Kanai’s Cube Mechanics

Introduction

Kanai's Cube is a versatile tool, that allows you to create and modify items, obtain their special powers, convert crafting materials and gems, and more.

Before Kanai's Cube can be accessed, it must be unlocked (once per game mode). For that you need to head to The Ruins of Sescheron, proceed into Elder Sanctum and finally move to the dead end at the northeastern edge of the map. After that Kanai's Cube will become accessible in every town in Adventure Mode.

To use any of Kanai's Cube recipes, you need to put all the required ingredients into the Cube and click the "Transmute" button. For ingredients, that are not physically present in your inventory, such as Reusable Parts, Forgotten Soul or Arreat War Tapestry, you need to choose the appropriate Recipe and click on "Fill". Finally, you can click "Accept" to remove the result of transmutation from the Cube, but you don't have to do it; you can just walk away and you won't lose anything.

Kanai's Cube Animation Skip

The Cube plays a 2 second long transmutation animation, when you use it. This can be annoying, especially when you want to use the Cube many times in a row. There are two ways to skip that animation: completely closing the cube window, or switching to a different Recipe. The first method is useful for the recipes that don't require usage of the "Fill" button (Darkness of Radament and Caldesann's Despair). The second is the most useful one, as it can be used to mass upgrade items via Skill of Nilfur. In that case your sequence of actions should be:

1. Right click the item
2. Click "Fill"
3. Click "Transmute"
4. Go to previous recipe
5. Go to next recipe
6. Repeat

With a little practice, the entire sequence can be performed in less than 2 seconds, potentially saving you up to an hour on lengthy end-season upgrading session.

Archive of Tal Rasha

• 1x Khanduran Rune
• 1x Caldeum Nightshade
• 1x Arreat War Tapestry
• 1x Corrupted Angel Flesh
• 1x Westmarch Holy Water
• 5x Death's Breath
• 1x Item with an extractable Legendary Power

This recipe allows you to use the extracted power of an item as a passive ability. Nearly all special affixes on Legendary and Set items can be extracted with this recipe, the most notable exception being Hellfire Amulets. The extracted power always comes with the highest possible value. Extractable powers are marked by an empty orange gem in the item's description. The gem becomes filled with yellow color if this particular power has already been extracted.

You are limited to 3 powers in total: one that comes from a weapon or an off-hand item, one from armor, and one from jewelry. You can only use the powers from items that are equippable by your class, even if the power itself is not class-restricted. For example Demon Hunters cannot equip two-handed maces, and thus cannot use the legendary power of The Furnace, which just provides 50% Elite Damage.

In Season 22 an additional slot is added to the Kanai's Cube, it can contain any item (Weapon, Armor or Jewelry), but you cannot equip the same power twice.

Note, that this recipe is indifferent to the level of the items. Save Legendaries with useful powers, that you find while leveling, so that you don't have to find them a second time.

Law of Kulle

• 5x Khanduran Rune
• 5x Caldeum Nightshade
• 5x Arreat War Tapestry
• 5x Corrupted Angel Flesh
• 5x Westmarch Holy Water
• 50x Forgotten Soul
• 1x Legendary or Set item

Rerolls all the stats on the item. For not class-restricted items, the resulting item is smart-looted to your character, meaning that the rolls such as Main Stat, Increased Skill Damage, Maximum Resource etc. are always for your class. Reforged item has the same level as the original and has a chance to be Ancient or Primal (if solo Greater Rift 70 has already been completed). This recipe cannot be used with crafted items.

The best usage for this recipe is upgrading your hard to obtain items. While nearly all items have the same drop chance, some are easier to Gamble or Upgrade then the others. For that reason, it's best to use this recipe on items that can't be easily obtained by other means. Mostly that includes weapons and jewelry, but, depending on the build, some other items can also be very hard to find.

Sometimes it's best to do your reforges on a different class, because of smart-loot. For example, if you are trying to obtain The Travelers Pledge with Socket, Critical Hit Chance, Critical Hit Damage, and Physical Damage for your Barbarian, then you have better chances of getting it on a Necromancer, because Necromancers can only have Physical, Cold or Poison damage, while Barbarians have Physical, Fire, Cold, and Lightning.

Hope of Cain

• 50x Reusable Parts
• 50x Arcane Dust
• 50x Veiled Crystal
• 25x Death's Breath
• 1x Equippable Rare level 70 item

Upgrades the quality of the item, producing a Legendary or Set item with the same item type. Except for the class-specific item types (e.g. Ceremonial Knife, Cloak, Phylactery), the upgraded item always comes from your class' drop table and all the stats on the item are appropriate for your class. The upgraded item can be Ancient or Primal (if solo Greater Rift 70 has already been completed).

There are two main use cases for this recipe. You can use it to quickly throw together a build when you make a new character late in the season. It usually costs you less than 2000 Death's Breaths to get a complete build, and even if the rolls on the items are not very good, you can instantly farm Nephalem Rifts and find upgrades there.

The second usage of this recipe is getting an upgrade on some specific items. For some item types on some classes there's very few options in terms of what you can get. That makes it very easy to upgrade Rares into these items. For example, getting a Karlei's Point for your Impale DH is extremely easy, because there's only 2 daggers that can drop for a Demon Hunter.

Sometimes it's best to do your upgrading on a different class. For example, if you are trying to get a Pig Sticker for your Wizard, it's better to upgrade daggers on Witch Doctor or Necromancer, because those 2 classes cannot drop Wizardspike. Consult the drop table to see which class is the best for you.

Skill of Nilfur

• 10x Forgotten Soul
• 10x Death's Breath
• 1x Set item

Converts an item to another item from the same set. Does not work with sets, that only have 2 items. Does not work with crafted sets. The resulting item cannot be Ancient or Primal.

