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."

[Ruvanal]

Shhh.... your spilling the beans on how I have been equiping my act 2 mercs early in the game. jk ;)

The output polearm will have an ilvl=50 (the 60 parameter is ignored in this formula). The type of polearm is randomly picked from the ones with a qlvl<50. The Savage prefix has a level requirement of 19 and if you get one the exceptional polearms it will probably be what pushes the req level to 25. With enough sampling you should be getting 50% of the polearms to also have a suffix.

The polearms that have a qlvl<50
Bardiche
Voulge
Scythe
Poleaxe
Halberd
War Scythe
Lochaber Axe
Bill
Battle Scythe
Partizan
-endlist

[Crystalion]

Shhh.... your spilling the beans on how I have been equiping my act 2 mercs early in the game.&nbsp; jk&nbsp; ;)

Thanks for the info.

Actually, having discovered this just prior to upgrading to v1.10 beta2 and effectively becoming naked, I have been quite happy to know it, as I've had four shots at rolling a decent weapon for my merc now in under an hour of play (I want the partizan, of course).

Since I happened to be broke at the time of the upgrade, the cash from selling these off has been nice also.

[MMAgCh]

This should indeed allow one to make Act 2 mercs considerably more powerful early on. :)

[Brista]

My favourites are Savage Halberd for a level 19 merc (they need some + Str to lift it) and Savage Bill for level 25 characters or mercs (with +Str). It's a pretty potent druid weapon for people who can accept slow weapons in return for big damage

I think it's half of them that get suffixes. Mana leech or life leech is pretty handy although more damage is always nice