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Color-Coded Item Tiers

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Whether you're playing a single-player RPG, or a MMORPG, you're bound to encounter items (weapons, armor, jewelry, etc.) that are divided into at least three tiers of power and rarity that just happen to be Color-Coded for Your Convenience. Rarity gives us a visual indicator of how one item compares to another in terms of game advancement. If rarity didn't exist, there would be more of a need to test or compare stats before you'd even know whether to get excited that you got a particular item. Rarity offers an immediate clue as to whether an available item will be effective against the tier of enemies you'll encounter at your current level.

As opposed to tropes like Power Glows and Bling of War, Color Coded Item Tiers are strictly non-diegetic, used only to help the player distinguish the item's power through inventory background or item name color. Usually, the colors are, as codified by World of Warcraft, mundane white items, followed by green "uncommon" ones, blue "rare" ones and purple "epic" ones. Sometimes, orange or golden tier of Infinity Plus One Weapons is used as well. The only consistent pattern is that White, Gray and Green are towards the bottom of the tier and Purple and Orange are usually towards the higher end (if they're even there), but whether white is the absolute lowest or purple is the absolute highest or there are 3 or more colors or whatever is up in the air.

A subtrope of Colour-Coded for Your Convenience and Tier System. Compare with Law of Chromatic Superiority.


Examples:

    open/close all folders 

    Action Adventure 
  • ANNO: Mutationem: All Shop Fodder collectibles have color-coded traits displaying their value on how much credits will be earned after being sold. From the least to most value; green is worth the least amount, blue is worth a bit more, purple is worth moderately higher with rare finds, and orange is the highest value with the rarest materials worth the biggest amount.
  • Rupees in The Legend of Zelda have different colors depending on their value. While higher colors tend to vary, the most consistent value is Green=1 Blue=5. Purple is always among the higher values, ranging from 50 to 200 depending on the game.
  • Little Big Adventure 2 is a mixed case; the game has 4 item tiers in total: yellow, green, red and fiery. Each tier is more powerful than the last. Some enemies wear armor that utilizes these same tiers, which makes them invulnerable to any lower tier. Therefore, you need to a weapon of at least the matching tier to deal any damage at all. However, only green and red are the colors consistently used for various items in the game; yellow and fiery are only utilized by Twinsen's Magic Ball, which functions as a thrown weapon. It's the only item that can go through all 4 tiers, via upgrades.
  • Studio Nanafushi's Dead or School has an item's special feature tiered from weakest to best as: white, blue and green.

