My Shield is Worthless?

I have a req8 shield with 16 armor. Why is it still in white letters and not worth anything?

There are several ways to categorize weapon rarity, all of which directly relate to market value.

1. Skin -- a rare skin, like an Emerald Blade or Crystalline Sword, will be worth some regardless of if it is req9, req13, purple, gold, whatever.

2. Color -- as in white, blue, purple, and gold lettering. This is a built-in system for indicating rarity. Gold is obviously the most rare, and reigns in the highest price.

3. Stats -- requirement is a big factor, but there are several others, especially on weapons with "inherent" mods (a weapon either has an inherent or an inscription slot). This is where a req8 max would be worth a lot.

The most valuable weapons are valuable because of a combination of color/rarity, skin/availability, and stats. In your case, you have a weapon with part of a good set of stats, r8 max anything is indeed rare. However, being white, it's not moddable, so you lose points for stats. Being white, you lose points for rarity. And being white typically means the skin is a common one. In other words, of the three criterion, your shield fulfills about half of one .

I was going to say something but FengShuiDove beat me to it.

Why it's white with those stats is simple. Color coding is done based on the modifications (prefix & suffix) the item has, not the basic function of the item (16 armor @ R8 in this case) Basic items without mods will always be white.

white letters means it has no upgrades, it isn't essentially worth nothing but it could be worth more if you added max mods and it depends whether its a rare skin.

^ but you can't fully mod a white item... so it is only worth what the vendor will give.

Thx for info everyone


What if I add mods to it, will it change color of lettering?

And how would I know if a weapon is inscribable or not?

You can't mod any white shield. If you upgrade another white weapon with a prefix or suffix mod, it will change to blue text.

Inscribable items will have the text: "Inscription: ..." in the description. There is no such thing as an inscribable white weapon.

If it dropped in NF or EotN you can always add a shield handle, but you can never add an inscription.
Adding a shield handle will make your item rarity "blue".

But it's not worth anything, so don't add the handle and just merch it.

And white weapons can NEVER be inscribable.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Shield_Handle

I know the wiki article, but that statement is wrong, like many other things on the different wiki-pages.

Just try it yourself: Walk out of Kamadan and kill a few low-level-creatures until you find a white shield.
And then try to add a shield handle. It will work and the rarity will switch to blue.


EDIT: The same applies to Offhands and Wands from NF or EotN. You can always add a Focus Core or a Wand Wrapping.


~take_me

I'll have to try that. It wouldn't be the first error. Then again, I never saw the point of putting a handle on a white shield.

Yes, there is no point in doing that. The shield is worthless.
I just wanted to point out that it is possible ^^

Everything makes sense to me except the color and relation to value. I had a R8 shield drop a while ago, and was told the color of text made a difference in value (purple vs. gold). It wasn't a little bit, either.

It's probably a remainder from the time before Nightfall and inscribable crap, when the rarity of the item had something to do with the mods it could have.

Only a gold shield could have 2 max mods, a purple shield could only have close to max mods. A blue shield was always way off max. And a white shield never had any mods.

Also many seem to favor blue inscribable shields over the purple ones.
One reason could be: The blue rarity is "cooler" since it's less "rare".
The other reason might be, that the purple colored text is just not pretty

Yes it sounds a little strange, but that's how it goes.