Unique items are rarely-discovered they show golden text when hovered over for instant recognition, and have special, pre-set names and stats. Every time you find a Unique, it will have the same mods, though many have some small range allowed, such as +50-60% Defense. Unlike the random magical and Rare items, you can look over the lists of Uniques and see one that you want, and know if you find it it will be just like the info listed. In 1.10 of the Expansion the odds of gambling an Unique is 1 in 2000. In 1.09 of the Expansion you can gamble for unique items, but your chances will be very slim.
Uniques can have more and different modifiers than Magical and Rare items. There are no rules to the mods that can be on a unique, unlike with magical and rare items. Uniques can have much higher damage or defense, and add lots of special modifiers, more hit points, +%hit points or mana, +magic find, and other cool things no magical or rare item can ever do.
Not all Uniques in Diablo II are useful, but some are the best items of their type. The Uniques added in the Expansion are all quite high quality, and nearly all of them are desirable.
Unique Usefulness
A few Unique items are very useful throughout the game, either because they have properties as good as you'll find on Rares, or else special properties that no normal items can ever have. Lots of lower-quality Uniques are also very useful to pass down to new characters, since Uniques have no Character level requirements, so as long as you have enough strength and dexterity to equip them, you may do so.
Generally speaking, Unique Armor is more useful than Unique weapons. This is primarily since defense becomes useless on hell difficulty for most characters, and it's not all that important before then either. So if it makes no real difference if you have 700 def or 50 def on your armor, then that goes for belts, helms, boots and everything else as well. If you aren't worried about defense, then you can just look for the best possible properties, and some unique armor has very cool properties, though none has much in the way of defense.
With weapons, damage is the main consideration, and it is always very important to most characters. No unique weapons can compare to a good rare Exceptional weapon, so the only unique weapons that are much used are ones for new characters before their damage becomes a problem, or else weapons not used for their non-damage benefits, held by Sorcs or Necros or Hammerdins.
Special Properties
In addition to the normal bonuses to damage, resistances or stats, many uniques have special properties that can't be found on any other items in the game. Some of these are, Crushing Blow, Deadly Strike, Open Wounds, Hit Causes Blindness, Hit Freezes Target, +to Fire Skills, +% to total mana, Hit Slows Target, Freeze duration, and more.
All of these properties get an asterisk * after them in each item description, and are explained in more detail below the item tables. For info on all other modifiers, see them listed in our Modifiers page, where you can find more info on most of these special ones as well.
Uniques and Rares
Uniques and Rares are easily confused. But read this and you'll be set:
| Unique | Rare |
|---|---|
 |  |
Rares
Rares actually look more like the Uniques from Diablo. Their name is in yellow, and they have a stack of modifiers, and weird names. However they are random, both in name and modifiers, and much more common than Uniques. Each character gets a rare item when they have Charsi imbue something as their reward for completing the Horadric Malus quest, plus Rares are dropped by monsters and chests more often than real Uniques are.
Uniques are much as they were in Diablo. One point of confusion is that their names are written in a dark gray/gold. But they have names and attributes that are the same every time, as they were in Diablo, and are dropped very infrequently. There is some variability in their stats allowed of the base item, as with all base items in Diablo II. Armor varies slightly in Defense rating, and weapons can in durability.
Uniques
But as you can see in the picture above, either of these items could be a Unique or a Rare, based on their stats. The difference is that the Skewer of Krintiz will always be what is here, the stats unchanging. While the Rare item, the Eagle Gnash, is totally random. The name, the stats, the item type, etc. There is a huge database of first and last names for Rares, all of them able to appear on some item types and not on others. And the same goes for the modifiers. All the listed modifiers on Rares are known prefixes or suffixes, but they are listed by their effect, rather than name. The 1-8 lightning damage here is "of shock", for example, and +66 to attack rating is within the range of benefits the "Silver" prefix grants.
Crafted
Crafted items add to the confusion for new players in the Expansion. In a nutshell, crafted items are made in the Horadric Cube, using another item, and usually some runes, a jewel, and perhaps a gem. There are hundreds of different recipes, all of which make items with some pre-set mods that are always the same (much like uniques) but also will generated with 1-5 random mods, like Rares. Crafted Items have orange names and they are basically half unique/half Rare, with mods possible that you can never get on Rares otherwise. Some of these are extremely useful, so you should look over the recipes.