Kanai’s Cube

Kanai's Cube interface.

Kanai’s Cube (the KC or Cube) was added Patch 2.3, It harkens back to the Horadric Cube of Diablo 2, giving players the ability to convert or break down legendary items and gain bonuses from their special properties.

The cube is obtained from the Kanai's Throneroom located on level two of the Ruins of Sescheron in Act Three. This area was added to the game in Patch 2.3, along with the Cube, and is found only in Adventure Mode. Players need not complete a quest or bounty to obtain the Cube; just find the area (which requires some exploration, as it's not marked on the map and the Ruins are large)

Kanai's Cube Recipes

Short list. Click each recipe for full ingredients and details.

Archive of Tal Rasha -- Extract Legendary Power.
Law of Kulle -- Reforge Legendary Item.
Hope of Cain -- Upgrade Rare item to Legendary.
Skull of Nilfur -- Convert Set Item.
Work of Cathan -- Remove level requirement from item.
Darkness of Radament -- Convert gems.
Anger of Iben Fahd -- Convert white/blue/yellow materials.
Vault Portal -- Open portal to The Vault (undocumented).
Cow Portal -- Open portal to Not the Cow Level (undocumented).
Caldesann's Despair - Use Legendary Gems to boost an Ancient or Legendary item with a bonus.

Using the Cube

To use the Cube, players must first obtain it from the Ruins of Sescheron in Adventure Mode. Simply locate it there and click on the cube and it will automatically add to your account. The Cube is not a physical item you see in your inventory, and the only way to access it is by clicking the cube, or Zoltan Kulle standing beside it, in town.

Ingredients for the Cube Recipe must be placed inside the cube (drag and drop or right click); it will not pull them directly from your inventory or stash the way Blacksmith or Jeweler crafting does.
All ingredients must be correct; recipes will not work if they are short an ingredient or have extra items in the cube.
Stack amounts do not matter; players need not insert exactly a 50 or 100 stack. Larger stacks are fine and the recipe will subtract the required amount from the total stack in the Cube.

The usability of the cube wasn't great when it began testing on the PTR, and players often complained about having to run to their stash, pull out the materials required, run to the Cube, insert them, etc. Common requests were to make the Cube pull items from the stash as needed, or to make the Cube part of the stash or the basic Inventory interface, as the Horadric Cube was in Diablo 2.

Extract Legendary Power

This recipe destroys the legendary item and adds its legendary affix to the cube, enabling a character to enable that power through the cube and enjoy it without equipping the item. This can be done on any legendary or set item with a legendary affix (shown in orange text). Only that orange text power is extracted, not any other properties from the item, and the cube always imparts the property at its highest possible roll.

Archive of Tal Rasha

1 Legendary item with a legendary affix.
1 Khanduran Rune
1 Caldeum Nightshade
1 Arreat War Tapestry
1 Corrupted Angel Flesh
1 Westmarch Holy Water
5 Death's Breath

"All agreed that the cube was necessary if the hunt for the three was to be successful. They thought they understood the dangers."

--fragment of the Dark Exile Scrolls.

Reforge Legendary Item

Archive of Tal Rasha recipe.

This recipe rerolls any legendary item, completely resetting all stats as if the item had just dropped for the first time. The odds to roll Ancient are 1/10.

Law of Kulle

"For weeks the fires burned, the smiths hammered and the mages changes. Those who spent too long in the forge wandered, wide eyed and unblinking, in the daylight. They did not sleep."

--fragment of the Dark Exile Scrolls.

Upgrade Rare Item

This recipe allows a player to turn any level 70 Rare item into a random legendary or set item of the same type. Items purchased from vendors or gambled can be used, as well as found from drops. Best used on items that are expensive to gamble, like Amulets, or to hunt for specific legendary weapons, such as two-handed maces to attempt to create The Furnace.

Hope of Cain

1 Rare item (level 70)
25 Death's Breath
50 Reusable Parts (white material)
50 Arcane Dust (blue material)
50 Veiled Crystal (yellow material)

"When the physical material of the cube was forged, the real work began. Ten Horadrim took it deep into the cave, to a place that should never have been disturbed."

--fragment of the Dark Exile Scrolls.

Convert Set Item

Skull of Nilfur.

This recipe changes a set item into another random item from the same set. Intended to help players get that 5th or 6th item to complete a set when they keep finding the other items in the set, but not the one they need. Can also be used to hope for an Ancient upgrade of an item in the set.