    Action RPG 
  • Afterimage: Item pick-ups have color-coded "pillars" of light depending on their rarity or importance. From ascending order, the game uses white, green, blue, purple, and orange.
  • Battlerite has four tiers of item rarity. The colors are used on the items' names on the customization screen, and when revealing the content of a chest:note 
    • Common items are gray and consist of avatars and recolors of a character's default weapon.
    • Rare items are blue and consist of Victory Poses, recolors of a character's default outfit, weapons with new models, and recolors of the default ram mount.
    • Epic items are purple and consist of flashier recolors of a character's outfit with more details added, more elaborate weapons (including event exclusive weapons), and some mounts.
    • Legendary items are orange and consist of outfits that completely change a character's appearance, weapons with lights and moving parts, and mounts with elaborate models and particle effects.
  • Demon Hunter: The Return of the Wings: Equipment is marked in white, blue, yellow, gold, and purple, depending on its rarity.
  • Diablo:
    • In Diablo (1997), the division between standard (white) items, enchanted (blue) ones and uniques (gold), may be considered an Ur-Example. The sequels add the green "set" category, where items from the same set are more powerful when used together, and yellow for a more powerful tier of "randomly enhanced" blue items.
    • The colors in Diablo II are:
      • White (Normal, inferior, or superior)
      • Grey (Socketed, same as normal but can be improved with gems and runes; the expansion also adds Ethereal items, which have better stats but cannot be repaired)
      • Blue (Magic, one or two magic properties)
      • Yellow (Rare, a random mix of up to 6 magic properties (but with lower values than Magic ones))
      • Gold (Unique, preset magical properties with a unique name and appearance)
      • Green (Set, preset magical properties and can be used in conjunction with other items in the same set to get additional bonuses)
      • Orange (Crafted, created using the Horadric Cube)
    • Diablo III uses a slightly different colour scheme than its predecessor.
      • Grey (Inferior, no magic properties and lower base stats)
      • White (Normal or superior, no magic properties)
      • Blue (Magic, one or two magic properties)
      • Yellow (Rare, a variable number of random magic properties. Actually the most common kind of item at max level)
      • Orange (Legendary, named items with higher stats and certain guaranteed properties, usually including a special power exclusive to that item. Unlike D2 uniques, most properties of legendary items are still random. May also drop as Ancient or Primal Ancient variants with better stats and a gold or red border, respectively.)
      • Green (Set, legendary items that also grant extra bonuses when worn with other items of the same set. May also drop as Ancient or Prime Ancient variants with better stats and a gold or red border, respectively.)
  • In Digimon World 4, equipment (weapons and boards) may drop randomly with color-coded names to indicate a greater-than-normal boost to stats. The progression is white (normal) < blue < green < yellow < orange < pink, and availability depends on your experience level. For example, a blue-labeled weapon has anywhere from 1-30 more attack points. Also, these boosts are independent of the number of mod slots generated on the item.
  • Disney Heroes: Battle Mode follows the World of Warcraft color scheme pretty closely, organizing all the consumable items into seven tiers based on their rarity: White, Green, Blue, Purple, Orange, Red, and Yellow, in that order. These colors are also applied to the characters themselves, but it's tied to their power level; they ascend to higher tiers the higher you level them up with the right items.
  • Dungeon Siege uses color tiers only for magical enhancements. The tiers are white for mundane items, blue for basic magic items with 1 or 2 bonuses, mauve for 1-bonus-only "rare" magic items, yellow for "legendary" items with up to 2 bonuses, and reddish-brown for items that give a debuff. Nature magic spells get green, and combat magic spells get orange-gold. The Legends of Aranna expansion adds purple for items imbued with a spell, and a teal-green for Diablo-style set items.
  • In God Eater Burst, items are tiered by "Rank" and icon colors/icon background. Ranks 1 and 2 use the default font color and background, 3 and 4 uses Purple icons, 5 and 6 uses Red, 7 and 8 uses Teal, 9 uses White and 10 uses white with a special background.
  • Grim Dawn:
    • White (normal, no magic properties)
    • Yellow (magical, 1 to 3 magic properties)
    • Green (rare items, more magic properties)
    • Blue (epic items, many magic properties and could sometime be item sets)
    • Purple (legendary items; plenty magic properties and could sometime be item sets)
  • Horizon Zero Dawn has a simple scale of White < Green < Blue < Purple < Purple-with-Extra to show the rarity of a weapon, outfit, modification or salable/tradable item. With the right combination of skills, the appearance rate can be increased to the point that a white-only common drop is rarer than green or blue.
  • Monster Hunter has ten tiers of rarity that vary depending on whether the item is a material or equipment. For equipment, Low Rank is Rare 1-3 (white, purple, yellow), High Rank is Rare 4-7 (brown, green, blue, red), and G-Rank is Rare 8-10 (cyan, orange, pink). Common Low Rank materials are Rare 4, rare Low Rank materials are Rare 5, common High Rank materials are Rare 6, rare High Rank materials are Rare 7, common G-Rank materials are Rare 8, and rare G-Rank materials are Rare 9. Equipment made from Deviants are a special rarity, Rare X (indigo). Equipment icons are color-coded accordingly, while material icons are not. Monster Hunter: World introduced rarity levels 11 and 12, colored gold and silver respectively.
  • Path of Exile has a color coding similar to the Diablo series: regular items are white, magical ones are blue, rares are yellow, and uniques are golden. Quest items are green but they are not equippable. Some players and even the wiki have been known to refer simply to white, blue, gold and orange items.
  • Titan Quest has six tiers: Grey (junk), White (normal), Yellow (magical), Green (rare), Blue (mythical) and Purple (legendary). Unlike other games, purple-tier items are available only on Epic and Legendary difficulty settings.
  • Torchlight II has white (common) > green(uncommon) > blue (rare) > orange (unique), with purple being reserved for quest-related items.
  • Warhammer 40,000: Inquisitor — Martyr inverts the common colours for mastercrafted (uncommon) and rare items, and adds red (archeotech) at the top. This results in a progression of common (white/grey), mastercrafted (blue), rare (green), artificer (purple), relic (orange), and archaeotech (red).
  • Xenoblade Chronicles:
    • Xenoblade Chronicles X has five different tiers for collectibles, materials, and equipment: gray (Common), blue (Rare), green (Unique), yellow (Prime), and orange (Intergalactic). Quality of materials reflect the strength of the enemy (early-game enemies like Grexes mainly drop Common-quality items, while late-game enemies like Seidrs mainly drop Unique-quality items), while the quality of collectibles and ores reflect their rarity. For equipment, quality reflects how many built-in skills they have. Common have none, rare has one, unique has two, and prime has three. Intergalactic-quality gear is exclusive to Skell equipment, and equipment of this tier has higher stats than lower-tier versions.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 2 ignores the precedent set by X for a simplified three-tier system: common items are dark gray, rare items are red, and legendary items are gold.
    • Xenoblade Chronicles 3 ignores the precedent set by 2, making common items white, rare items yellow, and legendary items purple.

