Normal Items

Normal (also called Common or White, for the color of the tooltips) is a level of item quality in Diablo series, generally the lowest one with no magical abilities at all. Later games also introduced Poor (also called Gray) items, which are Normal for most purposes but distinctly lower quality than "regular" Normal items. Normal and Poor item names are almost always color coded white and gray respectively.

Normal items represent items that have the same usage and benefits as their equivalents in the real world - a modest amount of Defense for armor, and the ability to inflict Damage on enemies with weapons. They have no magical affixes or special powers, and therefore provide no advantage to player statistics beyond those basic functions. Usually these items are worn by characters at very early levels, when they are yet to obtain even the simplest of Magic Items. Once higher quality magical items become commonplace in later gameplay, a character will usually not wear a Normal item again.

Diablo I[]

Normal Items first appeared in the original Diablo. This is the most common drop quality, and at many occasions, their damage and defense allow players to use such items long enough, until they can obtain higher quality equivalents.

Diablo II[]

In Diablo II, in addition to the magical quality of items shared by other games, there is also a three-part progression of "base item quality", with Exceptional Items and Elite Items superior to Normal ones and attained at higher levels and difficulties, but still potentially dropping as "White" non-magical items. Just like the lower base items, these higher tiers could have magical properties as well or be used for Rune Words, and each shares the same appearance as a Normal item. This causes confusion due to "Normal" being used as the default low level for both forms of item quality - Normal, Exceptional, Elite; and Normal, Magical, Rare, and beyond.

Unlike those in the first game, Normal Items now may have prefixes that add no new properties, but may slightly increase damage, defense or durability. Sometimes they may even have prefixes that actually reduce their already mediocre attributes, in which case they are called Poor and show up with Gray text. Socketed Items appear with gray color, but are actually Normal, not Poor quality.

While there is no real use for Normal items directly, they are often farmed for by players who seek to make use of Rune Words, as those require either a Socketed Item, or a Normal item that can be converted to a Socketed via the use of Horadric Cube.

Diablo III[]

In Diablo III, Normal items return in two forms: as typical normal items similar to Diablo II, including the optional minor prefixes, and as so-called Poor (Gray) items. Poor quality items are essentially Normal for most in-game purposes - they can be worn by starting characters until better equipment is acquired, supply the same sort of materials when salvaged, and are treated the same by the powers of a Puzzle Ring or Kanai's Cube - but represent a distinctly lower quality level and have worse statistics.

The only real use for Poor / Normal Items during most gameplay is to salvage them with the Blacksmith to obtain a bunch of Reusable Parts for crafting. Equipping them is pointless after players get their hands on Magic Items, and selling them to vendors awards too little gold. Many players are in the habit of ignoring the gray or even white items and not even bothering to pick those up. However, this may be an inefficient approach given the following options:

• Kanai's Cube's "Pleasure of Iben Fahd" recipe converts Reusable Parts to either of the other two salvage materials. So, all three non-legendary crafting stockpiles can be supported in part with the numerous materials from salvaged Normal items.
• Before the Cube's introduction in Patch 2.3.0, the Puzzle Ring provided an unconventional use for Normal items: A Treasure Goblin summoned by the ring picks up Normal and Poor items, periodically giving a Rare Item in return. This power still works, but ultimately produces far fewer crafting materials than salvaging the Normal items and converting them with Kanai's Cube.
• Prior to Patch 2.0.6, Normal Items of top tier (Ascended) were also used as a base for crafting Legendary or Set items at level 70.

Some item types - Jewelry, Follower items, Sources, Quivers and Mojos - may not exist in Normal quality; they are always of Magic quality or higher.

Diablo IV[]

Normal items return in Diablo IV. As in previous games, they do not grant magical bonuses, but grant some basic statistical improvements.^[1]

References[]