Gamble is a mechanic in Diablo 2 that can be performed in the towns of the game. The player buys what appears to be a normal item, but said item has a chance of being magical, rare or even Unique or from Set.
Gambling in Diablo 2
Gambling Description
Gambling is a good way to improve your Character's equipment, and can help you, specially, to upgrade a new character's equipment.
You can obtain rare items or even Unique or Set Items, though the odds of getting one of these higher-level types of items is extremely low.
Where can I Gamble?
You can gamble in any town of Diablo 2. Difficulty, or whom do you gamble with, does not affect the odds at all. Instead, the odds are affected by your character's level. Gambling can only be influenced by certain items, like for example Gheed's Fortune, that lowers the price demanded by Merchants but does not have a direct impact on the odds of getting a better item.
You can gamble with the following NPCs:
Gambling Information
- Note that the quality of items is determined entirely by the Character Level that is gambling. Difficulty, Act or the Npc you choose to gamble with, have no incidence whatsoever in the odds of obtaining a better item through gambling.
- Once the gambling window is closed, the items available on the screen reset. It is common for players to close the screen many times in order to obtain the desired item types.
- The items offered are always randomly determined, BUT there is always one Amulet and one Ring. The price of items increase alongside the character's level. Again, except for Rings and Amulets, which are priced 50,000 and 63,000 respectively.
- High level characters get more item types offered to them. After your character reaches level 55, every time of item becomes available.
When is the best time to gamble?
There is no exact answer to WHEN you should be gambling, without knowing beforehand what are you looking for. More types of items and Modifiers, become available as the player character increases in level.
In case you are searching for a specific modifier, you will want to compare the Area Levels of those items. The Area level is used to determine the types of items and modifiers that can drop from monsters and from chests in all Difficulty Levels. In order to have the item you are looking for available in the modifier pool, you have to exceed its Area Level.
You can take advantage of this information. If a certain modifier you want is available at item level 50. It may be better to attempt to gamble for it at that level, before passing the item level of 60 and more modifiers being added to the pool, reducing the chance to obtain the desired mod.
How to afford gamble
The amount of Gamble you can do depends exclusively on the amount of gold you have at your disposal. In order to be able to do this repeatedly, you may want to specialize in wearing gold find equipment and sell a lot of items each time you travel to town.
Besides having gold find equipment, Gheed's Fortune and the Edge Runewords are ways to reduce the price from Merchants, thus allowing you to gamble longer with the same amount of gold.
Formula for item quality determination
Although there are normal items displayed in the gambling window, the real fun is attempting to score a higher quality item, if possible exceptional or elite.
The odds are the following:
- Magical: 1797/2000 (89%)
- Rare: 200/2000 (10%)
- Set: 2/2000 (1%)
- Unique: 1/2000 (.05%)
There isn't a single factor that can affect these odds.
On the other hand, the odds that determine if an item will upgrade from exceptional to elite are more complicated. They depend on Character Level (clvl) and Item Level (ilvl). For higher level characters, is more likely to get an exceptional and elite items, and also lower level items are more likely to upgrade to exceptional and elite.
The formulas are like this:
- Exceptional = 1 + (ilvl - exceptional qlvl)* 90/100
- Elite = 1 + (ilvl - elite qlvl)* 33/100
Note that you can't tell if an item will be Exceptional or Elite by its appearance alone on the gambling screen.
How to determine Item Modifiers
Items have what is called an Item Level (ilvl), which Diablo 2 uses to determine which Affixes (this encompasses both Prefixes and Suffixes), based on their Area Level (or Alvl), can possibly appear on that item. From the valid pool of modifiers available (based on item type and ilvl), for the character that "finds" the item, and proceeds to select one or more modifiers.
For item drops, be it monsters defeated or chests, the item's lvl is determined by the Monster's level (mlvl) or in case of chests, the area level (alvl) in which it was found. For Gambling, ilvl is determined by the level of the character that is Gambling.
How to determine Item Type when Gambling
The base items displayed in the gambling window are mostly determined by your character level. Past level 56, every type of item can appear in the gambling window. But this information is important for low and mid-level characters that want to roll determined items.
This only affects the types of items available in the gambling window, it DOES NOT influence the modifiers that can be found on those items. Modifiers are mostly determined by the character level.
Level 1
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
Level 5
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Level 7
Level 8
Level 9
Level 10
Level 11
Level 12
Level 13
Level 15
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Level 27
Level 28
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Level 30
Level 31
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Level 33
Level 34
Level 35
Level 37
Level 40
Level 52
