The Revenge of the Savage Bardiche

[Crystalion]

The ancient "make a Savage Bardiche" cube recipe got overhauled at some point and I just caught on. Actually I made one as a joke for a friend while we were talking about the various cube bugs I've been finding (reported in maggot lair). I had an immediate "wait a minute!" reaction, as the resultant base item was NOT a Bardiche.

Sure enough, the description on Arreat Summit and the patch_d2.mpq cubemain.txt have changed to reflect this but I hadn't noticed. I'm not conversant with the qlvl stuff for rolls, but the recipe has 50 60 which seems pretty high (compared to some other reroll recipes).

In any event, (in v1.10 beta 1) I gave a level 1 character a cube and the requisite ingredients...

Any staff (normal act 1 Akara will commonly sell you a plain staff cheap)
Any kris (normal act 2 Fara sells will commonly see you a plain kris cheap)
Any belt (normal act 1 Charsi will commonly sell you a plain sash cheap)
Any diamond (I used a diamond chip)

As I'm playing SP I fudged and reloaded to try this a few times. I discovered with my level 1 roller the same thing I'd seen in a few tests with my level 53: commonly getting exceptional base polearms (e.g. up to Partizan). A minority of the time the item would roll with a suffix (not just savage).

Do I need to mention that these items sell back to the shop for a *lot* more than the components (cost)? Selling or cubing flawed and chipped diamonds might not be a good choice if you're cash strapped, as I'm estimating the average value (profit) per chip to be quite a ways into the x 1000s.

If you are starting out on the new v1.10 ladder and hire an act 2 merc you will probably be able to make him quite a nice damage dealer (before he even is allowed to wield it, I imagine, as I was seeing often seeing level 19 to 25 reqs on these rolls).

Thanks to my Assassin goofing around, I see that "Diamonds are a girl's best friend."