What items are worth picking up?
Having grown up in a currency economy, I am not so familiar with evaluating barter economies.
I notice that when I pick up only blue items to avoid running out of town portal scrolls, I tend to run out of scrolls of wisdom quickly if I try to identify all my items.
I have two questions:
- Is there an "optimal" mix of items to pick up?
- Is it worth identifying enchanted items that I'm sure my character won't wear?
It depends on what you are looking for.
When I started playing, all I wanted was scrolls (wisdom and portal), magic and rare items. So I picked up pretty much everything and sold all the items I didn't care about.
Right now, I'm more looking for shards and orbs because I'd like to enhance my gear, and in order to obtain those, I have to follow the famous vendor recipes.
For instance, I need Armourers Scraps and Blacksmith's Whetstons which require superior quality equipment, and also Chromatic Orbs which require items with 3 slots of 3 different colors linked together. In addition of that, I also pick up blue stuff (4 or less slots, like ChrisHateZ said) and yellow/orange stuff when I can find some.
I identify everything before selling my stock because
- Scrolls of Wisdom can be found super easily
- You can get more interesting stuff by selling identified items (once again, check the vendor recipes)
So what should you pick up ? You should pick up what you need: powerful gear (blue/yellow/orange) and everything that might be necessary for one of the recipes you are following.
If you're going to pick blue items pick only those that don't take a lot of space (1H weapons mostly, but 4-square gear is ok too). If you sell unidentified items you will mostly get shards for orbs, some identified items will sell for wisdom scroll pieces, but most of them will sell for shards.
Now for your second question, don't identify blue items you know you wont use. The only items you know you wont use, which you should identify are yellow (rare) and unique (orange) items as you could trade them with other players if their stats roll out well.
Furthermore i wouldn't worry so much about wisdom scrolls, because they'll be droping pretty often later on. I am lv18 currently and I'm getting lot of them as drops, more then i can use.
I Would always Identify lvl 50+ Rares, could have awesome properties who sell good..... (DOnt Judge me, im just a mid!). Also i think most Endgame Items are lvl 50 (or 59) OR higher.... so it could be worth checking it.... And Wisdoms arent that rare... got 5 stacks...