yea I forget the formula off hand it's like +5 or 6 of item base level or something and yes grief is banned but there isn't a 59 bracket anymore so it's just the wild west anyway. I use my 59 as a tele smiter with fort grief exile for killing hlds in lld games
copy pasta from another place
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There is a +5 modifier to the base level requirement when transmuting a normal rare/unique to the exceptional item type. There is a +7 modifier when a rare or unique is upgraded from exceptional to elite. (This applies to set items too although not exclusively written)
So, when you go from normal to elite entirely you have to account for the +12 and d2 players typically know this as the +5/+7/+12 rule for upping. There is also a caveat for when socketing upped items because it also applies to the level requirement of whatever you are socketing.
This is a good example I will copy and paste from a different forum:
Suppose you had a Rixot's Keen, upgraded to elite, socketed with a Zod.
The unique has a level requirement of 2. The new base item has a level requirement of 42. The Zod has a level requirement of 69. Because you upgraded it from normal to elite, you add 12 to the level requirement.
That means the final level requirement is max(2, 42, 69) + 12. That is, 81. Without the Zod, it'd require just max(2, 42) + 12 = 54. So, while one might think that adding a 69 level requirement rune in an item would increase the level requirement to 69, this is not the case for upgraded items, since the +5/+7/+12 is added after everything.
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So yeah, upping this again will make it lvl60 yet another fail