    Augmented Reality Game 
  • Ingress has two sets of color-coding:
    • Resonators, XMP Bursters, and Ultrastrikes are colored yellow at Level 1, and then cycle through the spectrum of hues with Level 4 being red and Level 8 being purple.
    • For Portal Mods, there's green for Common, purple for Rare, and pink for Very Rare.

    Card Battle Game 
  • Artifact has only three tiers: common (bronze), uncommon (silver), and rare (gold). However, for the sake of balance and fairness, rarer cards aren't necessarily stronger than more common ones.
  • Eternal Card Game has 5 tiers: common (grey), uncommon (green), rare (blue), legendary (yellow), and promo (purple). Promo cards can be obtained by playing the game during their limited time frame, then can only be crafted afterwards.
  • Hearthstone: Heroes of Warcraft's cards follow the World of Warcraft colour scheme to denote their rarity, however actual card power is almost completely disconnected from their rarity (with the exception of the orange legendary cards, although even many of those don't see much play).
  • Might and Magic Duel of Champions divides the cards into five tiers: white are common, green are uncommon, blue are rare, orange are epic (often unique, meaning you can have only one copy in your deck) and purple are exclusively Hero cards.
  • Plants vs. Zombies: Heroes has 6 rarities: Common (white), Uncommon (silver), Rare (gold), Super-Rare (geometric purple), Legendary (rainbow), and Event (red with stars).
  • Shadowverse has 4: The rarities of the cards are denoted by their frame - bronze, silver, gold, and legendary. A less noticeable example lies in the gem at the bottom of the frame — its color denotes the craft that card belongs to.
  • Splatoon 3's Tableturf Battle mode has three rarities: Common (purple), Rare (yellow), and Fresh (rainbow).

