[STEAM] Diablo 4 players are accidentally trashing their best items due to an "objectively misleading" recipe, and it's the best argument I've seen for yellow paint in games

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Another day, another

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stir-up. This time, however, I'm not sure how much blame can be reasonably placed on developer Blizzard, as a big part of the issue stems from some very important – and not even very fine – print that's just not being read.

I'm always cautious to throw up a shield around Blizzard when disgruntled Diablo 4 players come a-knockin', but in this case, the root of the controversy can be pretty evenly divvied up between legitimately confusing precedent set by another crafting recipe, and also gamers' unwillingness to read onscreen text.

See, Diablo 4's season 14, which

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, introduced a new crafting recipe for the Horadric Cube. It's called Upgrade to Mythic, which at face value would make you think it's a way to take a Unique and make it a Mythic item with all of the same properties and one additional Mythic power. After all, the pre-existing Upgrade to Legendary path does exactly that, but at the Legendary tier. But no, the Upgrade to Mythic recipe takes your Unique and gives you back a random Mythic item of the same type. So your Unique dagger is going to come out a Mythic dagger, but here's the rub: it won't necessarily be the same dagger that went into the Cube, and in all likelihood, it will be a completely different item with its own stats.

The tooltip for the recipe reads verbatim: "Transmutes a Unique equipment item with at least 850 Item Power into a random Mythic of the same item slot," which is pretty darn unambiguous. That said, I can understand that the Upgrade to Legendary recipe being what it is can cause some confusion. It's just that, still, at the end of the day, simply reading that recipe description even just once would completely eliminate any doubt about what the crafting tool is going to do.

Still, "Diablo 4 Players Keep Destroying Valuable Items Because of One Misleading Recipe," reads a recent headline from

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. "Guilty," reads the

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on a

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discussing the article. "I lost a really good dagger because I thought I was 'upgrading.'"

"Me too. I logged off for a few days afterwards," says another

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.

"Same lol," says

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.

"Yup me too," says

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. And so on.

Again, I'm not saying Blizzard is completely blameless here. It is undeniably weird that the Upgrade to Mythic recipe destroys the input item and gives you something completely random when the Upgrade to Legendary recipe gives you the same item but Legendary, but I also can't help but think this whole mess is a pretty compelling argument for the

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that's often used as a visual cue to guide players toward their goal. In this case, it's not about reading between the lines – it's literally about reading the lines.

On the bright side:

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