Vendor Trashing: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Max out my Gold.

Do you have gold find problems? Can't afford that insane repair cost on that superior armor?

DON'T DESPAIR!

Follow this Guide and you will have so much GOLD you won't know WHAT TO DO WITH IT! (Gambling is your friend).

This will be a 'quick and dirty' reference guide to NPCing certain items in order to max out your gold stash.
As time goes on, more specifics will be added here.

Firstly:

If you have an item to sell to an NPC for gold, you want to be in Hell Difficulty. Only Hell has the maximum gold of 35,000 for an item that will sell for that much. Take note below the max gold that NPCs will give you for an item
that has maximum gold value when sold.

Normal:
Act 1 - 5,000 gold
Act 2 - 10,000 gold
Act 3 - 15,000 gold
Act 4 - 20,000 gold
Act 5 - 25,000 gold

Nightmare:
Act 1 - 30,000 gold
Act 2 - 30,000 gold
Act 3 - 30,000 gold
Act 4 - 30,000 gold
Act 5 - 30,000 gold

Hell:
Acts 1 to Acts 5 - 35,000 gold

If you are unable to get to Hell Difficulty, NM is fine too, but you will miss out on 5,000 extra gold from a 35k capped gold value item.

Now you may be asking, what items do I NPC to get gold?

Here are some examples of what to look for.

Armors:
Any exceptional or elite armors, no matter if non-magic, magic, rare, set, socketed, or unique. Note: Superior armors will increase the amount of gold value, being more likely to hit the max 35k gold value.
Examples: (

Serpentskin Armor,

Trellised Armor,

Ghost Armor,

Ornate Plate,

Demonhide Armor,

Scarab Husk,

Wyrmhide,

Dusk Shroud,

Wire Fleece,

Balrog Skin,

Sacred Armor, etc).

It is recommended you double check that you don't wish to use or sell elite armors you find before NPCing them.
For example, elite light armors such as the

Archon Plate are in demand for RWs, and if it's non-magic, you can do

Larzuk socket
or attempt the socket recipe. Often, it's a good idea to try for the socket recipe on an elite light armor, and if it fails (getting 1 socket),
then you can NPC it to your heart's content, since it is worthless for a runeword. Also,

Mage Plate are an exceptional armor that has
demand for runewords, but any other exceptional armors are essentially worthless for runewords, making them fair game to simply NPC.
Any superior armor that has +durability but no +enhanced defense is a fair candidate to vendor trash, since you can't socket recipe it,
and it is wasteful for using the socket quest on it, since you could have done the socket quest on a superior armor that has extra defense.

+Skill items:
Another easy pick for high gold value are any items that have +skills to a class. These can be weapons, helmets, shields, necro heads, and gloves.
General rule of thumb, the more +to skills an item has, the higher and closer to the 35K max gold value it will be.
Some easy examples of high gold value items:

-Wands (

Bone Wand,

Grim Wand,

Yew Wand, etc).
-Necromancer heads (

Gargoyle Head,

Demon Head,

Mummified Trophy, etc).
-Barbarian helmets (elite/exceptional) with +skills (

Conqueror Crown,

Slayer Guard, etc).
-Elite or exceptional Assassin

Wrist Blade with +skills (

Suwayyah with +

Dragon Claw,

Death Sentry, etc).
-Shields with paladin +skills (will have to be magic or rare to have this effect).
-Staffs/Staves with any +skills (

Short Staff,

War Staff,

Walking Stick,

Stalagmite,

Gnarled Staff, etc).
-Sorceress one handed orbs with +skills (

Clasped Orb,

Heavenly Stone,

Jared's Stone,

Swirling Crystal, etc).
-Paladin maces with +skills (

Holy Water Sprinkler,

Caduceus,

Scepter,

Divine Scepter, etc).
-Elite Druid helms with minimum of x2 +skills (

Earth Spirit,

Blood Spirit, etc).

Elite/Exceptional armor pieces (gloves,

Boots, belts, shields):
-

Grand Crown/

Corona
-

Defender/

Heater
-

Luna
-

Vambraces
-

Mesh Belt
-

Crusader Gauntlets
-

Shako
-

Spired Helm
-

Wyrmhide Boots
-

Bramble Mitts
-

Spiderweb Sash
-

Vampirefang Belt
-

Battle Boots/

Mirrored Boots
-

Vampirebone Gloves
-

Mesh Boots/

Boneweave Boots
etc.

Circlets/Coronets/Tiaras/Diadems:
Any of the

Circlet class of helms will yield
a decent amount of gold. Take note, it would probably be best
to save diadems for the

Charsi imbue option, since those items
have a good chance to roll +skills and other good magic attributes.