    First Person Shooter 
  • The Borderlands series:
    • The first game, Borderlands, features nine colors: White, Green, Blue, Purple, Orange, Dark Orange, Darker Orange, and Cyan. White and green are exclusively for generic weapons, while blue and purple may either be generic or possess special red flavor text that grants a one-of-a-kind effect, earning the moniker Unique. The oranges are reserved for legendary weapons, which are guaranteed to possess red flavor text like Unique weapons. Cyan weapons were introduced with the "Secret Armory of General Knoxx" DLC as an even stronger version of legendaries, dubbed Pearlescent, and are far more rare; each weapon manufacturer only makes one Pearlescent weapon (With the lone exception being Atlas, which produces both a revolver and a Shield), and there is only one Pearlescent weapon of each weapon category (e.g. revolver, sniper rifle, shotgun).
    • Borderlands 2 recycles much of its predecessor's system, but makes some alterations to keep things fresh. White, green, blue, and purple fill essentially the same role, although Unique weapons are almost entirely blue now. Magenta is introduced as a variant of purple for E-tech weapons, always-elemental guns that fire atypical projectiles. Legendary items have been condensed to one shade of orange. Pink weapons, dubbed Seraph, were introduced with the "Captain Scarlett and Her Pirate's Booty" DLC as a variant of legendaries that would serve as a reward for fighting raid bosses. The introduction of Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode brought back cyan for Pearlescent weapons, which are now exclusive to UVHM. Years later, the "Commander Lilith and the Fight For Sanctuary" DLC added a rainbow rarity, dubbed Effervescent, as yet another legendary variant; several of these have conditions for their special effects, such as being in a particular area or having certain other Effervescent items equipped. One interesting feature to note is that white weapons will never spawn with an accessory, while purple and above will always spawn with one. One of the Loading Screen tips even offers a helpful mnemonic for the basic spectrum: "When Grandma burps, Patrick obeys."
    • Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! once again makes some alterations. White, green, blue, purple, and orange keep the same roles they had in Borderlands 2, but magenta and cyan have been removed, and pink has been repurposed for the new Glitch weapons introduced with the "Claptastic Voyage" DLC, which can activate one of four "glitch" effects upon reloading based on their randomly-generated green "error code".
    • Borderlands 3 sticks to the "core" five, with many former Pearlescent items returning as legendary rarity instead.
  • Counter-Strike: Global Offensive divides weapon skins into seven tiers: Consumer grade (white), Industrial grade (light blue), Mil-spec (blue), Restricted (purple), Classified (magenta), Covert (red) and melee weapon-only tier marked with a star symbol (gold).
  • Destiny uses White (Common) > Green (Uncommon) > Blue (Rare) > Purple (Legendary) > Gold (Exotic) for its items. Exotic gear has set perks, while all other gear rolls random perks out of the possible perks for that item. Additionally, only one Exotic weapon and one Exotic armor piece can be equipped at a time (with the exception of three special Exotic armor pieces that have a perk allowing them to be equipped alongside another piece of Exotic armor).
  • Overwatch features four rarity tiers for its cosmetics. The lowest tier, Common, is colored white; all sprays and voice lines fall into this category. Next up is the blue tier, dubbed Rare; this includes all player icons, all victory poses, and basic skins. After that comes Epic items, colored purple or magenta; this category covers all highlight intros, most emotes, and more detailed recolor skins. Finally, gold is reserved for Legendary items; apart from a select few emotes, this tier is reserved for skins that actually change the character's model.
  • Paladins has seven rarity tiers; Uncommon (character recolors), Rare (lower-grade skins, certain MVP Poses and Emotes), Epic (Most skins fall under this, as well as emotes, sprays and MVP poses gotten from the Battle Pass), Legendary (Skins and some titles), Mastery (Limited to Mastery-line of cosmetics, including Golden Weapon/ Golden skins), Limited (Skins/ titles that only appear once, and can never be gotten again), and Unlimited (Event skins that were cheap during the event, but twice the price outside of it).
  • Team Fortress 2 features item qualities for its weapons, hats and aesthetic gizmos. Although their rarity is relative and sometimes a vintage or a genuine quality item can be considered being worth less than their common counterpart from the users, Light Grey (default "Stock" items) > Yellow (unique) > Blue (vintage) > Green (genuine) > Purple (unusual) could be considered a relatively canonical order of rarity, with genuines and vintages being very dependent on the item itself. There are also other qualities such as stranges or community made items that can't be placed anywhere precisely within the order by rarity.
  • BioShock had three different types of ammo for each gun. One is always much rarer than the others but is also the one that can be crafted; on your HUD, that one's icon has a red background. Color is also used to differentiate the ammo itself in most cases, with antipersonnel rounds being red (like flesh) and armor-piercing rounds being gray (like metal).
  • Apex Legends follows the typical white<blue<purple<gold tiering for both cosmetics and in-game loot. In the latter case, gold is typically reserved for fully-kitted weapons, special weapons that can only be found in supply drops, or purple-level equipment with special benefits (such as the gold backpack, which adds just as many inventory slots as the purple backpack, but also cuts the use time for healing items in half).

