Item Use Requirements
Many items have requirements in order to use them. The types of restrictions on items include minimum level, required proficiencies, class restrictions, and reputation requirements. If you do not meet one or more of the requirements, those requirements will display in red text in that item's tooltip.

Item Rarity Colors (from most common to least common)

Poor*
Common
Uncommon
Rare
Epic
Legendary

*"Poor" items (commonly called "vendor trash") have no value outside of cash value when sold to NPC vendors.

Soulbound Items
Many items, particularly magic items, are Soulbound. An item that is soulbound is permanently bound to a specific player and cannot be transferred to another character in any way. A player can vendor, disenchant, or destroy his soulbound item, but cannot trade or sell it to another player. Items become soulbound in a variety of ways: on pickup, on creation, or when equipped. You will receive an alert indicating that the item will become soulbound by performing the relevant action.

Item Durability
Many items are subject to gradual durability loss through use. All armor and weapons have item durability, but not trinkets, cloaks, off-hand frills, shirts, tabards, amulets, and rings. An item's current and maximum durability is displayed on its tooltip. On death, all equipped items lose 10% of their current durability.

• All armor/weapon NPC vendors can repair durability for a fee. The repair fee varies depending on how damaged a given item is.
• Items remain at full effectiveness until they have zero durability. Their power does not gradually degrade.
• When an item reaches zero durability, it no longer gives the player any benefit; it acts as though it does not exist until repaired.
• Items that are broken (zero durability) can always be repaired - thus, players can never permanently lose items through durability loss.
• The 10% durability loss that affects equipped items does not occur when the cause of death is another player in PvP combat.
• If you accept a resurrection from a Spirit Healer, both your equipped items as well as items in your inventory will be affected by durability loss.
• If an item gets to low durability, a paper doll displays on your screen with the corresponding region shaded in yellow. Broken items are indicated by red shading on the paper doll.

Linking Items to Chat
You can create a link to an item to insert in a chat message, which is useful for showing it to people for trading purposes or just to share information about your item. Hold down "Shift" and left-click on an item while typing a line of chat text. This will insert a link to that item in your message. The recipient of your chat can simply click on that text to bring up the item's tooltip. You can link items in whispers, party chat, guild chat, raid chat, and the city trade channel. You can link any item that you can see the icon of, not just the ones you are wearing. Thus, items in your bank, worn by others, displayed as rewards in your quest log, previously linked to you in a message, or in the Auction House are all fair game.

You can link recipes into chat. If you have chat input open and you shift-click on one of your recipes in your profession UI then it will put a link to that recipe with the reagents it requires to make into chat. The recipes show up in gold/yellow.

Stacking
The process of stacking items combines two or more identical items into a stack, which allows you to carry multiples of that item in one inventory slot. Items used in tradeskills, reagents, and consumable items are the most common stackable items. Stackable items combine if you pull one item on top of the other. To break up a stack, hold "Shift" and then left-click on the item. This will bring up a window which allows you to control how many items you want to take out of the stack. The maximum number of items that can fit into a stack vary by the item.

Key Rings
When a player first acquires a key, they will automatically acquire a key ring that can only hold keys. The number of slots in the key ring will increase dynamically depending on character level. You can find the icon to open your key ring just to the left of your bag icons. Any item designated as a key, including both permanent dungeon keys as well as quest-specific keys, can be stored in the key ring.

Consumable Item Cooldowns
Items that can be used or activated by right-clicking on them, such as potions, fall into one of three categories. Using an item of a particular category will trigger a shared cooldown among all other items in the same category. The categories and their associated cooldowns are:

• Potions - 2 minutes: Potions include health and mana potions, as well as specialty potions such as Invisibility and Mighty Rage.
• Aggressive - 1 minute: This category includes items such as explosives, Really Sticky Glue and Discombobulator Ray.
• Non-Aggresive - 2 minutes: This category includes items such as Healthstones, Night Dragon's Breath, Whipper Root Tubers and Target Dummies.

• Common unique items will not drop for you if you already have them in your inventory.
• Armor can't be swapped out (changed) while in combat. However, weapons can be swapped during combat.
• Item sets can be found in the game. Wearing multiple pieces of an item set will convey special bonuses to your character. The most common item sets are class-specific armor sets.
• When you destroy a superior quality (blue) or better item, a window will pop that asks you to confirm deletion of that item.
• You can check out what items will look like on your character before you get them. Learn more about the dressing room feature.
• Shields have block values. Blocked attacks avoid an amount of damage based on your shield and your character's Strength.
• A player wearing a cloak or helm can choose to have them not show up in the game world. To control this functionality, look in the Options menu under "Interface Options." If you select to disable the display of these items other players will not see them as well.
• All wands can be used by classes that possess the Wand Proficiency. Wand damage is reduced by resistance in the appropriate school. Wand use is not prevented when silenced.
• The Shoot Wand ability is a toggle. While active, you will continue attacking with the equipped wand until cancelled (e.g. moving).
• Most quest rewards are labeled as Bind on Pickup. As a result, they cannot be traded to other players.
• Quivers and ammo pouches will increase attack speed when using a gun or bow.
• Items with procs are using time-based procs. Their proc frequencies are entered as the number of desired procs per minute, and their actual per-swing proc chances are calculated from that using the weapon's speed.
• Items that increase percentages to block, dodge, crit, parry, and hit chance now stack.
• There are items in the game that have a duration on them that is measured in real time. For instance, there are fish that have a four-hour duration; they only last four hours regardless of whether or not the character is logged in.
• Proficiency Bonuses: Some sets of equippable items will give bonus effects to the player only if they have a specific skill, such as Leatherworking.
• Reflection: Effects which cause reflection do not reflect triggered effects separately from their base effects (e.g.. Impact, Improved Shadow Bolt, Aftermath, etc.)
• Temporary item buffs (e.g. poisons, sharpening stones and shaman weapon buffs) will persist through zoning or logging out.
• Items which allow mana regeneration while casting will not stack greater than 100%.
• Patch 2.4 Update: Item Cast Spells: Many spells cast by items were being cast as if the caster were the same level as the item. Most of those will now be cast at the player's level, giving them a reasonable chance to miss, be dispelled, or be resisted.
• Weapon enchants are shown at the character selection screen.