Potencial exploit to obtain perfectly socketed items from vendor recipes

This is an issue caused by the visibility of sockets on unidentified items.

There are many vendor recipes that generate unidentified items. These recipes appear to use a product of their inputs as the seed for the created item.

As a result, by collecting a large set of inputs, and cycling through the different combinations you can get many item rerolls for free.

e.g.

Using the recipe:
5x Items of same type & rarity = 1x Item of same type & rarity


1) Collect (or manufacture) 15 rare "Commander's Brigandine" armours.
2) Iteratively cycle through all the possible combinations of 5 that are possible from your set of 15.
3) For each combination the vendor will offer you a different rare whose socket configuration will be shown to you.
4) Continue doing this until you get a socket configuration you like (e.g. 6 linked!), and then buy it.

Even with a small set of 15 inputs you have
15!/(5!*10!) = 3003 different combinations to try.

While working through all these permutations might seem tedious, I expect it could be quite easily scripted client-side.

I'd suggest that items created by the vendor should not display the created item's actual socket configuration until the item has been purchased.

p.s.

I believe a similar issue was raised & fixed in an earlier beta release? Where the created item's seed would be completely random, so just toggling one of the inputs would get you a new output each time.

Its your option and free decision to try out any possible combination to get the best result - it demands a lot of cycling and especially for items that dont fit (all) into your inventory its not that easy to keep the overview...

Same, and also expected as intended, is with the jewelry creating recipes: lay 3 different coloured gems into the trade window and swap some amulets to them to check the best onxy you get offered... ;)

My primary concern is the ease with which this can be automated with scripting.

It'll seriously undermine the game's economy if the process for obtaining perfectly socketed (or as you point out, perfect intrinsic stats) can be automated.

I can see something like this happening, but, I am not sure it will undermine the economy that much.

But it seems like they could easily fix the issue by just having an item with no stats/holes in the vendor window as a place holder.

Makes it more interesting.

Edited because I put this in the wrong forum.

/facepalm