Diablo 3 Guide: Find and Enhance Ancient Items

How to get Ancient Items in Diablo 3? We show you various ways to obtain the Ancient Items.

To improve your character in Diablo 3, you collect a lot of equipment and weapons on your adventures. These items have different rarity values. The rarer items are particularly interesting for players because they usually have better stats than items that can be found frequently.

Armor or weapons that are labeled as “Ancient” are particularly sought after. These items are better versions of already existing Legendarys and Set Items.

Recognizing Ancient Items

In the game, you can recognize Ancient Items by their gold/orange-colored frame after identifying them. Additionally, the description changes from “Legendary Dagger” to “Ancient Legendary Dagger”. In chat, the names of the items appear in an additional bracket. Instead of [The Barber], it shows in chat {[The Barber]}.

In addition to the display changes, there are also higher attribute values that vary depending on the item. In the example image, we compare a legendary dagger with the Ancient version of this dagger. You can see in the legendary version of the Barber dagger that the Intelligence value can reach a minimum of 626 points and a maximum of 750 points. You can recognize this by the gray numbers in the square brackets, right next to the Intelligence value. The Ancient dagger can reach 825 points to 1000 points in the Intelligence value. This is a significant improvement compared to the legendary version.

However, not all values increase when you obtain a legendary or set item in the Ancient version. Attack Speed, Critical Hit Chance, Critical Hit Damage, Elemental Damage, Resource Cost Reduction, Damage against Elite Enemies, Percentage Life, Socket, and Cooldown Reduction are not affected by the item upgrade and do not receive higher values.

How to find Ancient Items in Diablo 3?

To find Ancient Items in Diablo III, you need luck and a high torment level. At Torment 1, the chances of obtaining an Ancient Item from monsters, chests, and objects are at 1%. At Torment 6, the chances are at 10% and increase slightly with each higher torment level that you select for your game.

There are various ways to obtain Ancient Items. For example, you can find them when exchanging Blood Shards with Kadala, as a drop in Nephalem Rifts, or as loot from monsters. You can also upgrade Rare items at Kanai’s Cube and convert them into Legendary Items. For this, you need to take a yellow item (rare) and place it in the cube with the corresponding materials. You will need: 25x Death Breath, 50x Reusable Parts, 50x Arcane Dust, and 50x Forgotten Crystals. After you click on “Transmute,” you will receive a Legendary Item that has a chance to be Ancient.

Another option for an Ancient Item from Kanai’s Cube is Transmuting: The attributes of the item are changed, and there is a chance that the item will become Ancient. However, if you transmute an item that is already Ancient, this property may be lost. To transmute, you need: 5x Rune from Khanduras, 5x Nightshade from Caldeum, 5x Wall Tapestry from Arreat, 5x Corrupted Angel Flesh, 5x Holy Water from Westmarch, and 50x Forgotten Soul.

The video from 4FanSites explains the hunt for Ancient Items again:

Improving Ancient Items

If you already have Ancient Items and want to improve them, you can also do this at Kanai’s Cube. The additional attribute points the item receives depend on the gems you add as materials.

Three flawless royal rubies improve the Strength value.
Three flawless royal topazes improve the Intelligence value.
Three flawless royal emeralds improve the Dexterity value.
Three flawless royal amethysts improve the Vitality value.

For the various equipment items such as weapon, ring/amulet, or armor, you need additional materials. If you want to improve a weapon, you need a Legendary gem from level 30 in addition to the weapon and three gems of the same color mentioned above.