There are going to be 18 gear sets in Diablo III. A "gear set" is not an [[Item Set]], a group of themed magical items with interrelated magical bonuses. "Gear set" is just a term the developers use for pieces of armor of the same approximate level. The lowest level items, for each armor slot, would make up one gear set. As These items would be things like cloth armor, plain leather boots and gloves, etc. The quality of items found throughout the highest level items of game (over all 3 difficulty levels) will increase gradually, as characters upgrade their gear from light cloth to heavy plate. All armor is themed appropriately for each typeclass, and the other 16 in betweenevery piece, much less gear set, will look different depending on which class or gender wears it.

It's known that players will have the ability to use [[armor dyes]] to change the color scheme of their armor, but it's not yet clear just how gear sets and items worn determine what a character will look like. Gear After months of confusion, Bashiok finally confirmed[http://diablo.incgamers.com/blog/comments/blue-on-item-upgrades-and-gear-sets /] that there are clearly indeed 18 different types of every armor item in the game.  Wearing a full kit of all the same tier of items will give any character the sort of matching, themed look that's seen in the various photos on this page. It's not clear just how unified character outfits will look with some mixed and matched in appearancearmor, though. If your Barbarian wears a full set from Tier 15, and then switches to the Tier 16 chest armor, or shoulders, but what if you change will those stand out one minor as obviously mismatched and ugly?  Most speculation says no, and players are largely assuming that armor from similar gear sets will match fairly well. For instance, all of the items, from gear sets 11-14 would probably be roughly similar in looking like your [[shoulders]]medium-heavy armor. However, or [[bracers]]if items from very different sets, or say a [[belt]]. Will that one item show up, looking mismatched? Or does the and [[chestbracers]] armor, or from gear set 15 were worn with the majority rest of the itemsfrom gear set 5, determine which it would look shows up on the character in the game? anything but unified.