The icon of Barrowstep Hobnails, as the game shows it on the gear screen.

Unique · boots · Hobnails · the Bonecaller’s own

Barrowstep Hobnails

Wither Hex jumps: a cursed foe you kill passes its curse to the nearest foe in 4 tiles.

Play

Drops from floor 3 down.

The power

Wither Hex jumps: a cursed foe you kill passes its curse to the nearest foe in 4 tiles. It changes Wither Hex, which you still have to learn with a level-up point for the power to do anything. Only the Bonecaller finds it (it never drops while another hero dives), and only he gets its power: another hero can take it from the shared stash and wear it, but he keeps just its stats.

Stats

A unique always has its own lines, each rolled in a narrow range, on top of its base’s implicit. The implicit grows with the floor it dropped on (3–5 plus 1 per floor below the first, rounded down). The ranges below are the ones it rolls on floor 3, where it first drops.

Slot
boots
Base
Hobnails
Line 1
+3% move speed
Line 2
+14 life to +18 life
Line 3
-3% cooldowns
Line 4
+5% damage to +6% damage
Line 5
+4% skill area
Hobnails implicit (move speed) by the floor Barrowstep Hobnails dropped on
Dropped on floorImplicit roll
35–7
1012–14
3032–34

Keeping up as you go deeper

Its lines grow with its item level, step for step with the best affix tier a rare of that level can roll, so one found deeper rolls bigger and an early one is not left behind. To lift one you already own, the Smith’s one Upgrade button raises its item level to the floor of your deepest lit waypoint (up to 30) for 3 slag a level: it keeps its power, its sockets and its place in each range, and its base stat grows too. Worked example: found on floor 3 and upgraded once you light the floor-30 waypoint, it costs 81 slag and its first line (move speed) goes from 3 to 10. Past item level 30 the same button costs Fault shards (from the Fissures) instead, and its lines stop growing at item level 36, where the affix tiers end.

Barrowstep Hobnails’s lines by item level
Item levelLine 1Line 2Line 3Line 4Line 5
3+3% move speed+14 life to +18 life-3% cooldowns+5% damage to +6% damage+4% skill area
10+5% move speed+31 life to +40 life-5% cooldowns+12% damage to +14% damage+10% skill area
20+7% move speed+51 life to +66 life-7% cooldowns+20% damage to +24% damage+16% skill area
30+10% move speed+87 life to +112 life-10% cooldowns+34% damage to +41% damage+27% skill area

How it drops

From floor 3 down, a boss kill drops a unique 50% of the time, an elite 7% and any other kill 0.06%; from floor 11 down an elite drops one 4% of the time and any other kill 0.03%, so a geared hero fills his slots more slowly. Until your camp owns its first unique, every boss kill drops one made for your hero’s class while one of his is left, even one that otherwise drops only deeper, and else one any hero can find. The game never drops a unique you already own or wear, nor the same one twice in a dive, and picks evenly among the rest: with none yet, a boss kill has a 3.3% chance of being this one for the Bonecaller (one of 15); 50.0% for the boss that pays the Bonecaller’s camp its first unique on floors 3–5, where that one is always one of the Bonecaller’s 2 found there, and 12.5% from floor 6, where it is one of all his 8. Above floor 6 the 26 deeper uniques cannot drop yet, so on floors 3–5 a boss kill has a 8.3% chance of being this one for the Bonecaller (one of 6). Uniques and set pieces are finished work: the smith will not reroll their lines. His Upgrade lifts a unique to your depth for slag, and either one past it for Fault shards.

Other uniques