I’ve been lurking in the depths of ESO (Elder Scrolls Online) mining item data this week and have been trying to find just how many different items the game has. The quick answer is simply: “a lot”!
Without getting too technical, an item link in ESO has the format:
|H0:item:ID:SUBTYPE:LEVEL:ENCHANTID:ENCHANTSUBTYPE:ENCHANTLEVEL:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0:STYLE:CRAFTED:BOUND:CHARGES:POTIONEFFECT|hNAME|h
We don’t need to include all fields when considering the number of different unique items, like the CRAFTED, BOUND, and CHARGES fields. The POTIONEFFECT field is only valid for potions/consumables and it currently has 12,167 different combinations (23*23*23). We’ll also ignore the ENCHANT… related fields as I don’t yet have a number on these or which enchantments can be on which item types.
This leaves the following fields:
ID = Item ID which is a number from 1 to 60,000+.
LEVEL = 1-50
SUBTYPE = 1-317 (combines quality and level/veteran levels)
The LEVEL and SUBTYPE fields combine to give the final quality and level of the item. Short story is that there are around 800 different combinations of LEVEL+SUBTYPE used in the game (roughly: 64 levels, 5 qualities, store/crafted items = 64*5*2 = 640 + extra).
This means the number of different unique items is: 60,000 * 800 = 48 million
If you include STYLE then that’s another x16 for a whopping 768 million. Add in enchantments for another several order of magnitudes.
Now it will actually be a little less than this as not all items vary by every level and quality but this is a rough approximation, at least until I finish mining items in the game.