Mystic

The Mystic, Myriam Jahzia, is an NPC Artisan who will be added in the Diablo 3 Expansion, Reaper of Souls. She is not found as an NPC merchant in Diablo 3 Classic.

Along with delivering lore and story via her conversations, the Mystic will provide item enchanting, giving players the opportunity to reroll one affix on an item to upgrade the quality of that item. Enchanted items will become Bind on Account (BoA), making them untradeable. She is also the NPC used for transmogrification, changing your character's appearance for purely visual reasons.

Mystic concept and in-game art.

The Mystic and Enchanting

The primary service the Mystic provides is enchanting which enables players to reroll a single property (also referred to as an affix) on an item. The process is as follows.

1. Take an item to the Mystic and select one of its properties you would like to change.
2. Click that property and a list will appear of the new properties available to replace it with. Select which property you would like.
3. Give the Mystic the necessary crafting materials and gold.
4. If you are not happy with the result you can refuse the change (using up the crafting materials) and try again.

But:

1. You can only select one property from the item to replace and that is the only property you can change forever. All other properties are 'locked in' the moment you change a property.
2. Any items you enchant become account bound and therefore can not be traded or sold to a merchant.

• More on Enchanting

The Mystic and Transmogrification

The Mystic is also in charge of the transmogrification feature added in Reaper of Souls, which gives players the ability to change their appearance. Rather than displaying purely as their current equipment shows, players are able to change the appearance of items, (including Legendary and Set), to that of another that they have 'unlocked'. The process is as follows.

1. Select Transmogrify from the Mystics menu.
2. Place the item you wish to alter in the transmog window
3. A list of items available will appear
4. Select which look you would like and click on it to preview it on your character
5. When your satisfied, hit 'Transmogrify' and for a gold fee the item will change.

But:

1. Items transmogrified become account bound so can not be traded or sold to a merchant.
2. Items you unlock in Softcore mode will not be unlocked in Hardcore and vice versa.
3. Items you unlock will be available to all characters on the account in that mode.
4. Dye you have placed on any item will be overwritten when transmogrifying. You can redye the item after it's been transmogrified.
5. Legacy items (items acquired before the expansion/pre-expansion patch) will not unlock the new looks but they can be transmogrified.

• More on Transmogrify

The Mystic's Story

Myriam is a member of the Vecin, a nomadic clan blessed with magical visions they believe come from the powerful deity known as the Allmother. Although Myriam is a particularly gifted Vecin she proves no match for Malthael's forces and they manage to trap her in Westmarch. This is where the player is to rescue her from in Reaper of Souls after which she will be at your service and join your travelling Caravan.

When the Mystic was first revealed with the other Artisans, many fans speculated that she might be Adria, the NPC witch from Diablo I. While an interesting supposition, this ultimately proved to be untrue.

Development of the Mystic

Enhancement options as of the beta build.

When first announced, the Mystic handled numerous duties. A quote from the Gamescom 2010 Artisan FAQ.

The Mystic creates scrolls, potions, magical weapons, spell runes, and charms, and can also enchant items.

All of the Artisans had more varied tasks when they were first revealed. Initially the Mystic was intended to be the NPC who would craft magical items such as wands and sources, but over time all item crafting was allocated to the Blacksmith. Other planned Mystic functions were eliminated by turning them into inherent abilities (such as selling scrolls or identifying items), or removing them from the game entirely (skill runes as a type of item). With these changes the Mystic soon had nothing left but item enchanting, and the developers didn't feel that system was adding enough to the game at that point to retain it.

The Mystic's main utility comes from her ability to add bonuses to all sorts of items. This system was detailed in the BlizzCon 2011 Panel: Gameplay & Auction House, and discussed in Blizzcon 2011 interviews. Here's Andrew Chambers speaking on the topic.

Gameplanet: Are the Mystic's item enchantments randomised or can they be selected?
Andrew Chambers: You specify the item you want, then you choose the enhancement you want, and that enhancement actually has a range. So say the plus experience might be 10 to 20 percent: when she applies it you might get +15% experience. You can reapply that and you’ll have a change of getting +16% or +17% experience, but it will never go beneath the current enhancement and you've always got a chance to improve to the maximum possible value.

Concept art for the Mystic's wagon.

On 19 January, 2012 Blizzard announced that the Mystic would not be found in the initial release of Diablo 3. Her function at that point was deemed largely redundant to the bonuses provided by gem socketing and the team wanted to save her for later, when they could adapt her functions to fill some future roll.

The design team is currently looking at systems and cleaning them up, removing any superfluous system objectives and those that are beyond fixing. Thus, we're removing the Mystic artisan. As we look at the big picture, the Mystic simply wasn’t adding anything to our customization system. Enhancement was really just the socket and gem system with a different name, and it would prolong the release of the game even further to go back to the drawing board and differentiate it, so we’ll revisit the Mystic and enhancements at a later time. Removing her from the game took some time, but it’s nowhere near the efforts that would be required to flesh out a better customization system. We hope she’ll be able to join your caravan in the future, but for now we’re going to focus on the extensive customization options the game already offers.

When asked what happens to her enchants Blizzard confirmed:

Oh right, uh, as far as I know the mystic enchants are just being put into the item affix pool, not gems. Might change. We’re still working on adding affixes, cutting ones that don’t work, and testing. No major changes for gems, though.