Identify

Unidentified items are weapons or pieces of armor or jewelry that must be identified, to reveal their properties, before they can be equipped. Identifying items has been a suspenseful delight throughout the Diablo series, and while it remains a game feature in Diablo III, the amount of items to be identified has been reduced, and it's been made easier to identify things.

Only Rare, Set, and Legendary items, found from monster drops, need to be identified. Magical (blue) items do not; their prefix or suffix is stated clearly as soon as the item is found.

Another change from earlier titles is that NPCs are no longer required, or able to identify items. Deckard Cain returns, and can be seen in town in Act One of Diablo III, but he does not identify items. Players have speculated that Cain will not be present in town throughout the entire game, and thus it wouldn't have made sense for the developers to make him a useful source of identification when he was not going to provide it throughout the entire game.

Identify yourself

When the Artisan system was first introduced in 2010, the Mystic had item identification listed amongst her talents. She eventually lost that talent, before she was removed from the game during late testing in January 2012.

NPC assistance is not required for item identification, since characters now have identification as an inherent ability. This process required scrolls during most of Diablo III's development, but those scrolls were removed in a major game system overhaul in January 2012, and players were given the inherent talent. To use it, a character need simply right click on any unidentified item, and after a short (two second) status bar, the item's properties are revealed.

Identification in Diablo III

The system for identifying items has changed repeatedly during Diablo III's development. Bashiok reflected that principle when he commented on the many options for Identification in a forum post from February 2009.

The identify system has gone through quite a few internal iterations already, and I think we’ll probably see quite a few more. It’s an interesting system in a lot of ways because first off it’s something everyone remembers from the previous games, so if it wasn’t there you’d probably wonder where it went. In a different light you could literally remove it entirely and probably not impact gameplay itself very much at all. It’s also open ended enough where you could blow the system out and do something new and cool with it. Ultimately (and I know it’s a broken record at this point) we’ll do what is best for the game and what adds to the best game experience possible.

Personally – my own personal thoughts on the system – are that I think you could do almost anything with it and I’d be just fine. It wasn’t annoying to me when playing the previous games, it was just a part of how they played, if it was removed I don’t think I’d really miss it either, and if it was changed for the better then that’s cool too.

ID scrolls were seen in the August 2010 Gamescom demo. and also in that year's Blizzcon demo. The major changes to the system came during the beta, with blue (magical) items changed to not require identification. More changes came in Beta Patch 10, when identify scrolls were removed from the game, and characters were granted the inherent ability to ID items with just a right click.

Gameplay Tool

Identifiable items have been around since early days of pen and paper RPGs (and, ironically, there's a Diablo pen and paper RPG), where a player found loot they had to spend some resources to identify in order to make use of them. It created a level of realism that magical items found are mysterious. One of the good reasons to identify rather than just start using was the fact that weapons and items were not always benevolent, but could be cursed.

There are no cursed or deleterious item mods in Diablo II or Diablo III.

Item Identification in the Diablo Series

Identifying all magical (or better) items was a standard feature of the series prior to Diablo III.

Diablo I required players to use Identify Scrolls or to consult Deckard Cain to find out the stats on magical items and unique items. (There were no set or rare items in Diablo I.) Identification from Cain cost 100 gold per item, and unidentified items could be equipped, though they did not grant any bonuses (or penalties, as cursed items were found in Diablo I) until they were identified.

Diablo II continued Diablo I's system, with all magical and unique items, as well as the newly-added set and rare items requiring identification. Tomes of Identification were added, allowing up to 20 scrolls to be "stacked" for convenience, and Deckard Cain was still the town identification NPC, now doing it for free after players rescued him from ruined Tristram in an early game quest.

Lore

Any object imbued with magic exhibits an aura that is easily noticed. To determine the exact nature of this enchantment, however, requires intense study and an extensive knowledge of arcane materials and symbols.

It's extremely difficult to master the ability to memorize a spell of this magnitude but the Vizjerei mage clan have developed a means for the untrained to discover the secrets of an ensorcelled object by using a rare crystal that is extremely sensitive to magical auras.

This sensitivity makes it very fragile, however and the crystal will shatter if it is brought too close to an enchanted item. The very act of Identifying such an object also destroys the crystal. Scrolls and staves have been crafted and imbued with the spell that identify virtually any magical aura. By using special inks and dyes that contain tiny grains of these crystals, the stability of the crystal is maintained until it is used to examine the enchanted object.