This recipe was overpowered when the recipe went live, with very low material costs of just 10 Death's Breath and 10 Forgotten Soul. The easiest exploit was to use it on two-item sets, such as the Focus/Restraint rings, where the item would just change from one to the other repeatedly, making it very easy to roll until a perfect item was created. Blizzard vowed to modify the recipe to stop such easy rerolling the first day the PTR testing began,[1] and in the first PTR patch they changed this recipe to only work on sets of three or more items.

Skill of Nilfur

1 Set Item
10 Death's Breath
10 Forgotten Souls

"...of the cave, ten Horadrim channeled powers arcane and mystic. Ten felt their sanity slipping away. And nine averted their eyes as the cube came alive."

--fragment of the Dark Exile Scrolls.

Remove Level Requirement

This recipe lets players entirely remove the level requirement from any item, just as the Gem of Ease does when socketed into a weapon. Of little use to Softcore players, but this will make twinking even easier for Hardcore players, who could put an entire six piece item set on at level 1 and play through the entire game on Torment 10, going from 1-70 in just minutes.

Work of Cathan

1 item (any type)
1 Gem of Ease, rank 25 or higher.

"...was done, and the scars would remain forever. And so it was time for eh final step, the one each of them had secretly hoped would not come to pass.""

--fragment of the Dark Exile Scrolls.

Convert Gem Type

This recipe lets a player convert 9 gems into any other type of gem. It can be used on any level of gem, but only in quantities of 9. Gem Essences are purchased from Squirt the Peddler in Act Two, for 500,000 gold each.

Darkness of Radament

9x any gem (same type/quality)
1 Gem Essence (of the gem type you want)
5 Death's Breath

"...in time, the cube became the center of the Horadric works. Every initiative or action required it, and those who survived its creation became increasingly haunted by its presence."

--fragment of the Dark Exile Scrolls.

Convert Crafting Materials

Kanai's ghost assists with the Cube.

This recipe lets players convert 100 of any type of crafting material (white, blue, or yellow, but not Death's Breath or Forgotten Souls) into 100 of white/blue/yellow material. This is helpful to offset imbalances in material quantity, such as a player who has many more Veiled Crystals (yellow) and wants to convert them into blue or white materials for crafting purposes.

To craft, insert at least a 100 stack of the materials you want to change + 1 item (white, blue, or yellow) of the quality you want to change the 100 materials to. For instance, 100 Veiled Crystals + 1 magical item = 100 Arcane Dust (blue). You do not need to insert exactly 100 stack into the cube; any stack larger than 100 the game will automatically subtract 100 from.

Anger of Iben Fahd

100 stack of white, blue, or yellow material
1 item of the quality (white, blue, or yellow) you want to change the materials to.
1 Death's Breath

"He called the nine together, and declared that the cube must be put away, hidden even from them. Perhaps from them most of all. Seven of the nine concurred, and so the cube was taken under cover of darkness, entrusted....""

--fragment of the Dark Exile Scrolls.

Portal: Not the Cow Level

An undocumented recipe, this one opens a portal to the Not the Cow Level, a bonus area first introduced for Diablo 3's third anniversary. Only one per game.

1 Bovine Bardiche (legendary polearm)

Portal: The Vault

An undocumented recipe, this one opens a golden portal to Greed's Domain, a bonus area where fabulous golden riches await. Slaying Greed is the only way to obtain a first Boon of the Hoarder legendary gem each new season. (Once one has been found, additional Boon of the Hoarder gems may drop from Rift Guardians, same as other Legendary Gems.

Only one portal to The Vault may be opened each game, so if one is found randomly from a Goblin, this recipe can not be used in that game. (Presumably using this recipe means no random Goblin will open one out in the world, either, though this is difficult to verify.)

1 Puzzle Ring (legendary ring)

Kanai's Cube History

The initial details came from Blizzard's Patch 2.3.0 preview on June 23, 2015:[2]

New Artifact: Kanai’s Cube Those who played Diablo II might remember the Horadric Cube, a unique device which allowed you to combine items. Useful as it was, it was easily surpassed in power by the item from which it originated, Kanai’s Cube. In Patch 2.3.0, players will be able to discover this powerful ancient relic and utilize its incredible potential, including the ability to break down Legendary items and equip their special effects as passive skills (which are separate from your other passive skills), convert crafting materials from one type to another, and so much more.

Additional details were added in a reply by a community manager:[3]

How many passives can we use at same time? Does it take a passive skill slot to equip?

Tyvalir: There’s been some confusion about how these passives work, so let me clarify.

With the current plan, the passives you get by breaking down Legendary items with special effects in Kanai’s Cube do not replace passive skills on your character, but are instead part of a separate set of passives that are specifically stored within the cube. You can store as many special effects as possible in the cube, but only a limited number can be active at a given time (currently, this is three: one weapon effect, one armor effect, and one jewelry effect).

