Does it just have something to do with the innate (pre-Anvil enchantment) modifiers on the item or is there a hidden something - i.e. is an armor item with 8 stars inherently better than a heavily modified same-slot item with 1 star?
It seems broken on rings and amulets. I'll have a 1-star ring with 5 stats on it and then finish a side quest and get a 6-star ring that has +2 block. WOW...junk
It's not broken, you're just not interpreting it properly. The star rating is a fixed quality of the <b>base item.</b> It may have multiple enchantments on it, but that doesn't change the star rating; a rusty sword with fifty billion enchantments is still a one-star item.
@Tacroy, but I've seen base artifact rings with 5 properties and a 1-2 start rating, and another artifact ring with only 1 property and a 3-4 star rating. It really doesn't seem to be working properly. 2 rings in Brax's shop can sell for the same amount and have the same star rating, but one ring has +1 to five different stats while the other ring has something like +2 conflagratory. The first ring will most always be better, and is certainly better enchanted, so why would it have less or equal star value?
Many rings come with extra enchantments on them, but just because you discover them that way doesn't mean those extras count as part of it's base. The base item stats are the ones that you find in the itemDB.xml file - and most rings have either a single, or no enchantments.
@lokiju "Base item" quality is just what the ring is made of. For example, a Gold Ring is higher quality than a Plastic Ring even if both are artifacts and the Plastic Ring has 5x the enchantments when you find it.
Well then the star rating isn't really helpful is it? The idea of the rating is to help players get a quick view of an item's worth...and if the stars don't show that current worth, then it's just taking up space that could be used for actual useful information IMHO.
I don't know if there are any hard and fast rules, but in general, a non-Artifact item's basic, same-for-every-one-you-find stats are higher on items with a lot of stars and lower on items with hardly any stars. Example: Traffic Cone - 1 Star - 1 Dodge (Total: +1) Vampire Hunter's Hat - 5 Stars - 3 Crit, 3 Dodge, 2 Counter, 1 Armor Absorb (Total: +9) Sir Albrecht's Helm - 10 Stars - 2 Stubborness, 8 Block, 1 Counter, 6 Armor Absorb, -1 Nimbleness, -2 Mana Regen (Total: +14) So all it really tells you is that more Stars = more likely to be found on the lower levels and will have higher BASE stats, before any additions from becoming an Artifact, then an item with fewer stars.
But who cares what the base stats would be if you almost always find the items with buffs on them? It's a waste of game space. The game should calculate what buffs are worth and base the rating on the current weapon's potential, not what it used to be in an itemDB.xml file.
Well honestly I agree that the stars are pretty meaningless, but linking them to number of enchantments is just as meaningless. I mean, you're not going to put something on just because it has more stars than the thing you had before, right? Depending on the build, I might take something that gives +2 sagacity over something that gives +4 burliness, even though the latter is more heavily enchanted. I definitely wouldn't swap a four star sword for a six star mace, if I don't have mace proficiency. It doesn't matter how good the item is in some theoretical absolute scale, what matters is how good the item is <i>for your character</i> - and that would just be ridiculous to implement.
It also doubles as a Rarity indicator. That's probably it's best use: you have a vague idea that if you find an 8-star item, and you Krong it enough times, it should beat your lower-star-but-similar-stats current item.
"But who cares what the base stats would be if you almost always find the items with buffs on them?" You don't. The only items that are commonly found with enchantments are rings and amulets. All other gear is more often found in its "base" form.
That's not exactly true -- The amulets I've found just lying around tend to be fairly standard, whereas some other items tend to commonly have extra enchantments (such as the 1-armed leather jacket, some weapons, whatever it's called). Furthermore, if you include items such as from quest rewards, evil chests, and the lutefisk god -- I've almost always gotten non-standard armor or weapons, and never have gotten an amulet (I'm not sure about rings). I suspect that you are basing your assumption only on personal experience, rather than knowledge of the game code, because my personal experiences completely contradict yours.
Also, back to the main topic, does the star rating maybe have something to do with how much money Brax will pay you for the item? In that case, it may be useful, at least, to determine for stuff you don't actually want, whether to save it for Brax, or discard, donate, or convert it into lutefisk.
Since the game seems to base value off how many stats an item has (at least for gear, not so much for Bolts and Potions and the like), that would be a good use as well. YOUR INVENTORY IS FULL, so drop the 1-3 star stuff and keep the 6-star armor and helms to sell. A Traffic Cone sells for what, 8 Zorkmids? Just leave that shit lying on the dungeon floor.
"That's not exactly true" No, it is exactly true. And yes, I'm basing my conclusion on the game code, which yes, I've been studying. Amulets especially only have one that has any stats at all, so when the game generates any other amulet but that one, it adds random stats to it. While there are considerably more rings with stats, there are still a large number without, again, leading to random stats being added. The same is not true of the rest of the gear. And no, this does not count quest rewards, evil chests, etc, as of course those are guarunteed to have extra enchantments. But the common items that you find in either chests, strewn on the ground, or in shops are, the majority of the time, "base".
