Unique Items

Unique Items are by far the most sought-after, possessing many magical properties that no Magical, Rare, or Crafted Item has. There is usually only one Unique item for every type of weapon and armor in the game. Unique items are denoted by their names being colored gold. Set Items are different from Unique ones, but very similar to them in terms of how they work and rarity.

In Diablo III, Unique items are replaced with legendary items, with only Death's Breath having a unique (teal) level of quality, indicating its special reagent status.

Unique Item Appearance Limit
In earlier versions of Diablo II, if any player in a game had a certain Unique item in their possession, the game would not generate another of it. However, this limitation was revised with one of the patches to the game. It is now possible for the game to generate a Unique item even if someone in the game has it already. But it will not appear more than once in a single play.

Note that items are actually generated during gambling, even if you do not buy them. This means that if a unique appeared in the gambling window, it will not be dropped by enemies until you start a new session. Therefore, it may be advisable to restart your game after spending a significant amount of time gambling.

Level Requirements
In Classic Diablo II, Unique items have no experience level requirements. In Lord of Destruction, these items do have determined level requirements, to prevent players from having characters with low levels, but high stats. Also, Exceptional and Elite Uniques each have higher level requirements than their Normal counterparts. Exceptional and Elite Uniques do not appear in Classic Diablo II.

Elite Uniques
Elite Unique items are somewhat sparse. There are weapon and armor classes that don't have a Unique for every type. For instance, there is no Unique Hydra Edge (Elite ) or (Elite ). However, there are classes of equipment that actually have two Unique items of the same type. There are two Unique Phase Blades (Elite Crystal Sword); and. There are two Unique s (Elite ); Horizon's Tornado and Stormlash. There are even two Unique Thunder Mauls (Elite ); and Earth Shifter.

The reason for some of these instances of two Unique Elite items of the same type is because early in the release of Lord of Destruction, Blizzard added Unique Elite weapons and armor that were based on the most famous Unique items in the original Diablo, such as maul,  bow, and  two-handed sword. Later on, new Elite Unique items were added, and a few of them were of the same types as the returning items from Diablo I.