There’s a lot levels in Diablo 4, both character and item. Today we’re taking a look at some very important breakpoints for said item levels, as you’ll need to know when and what to upgrade!
Why Should You Care?
Item levels increase your stats by default, so why exactly would you care about some specific breakpoints? You get what you get when it drops and that’s it right? Well, no, since we can upgrade your gear a certain number of times at the blacksmith. The first few upgrades are pretty cheap in terms of mats. However, the final ones tend to cost materials that only come from salvaging legendaries or even only from Helltides. So you may want to not just spam those out on any gear you find, which is where the breakpoints come in.
And that’s where the importance of the breakpoints comes in. If you push a piece of gear past the next item level breakpoint, it will re-roll and increase its stats. The affixes it already has will jump to the next “bracket” of power and be re-rolled. For example, if you push an item over the 725 breakpoint, it can now change your Thorns damage affix of 273 that you got from a 273 – 545 range on the pre-upgraded item to a new value of 470 from the new 411 – 822 upgraded range (as explained by ThatJumpyJumpS). This could theoretically also result in a lower stat than you had, but the ranges are significantly higher so it is still very much worth doing. Some of the jumps are very dramatic and also include higher bonuses to skills. For example the skill bonus goes from +1 to +1-2 at the 340 breakpoint.
The Breakpoints
Plenty of players have shared the breakpoint over on reddit but ThatJumpyJumpS put together the simplest one, in image form.
Obviously that last 725 one is the most important and getting an item past it is what you want to look out for, but the others are useful as well. Once you get past 725, it’s only armor and weapon damage that increases, the affix ranges remain the same.
Update: There are two exceptions when it comes to affixes above item level 725. +Maximum Life and Thorns actually scale with item level above 725, the same way that weapon damage and armor does.
Good luck with the item hunt!
