D2 Charsi Food Guide (Rare Rings and More)
What Is D2 Charsi Food?
D2 Charsi Food is a database that uses statistics to evaluate a specific piece of gear against all other gear of the same class or type. For example, it can compare your particular ring against all other rings submitted by D2 players. The url is https://d2charsifood.com/. Many folks at d2io keep it bookmarked. If you're new to the game, "Charsi food" is slang for trash gear, which is usually sold ("vendored") to the NPC Charsi in Act I. (Charsi also repairs gear, and since a town stop usually involves vendoring and repairs, she's the first NPC you hit up for your one-stop town business. Thus the origin of the slang.)
This guide isn't a special endorsement or anything, it's just a really handy tool for D2/D2R gear appraisal.
How To Use the Site
First, if you're going to stick around d2io for trading (which I greatly recommend), especially for rare gear, you should also create an account with d2charsifood. When you create an account there, all the items you submit are associated with your account. You can sort, filter, edit, etc. The site also offers an auction platform that uses a perfect gem scale for currency. I've never listed there, so I don't know how active it is, but just viewing the listings, the prices are reasonable market value.
This example focuses on rings. Rings were the first item type available on the site, and they're by far the biggest database. Other item types include charms, amulets, boots, jewels, gloves, and circlets. The basic idea is, you add your ring to the database, and the d2charsifood system compares the affixes/rolls on your ring to all other rings in the system.
Each affix and roll on your ring is given a score. Certain affixes are given more weight than others. For instance, faster cast rate receives a higher score than light radius. And of course high rolls get a better score than low rolls, so 30% lightning resistance gets a higher score than 3% lightning resistance. Then, all those numbers are crunched into a sigma score, which essentially says how your ring compares to the rest of the database. It's all based on the mathematical concept of standard deviation. If you're curious, there are multiple FAQs on the site about the math behind scores.
To load a ring into the database and get your d2charsifood score:
- From the left nav at the main site, choose the gear type you want to evaluate. This example uses rings, so it would be https://d2charsifood.com/rings/.
- Enter some basic ring properties in the fields at the top. The only value that actually affects scoring is the req level field (many affixes are not available below a certain level, and high-roll, low-level rings get higher scores):
- Click the Add another mod button until you have enough fields to enter all the roll types and values. Be careful here; some things can overlap, e.g. a light res roll of 41% is really one light res affix and one resist all affix. There are some tips and logic on the site to help with proper determination of affixes and splits in this situation:
- Once you've entered everything, click Submit and get your score:
What d2charsifood Does Well
The best thing about d2charsifood (in my view) is it gives you an idea of what a realistic ring drop looks like. Content creators on YouTube might highlight the 6-point trophy rings, but d2charsifood aggregates a reasonably true average ring. That makes it really helpful for comparing to a baseline. If you don't know which affixes are actually valuable, and you aren't sure if you just got rich, d2charsifood tries to give you an objective score using math. The formulas and weights are documented not secret, so you can decide for yourself if you're getting a fair assessment.
Limitations of d2charsifood
As handy as the site is, it definitely has some limitations. A few off the top of my head:
- I'm not sure how often the weights and formulas are adjusted, but almost certainly not as fast as the market shifts. And although the input form asks for the region and play mode, I don't know if those are factored into scoring. So the final score you get may not account for differences between markets (e.g. HC vs. SC) or keep current with the latest meta.
- The system relies on data, and it's only as good as the amount of submissions people have made. This is why the rings database is so much more useful than the other gear types on that site; there are twice as many ring entries (40,000+) as the next most popular item type (circlets, at 20,000+). If you use the site for one of the less popular gear types, keep in mind the sample size might not be large enough to give an accurate comparison.
- User submissions are not truly random. For instance, I might submit 1 rare ring for every 20 I pick up because only 1 seems worth trading. This skews the database toward high-end rings to begin with. That isn't exactly a problem, but it's something to keep in mind if your ring scores really low--it might still be a great ring for self-use. Don't sell something just because the site calls it Charsi food; use your judgment.
- Not every item in the database is a legitimate drop. At the very high end, there are some clearly fake items in the system (e.g. for theorycrafting). This skews the overall scores, maybe not much but worth mentioning. Likewise, it's possible to delete your own items from the system. Going back to the point that the site is only as good as its database, when "bad" items are deleted, it skews scoring toward really, really high-end stuff. All this bullet means is, the "average" on d2charsifood doesn't reflect the real average of a random drop.
Your d2charsifood score is best thought of as a reference point. We use it, combined with play experience and market observations, to appraise your item from a d2io point of view (which might give you a different recommended value than another site like d2jsp or Traderie). This combines with the d2io price check tool to give--we hope--a really good idea of what you can expect to trade for here, in our trusted community that has its own particular market values. Rare drops are very price-subjective, and we don't always agree, so it's good to get multiple opinions and do your own research. Which is to say, d2charsifood is a helpful tool, but it isn't the absolute truth about an item's trade value.
Conclusion
That's a crash course in getting an independent, fairly objective, appraisal of your gear. A lot of us here use it as one of several price estimation techniques. Don't take the final scores as gospel, but they can give you a general idea of your drop will have trade value or not. And, as with all things D2R, use your own common sense first. If you like something, keep and use it, regardless of what any person or site says. D2/R is a game, after all. So keep it fun, and happy trading!
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