Diablo 2 - Ethereal Bugged Armor aka eth bugged armor aka ebugged armor

Ebug D2

Ebugged armor or shield is ethereal Diablo 2 armor or ethereal Diablo 2 Shield that has been socketed with the socketing recipe; that is, when the ethereal armor or shield is transmuted in the Horadric Cube along with the required runes and gems, it comes out with a second 50% defense bonus but one which is based on the total defense rating of the armor or shield. Thus, the armor or shield becomes ebugged: the ebug is erroneous; it is a bug in the game's code.

e = ethereal and b = bug. Thus, ebug.

To be clear, we ebug ethereal armor or shield to gain a notable increase in defense.

Godly Ebugs Diablo 2

• ebugged Eth Archon Plate D2, perfect, ethereal (796, 1179)
• ebugged Eth Sacred Armor D2, perfect, ethereal, Stone (max 5265 def.)
• ebugged Eth Monarch D2, perfect, ethereal, Spirit (222, 333)

ebug Horadric Cube Recipe

• Socket Normal or Eth Armor: Tal + Thul + Perfect Topaz + Armor
• Socket Normal or Eth Shield: Tal Rune + Amn + Perfect Ruby + Shield
• Socket Normal or Eth Helm: Ral + Thul + Perfect Sapphire + Helm

Diablo 2 Ebugging

Back in the day, one of the best items I came out with was this ethereal Ornate Plate:

This armor is highly sought-after as merc armor due to its ethereal nature and its manageable strength requirement. We want ethereal armor and weapons for our mercs for the 50% damage/defense bonus they confer. We don't have to worry about ethereal items breaking because there is no wear and tear on merc-equipped items. Of course, elite ethereal Sacred Armor is superior to exceptional Ornate but its strength requirement is much harder to meet. Thus, Ornate can be equipped on mercs much earlier, and is therefore the preferred choice.

Now, what we want to do with this armor is socket it with four sockets in order to apply the Stone runeword to it. There are two ways to socket armor: Larzuk and the Horadric Cube socketing recipe (Tal-Thul-pTopaz). Larzuk will give us the max sockets, which for Ornate armor is four. The recipe, on the other hand, will randomly give us between 1 and 4 sockets. Thus, it would make sense to socket the armor through Larzuk, right?  

But the socketing recipe is advantageously bugged for ethereal armor (eth bugged) in that it erroneously applies the ethereal defense bonus a second time; better still, not to the armor's base defense but to its total defense. Thus, we come out with this:

We now fit our runes to make the Stone runeword:

So, at 47th level, and strength-permitting, a merc gets 3861 defense from this armor. In single-player mode, 47th level is reached around the midway point of Nightmare.

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