Your and the difficulty level of the quest reward has nothing to do with the number of sockets you get. The number of sockets from the is not affected by the difficulty level, only by the of the item, which is based on the of the monster that drops it. Check the master table below, or the individual and pages for info on how many sockets are possible on given item types. This limitation only applies to sockets that are spawn naturally, not ones which are added through the cube recipe or socket quest. Items can only naturally spawn with a maximum of 3 sockets on normal difficulty, 4 sockets on nightmare and 6 sockets on hell. How many a given item can get is random for most item types, but the maximum is always limited by the of the monster that drops the item, item type and in the case of naturally spawning sockets the difficulty level.
That’s why it doesn’t always give the same number of sockets. A weapon dropped in normal difficulty will not have a high enough ilvl to have 4 sockets even if you use larzuk.
