Items play an integral part of any RPG and WoW is no exception. Not only can they improve your character’s performance, they also help drive any in-game economy via trading and auctions.

Equipment Rarity

WoW features numerous items and the game conveniently colour codes all of them according to their rarity. This makes it easy for players to determine the relative value of any item in the game simply by looking at the colour of the item’s name.

Poor Quality (Grey)
Common Quality (White)
Uncommon Quality (Green)
Rare Quality (Blue)
Epic Quality (Purple)
Legendary (Orange)
Artifact (Red)

Poor Quality (grey) items are also commonly known as “vendor trash” among players and can be sold to the vendor for cash. There are no other uses for them and can be destroyed. Items which are used as components/reagents in a recipe are always marked as Common Quality (White) or better.

Equipment Types

Items come in several types as well, and this can be mainly divided into equipable and non-equipable. Within the equipable, it is divided into Armor and Weapons. Players may wear 1 item each on the Head, Neck, Shoulder, Back, Chest, Body, Wrist, Hands, Waist, Legs and Feet. 2 items can be equipped on Fingers as well as 2 general Trinkets. There is a special item slot for wearing a guild Tabard as well, and this Tabard will be displayed on your chest and back (a cape on your Back will cover up the back Tabard though).As far as armor goes there are restrictions across the classes and the following is a list of what each class can wear. Some classes such as the Hunter and Shamans can start wearing Mail armor when they have reached level 40.

	Cloth	Druid, Hunter, Mage, Paladin, Priest, Rogue, Shaman, Warlock, Warrior
	Leather	Druid, Hunter, Paladin, Rogue, Shaman, Warrior
	Mail	Paladin, Warrior, Hunter (40+), Shaman (40+)
	Plate	Paladin (40+), Warrior (40+)
	Shield	Paladin, Shaman, Warrior

Weapons also come in many forms. Axes, Swords, Maces, Daggers and Fist Weapons are the main categories of melee weapons. Ranged weapons go into a second slot specifically for them, players do not have to swap equipment to use ranged and melee weapons at the same time. Ranged weapons include Bows, Guns and Wands. Bows and Guns require ammo to use (they come in stacks of 100 or 200), and are also equipable in a special ammo slot.

Axes and Swords can be either 1-handed or 2-handed; all weapons will be clearly marked “Main Hand“, “Off-Hand” or “One-hand” to indicate which hand they can be used in. Some classes may learn how to dual wield later on and use 2 weapons. The weapon in the off-hand will deal half its listed damage. Depending on your class, playstyle and situation, some players like to use a 1-hand weapon along with a Shield for defense, dual wield two 1-hand weapons for offense, or wield a weapon and hold an orb in the off-hand for stat bonuses.

For the non-equipable items, they can be potions, scrolls, mounts, pets, items with some effects (such as bombs). To use these items, you simply right click on it in your inventory. You can also drag them to your toolbar to hotkey them. Most of these items are also stackable, where you can have several items of the exact same name stacked into a single inventory slot. The number of items you can stack in a slot varies from item to item.

The non-usable items are usually trade goods and recipe components. There are some items that you must also have in your inventory for certain skills to work (for example, a skinning knife for skinning). Along your travels, you may also find books, letters, and many other interesting objects.

What are Bound Items?

Blizzard has introduced a binding system to particular items.

• Unbound: These items are not restricted in any way and can be traded freely. Unbound items are not marked with any bound type.
• Soulbound: These items are permanently bounded to a player and cannot be traded to anyone else. To get rid of it, you can either sell it to a vendor NPC or destroy it.
• Bind on Equip: These items are treated as Unbound when they are first found and picked up and can be traded freely. Once a player has equipped it, it will change status into Soulbound. A warning popup will appear when a player tries to equip such an item.
• Bind on Use: As with Bind on Equip items, these items become Soulbound items once you have used it. The difference is trivial, since Bind on Equip refers to equipable items (such as Armor and Weapons) while Bind on Use refers to non-equipable items (such as Pets and Mounts).
• Bind on Pickup: An item marked Bind on Pickup will become Soulbound once a player loots it from a NPC corpse in the loot window. This means in a party/group situation, players have to discuss quickly who gets to loot the item in question. A warning popup box will also appear when trying to loot such items.

This system allows a sustaining economy, especially with regards to lower level equipment. After items have been bound to a player, if he finds a better replacement, the only alternative for the older weapon is to sell it (to an NPC), destroy it, or disenchant it. This keeps the low level economy in business all the time as low level equipment is constantly being destroyed all the time instead of passing them on to another player.

Rare loots can be generally classified into 2 types. Random drop (it has a random chance to drop from a few monsters), or Instance-Boss drop. Random drops are generally Bind on Equip and hence tradable. The bosses in instances however drop from a very small loot table, typically 2 to 4 items only, so players are almost always able to get the item they want after making a few trips into the instances. This equipment is always Bind on Pickup.

Quest Items

Often, NPCs will give you quests to collect or obtain certain items. These items are marked Quest items and they cannot be traded. These items are not lootable (they do not even appear in your loot box) if you do not have the associated quest in your quest log.