    Idle/Clicker Games 
  • Heirlooms in Trimps followed the same color scheme as World of Warcraft did for the five well-known tiers (Common->Uncommon->Rare->Epic->Legendary; however, after Legendary tier, heirlooms took on a staggeringly wide variety of tiers, which went as follows...
    • Magnificent (red)
    • Ethereal (blue with purple glow)
    • Magmatic (maroon with bright orange glow)
    • Plagued (green with purple haze)
    • Radiating (dark purple with green haze)
    • Hazardous (yellow with red border and black haze)
    • Enigmatic (blue with pink border and black haze)

    MMORPG 
  • Albion Online has eight tiers of items matching the skill level required to use them: Gray (Beginner) > Brown (Novice) > Green (Journeyman) > Blue (Adept) > Red (Expert) > Orange (Master) > Yellow (Grandmaster) > White (Elder)
    • T4+ materials and items additionally come in four tiers of rarity: Common (no glow) > Uncommon (green glow) > Rare (blue glow) > Exceptional (purple glow), with rarer ones having much lower spawn/drop rate but being more powerful.
    • And there is also equipment quality determined by the skill of the crafter, which follows the typical none-bronze-silver-gold-platinum formula.
  • Dungeon Fighter Online has Common (white), Uncommon (blue), Rare (purple), Unique (pink), Legendary (orange), Epic (yellow), and Mythic (rainbow). There are also some odd ones such as Chronicle gear (which doesn't really fit into normal rarity tiers) being red.
  • The Elder Scrolls Online uses the common color scale of white, green, blue, purple, orange. However by using certain crafting materials it is possible to raise an item along the scale and increase its stats.
  • In Elsword, the colors that indicate item tiers isn't shown in the equipment model itself, but rather, the letters are colored differently. The tiers go as thus: Normal (white letters), Rare (yellow letters), Elite (purple letters) and Unique (beige letters). There's also one extra tier, Old (black letters) that is reserved for unusable, junk equipment.
  • Final Fantasy XIV has gear color coded backgrounds in their icons. Gray is the lowest tier and is either usually bought from vendors or crafted yourself. High quality versions of gear in the gray tier always have better stats than the normal version. Pink and green are around the same tier as the high quality gray tier, but pink's secondary stats are randomized. Certain green items can also be obtained at higher quality that put them on par with blue items. Blue items are the bread and butter of endgame gearing and usually come from vendors that sell end game gear for tokens instead of money. Purple items are nominally the highest tier, but are generally on par with blue items. The main advantage of purple items is their customizable secondary stats at later stages, but obtaining and upgrading the purple items is locked behind huge grinds for marginal at best advantages over blue items, putting them in the territory of Bragging Rights Reward.
  • Granblue Fantasy applies color-coded tiers for several items:
    • For the borders of the characters: Gold for SSR-rarity, Silver for SR-rarity, and Bronze for R-rarity.
    • Weapons and Summons also follow the Gold to Bronze rarity colors as stated above, but also includes a light-gray background for Normal-rarity items.
    • Brown wooden chests contain normal-rarity items or rupies, silver chests contain SR weapons/summons and certain crafting materials, gold chests contain items like Merits and Animas and Archangel weapons, flipping golden chests with a rainbow have SSR summons/weapons and items like Damascus Grains or Urns, blue chests are given for reaching a certain honor threshold and can contain anything from either gold or flipping chests, and red chests are given to players who host the raid battle and gained the most points and can contain the same items as blue chests.
  • Guild Wars initially launched with a four tier system based on item mods: White (no item mods) > Blue (low-end mods) > Purple (mid-range mods) > Gold (high-end mods). The developers later added Red for PvP items and Green for unique boss drops, which would usually have the best version of mods. The system later expanded to cover other items, such as miniatures.
  • Guild Wars 2 has a full spectrum for quality: Gray (Junk) > White (Basic) > Blue (Fine) > Green (Masterwork) > Yellow (Rare) > Orange (Exotic) > Red/Pink (Ascended) > Purple (Legendary).
  • The Lord of the Rings Online:
    • White/Common
    • Yellow/Uncommon
    • Purple/Rare
    • Cyan/Incomparable
    • Orange/Epic
  • The Secret World plays it straight: Green items are the most common and easily available, Blue ones are usually dropped by Dungeon bosses and Purple ones are rare endgame gear with special Signet slots (Signets being equally rare components giving the weapons powers similar to some passive skills).
  • Star Trek Online uses white for common, green for uncommon, blue for rare, purple for very rare, light purple for ultra rare (reserved for Fleet gear or upgraded items), and gold for Epic (mostly upgraded items and a few mission rewards). For equipment, each tier adds an additional "mod" that grants a bonus like increased critical chance or a bonus to a character skill.
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic features eight colors: grey ('trash' items, only good for selling to a vendor), white ('street' gear, which do not give stats), green, blue, orange (Socketed Equipment that allows you to freely swap the stat-boosting components to match your level while keeping the same look), purple/magenta (coming from Rare Random Drops and stores selling gear for endgame dungeon tokens; usually Socketed Equipment filled with purple stat-boosting components by default, the endgame shop armors also give additional bonuses for wearing at least two parts of a given set), darker purple 'legendary' items, and light gold "Inheritance" items that are limited to characters on the same player account.
  • Vindictus also has item qualities that follow the usual Grey > White > Green > Blue > Purple pattern. They stop at purple for now.
  • World of Warcraft is the Trope Codifier that introduced "standard" color coding of Grey (Poor) > White (Common) > Green (Uncommon) > Blue (Rare) > Purple (Epic) > Orange (Legendary) (with light gold "Heirloom" items that can be transferred between characters on the same account added later).
  • Wynncraft's items are arranged as Normal (white) > Unique (yellow) > Rare (pink) > Legendary (sky blue) > Fabled (red) > Mythic (purple), with each tier being rarer and stronger than the last. However, four more tiers exist outside of this standard chain:
    • Set (lime green) items range in power from Unique to Legendary, depending on what set it is, and how many items in the set the player has.
    • Crafted (teal) items can range in power from Normal to Fabled, depending on what the player uses to create them.
    • No weapons, armor, or accessories belong to the Misc. (light gray) or Junk (dark gray) tiers, which are instead used for miscellaneous items, often for one special purpose and no other use besides.

