Magic properties or affixes are standard attributes that appear on most items in Diablo III. Each different property provides a bonus to one character statistic, divided into two categories: Primary, increasing direct combat power, and Secondary, benefiting minor combat mechanics or overall progression. Magic Items have one or two properties, while higher quality levels can have up to six, with several exceptions.
For the most part, the properties on a newly dropped or crafted item are randomly chosen, with a pool of possible properties for each item type. The exact bonus amount provided by each property is also randomized within a certain range. Enchanting allows changing one property on an item to new random values or to a different property entirely.
Number of properties[]
Magic Items have up to two magic properties, while Rare Items have four to six, up to a maximum of 4 Primary and 2 Secondary properties. Off-hand items are an exception to this rule; they have a guaranteed extra property which does not count against those maximums. Any mix of Primary and Secondary properties is possible within those limits.
Legendary and Set items are guaranteed to have at least six properties. They usually follow the same 4/2 distribution, but two variations are not uncommon:
- A unique legendary power, when present, usually takes the place of one of the Secondary properties.
- Quite a few specific items either have a 5 Primary/1 Secondary distribution, or simply have more than the usual total number.
Bonus amounts[]
The stat bonuses for each property on an individual item are chosen randomly when it drops or is crafted. The minimum and maximum possible stat bonus is determined based on item type, Character Level or crafted item level, and quality tier. Magic and Rare Items share the lowest possible ranges of values, while Legendary and Set items have higher ranges. The highest maximums are achieved by Ancient Items, which have about 30% larger values. Finally, Primal Ancient Items do not increase the maximums further, but they always provide the maximum bonus possible for every single property.
Different item types not only have different possible properties, but also different value ranges for a given property. However, for each possible bonus, item types can usually be formed into groups that do share the same value range for that bonus. Some type/bonus combinations have particularly high ranges, making those bonuses particularly desirable on that item type.
Magic properties that add absolute (rather than percentage-based) bonus damage add a random amount from a range on every hit. The minimum and maximum of this range is itself randomly determined when the item drops, as with other properties, but they are not independent; items with higher minimum added damage tend to have a higher maximum as well, though this is not guaranteed.[note 1]
Development[]
Diablo III initially used a system similar to its predecessor, with a clearly prefix- and suffix-driven setup, and items potentially having higher levels depending on the game zone and difficulty they dropped in. These concepts were made obsolete with the increased focus on Legendary Items for itemization, and simplification of item levels and reorganization of how properties were determined in the Loot 2.0 system.
Footnotes[]
- ↑ It is theorized that the drop system first chooses minimum damage linearly from a range, then chooses the difference between minimum and maximum from another range, also linearly.