Area item levels

[Crystalion]

Next, determining the ilvl you need from the alvl you want.  The short answer is look here, however that is a bit dry for most people.  Basically the game works out the alvl of an item when it spawns from its ilvl and its qlvl (quality level, associated with the base item - you can also see those listed on d2data if you look around under Base Items).  Once it works out the item's alvl then it randomly picks from all possible affixes with alvl less than or equal to the item's alvl.

Now, the alvl algorithm has a few twists to it...

Twists indeed.

I'm often intertested in cases where the base items qlvl is the driving force in determining alvl; i.e. ilvl < qlvl so ilvl is "set" to qlvl.

In plain terms, if you're imbuing or rerolling an item and have poor ilvl to work with, if your base item has enough qlvl mojo then you can potentially still get some desirable affixes.

For this concept a key breakpoint is qlvl 66. At qlvl 65 (and below) we're using one "branch" of the code to compute the alvl, ramping up to alvl 33 (remember I'm only concerned here with "low" ilvl items, where the base's qlvl is what matters). At 66 and above we're using the other "branch" of the code, starting at alvl 33 and picking up 2 points of alvl for each bump in qlvl above that.

So if I have my sights set on Cruel for my rare weenie imbue, needing affix level of at least 56 (which I looked up on d2data), I can see that is 23 points beyond 66:33 breakpoint (qlvl:alvl) and so, needing one qlvl per 2 points, I can readily see I need qlvl 66+12 or 78 at a minimum. Knowing that, it is really very easy to scan base items at a site like d2data.net to see which qualify for what. I can then happily snap up white base items from cow and pindle runs (e.g. elites from hell), etc., that I know are "valuable" in this regard.
...

Knowing how this stuff works, I'm disappointed that Wirt's Leg was not given a high qlvl (it has 0) because then the socketed weapon reroll or imbue could easily make it into a fun to fine weapon (depending on how high that qlvl was).

I remember in v1.10 beta that the upgrade (normal to exceptional) recipe would work on quest uniques, but I don't remember trying the upgrade of a rare (i.e. imbued) Wirt's Leg... the uniques ended up being Hatchets, btw, a presumably harmless bug. If you gave Wirt's Leg qlvl in a mod, you'd no doubt also want to establish a real upgrade path for it.

Last time I checked, even a runeword recipe that "should have worked" in Wirt's Leg failed. Pity. Ought to be a special one just for it, imo.