Okay, so today I kept wasting gear trying to add sockets, figured I finally needed to get this recipe memorized properly. Seriously, it’s frustrating losing good items because you pick the wrong one or forget the right rune! Here’s exactly what I did and found:
Getting My Head Around It
First step was accepting the recipe uses that white Hel rune, plus a Scroll of Town Portal, plus the actual item you want to add sockets to. Easy to mix this up with other cube recipes! Remembered:
- It ONLY works on normal white items. Yeah, tried using a rare once… total waste. Won’t work on magic, rare, set, or unique stuff. Just plain white.
- For weapons, base damage matters! Sloppy me grabbed a low-damage club thinking “It’s white!” but the cube spat it back at me. Learned it only works on weapons that can naturally do more than zero damage or are basically top-tier bases everyone uses. Felt stupid.
Finding The Stuff
Needed some targets. Hit my stash hard:
- Scoured all my normal “Monarch” shields – these are the classic choices for Spirit runeword later, gotta get those 4 sockets!
- Dug out every single plain white “Phase Blade” I’d saved. Wanted one for a future “Grief” maybe.
- Found a couple of white “Ethreal Elite Armors” too. Why not? Maybe get lucky on sockets for a merc.
Ran down the town portal scrolls real quick – gotta buy stacks of these by the dozens! Always run out. As for the Hel runes, those piled up doing Countess runs on nightmare. They drop like candy, so grab ’em all. No Hel? Go farm her on NM.
Actually Doing It
Time for the cube action. Super simple steps once you got the right things:
- Drop the white item into the Horadric Cube. Triple-check it’s normal, white, and usable (especially weapons).
- Toss in one Hel rune on top of the item.
- Toss in one Scroll of Town Portal on top of both.
- Hold my breath… and hit the “Transmute” button.
Wham! Item pops out with a random number of sockets. Seriously, totally random! Did 4 Monarchs:
- First one got 4 sockets! Jackpot! Exactly what I wanted.
- Second one got… 3 sockets. Okay, decent, could use for something else.
- Third one got 1 socket. Sigh. Maybe use for a lower runeword later?
- Fourth one got 2 sockets. Meh.
Tried a white “Archon Plate” armor I had: 3 sockets popped out. Solid. Phase Blade? Landed 5 sockets. Not bad! Ethereal armor got 2. It’s always a gamble!
Big Takeaways
After burning through my stash practice:
- RIGHT ITEM: Normal, white, good base type (don’t waste it on junk!).
- RIGHT STUFF: Hel rune (easy farm NM Countess) + 1 TP scroll.
- RANDOM SOCKETS: You have zero control. Need exactly 4 for that Spirit shield? Gotta cube several and hope you hit gold.
- SAVE YOUR BASES: Hoard those white Monarchs, Polearms, elite armors! Takes effort to find them naturally white.
Felt way more confident after hammering this out myself. No more guessing or wasting that last Hel rune! Just toss the right white item in with the Hel and TP scroll, pray to the RNG gods, and hope you don’t get just one socket. Still stings a bit when that happens!