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Ethereal Items are found only in the Expansion. "Ethereal" is not a modifier, it's a type of item flag, similar to Superior or Socketed, that can occur on all types of items. Ethereal can occur on normal items, but also magical, Rare, Unique, (but not Set), any type of item in the game that has durability.

Ethereal items are always found with full durability, unlike normal, magical, and rare items. Of course this full durability is about half the normal, but instead of finding say 23/50 Field Plate, the ethereal will have 27/27 when found.

Ethereal items calculate the 50% defense or damage increase on the base item, and that is then modified by any mods on the item. This makes for much larger improvements in defense/damage.

Ethereal items on the ground have a dark gray name, just like socketed items. You can't tell a socketed armor, helm, weapon, or shield from an ethereal from the name tag. Obviously if the gray-text item is boots, belt, or gloves, it's going to be Ethereal, since those items can't be socketed. Bliz has considered changing the colors, such as making Ethereal slightly lighter grey, but this hasn't happened yet. Perhaps in v1.10. You can't see any indication that a magical, set, rare, or unique item in Ethereal from the name when on the ground.

In your inventory Ethereal items are transparent. They have the same colors from affixes as other items, but they'll always be somewhat see-through. You can [[Ethereal Merc| see one here]].

Prior to v1.09, Ethereal didn't add that big of a bonus, since the 50% was just tacked on at the end. If you had an Ethereal [http://www.diabloii.net/items/armor/armor-excep.shtml Ornate plate] with 440 Defense base, the Ethereal would act like a +50% enhanced defense modifier, and you'd get 220 more defense. Not a bad bonus, but you can get up to +100% on Rares, and +200% with Godly on magical items, and in those cases the bonus from the Ethereal is just a small part of the total defense.

For a weapon, if you had a War Pike, with a base damage of 33-178, and 300% enhanced damage, it would do 132-712. If this item were Ethereal it would be 49-267 base, and the 300% damage would make it 196-1068. A huge improvement. Of course the problem is that it would only have 13 durability.

All types of armor lose durability when you are hit by monsters or other players while wearing the items. Different pieces of armor take durability loss at different rates, as listed below. Armor does not lose durability when you take magical damage.

If you don't hit anything with your weapon, (as with an orb or staff or wand used by a spell-caster) the item will never lose any durability. So an ethereal orb is just as good as a non-ethereal one.

Ethereal ruins the selling price, cutting it by 75% or more. You can still get pretty good gold for ethereal armor or wands/scepters/staves/etc, the really expensive stuff, but not weapons or most types of armor.

Anything you sell that is ethereal is gone; the NPC merchants will not display it for repurchase, even if they have room in their window.

An item can get Ethereal as well as one of the self-repairing modifiers, and will last forever if you don't use up the durability quicker than it repairs itself. If you use it up completely, the item will regenerate durability, but will still be unusable. The key is obviously to take it off or wait in town to let it regenerate, if it's getting really low.

These will refill themselves, but if they go to 0, they are ruined. The counter will refill, but you will not be able to equip them again. Ethereal Titan's Revenge are a popular item, but you'll need at least one spare stack of javelins to switch to when the Ethereal Titans get low.

All self-regenerating throwing items work the same way, in that they go to 0 and become unusable, even as the stack regenerates. It's just that non-ethereal ones can be repaired (for 1 gold) and all is well. Ethereal ones are broken forever.

This is possible, and the Ethereal is calculated after any +durability from Superior. So a 50 durability item with say 12% bonus from Superior would have 56 durability, and that would drop to 31 with Ethereal.

Neither the item nor the charges on the item can be repaired, so once you've used up all of the spell charges, they are gone forever.

Ethereal socketed items used to make a RuneWord will still be Ethereal, with the normal bonus and lower defense, and unrepairable. There are no RuneWords that use Zod in v1.09.

This is not a good idea, since the Ethereal stays on the item even once it's been made Rare. Unless you are very lucky and hope for a self-repairing mod, or have Zod runes to spare, don't do it.

You can socket a normal ethereal item, and it will remain ethereal, and gain sockets just as a non-ethereal item would.

Ethereal swords used in the 3 chippy recipe do not remain Ethereal. Ethereal items used in the 3 perfect gems recipe do not remain Ethereal. They emerge as normal items of their type, no longer ethereal. However this will (of course) reset all of their mods, so you can't do this to de-etherealize something useful.

Ethereal items that are crafted will become normal items, not remain ethereal.

The rule of thumb is that anything using a cube (crafting or other recipes) will turn an ethereal item normal, and remove the bonus damage or defense on it. Just imbuing or socketing with Larzuk will leave it ethereal, since there's no cube involved.

The [[Runes Alphabetical#zod|Zod Rune]] (#33) makes anything you socket it in indestructible. This is the only way to fix an Ethereal item, and as it would retain the damage or defense bonus from being Ethereal, you'd have an indestructible item with higher than normal stats.

For example, The [[Unique Maces#baranarsstar|Baranar's Mace]] has +100 durability, and due to the bug can not be Zod'ed properly. [[Unique Axes#messerschmidtsreaver|Messerschmidt's Reaver]] has +25 durability, and will break if you Zod it. However [[Unique Axes#hellslayer|Hellslayer ]] has no bonus durability, and will therefore become indestructible if you Zod it. The same is true for the [[Unique Body Armor|Unique elite body armor]]; Gladiator's Bane will break if you Zod it, but Arkaine's Valor will become indestructible.

There is no way to make an Ethereal item non-ethereal and retain its original stats, other than using the Zod rune, and it is partially bugged, as the above entry details. You must socket the Zod before the item goes to zero durability. Once it's gone to zero durability there is no way to bring it back, and Zod will not help then. There is nothing else you can do to change an Ethereal without changing the entire item. Adding a socket, personalizing an item, etc has no effect on ethereal.

Ethereal items used to create the Necromancer's Iron Golem look different than normal Iron Golems. The Golem gets bonus stats, and is transparent in the game, much like Ghostly champion monsters. Golems you can see-through are cool.

Common, but not that common. It's said by Blizzard to be 5% of all item drops, but since it can't occur on various types of items (bows, xbows, jewelry, set items) the actual amount is less than 5% of total item drops. You'll see something Ethereal every game, often several of them a game, but it's only really noticed when you get it on a Rare or Unique. Pre-game there were lots of worries of great Rares being ruined by Ethereal, but this is very seldom an issue. So few Rares happen to have a good combination of mods, especially with Ethereal on them also, that it's just not something to worry about. Ethereal Uniques are much more often a problem, since most Uniques are pretty good now, especially all the Exceptional and Elite ones.

To quote the dictionary: