Diablo IV is about vanquishing evil and pressing the same buttons over and over to demolish enemy hordes in the hopes they drop a new sword or pair of boots that are stronger than the ones you already have. But what’s the rarest, most powerful gear you can possibly get in the action-RPG? A Blizzard developer has finally revealed that there are precisely six ultra-rare Unique items that most players will probably never see across their millions of collective hours with the game.
The best gear in Diablo IV are called Uniques. They each have specific affixes instead of randomly rolled ones, and their powers can’t be extracted to add to other gear. They’re effectively the most powerful items in the game, offering the strongest mix of stats and abilities for whichever slot they go in. They’re also incredibly rare, which is why some players thought they were bugged or might not even be in the game yet when only a few were spotted in the wild after millions of players began grinding through Diablo IV’s end game in the weeks following its launch.
So Blizzard lead class designer for the game, Adam Jackson, decided to reassure players that the six most ultra-rare Uniques do in fact exist. They just require a ton of luck to get. “I wanted to clear up some details on the rarest Unique items in Diablo 4,” he tweeted on June 24. “1. They can drop from level 85+ enemies 2. You get them anywhere you can get a regular Unique, and they always drop at 820 ipower 3. We currently have 6 of them in the game 4. They’re realllly rare!”
The six most powerful Uniques in Diablo IV are the one-handed sword Doombringer, the two-handed sword The Grandfather, the Ring of Starless Skies, Andariel’s Visage helmet, the Harlequin Crest helmet, and the Melted Heart of Selig amulet. They do things like wildly increase damage output and decrease your Resource expenditure. But most players won’t have to worry about any of that because they’ll probably never find one.
The first and most obvious question players had for Jackson was how they can most efficiently farm for these Uniques. “Whenever you get a Unique there is a chance for that Unique to instead be one of these,” he tweeted back. “Therefore, the best way to farm these is to do content that gives you the most Uniques per x period of time.” With no real apparent way to specifically grind for Grandfather and the rest, obtaining one is basically the in-game equivalent of winning the lottery.
The revelation has led some players to call for the drop rates to be buffed, or for better chances at nabbing one in certain end-game activities. Others like that these ultra-rare pieces of loot are indeed ultra-rare. Keeping the rates so conservatively low to start also allows Blizzard to make them more generous in the future, though some players feel things are a little absurd right now, especially since Uniques aren’t trade-able in Diablo IV.
It’s all part of the larger tension surrounding the action-RPG as it leans into being a live-service multiplayer game rather than an old-school solo experience. Some players have also balked at the idea of having to start leveling a new hero from scratch each season in order to make progress on Diablo IV’s battle pass. For players who just want to right-click until their heads fall off, it’s another justification for continuing to play. For everyone else it can start to feel like a time sink with a stingy payoff.
