Ancient Items were added into the game in Patch 2.1.2 after extensive testing on the PTR.
These are level 70 Legendary or Set Items with a special "Ancient" designation which grants higher values to most of the affixes on the item, including the damage roll on weapons. Ancient Legendary Items can be big upgrades over non-Ancient versions of the same item since they will have higher values to many affixes, but ancient items are not guaranteed to be better since they might not roll with ideal affixes for a specific character or build.
Contents
Appearance
Ancient items look identical when they drop; there is no way to tell if an item has rolled ancient until it is ID'ed. Once identified, Ancient items have an orange border (green for set items) around the outside of the item tooltip, and say "Ancient" in the item name.
The appearance was given a fix in Patch 2.3, when Ancient items gained a {{double bracket}} around their name. (Normal legendary or set items have just {single bracket}. During PTR testing, this double bracket showed up even on items that hadn't been identified yet.
Frequency of Occurence
A small % of level 70 legendary items found from monster/chest drops on Torment 1 or higher will spawn as Ancient.
- Ancient items can come from all sources; monster or chest drops, gambling, Horadric Caches, Kanai's Cube, or blacksmith crafting.
- The odds of Ancient on an item found from a monster or chest starts at about 1% on Torment 1, and increases gradually. It was initially set at 10% on Torment 6.
- Patch 2.3 added Torment 7 - Torment 10 difficulty levels, with slightly higher odds of Ancient items increasing thereby.
- Items produced by all forms of crafting, via the Cube, or by gambling have about a 10% chance to roll as Ancient.
- This includes the Hellfire Ring or Hellfire Amulet which will roll Ancient about 10% of the time.
Affix Boosts
Ancient is most valuable on weapons, for the big increased damage. It is also very useful on most armor, as mainstat and vitality and resistance all roll at up to 30% higher. Jewelry is much less sought as Ancient, as most of the best affixes on jewelry are not affected by the item being Ancient.
- Mainstat or vitality rolls at 500-750 on normal legendary gloves and 751-1000 on Ancient legendary gloves.
- Mainstat or vitality rolls at 416-500 to normal legendary rings and 501-600 on an Ancient legendary ring.
- ResAll rolls 80-100 on normal armor and rings, and 110-130 on Ancient armor and rings.
- Single secondary resist rolls max 160 on armor, and max 210 on Ancient armor.
- +Damage rolls max +160 on normal rings, and +210 on Ancient rings.
- Life per second is greatly boosted, as is Life per Hit and Life per resource spent.
- Monster kills grant +x experience increase greatly.
- Armor is much increased on Ancient items.
Not Ancient Boosted
Some affixes are not boosted by occurring on an Ancient item, and these include many of the most powerful affixes in the game, especially those found on Jewelry.
For instance, as of Patch 2.3 a BiS amulet gets zero boost to the primary affixes by rolling Ancient, as Crit damage, Crit chance, socket, and +elemental% damage are unaffected by Ancient.
Affixes not affected by Ancient, on all types of items, include:
- Critical hit Chance
- Critical hit Damage
- Attack Speed
- Cooldown Reduction
- Resource Cost Reduction
- +Elemental Damage % to a single element.
- +X% Life
- +Damage to Elites
- Socketed (There are not additional sockets nor better odds for an ancient item to be socketed.)
- All special Legendary Affixes are unchanged by Ancient items.
Ancient Value by Item Type
One major point of debate concerning Ancient Items during their PTR testing was the varying utility by item slot. An ancient item of the same type with good affixes was always a big upgrade, but since Ancient items are as random as all other items in their affix range, it's possible to find Ancient items that are not upgrades, since their affixes are not ideal.
- Ancient weapons were the most useful, with guaranteed much higher damage than on any non-Ancient item.
- Ancient Armor was usually a nice upgrade, with guaranteed higher rolls to Mainstat, Vitality, and Resistances.
- Ancient Jewelry is the least improved by Ancient, since most of the best modifiers on jewelry, including crit hit, crit chance, +elemental damage, attack speed, and socket, are unaffected by Ancient. Only Mainstat, among the top affixes, was boosted by Ancient.