Stacking Items

Some items are small and are stackable such as cloth and herbs. Items of the same type automatically stack together in the inventory where applicable. Depending on the item, some items can stack to piles of 5, 10, 15 or even 20 in a single inventory slot. To combine two stacks together, simply drag one stack on top of the other. To split up a stack of items into 2 stacks, shift+click the stack and a popup box will appear asking you how you many items you wish to split away from the stack.

Player Created Items

As WoW features crafting of items via trade skills such as leatherworking or blacksmithing, players can create numerous items by themselves assuming they have the appropriate resources to do so. Items created by a player are labeled with the name of the person who created the item (as above). The player’s name stays with the item even when traded with another player.

Set Items

In WoW, some of the equipment you find could belong to a set. Generally wearing items from the same set will give your character a look that is matching, so if you want to appear in equipment that is all of a certain colour, you might want to get the equipment from a set. For example, there is the Thunderscale set, where players can find Thunderscale Buckler, Thunderscale Gauntlets, Thunderscale Leggings and many others. Set items can contain partial bonuses based on the number of items you have in the set. The more items, the better the bonus and each new item you add to set will change the bonus you receive.

Example of Necropile set:
2 pieces: +5 Defense
3 pieces: +5 Intelligence
4 pieces: +15 All Resistances
5 pieces: +12 Spell Damage / Healing

 

Warlock
Dreadmist Raiment (Superior-Blue)
Felheart Raiment (Epic-Purple)
Nemesis Raiment (Epic-Purple Tier2)

Druid
Wildheart Raiment (Superior-Blue)
Cenarion Raiment (Epic-Purple)
Stormrage Raiment (Epic-Purple Tier2)

Paladin
Lightforge Armor (Superior-Blue)
Lawbringer Armor (Epic-Purple)
Judgement Armor(Epic-Purple Tier2)
(Not sure on the tiers on these, im horde, so im basing this off what we see drop)

Warrior
Battlegear of Valor (Superior-Blue)
Battlegear of Might (Epic-Purple)
Battlegear of Wrath (Epic-Purple Tier2)

Priest
Vestments of the Devout (Superior-Blue)
Vestments of Prophecy (Epic-Purple)
Vestments of Transcendence (Epic-Purple Tier2)

Rogue
Shadowcraft Armor (Superior-Blue)
Bloodfang Armor (Epic-Purple Tier2)
Nightslayer Armor (Epic-Purple)

Shaman
The Elements (Superior-Blue)
The Earthfury (Epic-Purple)
The Ten Storms(Epic-Purple Tier2)

Mage
Magister’s (Superior-Blue)
Acanist Regalia (Epic-Purple)
Netherwind Regalia (Epic-Purple Tier2)

Hunter
Beaststalker Armor (Superior-Blue)
Dragonstalker Armor (Epic-Purple Tier2)
Giantstalker Armor (Epic-Purple)

All classes have 3 sets, the blue set and a tier 1 and tier 2 epic set. Tier 2 epics are not yet in the game except for pants from Ragnaros and helms from Onyxia.

Placing Items

When you pick up or trade for an item, it appears in your inventory. To equip an items simply drag it onto your character’s avatar on the main character screen. Each item fits in a specific slot, so for example a shirt can only be placed in the short slot on the character screen. When equipped on your character the item does not take up an inventory or bag slot.
Note: Not all equipped items will show on your in-game character, objects such as rings are too small to show on your character.

Durability

Most items in the game have durability and items will decay slowly when you use them in combat. You won’t lose the weapon or armour when the durability reaches zero but you will have to repair the items at NPCs such as weaponsmiths, blade merchants, staff merchants etc. When the item durability runs low, a small paperdoll portrait appears in the top right of the screen right underneath the minimap highlighting the item position(s) that need repairing. The items colour changes from yellow to red on the paperdoll as the item durability runs down. Blizzard aims to have a situation such that a player would not need to visit a town to repair equipment more than once every two days or so.

• All armor and weapons have durability, but not trinkets, cloaks, shirts, guild tabards, necklaces and rings.
• Items remain at full effectiveness until they have no durability. Their power does not degrade.
• Items cannot permanently break.
• All armor/weapon vendors can repair durability in exchange for cash.
• When an item reaches zero durability, it no longer gives the player any benefit; it acts as though it does not exist until repaired.
• Professions cannot repair durability, but Blizzard will discuss ways for the professions to interact with them in the future.

Trading Items

Items can be traded between two players using the direct in-game trade interface. For more information on this view the interface section. Players can also place their items up for auction.

To make trading easy, items can be linked into the chat directly so that other players may click on the text and see a popup of the item you are trying to trade. This is also useful for showing others what equipment you have. When players loot items, the looted item is shown to all players in the party as well, allowing others to click on the link text instead of asking the stats of the looted item. To link an item, simply Shift+Click it while typing a chat message. Players can link Bind on Pickup items from the loot window as well without actually looting it.

WoW also features an Auction House where players can place items on auction for a few hours. For more information, visit the Auction House section.