    MOBA 
  • Dota 2 has a few rarity levels for its cosmetic items, which are represented by different colors:
    • Common (bluish-gray)
    • Uncommon (light blue)
    • Rare (Blue)
    • Mythical (Purple)
    • Legendary (Fuchsia; this level and the ones above are mostly arbitrary in meaning, though rarer items tend to look more impressive)
    • Immortal (Gold, for event-limited items which often have major visual effects)
    • Arcana (Green, for premium items with a steep real-world money cost which massively overhaul a hero's appearance)
    • Ancient (Red, a sparsely-used tier for items that can no longer be obtained normally)
    • Dota Plus Access and Seasonal (Yellow, for items which expire after a certain amount of time)

    Platformer 

    Roguelike 
  • Beacon (2018): Item Rarity information has a color and number of pips for each tier. Common is Green and 1, Rare is Blue and 2, Legendary is Purple and 3.
  • Crown Trick has five tiers of equipment (white, green, blue, purple, and gold) for weapons and relics. For weapons, the first four rarities can be applied to any regular weapon, with higher weapons having better stats, stronger custom weapon aspects, and more aspect slots, while the highest gold rarity is reserved for "Legendary" weapons with unique, powerful passive abilities and the highest stats of their weapon class.
  • Dungeon Crawl color-codes all the unidentified equipment you find or loot from enemies as either mundane (gray), enchanted (blue), or artifact (white).
  • Hades changes the colors of the names and descriptions of boons based on their tier:
    • Normal boons are randomly Common (white), Rare (blue) or Epic (purple), with higher tiers having stronger effects. There's a fourth "normal" tier, Heroic (red) which doesn't appear normally and can only be gotten by combining an Epic boon with an effect that increases its rarity, or if a boon is mutually exclusive with one you already have.
    • Some boons require a combination of other boons before they can be offered, and have a fixed tier. These are Legendary (orange/golden) if you need multiple boons from the same god, and Duo (green) if you need boons from different gods.
  • Loop Hero: Four colors of gear, which reflect the number of secondary stats on the item. White items have only the base stat, blue have one secondary stat, yellow has two or three secondaries, and orange has three or four.
  • Risk of Rain divides its items into five tiers based on rarity and type: common (white), uncommon (green), rare (red), boss items (yellow) and equipment (orange).
    • Its sequel Risk of Rain 2 adds two more tiers: lunar items (blue) and void items (purple).

