Kanai's Cube Guide

Last updated on Nov 20, 2019 at 09:23 by Deadset 6 comments

Kanai's Cube is one of the most important items in Diablo 3 — the heir to the legendary Horadric Cube that provides services that are just as important to your character growth as item farming and Paragon grinding.

This guide explain the myriad of things you can do with the Cube, as well as some of its lesser known properties.

1.

Obtaining Kanai's Cube

Kanai's Cube is found in The Ruins of Sescheron — the waypoint in the top right corner of the Act III map. From that waypoint, run left towards the city and make your way around the ruins; one of its far corners (typically upper right, lower right, or lower left) will have the entrance to the next zone, the Elder Sanctum. Once in the Elder Sanctum, make your way through the zone, practically to its other end. When you find the Cube and click it, it automatically transports itself back to town.

Note that you will have to find Kanai's Cube once every Season, but after that it opens for your entire account, so you do not have to go through the process again on your Seasonal alts. Non-Seasonal characters only have to do this process once. You can access the Cube from any town in the game, Acts I to V, and at any level (1-70).

If you are playing in a group, make sure your entire party is in the Elder Sanctum before you "take" the Cube from its resting place. Characters that are not present in the zone will not get credit, so notify everyone to teleport to you (either by clicking your flag in town, or right clicking your character portrait and selecting 'Teleport to...') before you click the Cube.

2.

Kanai's Cube Item Slots

One of the major uses of Kanai's Cube are its three items slots for legendary power extraction. Any "legendary power" of an item (the orange text below the item stats) can be extracted in Kanai's Cube and placed into the appropriate slot, which are:

  • Weapon — this houses weapon and off-hand legendary powers.
  • Armor — this houses legendary powers from any of the six major amour slots (Helm, Shoulders, Chest, Gloves, Pants, Boots), as well as belts and bracers.
  • Jewelry — this houses the legendary amulet and ring powers.

Picking a legendary power in any of these slots grants that power to your character without needing to wear the item. Furthermore, the legendary power is maximized, i.e. you can extract the power of a ring that rolled anywhere between 150% to 200%, but the value in the Cube will always be maximized — allowing you to put bad and mediocre items to great use.

Another great trait of Kanai's Cube is that it ignores the item level of the absorbed item, and since legendary properties do not vary from level to level, it is a great place for legendaries that dropped while leveling — they can still greatly enhance your gameplay. During early Seasonal leveling, any of your strong class-specific drops, or generic powerhouses like The Furnace The Furnace, Cindercoat Cindercoat, Nemesis Bracers Nemesis Bracers, and many more, can and should be extracted in the Cube once you outlevel the usefulness of their basic stats.

As a final note, you can not 'double-up' on legendary powers — for example, wearing a Ring of Royal Grandeur Ring of Royal Grandeur while simultaneously using it in the Cube will not reduce set item requirements any further.

3.

Recipes in Kanai's Cube

3.1.

Extract Legendary Power (Archives of Tal Rasha)

This recipe will allow you to extract a legendary item into one of the three slots mentioned above. The item can be any level, as long as it is a legendary that has a specific power on it, and the cubed version will always give you the maximum roll on a modifier. This means that, if you cube a ring that has a roll range of 150% to 200%, it will always grant you the 200% effect when placed in the cube.

The materials required are as follows:

3.2.

Reforge Legendary (Law of Kulle)

This recipe allows you to reforge a specific legendary item to re-roll it, completely resetting the stats on it, as well as giving it the potential to roll as an Ancient or Primal legendary.

While this recipe is expensive, it is the only way to specifically improve a targeted legendary. Note that, if you place an Ancient or Primal item in this recipe, it is not guaranteed to come out as the same quality and can be reforged into a standard legendary.

Any augments that you have on the item will also be removed upon reforging.

The materials required are as follows:

3.2.1.

Legendary Reforging Priority

It can be a tough decision when choosing which of your legendaries to reforge, but you will need to evaluate your own gear to decide which ones are worth reforging first.

Non-Ancient items will almost always have priority over Ancients, but there are exceptions to the rule:

  • If you have a well rolled piece of gear that has all of your BiS stats, but these stats do not increase with higher quality (such as Critical Hit Damage, Elemental Damage, Critical hit Chance), then keeping a very well rolled non-Ancient can be a good thing until your other pieces have been improved.
  • The piece of gear in question has a very wide or very limited stat pool, such as Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac Obsidian Ring of the Zodiac, which has a fixed set of 4 rolls. Reforging this ring will bring barely any benefit to your build and, on the most part, will just be a waste of materials.

Evaluate your own items and, using the following priority, decide what items are most important for you to reforge.

