Information about the new Horadric Cube Recipes added in Patch 2.4.

While the big updates for Patch 2.4 were the runewords, skill rebalances and the kickoff of Ladder Mode, the old Horadric Cube wasn’t entirely neglected, as there are four new Horadric Cube recipes available.

These all involve upgrading the base item type of set items, and there were similar recipes for upscaling unique arms and armor in the past. The reason why you’d want to do this is somewhat questionable, as normal sets tend to have terrible modifiers compared to exceptional/elite sets, leaving relatively little incentive to ugprade them (although it is worth noting that many normal-tier sets did get some upgrades, it’s not nearly enough to close the gap and make most of them worth upgrading to exceptional or elite).

Upgrading base items has always been a bit of an odd proposition that bears some scrutiny before investing resources into it. Most items don’t benefit much from this, as upgrading most armors (say, upgrading Leather Armor to Serpentskin Armor to Wyrmhide) only increases Defense at the expense of higher Strength and level requirements. Not really a worthy tradeoff, it’s something usually done by players looking to flex how much in-game wealth they have to burn, a dubious status symbol, at best.

Belts and weapons are a bit different. When upgraded, belts gain more potion slots, which is a fine reason to upgrade them. For example, using these new recipes you could upgrade the [Death’s Guard] from a Sash to a Demonhide Sash, which would keep its mods (including the useful “Cannot Be Frozen”) while going from 4 potion slots to 16 potion slots… and also increasing its Strength/level requirements. Still not the best use of resources, but there’s more justification for it than any other piece of armor.

Weapons, on the other hand, increase in base damage as their base item type improves. For example, a Short War Bow has a base damage of 6-14, while its exceptional counterpart, the Rune Bow, deals 14-35, and the elite version, a Ward Bow, deals 20-53. If you upgraded Arctic Horn, it’d keep its inherent and set properties (20% Attack Rating, +50% Enhance Damage, +8 Attack Rating per Character level, +20-30 Cold Damage) while its base damage increased. It’s worth keeping in mind, however, that as your levels increase, so do the variety and potency of available mods. From a practical standpoint, by the time you’re high enough level to worry about upgrading normal-tier sets, they’ve long since lost their luster, and their mods are generally so poor that upgrading the base item won’t make them competitive with exceptional uniques, sets, runewords, or heck, even rares you could use instead. Exceptional sets fare better, but even in this category there’s not a whole lot of weapons in general, much less ones worth upgrading.

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New Horadric Cube recipes allow you to upgrade set items.

In any event, the new Horadric Cube receipes are as follows: