Sacrifice of the Vaal: Teaser Screenshot #1

I've been around this game long enough to be 90% sure that white socket has nothing to do with corruption. It's probably in a recipe that's already available, but no one has discovered, and this is GGG's way of getting people to find it. When people see corruption and no white sockets, they'll figure it out.

Before I get too carried away, and Im about to, we always guess a million things and theyre almost always far more complex, bloated, time intensive ideas compared to what really comes. So whatever we imagine here, take the most simple idea, cut it in half and thats probably whats going on. And thats not a bad thing, its less disruptive when you can find efficient, clean ways of implementing ideas that give the same result you were after.


The corrupted thing, man that could be anything, I like the guesses so far. It could mean the item has been enhanced in some way, with a new orb maybe and corrupted is one of many mods that can be added. The gem for Spark is also presumably corrupted. Sort of like a TQ component system if you like.

The other thing said, which I would sort of lean more towards is that corrupted is some kind of negative effect this weapon has picked up for some reason, presumably because it has had a positive benefit in some other way, and I guess that doesnt have to be completely untied to the first idea, its a pretty open concept. Perhaps...

1. The items die when the league ends
2. The items cannot be traded
3. The items have some sort of time/use degradation outside of leagues (less likely I feel? No indication of a counter on the stat)
4. The items hurt you in some way to use, causing degen, stacking corrupted blood on you etc


As to the positive benefits for suffering these things...

Could be a droprate thing. A lot of crying about drop rates in a trade environment, slf etc. you could maybe drop more items or a chance of better items that roll in a smaller stat pool or a more diverse pool if some of them are corrupted and therefor either you cant trade them or they die with the league or they hurt to use etc. There could be corrupted mobs in the game who drop this corrupted gear.

Could be a crafting thing. Lots of crying afoot regarding lower level crafting, crafting in a trade environment, crafting being a rich mans pursuit and a lottery for everyone else, youve read the threads Im sure. You could have a more considered crafting/enhancing system for less well off players if you had some sort of trade/league restriction on the resulting gear. Maybe that ties with the white socket, thats something hes crafted at the expense of it being corrupted, but the fact hes standing in a zone makes it seem like maybe that was a drop. Maybe deep in the vaal ruins some being will aid you with crafting.

Could be an orb component/thing I guess and still come with one of the above drawbacks. You find orb enhancements for gems and weapons. Seems like the least likely though.

Could be absolutely none of these things. Id be happy with any of them except item degradation over time/use, as foul as binding/league restricting are to me theyre several orders of magnitude more appealing than item durability. Personally I dont think the economies are horrible in the non timed leagues at all, you just need to put in serious hours to really get involved. Theyre stable, you can trade for whatever you need, theyre just not casual friendly. I agree completely that an item sink of some sort could potentially help those casual/self found players, but I think just adding flat item degradation is probably the least helpful and the most detrimental way to deal with things. I think optional degradation as the price of a better crafting system/additional drops would be preferable, but really optional binding/league restricting sorts the problem a lot better than degradation in terms of the economies and doesnt punish the player as much. However degradation is maybe the more simple approach and that gives its likelyhood weight over the other ideas.

I highly doubt the corrupted mod is a vendor recipe, in fact the idea that the screenshot is being shown while in a zone tells us it could probably be a drop. Otherwise I think it would be equipped and/or shown in town.

Eh, when you look at the screenshot carefully the less complicated the answer should seem, and that answer doesn't seem too cool to me imo. The white socket might be separate from the corrupted mod, but if it isn't, and that's what the corrupted mod gives as its benefit, then its gonna be not so great a feature from what the game really needs. Only 5-6 socket items will benefit from this "corruption", which is nice, but socket colors is the least of our problems given their so cheap/available.

The screen implies it was a drop, with the white socket already on there, and the dev simply identified it, no crafting. The weapon itself sucks, so the theory of "good" mods as a benefit should be out the window. That doesn't leave much of any room to brainstorm what the benefits are other than the white socket. Negative can be whatever. Being destroyed at the end of a league would be a TERRIBLE move on their part, and would mean only the new leagues can use corrupted items, which I don't see them just ignoring standard/hc.

all i keep wondering is how did u get that item stats to come up with out the cursor hovering the item.

Same as i did with [15]:

I wish for a big skill tree change because that usually means we will get a free full respec.

So assuming that corrupted is a trait on dropped weapons, PLEASE make a red glow effect when they drop so we get a visual. A spray of corrupted blood would be pretty cool too I think.

hopefully it gives a buff to Blood magic users and punish CI users.

Hopefully we get a white gem that has attributes which either roll. boosting physical/ elemental

critical strikes

increase attack speed/cast speed


increase rareity/quantity

more hybrid support gems

i wouldn't be surprised that some new recipes for white sockets or/and corrupted mod would have to do with IIQ gems GGG are supposed to remove. nerfing those gems as well as making them an awesome sink in white socket recipe wouldn't be that a bad idea, imho.