***Post has been edited with latest comments and additions 2017-Feb-16 ***
Hi there,
I’ve been playing Grim Dawn for a while now, and I’ve read a lot about it on this forum and on others, which were very helpful.
However, I haven’t gone through a thread that is explaining in details the hierarchy and rarity of all items, associated with their own specific colors.
I am pretty sure most beginners are not aware of the complexity and diversity of the items in Grim Dawn , especially when it comes to MI’s, affixes, crafting or soul-bound items.
So let’s start with a simple association of ALL colors and items:
- Red Items => Consumables, Instant Constitution Healers
- Light Orange Items => Blueprints, Recipes
- Violet Items => Quest Items, Crafting Materials, Path Opener Materials, Notes
- Orange Items => Common Components
- Cream Items => Rare Components
- Grey Items => Iron Bits
- White Items => Common Gears
- Yellow Items => Magical Gears
- Green Items => Rare Gears
- Blue Items => Epic Gears
- Purple Items => Legendary Gears
- Light Blue Items => Relics
- Olive Green Items => Augments
The Violet items are not transferable between characters, as well as the Soulbound Items sold by the various factions in Grim Dawn. I’ll speak about those items later.
So the color coding is quite clear at first sight, although there might be some ambiguity/difficulty to differentiate some items from others (Quest items vs Legendary items, Common components vs Blueprints, Rare components vs Common gears…).
But this color recognition issue nearly disappears or becomes negligible when we use the Loot Filter at the bottom left of the screen.
Personally, I select the Green+ filter, and literally pick-up everything that drops.
When we look in details,however, at some specific color codes (such as the green color), we discover more differentiation within the color itself, and those differentiation are not at all self-explanatory.
Actually the green color items group gathers a bunch of various different kind of items, such as the Monster Infrequents, some faction items, some craftable items, and all the rare-affixes items. All those items are subject to différents mechanics, different drop rate and should definitely have different colors. Devs decided against even more colors to make these distinguishable and simply made them all green instead.
And this is where I want to dig in.
1) Affixes
In Grim dawn, when an armor, weapon, or any gears drops from a mob or is bought from a merchant (with the exception of the unique items that already have predetermined stats -> Epic & Legendaries), it has gone through a lottery process to determine its statistics (hence its power and rarity).
This lottery process randomly chooses from a list of prefixes and suffixes (affixes) that will add new stats to the base stats of the item.
Some prefixes are considered magical, and will have 1 to 3 average added stats lines each. They are rather common.
Some prefixes are considered rare, and will have 3 to 7 strong added stats lines each. They are pretty rare.
(List of affixes is available on https://gracefuldusk.appspot.com/items)
Consequently, this random process has got several possible output:
a. the common item has got no affixes - it will be considered as common
=> Incendiary Helm
b. the common item has got 1 magical affix - it will be considered as magical
=> Incendiary Helm of the Void
c. the common item has got 2 magical affixes - it will be considered as magical
=> Mighty Incendiary Helm of the Void
d. the common item has got 1 rare affix - it will be consider as rare
=> Menacing Incendiary Helm
e. the common item has got 1 rare affix and 1 magical affix - it will be considered as rare
=> Menacing Incendiary Helm of the Void
f. the common item has got 2 rare affixes - it will be considered as rare
=> Menacing Incendiary Helm of Olerons’s Wrath
2) Monster Infrequents
In Grim Dawn, some items drop from specific mobs or heroes or bosses only, and are given some specific powerful statistics. Those items are either a powerful version of a common item:
=> Incendiary Helm becomes Incendiary Casque
Either they are unique to some specific foes in the game
=> Salazar’s Sovereign Blade
Those items are called Monster Infrequents (MIs) and always drop as rare items, even if they do not have any rare affixes. Though they might have affixes, like common items.