Note also that, with the introduction of so many modifiers in recent patches, you must also consider the legendary modifier on the items you are looking to reroll. A Non-Ancient Yang's Recurve Yang's Recurve with a 200% affix roll will deal more damage than an Ancient one with a 150% affix roll.

3.3.

Upgrade Rare Item (Hope of Cain)

This recipe is one of the most potent in the game for early Seasonal play, as it allows you to upgrade rare items to legendaries of the same slot as the initial item.

The resulting item can be Ancient or Primal and, for some classes, it can be an extremely efficient way of obtaining a Primal weapon. Demon Hunters, for example, only have two possible daggers in their upgrade pool: Karlei's Point Karlei's Point and Lord Greenstone's Fan Lord Greenstone's Fan. This can be a much easier way of obtaining a Primal Karlei's for the Shadow's Impale build than trying to farm bounties and reforge an existing one.

The materials required for this recipe are as follows:

3.4.

Convert Set Item (Skill of Nilfur)

Converting set items is a useful strategy in the very early endgame, especially at the start of a Season, where getting duplicate set items of the same slot (i.e. two set pants) is common prior to set completion. Using this recipe, you can use your worse rolled duplicate and transform it into another piece of the set, either to complete or improve your set of choice.

The materials required for this recipe are as follows:

Note that this recipe cannot produce Ancient or Primal rolls, and it cannot be used for 2-piece sets, such as Focus Focus and Restraint Restraint or the Bul-Kathos swords.

3.5.

Remove Level Requirement (Work of Cathan)

This recipe can be used to reduce the level requirement of a high level item to 1, essentially allowing you to equip endgame gear right from character creation.

This recipe requires no materials beyond the item you wish to remove the requirement of and a level 25 Gem of Ease Gem of Ease.

We do not recommend using this recipe outside of entertainment purposes.

3.6.

Convert Gems (Darkness of Radament)

This recipe allows you to convert gems to another type, meaning you can put all of your Topaz gems into Rubies, if you do not need them. This can be a very quick way to get max tier gems in a new season with gems you do not need.

To do so, you will need to go to Squirt the Peddler in the Hidden Camp of Act 2 and buy the essences that she sells for the gem type you want.

The materials required for this recipe are as follows:

  • 9 gems of any type
  • An essence of the gem type you wish to obtain

For example, if you have Ruby gems and wanted to get Diamonds instead, you will need 9 Ruby gems and 1 Essence of Diamond Essence of Diamond for the cube recipe.

3.7.

Convert Materials (Pleasure, Regret, and Wrath of Iben Fahd)

These recipes all allow you to convert 1 type of basic crafting material into another, in groups of 100.

The materials required for this recipe are as follows:

If you do not have an item of the corresponding crafting material type that you need, a trick you can use is to check nearby town vendors, which usually sell a good mixture of normal, magic and rare items. Rare items can also be obtained by gambling from Kadala.

3.8.

Augment Ancient Item (Caldesann's Despair)

The final recipe is incredibly important for the Diablo 3 endgame; it allows you to augment an item to place additional stats on it, depending on the stat chosen.

This can only be done to Ancient or Primal Ancient items and the stat pool is entirely dependent on the gems you choose to use:

  • Amethyst — Vitality
  • Diamond — cannot be used in augmentation
  • Emerald — Dexterity
  • Ruby — Strength
  • Topaz — Intelligence

You will use a legendary gem in conjunction with the normal gems you choose, which will dictate the amount of the stat you get. For every gem level on the legendary gem, you will obtain +5 of the stat you have chosen.

The materials required are as follows:

  • 1 Ancient or Primal Ancient item that you wish to augment
  • 1 Legendary gem
    • At least Level 30 for augmenting weapons
    • At least Level 40 for jewelry
    • At least Level 50 for armour
  • 3 Flawless Royal gems of your chosen colour/stat

Note that, despite the investment required, augments are not permanent and they can be overridden by another higher augment, or one of a different stat.

The level to which you augment your gear will depend entirely on your pushing ability, but it is definitely worth it to augment gear that you feel you will not replace in the near future.

The augment can be a huge buff to your damage output and help you clear higher Greater Rift levels, which in turn allows for higher augments.

Do note that, as the legendary gems are consumed in the process, you should not use any gem that you currently are using or require for a build. Use a useless gem that none of your builds requires.

Also, do not waste your gems on augments below Level 80. If you are not able to push higher than Greater Rift 80 without augments, then there are likely many more improvements you can make to your gear and build before wasting your gems on low level augments.

4.

Changelog

  • 20 Nov. 2019: Guide added.
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