Item rarity
Every piece of equipment has one of five rarities. The colour of its name tells you which.
| Rarity | Colour | Affixes | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal | white | none | Can be socketed for runewords (Runewords) |
| Magic | blue | 1 to 2 (at most one prefix and one suffix) | Drops unidentified |
| Rare | yellow | 4 to 6 (at most three prefixes and three suffixes) | Drops unidentified, has a random two-word name such as "Doom Grip" |
| Unique | orange | Fixed lines with value ranges | Always identified (Unique items) |
| Runeword | special | Set by the word | Made from a Normal base (Runewords) |
Unidentified items. Magic and rare drops carry their modifiers, and those modifiers already work, but you cannot read them until you use a Scroll of Wisdom on the item. Wisdom is cheap: shops sell it (Vendors).
Plain items still roll. Even a white item rolls its base values within about 15% of the listed number, and some bases have an implicit modifier shown above the affixes (for example a resistance on a ring). See Affixes.
Seeing rarity on the floor. Loot stays in monster corpses, and corpses glow by the best rarity inside: blue for magic, yellow for rare, orange for unique. Rare and unique corpses also shoot a beam of light upward. Looting the item clears the glow (Loot and corpses).
Rarity of monsters is a separate system: magic and rare monsters carry modifiers and drop more (Monster rarity).
Changing rarity. Orbs move an item between rarities (Currency and orbs, Crafting basics): Transmutation turns Normal into Magic, Alchemy turns Normal into Rare, Regal turns Magic into Rare, Scouring returns it to Normal.
Related: Item level, Bases and tiers.