Base item upgrade.

For self found people finding an item with good mods / needed mods can be somewhat rare. Seeing a Fancy foil with flat phys., speed. and dmg. % and not being able to use that roll is sad.
Being able to upgrade it to Jewelled foil would be sweet and counterbalanced by the odds of it being found at lower lvl's than what is needed to get T1 mods.

What do others think? Would it be worthwhile?

The problem is that some of the low level uniques would become too strong.
Imagine upgrading this:
All passive str nodes become much better than dmg nodes. The only reason this is not misused is that the base item dmg is too low for end game...

That is an argument, but if they can't make Pillar or perhaps A Goddess Scorned work with upgrades, then I think I would still be a worthy idea solely for rares.

I would welcome this feature, even if only for experimental purposes. GGG is often experimenting with world rules but never the currency-crafting system.

A base item upgrade could be great in instances where players are having trouble finding upgrades, out leveling certain gear items, and lacking a sense of power-progression; these players could at least get some notion of progression by upping an item(s) that they currently have to the next higher base to squeeze out some more defenses/offenses until a more genuine upgrade comes along.

It's a bit of a shame, but any base item upgrade mechanic would surely have to not work on uniques.

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Treffnix wrote:

The problem is that some of the low level uniques would become too strong.
Imagine upgrading this:

All passive str nodes become much better than dmg nodes. The only reason this is not misused is that the base item dmg is too low for end game...

i deal 30k dps with that staff in end game. :)

I like the idea of base item upgrades. Very popular D2 idea. A found weapon you are using at level 40 isn't going to have tier 1 mods...

Generally, now, weapons/attacks have an extreme spike in effective damage output with each new weapon (Great weapon for 40, crap for 50...)

Now, if you could keep upgrading a weapon forever, it would continually be more and more medicore based on its tier mods... However, to close some loopholes, I'd say only allow an item be upgraded once. This might help you stretch an item over 15 levels or so, but would limit uniques from getting crazy...

Considering the above, it wouldn't be very hard to set pillar of the caged god in balance... just reduce the "PER N" values as/if needed. So, yes, all uniques would need to be reviewed, but jumping up a base item class isn't exactly OP, as long as a little item balance review is completed.

id prefer it to be upgradable and deal 120k dps :D

upgrading an item is good only on Uniques; having a lower tier with all t1 mods ain't very helpful, it would be just in rare cases i guess.

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jeonitsoc wrote:

i deal 30k dps with that staff in end game. :)

Sweet. Care to post which gems / other items make this possible? My little marauder has stopped progressing and I'd love to revive him...