Theorycrafting Kanai's Cube

The concept of adding three "free" legendary powers thrilled the community, and theorycrafting ideas flooded forth.[4] A few of the main ideas:

Getting the RoRG property from the Cube grants much more item variety while still getting six-piece set bonuses. (Which is a big buff since the RoRG stats are generally much worse than other rings.
This partially fixes the "Ancient weapon problem" since players can add the special legendary property from the ultra-rare weapon required for their build without having to find that item in Ancient form.
Defensive buffs abound:
- Wearing an immunity Amulet + getting a second immunity from the Cube.
- Gaining CC immunity from Ice Climbers.
- Gaining full time double Unity buff without having to wear the ring.

In practice on the PTR, almost everyone just went for more damage. The Furnace for a weapon (or Calamity for Demon Hunters), Convention of Elements or RoRG for jewelry, Cindercoat or Hexing Pants for armor, etc. While there were some more unique choices for some classes and builds, the overall approach was pretty generic. Whether players will evolve more interesting builds over time, or if Blizzard will intentionally create some interesting item synergies that can only be enabled with the Cube + equipped items, remains to be seen.

Lore and Story

Blizzard shared much of the lore and story behind Kanai's Cube in a blog preview in July, 2015.[5]

The precursor to the well-known DiabloWikiHoradric Cube, Kanai’s Cube is a powerful artifact containing immeasurable transmutation power. Originally simply known as “the Cube,” the Horadrim created it as a tool to aid them in the Hunt for the Three. However, its creation was marred by dark methods and disastrous results, resulting in the order quickly determining that it was too dangerous for anyone to continue using. Creating the weaker Horadric Cube in its stead, they entrusted the first Cube to a secret organization of barbarians on Mount Arreat, who kept it safe from everyone, including the rest of their tribe. Throughout the years, these barbarians served as guardians over the Cube, keeping it safe from prying eyes and those who would use its powers for evil. The last of these guardians, the great Chief Elder Kanai, perished when the demon lord Baal destroyed Sescheron during the events of Diablo II: Lord of Destruction. The barbarians have always believed their warriors must be put to rest on the slopes of Mount Arreat but, after the destruction of the Worldstone and the mountain that housed it, Kanai’s spirit was unable to rest. Now doomed to stand eternal vigil over his home and greatest treasure, he awaits a powerful and honorable individual to whom he might pass on his task.

Kevin Kanai Griffin

King Kanai's ghost vs. Transmog.

The object is named after a former Blizzard artist on the Diablo 3 team, Kevin Kanai Griffin. He passed away in 2014 and the cube gained his name as a reminder of his work on the game.[6] The Barbarian King Kanai seen in-game near the cube, in physical and ghostly form, is modeled after Kevin's own Barb's transmog look.[7]

Not Just a Legend, But a Tribute

There is more to Kanai’s Cube than lore and functionality. While we always knew that we wanted to implement a form of the Horadric Cube into Diablo III, we never anticipated the events that would lead to it becoming Kanai’s Cube.

Kevin Kanai Griffith was a beloved member of the Blizzard family and a longtime Diablo fan. He joined Blizzard as an artist on the World of Warcraft team in 2005 and his work can be seen in the Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, and Mists of Pandaria expansions, as well as the World of Warcraft trading card game. As the Diablo III team came together, Kevin joined and made his mark on the original game, crafting a plethora of diverse and moody environments that you’re certain to recognize.

Kevin continued producing gorgeous environments and Diablo holiday art throughout the launch and beyond the release of Reaper of Souls. You might also remember him from footage of his Diableard being shaved live on stage at the 2011 launch of Diablo III, his Artist’s Stage Demo at BlizzCon 2013, or our second anniversary livestream. He was always an active member of the community both inside the company and out, whether it was by organizing weekly sketch groups, or encouraging his friends to team up and play games together. Kevin was an amazing mentor to everyone around him and a wonder to work with: you couldn’t help but get passionate and pumped about your job when he was in the room.

Tragedy struck in February of 2012 when Kevin was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer known as Alveolar Soft Part Sarcoma (ASPS). Kevin kept his spirits high throughout the grueling treatment process and continued to work on Diablo III as much as he was able, pioneering environmental features such as the weather and night/day cycles experienced in Adventure Mode. Though he fought valiantly, we lost our coworker and dear friend on October 17, 2014. His spirit and legacy will always live on in the many games he’s touched with his stunning art, as well as the hearts of every individual who had the honor of knowing him.

We miss you, Kevin. This Cube is for you.

Blizzard also created a video that describes the cube and memorializes its namesake.