Apart of the terror zones, there isn’t really any new big boss or change like the the ubers were in its day. Also, I have been thinking for a while how a large numer of unique items are just disposable for the experienced players, specially the ones that came in 1.10-11 like flamebellow. Also also, a number of classic ones became obsolete with the new runewords, like doombringer or the patriarch. I normally would suggest to just rework those items, but then the problem would be where you start considering “useless” an item since even if experienced players have a very streamlined set of useful items, there will be always people who just play without those considerations. And they have been like that for 20+ years at this point so why bother now. But I think there might be a way to give them a new breath.
So let’s say there is a new quest similar to the ubers, you go farm certain objects to summon a difficult boss. The prize for killing that boss is a consumable that will extract the stats of an unique object and then you can use it to put the characteristics you extracted onto a different unique item, like a sort of fusion of 2 items. For example, you make a consumable out of an eaglehorn and use it on a windforce, so now you have a windforce with the additional stats of an eaglehorn applied.
Another one I thought is a consumable that will make your weapon swap stats be active when not used. For example, you are a sorc using oculus + spirit and you will have the stats of a mang song you have in the swap slot active even if you don’t have it selected as your present weapon. It couldeven be extra useful for those ethereal drops a lot of the time are discarded, now you can find a use a ethereal melee weapon you normally sell because the magic stats are still useful and have it on the swap slot
I know this might sound too op but I’m just presenting the idea, of course it will need be tweaked to not let it snowball out of control. In the case of the fuse items, it could be that in case of a repeating stat only the stat of the weapon receiving the consumable will prevail or viceversa or only use the highest value of both. Maybe not applying full stats and only 75% or 50%. Maybe limiting to just rares and uniques to stimulate the usage of normally less desirable items. Maybe a max number of “infused” items per equipped slot.
In the case of the weapon swap, the base stats of the weapons should be left out and only the magical stats would be considered, for example.
What do you think?