I want to talk about a very important thing. This could also be an overlooked part of Diablo 4, namely Blacksmith upgrades or Jeweler upgrades.
What Upgrades Do?
You may have seen them in Diablo 4 Open Betas. As you play the game, you can upgrade your items to Blacksmith, and these upgrades can be powerful in certain situations.
The baseline for an upgrade is that it adds 5 Item Power to the item, which increases its base stats in the normal way. All weapons have Armor value or DPS value, which is directly proportional to the Item Power itself. You can use Diablo 4 Gold to get any items that you want.
But there’s another thing going on, and that’s that each Affixes also increases, and each time by a considerable amount. When you upgrade your item, you can get 10% extra base stat value. But the rating and ricochet of your rapid fire, those can’t be increased by 10% like that.
But take other attack speeds as an example. It used to be a minimum range of 2.8%, from 1.6% to 3.3%. This has had an upgrade. So the base item here I think is 1.5% to 3.0%.
Tier Jump Breakpoints
But now comes the real problem, and that’s their Item Power Breakpoints. By the time you reach level 340, almost every stat that can be rolled on gear actually hits the next Breakpoints.
If an item rolls with a specific Item Power, every stat on the item will be at that level, unlike other RPGs where you can find Diablo 4 items.
So you’ll always go to the next level to level up for Blacksmith. You’ll see it in action here. If you make the next upgrade, level 340 leads to the next Breakpoints.
Our Barrages have suddenly gained a level, and they now roll at level 340 Item Power. This is obviously a very important upgrade to Item Power. But you’ll also see something else weird happening here. Attack 0.4% actually reduced speed.
We have 1.6% to 3.3% Attack Speed, and 2.4% Attack Speed control. This is minimal rollover, so at these Breakpoints it’s actually all stats that are re-rolled as you level up through them.
So similarly, we’re actually kind of lucky that there are additional ranks here, and they all rolled to the max. But Attack Speed was not so lucky. That doesn’t mean it makes more sense for the game to function this way.
Something to be aware of is which values you need to roll if you want to upgrade your items. I tried various ways to let you know the game system or exploit it in some way. I try to buy Diablo 4 Gold at IGGM.com to upgrade it and always remember the stats that the item will roll over the next upgrade. It’s definitely weird, but that’s how it works.
Item Power Jump Examples
As I said before, each max upgrade adds 10% to the stats, and this includes Inherent Affixes. Now, if you upgrade first, you’ll see that inherently this huge jump affects health on kill. Because it’s the next layer down the stats and has no scope. So it will upgrade directly to 20%.
You’ll see that the jump is actually pretty small, since you have to roll to unlock it. Because it re-rolls the level jump stats, we don’t really get any benefit, and if you look at this, the base skill damage isn’t really upgraded much here.
Now here’s another weird thing, and that’s that Intelligence’s main stats don’t actually jump to the same tier. Like one of the exceptions, this is something to be aware of. There are certain other similar fixed values, such as Maximum Life. Because compared to a percentage value that has these jumps, it’s kind of like you know it’s going to slowly scale up as you go.
Attributes & Flat Ranges
Here are more examples of these statistical Breakpoints. For example, Fire gets 10.5% Maximum Life, and a 25% bonus. It is almost double the same value as before.
Here, if you compare the previous upgrades with the gloves here. You’ll also see, for example, attack speed more than doubled. It’s a 2.8% increase from the previous upgrade’s 2.2%, and basically doubles Overpowered, from 9% to 10.8%. You’ll see this as these ranges increase substantially.
This is critical to optimizing your gear. Because you’ll see the opportunity to make a worthless item even better, like Gloss.
When To Upgrade Your Items?
Finally, is also the most important part of this Blacksmith Upgrades content. Since you also don’t want to waste your Diablo IV Gold for sale, many people are progressing through the early levels. You know that most of the time your gear really matters too much. You just have to like to pick and have your weapons ready and you’re ready.
You can try to upgrade your weapons to the highest level. Because this will increase its base DPS value, and usually weapons will also bring most of the attack properties except gloves. So these are just very important slots. But keep an eye out for these Breakpoints and anytime you have extra material.
You can do at least one or two Blacksmith upgrades or Jeweler upgrades on all items. This way, you no longer have to replace them every five minutes. Then, as your level increases, your item storage time will also be longer. You’ll get a third upgrade and maybe even a fourth, and so on.
All in all, this is the hidden power of Blacksmith upgrades and how I use Blacksmith to upgrade my items. I wish players the best of luck with the release of Diablo 4.