So they bring a new step to the rarity hierarchy of items with the following variations:
g. the MI item has got no affixes - it will be considered as rare
=> Incendiary Casque
h. the MI item has got 1 magical affix - it will be considered as rare
=> Incendiary Casque of the Void
i. the MI item has got 2 magical affixes - it will be considered as rare
=> Mighty Incendiary Casque of the Void
j. the MI item has got 1 rare affix - it will be consider as rare
=> Menacing Incendiary Casque
k. the MI item has got 1 rare affix and 1 magical affix - it will be considered as rare
=> Menacing Incendiary Casque of the Void
l. the MI item has got 2 rare affixes - it will be considered as rare
=> Menacing Incendiary Casque of Olerons’s Wrath
This last tier is commonly called “triple rare” or “triple green”. They are VERY rare. To give you an idea, the blue unique items drop much more frequently than the triple rare…
Knowing that, it is useful to know that other items only drop exclusively from mobs/bosses, but are not considered specifically MIs/Green/Rare. Instead they drop as regularly color-coded items (Alkamos’ rings, items from Sentinel, Mad Queen, …).
3) Faction Gears
In Grim Dawn, some factions offer gears for sale as soon as you are Respected by them. Those gears appear green (so supposedly rare). Some factions also sell some jewelry when you become Honored (rings, medals, amulets), and they appear blue (so supposedly epic).
This color code for the equipment sold by the factions can be misleading. Indeed, all of those items are Soul-Bound, meaning they cannot be shared between Characters. Moreover, those items will never receive any supplementary affixes. This brings more complexity to the color code understanding. Personally, I would prefer those items to be of another color, even if their power is close to most epic items.
4) Crafting
The crafting system in Grim Dawn is once again not really self-explanatory, and might add confusion to the color code and the rarity understanding.
When you have collected a fair amount of Blueprints and Recipes, you will find in the Forge Master catalog, several different crafting options with several different colors.
- Relics, it is actually the only place where we can get them from
- Common Components and Rare Components, some of them can only be crafted
- Consumables and Materials
- Epic Items
- Legendary Items
Then there are many yellow items and green items.
a. Yellow Items
Those items are not really items, they are the gambling part of the crafting system. In crafting one of those yellow items, you can absolutely get a double rare affix green item… at least, you will get a magical item with one magical affix. This is completely random.
b. Green items
Those items are either Monster infrequent items, either craftable factions items. And the good news is that they can get some affixes! But again, randomly.
However you can choose the base stats of the items, which are already generally rather nice. This system can give you very powerful items if lucky, despite the fact that those greens crafted items will only generate 1 affix (magical or rare).
5) Guaranteed rare - early Act 1
There’s a number of unique rare (green) items scattered across the early portion of the game. Most of these are found on a rotting corpse.
They are found on all difficulties, though higher difficulties give stronger versions.
All of them can drop with a prefix OR a suffix, not both.
They’re fairly easy to find if you know where to look and they can generate some really good affixes.
- Francis’ Gun
- Hevill’s Greatsword
- Olman’s Axe
- Ghalvin’s Crossbow
- Bernard’s Slightly-Chewed Buckler
- Slithtongue
- Karvor’s Conjuring Bone
For more info about those items and their location, see the thread below:
http://www.grimdawn.com/forums/showthread.php?t=35639
6) Conclusion
To conclude, the green color code is the main topic of this post, as a green item can be of very very different quality from one to another, at the same level.
Let us take my first example:
=> those are the stats of the Menacing Incendiary Helm at level 20:
8% Fire Resistance
+5% Burn Damage
+8% Fire Damage
10% Damage Reflected
+12 Cunning
+10 Offensive Ability
=> and below are the stats of the Menacing Incendiary Casque of Oleron’s Wrath at level 20:
20% Fire Resistance
+8% Burn Damage
+8% Fire Damage
2-5 Fire Damage
10% Damage Reflected
+12 Cunning
+10 Offensive Ability
7% Pierce Resistance
+7% Physical Damage
+5 Physique
+7 Offensive Ability
Both items are green, considered as rare, hence of the same quality, although they are definitely not…