    Shoot 'em Up 
  • Event Horizon uses this for ship modules. The tiers are: Junk (gray), Standard (blue), Improved (green), Superior (purple), and Rare (gold)

    Strategy RPG 
  • In Disgaea games, there are three tiers of item rarity and it shows through the name, the common tier have white text, Rare items have green (With blue if you equip multiple Rare items) and Legendary have Gold text. Almost all items have 3 versions of them : Common (White), Rare (Silver in first game, Green in later games) and Legendary (Gold). The better the rarity, the more powerful the item is, the more floor its Item World have, and the more Specialist/Innocents it can hold. However, while Rare items are stronger than normal items and Legendary items are stronger then Rare items, you can get most of the items in Common, Rare or Legendary (Exceptions include Rank 40 items like the Infinity +1 Sword, Joke Weapons and some unique weapons that Optional Party Members have, all of which only come in Legendary) and if you go to the Item world, you can strengthen an item making it stronger than an unleveled Legendary version of the same item.
    • Disgaea 5 introduced the Epic tier of rarity, giving items glowing azure text for it. However, this tier has to be worked up to through the Item World.
  • In Dead Ahead Zombie Warfare, upgrade items are separated into four tiers: Common (White), Rare (Blue), Epic (Purple) and Legendary (Orange). Higher tiered items can be upgraded further and can contain a higher amount of bonus stats.

    Survival Horror 
  • Dead Island follows the usual White-Green-Blue-Purple-Orange formula.

    Third Person Shooter 
  • Anthem (2019) uses this. The tiers go: Common (White) > Uncommon (Green) > Rare (Blue) > Epic (Purple) > Masterwork (Orange) > Legendary (Gold).
  • The Division uses this system. In order from lowest to highest, you have Worn (Gray), Standard (Green), Specialized (Blue), Superior (Purple), High-End (Gold), Gearset (Turquoise), and Exotic (Orange).
  • The various item/people cards in Fortnite use the same chromatic scaling as outlined above:
    • White < Green < Blue < Purple < Orange < Gold (Heroes and Survivors only); with each tier getting additional abilities / better base statistics than the previous one.
  • In Left to Survive from Upwake.Me, weapons and attachments use a somewhat separate color coding. For both the ranking in power is grey (Common), a dull green (Uncommon), blue (Rare) and purple (Epic). However for weapons interestingly there's no blue (Rare) helicopter weapons and as of 2022, there's a new color that's bright bluish-green which signifies an epic weapon that has a chance to cause extra elemental-based damage (as of writing, there's only 3 in the game). For attachments, there's an orange colour (Legendary) that goes beyond purple.
  • Whenever Warframe needs to denote rarity, it resorts to the Olympic medal color scheme: bronze for common, silver for uncommon, and gold for rare. Very rarely, a fourth tier, legendary, is needed, in which case platinum (a brighter white than silver) is used. Mods get a few extra colors for special categories. The randomly-generated Riven mods are purple with an elaborate crystalline border, while the humorous Peculiar mods are dark grey with a smoky effect. Amalgam mods, which are variants of existing mods that sacrifice a small amount of power for an extra, unrelated effect, are halfway between silver and platinum with a bulky, rounded border. Note, however, that this is never used for normal weapons and equipment; unlike most similar games, every single weapon is unique, with no obvious way to tell if it's better or worse except actually using it.

