On this page you’ll find various useful recipes for the Horadric Cube.

The Horadric Cube is a quest item you’ll find during Act 2. It must be used to advance through the main questline, but the uses to which you’ll employ it to advance the story are just the tip of the iceberg. The Horadric Cube can be used to combine lesser gems and runes into higher ones, repair items, create items, add sockets to items, remove socketed gems, jewels and runes from items, and so much more.

The recipes various Horadric Cube formulae can be found below.

Potion and Ammunition Recipes¶

Recharge/Repair Recipes¶

Note that the above formulae will not repair ethereal weapons/armor. None of the other stats or properties of the weapon/armor are affected. The primary use of these formulae is to bypass the extremely high gold cost of recharging items.

Gem Recipes¶

Rune Recipes¶

Note that higher-tier runes are not always more valuable than lower tier runes. Cham and Sur runes are prime examples - it would be a great waste to upgrade two Lo runes into a Sur rune or even worse, two Jah runes into a Cham rune. This is mostly due to the number and quality of runewords each rune contributes to, along with their rarity. Ber and Jah runes are generally considered two of the most valuable items in the game… not counting the runewords they are used to create.

Normal Item Modification Recipes¶

Unfortunately you cannot add sockets to superior grade items (or inferior items, for that matter). You can, however, add sockets to ethereal items. The item must be unsocketed and cannot be magic, rare, set or unique.

The number of sockets added is random, from one to the item’s maximum number of applicable sockets, which varies based on the item type and the item’s iLv. A Kite Shield can never have four sockets, but a Monarch (elite version of a Kite Shield) can. A Crystal Sword found in Act 2 Normal difficulty will never roll with more than 3 sockets, but one found sufficiently late in Nightmare or Hell difficulty can roll with 4, 5 or even 6 sockets. The creator’s Lv doesn’t influence this formula.

Suffice to say, these formulae are ideal ways to create socketed items, usually for runeword bases.

Magic Item Creation/Modification Recipes¶

Most of the magical items listed above have a chance to gain a random suffix/prefix when created, along with whatever set suffix/prefix they’re guaranteed to have. Since most of these formulae yield an item with an iLv of 30, the usefulness of these random mods is somewhat limited, but still worth noting.

Perhaps the most interesting magical formula is the Magic Item Reroll formula, as it can be used to reroll Charms. Stick a dud Grand Charm in there and reroll it every time you get a Perfect Gem you don’t plan on using for other formulae (everything save Amethysts and Rubies are fairly disposable). Just make sure the source Grand Charm has a high iLv - ideally one you found in an aLv85 area. With some luck, you can roll up +Skills charms this way.

Rare Item Creation/Modification Recipes¶

These are some odd formulae that bear explanation.

In the case of the Add 1 Socket recipe, the question that needs to be asked is… Why? If you’re playing the full version of the game, the answer is simple: There’s no good reason to use this, you can just use Larzuk to add sockets. If you’re playing Classic Mode, there’s no Act 5, and all of the exceptional/unique items don’t exist. This just leaves you with whatever rare items you can find - adding a socket to a powerful rare weapon is arguably worth the Stone of Jordan.

As for the Rare Item Rerolls, these are more useful in Classic, as well, given the heightened importance of rare items. That said, there’s some justification for them in Expansion play, especially with amulets, rings and circlets. The higher iLv formula will create an item with an iLv equal to 0.66x the creating character’s Lv plus 0.66x the base item’s iLv, generally improving the created item’s iLv (assuming the iLv of the item and the Lv of the creating character are roughly the same). The lesser iLv formula will create an item with an iLv equal to 0.4x of the creating character’s Lv plus 0.4x the base item’s iLv, generally resulting in a lower iLv result. Note that an item’s iLv can’t be seen without mods, so in unmodded Diablo 2: Resurrected, you’ll just have to remember what critter/chest dropped said item to ballpark its iLv.

Concerning the Upgrade Normal/Exceptional Rare Armor/Weapon recipes, the modifiers on the armor/weapon do not change, but the base properties of the item type do change. A rare Maul would retain all its same modifiers but its base item type would change to a War Club. Its base damage would increase from 30 - 43 to 53 - 78, its Strength requirement would increase from 69 to 124, and it would gain a level requirement of 25 if it didn’t have one already.

Unique Item Modification¶

First things first, note that the recipes above do not change the item from one type of unique to another. Sorry, you can’t upgrade a Peasant Crown to create a Harlequin Crest. Much sorrow.

The modifiers on the armor/weapon do not change, but the base properties of the item type do change. For example, if you used the recipe above to upgrade a Bonesnap Maul with +300% Enhanced Damage, it would still be a Bonesnap with +300% Enhanced Damage (and all the other modifiers typical for that weapon), but it would now be a War Club instead of a Maul. Its base damage would increase from 30 - 43 to 53 - 78, its Strength requirement would increase from 69 to 124, and its level requirement would increase from Bonesnap’s base of 24 to a War Club’s base of 25.

These formulae are often used to upgrade normal/exceptional with useful modifiers like Titan’s Revenge to higher-tier variants to benefit from the higher base damage of said items. It can also be used to upgrade normal belts to exceptional ones, granting them max potion slots… just in case your Goldwrap didn’t have enough potion storage for your needs. Upgrading other types of items is typically only done to show off how good a player is at wasting resources.

Unsocket Recipe¶

Using this recipe destroys any socketed items. That being the case, the uses for this are somewhat limited - you can use it to remove the runes from a Spirit Monarch so you can add them again (usually done if you rolled a low +Cast Rate the first time). You can also use this to swap out lower-quality Rainbow Facet jewels for higher-quality ones.

Respec Recipe¶

You can use a Token of Absolution to respec a character. You can find the components for this recipe from the following sources:

• Burning Essence of Terror: Dropped by Hell Diablo
• Charged Essence of Hatred: Dropped by Hell Mephisto
• Festering Essence of Destruction: Dropped by Hell Baal
• Twisted Essence of Suffering: Dropped by Hell Andariel and Duriel

Moo Moo Farm Recipe¶

See the page How to Reach the Secret Cow Level for more details.