A few of the 1.10 cube formulae

[Logic_X]

3 is a commonly encountered number (others are 2, 7, 12, etc. basically any divine or aesthetic numbers). That's probably the only reason behind it being chosen (ie it looked good, or was the first to come into mind).

There's whole explanations that can be made, and opinions probably vary on what exactly all the numbers that fit into this category are...but the most common ones are 3 and 7. With numbers like 2, 5, 12, 55, 66, 69, 99, 666, 777, etc. all being somewhat secondary but still seeing many occurances in literature and our every day lives. (there's also some that would list all the multiples of 5....ie 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30,... because they're more appealing as the actual number than most other numbers). (I would give examples but that's too far off topic).

3 in perticular is related to:
The Trinity (God, His Son, and the Holy Ghost)
The Moon, The Sun, The Earth (seen in some pagan religions - very interesting stuff there)
The Creation, The Growth, The Destruction (I don't remember the the religion...thinking Hindu - I know Shiva is the destruction)
hard to think of any others at the moment...sure people can give examples other than those, they're just the first 3 that came to mind.

[Professor Frink]

the three of one = one of the next higher also makes your rune/gem quantities a base-3 (ternary) number system, so if always cube-up when you have the chance, you can list how many of each rune or gem you have in order from most valuable to least and get a nice base-3 number. This would allow you to use runes as a balanced ternary currency where you can exchange any amount up to about 1.5 um, in units of el, by only exchanging (up to) one of each type of rune!

For example, if i wanted to buy a Immortal King's Detail and it cost 1,000,000 el (completely hypothetical value), I could exchange:

this_____________________for
dol__________1594323_____shael______531441
ral_____________2187_____amn_________59049
tal______________729_____ort__________6561
eth_______________81_____ith___________243
el_________________1_____nef____________27
subtotal_____1597321________________597321
_________________________belt______1000000
total________1597321_____=_________1597321
the value of a rune is how many els you'd need to cube it, 3^runenumber)

Since you tend to exchange equal amounts of any given rune, you won't tend to build up a shortage of one kind of rune or a scarcity of another just from trading (runes have different scarcities and usefulness, so it'd still have to happen).

Thus solving the d2 currency problem, at least in theory. The math's a little annoying, but an online calculator could handle it without problem.

The inability to automatically break higher runes to lower, the extra gem reagent and the 2:1 ratio past a certain point kinda screw up the mathematical coolness sadly.

-- frink

[Logic_X]

What's funny...is probably in the end, they probably just chose a number off the top of their heads (making sure it wasn't too excessive though) :).

[Brista]

Thus solving the d2 currency problem, at least in theory.  The math's a little annoying, but an online calculator could handle it without problem.

It's a very elegant idea, Professor, now try spending ten minutes in a BNet trade channel and see if you can see how it could be made to work in practice :lol:

[Occhidiangela]

Then it can be a useful bnet Realms Diablo II currency.

If not, then we are back to dropping stuff on the ground.