    Western RPG 
  • Items in the Dragon Age series are color-coded by their material. Dragon Age: Origins plays this trope straight, which every material corresponding to a particular item tier (e.g. from the grey tier 1 iron to the golden tier 9 Volcanic Aurum). Dragon Age II subverts this: despite having material and color tiers for the items, the real power/quality of an item is determined by a hidden statistic. Dragon Age: Inquisition plays it straight again, albeit with just three tiers: grey-coded Common items, blue Rares, and purple Uniques.
  • In Fate, rarer items emits different coloured glows. Green is Uncommon, Purple is Elite, Yellow is Legendary. A Legendary item has higher stats than an Elite item of an exact same type, which itself is better than its Uncommon counterpart, and so on.
  • Cyberpunk 2077 has the standard spectrum of grey-coded common items, green uncommons, blue rares, purple epics, and orange legendary items, but mixes it up a little with named "iconics", which can be found at any item tier (depending on V's Character Level when obtaining them), but are highlighted bright gold in the UI overlay so you won't miss them. Iconics can be upgraded into the next higher item tier, replacing the previous one.
  • Hogwarts Legacy has a Gear Rarity system consisting of: Common (black), Well-Appointed (green), Superb (blue), Extraordinary (purple), and Legendary (orange). Superb gear and above can be upgraded with crafting materials via the Enchanted Loom in the Room of Requirement once it becomes available, with each higher tier requiring a higher amount and variety of materials.
  • In Divinity: Original Sin II, item tiers are coded like this:
    • White: non-magical.
    • Green: Uncommon.
    • Blue: Rare.
    • Purple: Epic
    • Pink: Legendary.
    • Orange: Divine.
    • Gold: Unique.
  • The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt: In order from least to most rare, Common items have a gray background in the inventory, Master items have blue backgrounds, Magic items use yellow, Relic items use orange/brown, and Witcher gear uses green backgrounds.

    Wide Open Sandbox 
  • Dwarf Fortress denotes item quality with symbols rather than colors, but plays the trope straight in all other aspects. The tiers are as follows:
    • Regular
    • -Well crafted-
    • +Finely crafted+
    • *Superior*
    • ≡Exceptional≡
    • ☼Masterwork☼
  • Both looted and crafted items in Hytale have rarities denoted by color; grey is Common, blue is Rare, purple is Epic, and yellow is Legendary.
  • Minecraft: 1.13 introduces rarity: specific hard-to-get items have their tooltip names in a different color to signify their value and ease in obtaining. Most items are white, but there are three tiers above that: yellow/uncommon (totems of undying, elytra, mob heads, enchanted books, bottles o' enchanting, dragon's breath, nether stars and hearts of the sea), blue/rare (beacons, conduits, end crystals, golden apples and music discs), and purple/epic (enchanted golden apples, the dragon egg, and creative-exclusive items like the command block or the structure block).
  • Robocraft originally had a complex, arbitrary set of colours for the various armour tiers, but now uses the standard Grey-Green-Blue-Purple-Orange tier system across all parts.
  • 7 Days to Die color-codes items based not really on rarity, but quality, i.e. how effective a certain item is and how long it can be used until it breaks. The sorting is unusual: growing quality order is grey, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple.
  • Terraria has Rarity, a statistic applying to all items, that loosely indicates their value and the difficulty with which they are obtained. An item's Rarity is indicated in-game by the color of its name text, as displayed, for example, when rolling the cursor over the item in an inventory slot. An item's Rarity can be raised or lowered by up to two tiers depending on its Modifier. There are 13 tiers of Rarity which go from gray (the lowest) to purple (the highest), plus three special tiers not normally available (rainbow, exclusive to Expert mode items, fiery red, exclusive to Master Mode items, and amber, exclusive to quest items redeemable at the respective town NPC).

    Non-Videogame Examples 
  • The tabletop RPG Age of Aquarius has a rarity rating for every weapon or item. It features standard rarity ratings of "Common", "Rare", "Very Rare" for most items, and off-the-scale, idiosyncratic rarity ratings for both extremely common items (i.e. Rock: "It's probably lying under your feet right now") and extremely rare items (i.e. Minigun: "Hell freezes over before you find one").
  • Magic: The Gathering started color-coding the cards' expansion symbol by rarity with the Exodus set in 1998. Black means Common (or Basic Land), silver means Uncommon, gold means Rare, and copper-red (introduced in Shards of Alara in 2008) means Mythic Rare.
  • Association Football tabletop game Microstars featured a Green-Red-Blue-White-Silver-Gold tier system, with higher tiers being rarer and having slightly better stats. Later, the game added a seventh "Black" tier that was even rarer than Gold.

Alternative Title(s): Colour Coded Item Tiers

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