I know we only have access to a pinhead of the content pertaining to the time traveling elements available at this time. But I was curious (also a suggestion, if this wasn’t previously conceived) once more of the game is available, will acquiring uniques, be tied to being found in only specific era’s? Maybe some ‘durable’ uniques can be found in multiple era’s. The era the unique was forged, and afterward. The unique could have increased, diminished or altered properties according to when it was found.
FYI, I personally support your idea to keep uniques unavailable from trading. Possibly, if crafting sources are trade-able and, furthermore, if uniques can ever be turned to shards, the unique shards might be an exception for a trade-able unique.
As much as i know, for a unique to drop you need to be able to drop the base item the unique is derived from. For example we can use the “Keeper Gloves” which are the legendary version of “Refugee Gloves”.
Refugee Gloves may only be droped in an era where the Refugee exists, making it impossible to drop them in an era where the Refugee doesn’t exist, which also makes it impossible to find the “Keeper Gloves” in another age.
If i remember correctly we got that somewhere from the devs that you can only find i.E. Steel weapons in an era that has the knowledge and tools to process steel.
Some Uniques will indeed only be ordinarily available in certain Eras. I say ‘ordinarily’ because games can change over time - look at the addition of Divinaiton Cards to Path of Exile as one example of a game making items available in a new way.
When it comes to Uniques not being tradeable, this is not representative of our current plans. We have been discussing making Legendary items non-tradeable. The two item rarities will be similar in terms of design goals, with Legendary items being harder to find and more likely to have exotic functionality - but they are not intended to be flatly superior to other items. Apologies if there was any miscommunication on our part!
I could see that uniques acquired out of the era they belong being dropped by “time-aberration-like monsters.” The monster being encountered would signify that you have good odds of getting something out of the ordinary from defeating it.
Also, in kind to divination cards, you could acquire fragments (splintered over time) of the unique that once completed could be placed in an eternity cache and assembled, upon finding it again.
I don’t think I was advocating for any particular power expectations from using uniques, and that I just feel that trading uniques in of themselves is immersion breaking. Uniques not being trade-able can also allow for leveling story-progression uniques acquired from quests.
Finally, I mentioned above and your response didn’t include input to this and I wanted to flesh-out the idea further (I appreciate your participation on the forum in any capacity as is). What of uniques that belong to older era’s being found normally in advanced era’s but appear worn or tarnished from deterioration, or possessing some evolved attributed from the passage of time. The deteriorated versions, could either just be a form of the bad rare drop, or also used in an eternity cache to restore it to its original functionality. The items could possess different lore or descriptions on the flavor text too, and there could be some other tag evidencing the era the drop was found. The evolved versions, would not be specifically better either, just a variant of different build enabling properties. As a game-lore fanatic seeing the uniques have some indication that the progenitor of the unique shaped the history of time they were from and had in some cases a continuing effect in the time-line would be appreciated.
I just recently re-read Sarno’s reply. I didn’t read it thoroughly the first time, but I believe my suggestions about era effect should apply to both Uniques and Legendaries. For the trading aspect, I am used to uniques being traded in most games, so its not a big deal from my perspective, its just a preference that they shouldn’t.
Finally, what is going to differentiate a unique from a legendary outside of rarity? The uniques already possess “exotic” functionality in relation to the affixes you get from normal gear. If there can be some clarification on what “exotic” would be that makes a Legendary feel different from a unique would be appreciated to know to look forward to seeing implemented.