This recipe is useful for completing your set, when you get unlucky and find only boots over and over. And you can convert your Set items around to get acceptable rolls on them quickly. It can also be used as a way to reforge Set items, without using Law of Kulle, which requires Bounty materials. However, this is not recommended, even if you don't care about Ancients, because it costs 60 or 70 Forgotten Souls on average, which is more than reforging.

Work of Cathan

• 1x Level 25+ Gem of Ease
• 1x Equippable Item

Removes level requirement from the item. This recipe is largely useless, because it only helps you to level your second and beyond characters to 70, and that only takes 2-5 minutes with a little help.

Darkness of Radament

• 9x Gem
• 1x Essence of Amethyst or Essence of Emerald or Essence of Diamond or Essence of Ruby or Essence of Topaz

Converts gems to another color. All the Essence items can be purchased in unlimited quantity form Squirt the Peddler in Hidden Camp for 500000 Gold. You need to put at least 9 of the same gem into the cube, the transmutation will fail if you have less.

Pleasure, Regret, and Wrath of Iben Fahd

• 100x Reusable Parts or Arcane Dust or Veiled Crystal
• 1x Death's Breath
• 1x Equippable Rare or Common or Magical Item

These 3 recipes convert regular crafting materials into each other at 1:1 ratio for a small Death's Breath fee. It's useful when you have too much of one and not enough of the other.

To convert a lot of materials, you need a bunch of Items of certain rarity. Magical items can be easily purchased from any vendor, Common items too, but they are a lot more rare. Check all the vendors in each Act and remake a game if necessary. The Rare items are the most problematic, as you can't purchase them in unlimited quantity. The best way is just to run Nephalem or Greater Rifts for Blood Shards and then buying items from Kadala, around 80% of them will be Rare.

Caldesann's Despair

• 1x Ancient Items
• 1x Level 30+ Legendary Gem
• 3x Flawless Royal Amethyst or Flawless Royal Emerald or Flawless Royal Topaz or Flawless Royal Ruby

Adds an extra affix to the item, also known as Augmenting. The type of the affix is determined by Gem color: Ruby—Strength, Emerald—Dexterity, Topaz—Intelligence, Amethyst—Vitality. The amount is equal to Rank of the Legendary Gem times 5. This recipe can be applied to the same item multiple times, each time a new Augment replaces the old one. Weapons require at least a Rank 30 Legendary Gem, Jewelry—Rank 40, and Armor—Rank 50. However, this restriction rarely comes into play, because even the weakest builds can do GR 70 and above.

Augmenting is the vital part of Diablo III end game. Full set of items can be Augmented to increase your mainstat by as much as 9,750, providing a significant DPS and toughness boost. The usual strategy with augmenting is to level your gems to whatever GR tier you can speedrun in less than 3 minutes, and then use these gems to augment your speedfarming gear. Later on you will level a new set of gems and maybe use a 4-man group to push them higher than speedfarm tiers. These high-rank gems will be used on your pushing gear.

When choosing which gems to level, to be later used for Augmenting, you should avoid the following gems:

• Iceblink, Boon of the Hoarder: Rank capped to 50.
• Legacy of Dreams: Rank capped to 99.
• Esoteric Alteration, Mutilation Guard: Rank capped to 100.
• Gem of Ease: One missclick can waste a Gem on a Work of Cathan recipe.

If you need an extra Gem to level, you can make the Rift Guardian in any Greater Rift drop a new Rank 0 gem by removing all the Legendary Gems with the same name from your Equipment, Inventory and Stash. The safest way to do that, is to put your gems into Inventory of different character. But if you are not afraid of disconnecting, you can just drop them on the ground.

Curiosity of Lorath Nahr

• 1x non-crafted Legendary or Set Item
• 100x Primordial Ashes

Upgrades the selected item into a Primal. The stats on the Primal are rolled normally and are in no way connected to the stats on item used in the recipe. Primals obtained this way are different from normal Primals. They have the same red border but also a reddish-pink tint in your inventory and are a subject to several restrictions:

• You can only equip one such Primal at a time.
• Your followers cannot equip these Primals at all.
• These items don't have any guarantees when it comes to sockets.

This recipe is very similar to reforging but it's both more powerful and a lot more expensive. Unlike reforging, you can't just take one copy of an item and use this recipe on it over and over until you get the right stats. After each upgrade you need to salvage the Primal you crafted to get back 55 Primordial Ashes. If you plan to make a difficult to roll item into a Primal, make sure to stock up on non-Ancient copies of it!

In general, since Primordial Ashes are so hard to get, it's best to focus on easy to roll items: mostly Weapons or an item with a multiplier and good guaranteed rolls (e.g. Convention of Elements, Pinto's Pride or Bracer of Fury).

Hidden Recipes

There are also 3 recipes that are not shown in the recipe list:

• Puzzle Ring: opens a portal to The Vault - a dungeon full of Gold, Gems and Treasure Goblins, very useful in the start of the season, but eventually becomes barely worth the time. Still, can be useful if you need Gold or Gems, especially with Gold Find gear and Broken Crown.
• Ancient Puzzle Ring: opens a portal to Ancient Vault - a dungeon full of Gold, Gems and Treasure Goblins, with a lot more of everything than a regular Vault. Great source of Gold, Gems, Death's Breaths and Legendaries.
• Bovine Bardiche: opens a portal to Not The Cow Level - a relatively big map with Fields of Misery tileset. Contains a lot of Resplendent Chests, one of each Shrines and 2 Pools of Reflection.

Credits

Written by Northwar.
Reviewed by Raxxanterax.