Diablo IV has many respectable ways to lose millions of Gold. You can reroll affixes, Masterwork an item repeatedly, craft expensive gems or make several increasingly optimistic visits to the Occultist. Apparently, you can also achieve the same result by dying while wearing particularly fancy rocks.
A long-running repair-cost problem involving socketed Horadric Gems has resurfaced again in September, with a new player reporting that their repair bill jumps from roughly 64,000 Gold per death to around 22 times that amount when the gems are equipped. The original bug report dates back to June, while similar player testing appeared even earlier in May.
In other words, this is no longer a curious launch-week interaction that disappeared during one of Lord of Hatred's many cleanup patches.
Players are still reporting it nearly four months later.
Flawless Horadric Gems Can Make Repairs Extremely Expensive
The current PC bug report originally appeared on June 13. The player noticed the problem after equipping Flawless Horadric Gems and said their total repair cost increased from a few hundred thousand Gold to more than 15 million.
The suspected explanation is fairly straightforward. Diablo IV appears to be incorporating some or all of the socketed gem's value when calculating how expensive the parent item is to repair, even though the gem itself does not have durability that needs repairing.
That means your Blacksmith may effectively be charging you for repairing the sword, armor and incredibly expensive magical pebble sitting inside them.
The pebble, for the record, was not damaged.
A New September Test Says the Problem Is Still Happening
The bug thread became active again on September 4, when another player tested several socketables and reported dramatically different repair-cost values depending on what was installed.
Their reported figures included roughly:
- Rune: 1,547 Gold
- Grand Gem: 2,933 Gold
- Horadric Gem: 220,000 Gold
- Flawless Horadric Gem: 550,000 Gold
The exact final repair bill naturally depends on the player's equipment and how much durability has been lost, but the relative difference is the important part. The player says a death costs around 64,000 Gold without the expensive gems, while keeping them socketed increases that bill by approximately 22 times.
That is not a rounding error.
That is a mortgage with sockets.
We Actually Saw This Problem Months Ago
This will sound familiar to regular Diabloz readers because we already investigated the bizarre relationship between socketed gems and repair costs back in July.
At the time, player testing showed a repair bill dropping from roughly 2 million Gold to just 39,000 after gems and runes were temporarily removed from the equipment before visiting the Blacksmith.
That workaround was funny when it looked like a temporary oddity.
It is rather less funny now that another player is reproducing essentially the same behaviour in September.
The newer report also reinforces the earlier suspicion that the game's repair calculation is using an item's value after socketed components are included rather than calculating durability repair from the base equipment alone.
Horadric Gems Are Expensive Enough Before the Repair Bill
The irony is that Horadric Gems already represent one of Diablo IV's more expensive long-term progression systems.
We previously looked at how demanding a complete set of Flawless Horadric Gems can become. Crafting one requires a significant chain of lower-tier gems, and fully equipping a character turns that into a substantial fragment and farming commitment.
Another player calculation put the fragment requirements for high-end Horadric Gems into the millions.
That cost at least has an understandable purpose.
You are creating stronger equipment.
Paying enormously higher repair fees because those gems happen to be sitting inside the equipment is considerably harder to justify.
The Temporary Workaround Is Ridiculous but Effective
If you are affected, the player-discovered workaround remains the same:
remove the expensive gems before repairing your equipment.
Then repair everything.
Then put the gems back.
There are few things that capture the majesty of being Sanctuary's chosen hero quite like stopping outside the Blacksmith and emptying your pockets because he charges extra when he sees jewelry.
Of course, this is not a particularly acceptable permanent solution. Players should not have to unsocket part of their build every time durability drops simply to avoid a disproportionately large repair bill.
It also becomes especially irritating in high-end content where deaths are expected. Pit pushing, difficult bosses and experimental builds naturally involve failed attempts. A repair system that multiplies the punishment because a character has progressed far enough to use expensive gems effectively taxes the players most likely to be repeatedly testing difficult content.
There Is Still No Documented Fix in the Current Patch Notes
Blizzard has fixed a large number of Lord of Hatred problems since May. The expansion has received repeated passes over Horadric Cube interactions, itemization, crafting, socket behaviour and progression bugs. At one point Blizzard even fixed an issue where socketed Runes or Gems could be lost when a Unique was recycled through the Horadric Cube.
But the current public patch notes do not document a fix for Horadric Gems inflating equipment repair costs.
And the September 4 player report strongly suggests the underlying behaviour is still live.
That makes this a slightly different story from when we covered it in July.
Then, it was a bizarre repair trick players had discovered.
Now it is a months-old issue still being reproduced after multiple patches.
Your Gems Should Make You Stronger, Not Your Blacksmith Richer
Diablo IV's economy needs Gold sinks. Without them, currencies eventually become decorative numbers that everyone owns by the billion and nobody thinks about.
Repair costs can reasonably be one of those sinks.
But repair costs should reflect damaged equipment.
A socketed Flawless Horadric Gem has no durability bar, does not become chipped when a demon hits you and does not require the Blacksmith to lovingly reconstruct it with a miniature hammer.
It is simply sitting there.
Four months after players first started noticing the problem, that apparently remains enough to make the repair bill explode.
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