Unique Items
Unique items are legendary and/or mysterious artifacts of history and power. They bring prestige to whomever manages to secure them for himself, because they are somewhat rare and whomever owns one must be rich. When their presence is shown amongst men in battle, they can even become more famous and lend even more prestige to their owner.
Uniqueness
Why are unique items valuable? Because they are unique. And we don't mean that the way "rare", or "legendary" or sometimes even "unique" is used in most MMORPGs, where it actually means "about half a million top-players have it". In BattleMaster, each and every unique item exists exactly once(*). So if you want to be the owner of the Big Book of Bugfixing, then the only way to get it is to find the current owner and make him part with it. There is absolutely no way to find a second one. See, "unique" means exactly what the dictionary definition makes you think it means.
(*) actually, for technical reasons we only guarantee uniqueness per game world.
Acquisition
Unique items are, by their own natures, precious artifacts long forgotten inside the civilization circle. They were lost to the wild, and some eventually claimed by the unholy walkers of the wild, the Undead, or by monstrous beasts for their lair and treasure, the largest and wildest of Monsters.
Unique items are not the same thing as those common items, which adventurers can gather on a routine basis.
Unique Items can be gained by defeating undead champions or the largest of monsters. These can be encountered while hunting, though the exact circumstances when and where a champion/big-one is encountered are still unknown. On extremely rare occasions, adventurers have been known to find a unique item while investigating a region for monsters and undead, without having to defeat a champion at all. For that matter, it's possible for nobles to also discover unique items while looting a region or foraging a battlefield.
Unique Items can also be built by Sages. They require certain common items to build a unique item (see some examples). It is not known beforehand what the unique item will be until it is actually made. There is also a chance of failure in that the sage comes up with nothing unique or valuable.
- Category:Unique Items - unique items, sorted by type
- Semantic List of Unique Items
- Unique Items List - A manual list of unique items, sorted by continent. This is only temporary and should be used to begin placing Infobox Unique Item upon all the items. Once this is done the manual list should be deleted.
Losing and Finding
Unique items can be lost (e.g. if the character carrying them is seriously wounded or killed). If so lost, they can be found again, in the same region they were lost in. Adventurers have found items while traveling through the region, investigating the monster/undead situation, or searching for common items. There also exist reports of nobles that found a unique item while foraging the battlefield.
Condition
Unique items have a condition of integrity and deteriorate over time and with use. The rate of deterioration varies from item to item. Once the condition reaches 0% the unique item is destroyed forever. Only a Sage can repair a unique item. As only an adventurer can locate a sage, a noble wanting one of his unique items repaired will need to contact an adventurer. Once a unique item has been destroyed it cannot return in any way, shape, or form.
Improving Items
There are two different ways in which items can be improved:
- The bonuses that a unique item provides can increase by noteworthy acts on the part of the bearer.
- A sage can improve an item such that the item can also grant a bonus other than just prestige.
All items offer at least a +1 bonus to prestige. When the bearer of the item engages in particularly noteworthy actions there is a chance that some of that prestige will also apply to the unique item. In this way the bonus that an item grants to prestige can be increased. See the list of most prestigeous items for an idea of how high the bonus can increase.
Unique items can also be improved by sages, though this is fairly uncommon. It typically requires a lot of gold and some of the rarer and more precious common items in order to improve an existing unique item (examples). When a sage improves a unique item in this fashion, a skill benefit is added to the item (or the existing skill bonus is increased). For example, the item may grant a skill bonus to Oratory, or to Adventuring.
Trade
Unique items can be traded, not only among adventurers, but to proper nobles as well. Remember that these nobles are far more wealthy than all but the most successful adventurers. 20 gold isn't much for most nobles, it is a fortune for adventurers. Trading an item to a noble allows the noble to provide a recommendation for nobility to the adventurer. The gathering of three recommendations is one of the requirements for an adventurer to rise to the rank of true noble. Note that for game balance reasons you cannot trade items between your own characters and using a third-party to avoid this restriction may be considered cheating.
Roleplaying Potential
Unlimited. Especially for items with an in-game history, such as the Crown of Someplace, which has been the traditional regalia of the Kings of the Legendary Realm of Wherever for so many years until it was stolen one day...