests
• Breaking containers
• Crafting in the Horadric Cube (Diablo II only)
• Crafting at artisans (Diablo III only)
• Purchasing from NPCs
• Completing quests

Items

The first items were seen in Diablo I:

• Normal Items
• Magic Items
• Unique Items
• Rings
• Amulets
• Quest Items
• Potions
• Elixirs

There are many different categories of items introduced in Diablo II:

• Exceptional Items
• Belts
• Rare Items
• Set Items
• Miscellaneous Items
• Gems

More categories were introduced in Diablo II: Lord Of Destruction:

• Elite Items
• Class-specific Items
• Crafted Items
• Ethereal Items
• Runes
• Jewels

Item changes in Diablo III:

• Shoulders were introduced
• Pants were introduced
• Bracers were introduced
• Runes are no longer items, but instead affect how skills work, being replaced with Skill Runes
• Elixirs and most Potion types were removed; instead, players can find Legendary Potions
• Jewels were removed, replaced by Legendary Gems
• Legendary Items added, replacing Unique Items

Item Generation

In Diablo II, each item was given a certain Item Level which was stored in a huge database in the game files. Whenever a monster is killed, the game looks at the Monster Level and the Area in which the monster was killed. Then, the game looks at the item tables and rolls an item to drop. The magical attributes are also chosen by rolling all the Magical Prefixes and Suffixes. Then, the item is dropped on the ground. When opening a chest or breaking a container, a similar procedure is carried out but using only the Area Level in the calculation. Unique and Champion monsters have a boost to their monster level. So, they have better than normal drop rates.