Elite weapons:
Same as with elite armors, double check to make sure you don't wish to use any of these for a RW or to try to sell them for use as such.
For example,

Berserker Axe are in demand to make Grief, so even a plain unsocketed one can be useful to try to do the socket recipe. If you find a superior version of a weapon, and it doesn't have ED% on it (only increased durability), then it is a safe candidate to vendor trash, since you can't
use it for the socket recipe, and it is a bad idea to use the socket quest on it (save the socket quest for superior items with ED%).
-

Balrog Blade
-

Ettin Axe
-

Cryptic Sword
-

Mythical Sword
-

Colossus Sword
-

Legend Sword
-

Small Crescent
-

Conquest Sword
-

Ataghan
etc.


That being said, there are also items that are Not Recommended to vendor trash, since the gold output is low or it is considered wasteful to
sell off these items for gold.

-Most bows/crossbows (they take up alot of space and they give quite low gold).
-Magic Jewelry (amulets and rings can be re-rolled in the cube and have a chance to get decent stats).
-Runes (Just don't. To give an example, you can get 30,000 gold for vendoring a

Mal rune, but WHY?!!!!!!).
-Assassin blades that DON'T have any +skills (iirc you can get 1,000 gold for a plain elite

Suwayyah).
-Normal/exceptional Druid helmets (even these druid helms with +skills give a palsy amount of gold. If you have nothing better, go for it, but it is disappointing).
-Barbarian helmets with no +skills.
-Normal Barb helmets.
-Sorceress 1H Orbs with no +skills.
-Necro heads with no +skills.
-Staff/Staves with no +skills.
-Charms (Any charms from Hell can be re-rolled into something useful, and npcing charms give a disappointing amount of gold).
-Potions (low gold, more useful to drink).
-Keys (low gold).
-Most normal weapons or armor or armor pieces.
-Ethereal items (Low gold value compared to normal version of it. Although some elite items will still give high gold value, such as elite armors that can still give 35k despite being

Eth).
-Gems (low quality ones can be used to cube runes, flawless ones can be cubed into pgems).
-Jewels (any magic jewel can be used in crafting recipes, no matter how useless it's stats are).
-

Arrows/

Bolts (low gold value, takes up space).
-Normal and most exceptional spears and polearms/poleaxes (takes up alot of space, gives low gold).
-Normal/Exceptional non-magic and magic javelins, including Amazon ones (disappointing gold yield amount).
-Scrolls of any kind (lol, get literally less than 70 gold for each).
-Uber Keys (worth far more to trade to players or use it yourself).
-Essences (worth more to trade to players or to use it yourself).

This guide is a WIP. Feel free to add suggestions or other information below to add to this guide.

Interesting article you have here. This reinforces my thought that the

Cap of 35K was a bit silly. Why 35K? It feels like many items are actually worth hundreds of thousands of gold behind the scenes. I'd be curious to see what the true gold value is for some items, such as rare

Sacred Armor.

I live for guides like this. Thanks for your contribution @halflife, putting this in our pinned links thread at the top of the forums.

BillyMaysed wrote: 2 years ago

I live for guides like this. Thanks for your contribution @halflife, putting this in our pinned links thread at the top of the forums.

my man gif.gif

Ty mate =D I love D2, I love this community. Great to share our knowledge and keep the games going!

tatatat wrote: 2 years ago

Interesting article you have here. This reinforces my thought that the

Cap of 35K was a bit silly. Why 35K? It feels like many items are actually worth hundreds of thousands of gold behind the scenes. I'd be curious to see what the true gold value is for some items, such as rare

Sacred Armor.

I think perhaps it's a sort of arbitrary cut-off, based on whether the item is elite and the level requirement, with a preference towards armor and some weapons being easier to reach the max gold value. They probably capped it at 35k so as to avoid easy inflation of gold, despite how in-game it is worthless for player trades (they probably didn't have oversight of that at the time of developing the game).

tatatat wrote: 2 years ago

Interesting article you have here. This reinforces my thought that the

Cap of 35K was a bit silly. Why 35K? It feels like many items are actually worth hundreds of thousands of gold behind the scenes. I'd be curious to see what the true gold value is for some items, such as rare

Sacred Armor.

Actually you can find a trader with few items in one category, ie

Akara for armor items, sell her your stuff and go watch what she wants in return for buyback.
A2 also has quite some vendors, who don't sell much. Works good there, too.

tatatat wrote: 2 years ago

This reinforces my thought that the

Cap of 35K was a bit silly.

nah i think it makes perfect sense because if items actually sold for 200-500k then gold instantly becomes worthless, gold find barbs wouldnt be a thing and everyone would just kill meph a couple times and then spend the rest of the time gambling instead of farming lol