Created my first Classic char since 2001.

A few quick Q's: do items spawn with sockets or is the cube recipe with gems (skulls+soj for rares) the only way to have a socketed item?

For rare shields, as an example, would a rare ever drop with a prefix that comes with 1 socket or must you sacrifice a SOJ to have any rare with a socket?

For a magic shield, same question. I know the formula is different, no hefty SOJ price to pay, but is cube the only way since I didn't see any "jeweler's" or "mechanic's" prefix in the list of D2 Classic prefixes?

cube recipe for rares only

Thanks, so rares with a socket all went through the cube and ate a SoJ.

How about magic, do they only get sockets from cube recipe as well?

cube only!

wait.. are you telling us you've been playing classic for 19 years and didnt know about this?

I played the beta before D2 came out (if anyone reading this was around back then they know about the godly PTopaz dueler and how awesome it was finding a gem shrine).

In 2001 I switched to LoD as soon as it came out. In 2003 I left for the Navy. In 2020 I got bored with COVID keeping me in the house and bought some CD Keys and started playing LoD ladder in June, just recently made a classic character and it is ridiculously difficult compared to LoD

Sooo I played for 3 years, stopped for 17, and now have some newbie questions. It was so foreign to me, I couldn't believe there was no weapon swap, and how tiny the cube is, let alone that Mercs might as well not even exist. The fact that 105fcr is hard to achieve on a sorc is nuts. Where's the charms? Diablo clone spawns but doesn't drop an Anni? Dafuq is the point lol...

Magic items can’t be socketed

well there is a cube recipe to roll 1-2 socketed magic weapons, also some a5 sock magics (not available anymore)

This post was edited by BaHgerAUT on Oct 5 2020 12:39am

~5 years ago a hack was public that moved chars to any wp in the game
many players used this hack to travel to act 5 in classic and completed the larzuk quest to socket unique, set and magic items

all fixed now, but the items still exist on the servers

Not only 5years ago
If I rem correctly, people found ways to a5 even longer ago

Cool, cool, but that only impacts NL at this point. For ladder, in-season, it seems like my only options are: rares need 1 soj to add 1 socket, magic need gems to roll sockets (1-2?), but neither would ever spawn with sockets, and no uniques have sockets.

Thank you all for clarifying!

That was probably a very interesting time in the game being able to complete A5 quests, Anya + Larzuk, personalize some GG gear...