Magic Find

[Guest]

My character just started doing hell meph runs (check 'fire/orb sorc' thread under 'strategy') and I've got about 300 MF on. I've been doing runs all day, and I haven't found anything! How many runs do I have to do until I start finding useful things?

[adeyke]

300% is plenty.

MF won't allow you to find anything you can't already find. It'll just increase the chances a bit. And then it's still largely luck.

There's a diminishing returns on unique find, set find and rare find. So even if you doubled your MF, you'd just find 17% more uniques, 30% more set items and 33% more rares. So more MF isn't going to have as big an impact as you might think. Of course, if you can get MF without sacrificing killing speed, it doesn't hurt, either.

And, of course, the quality of your drop depends on how you define "useful." The higher your expectations are, the more likely it becomes that you'll be disappointed.

[Guest]

I built this character specifically for doing meph runs. Will I be able to find game finishing items, like Shako, Occulus, Stormshield, and Sojs, as well as good sets, like Natalya's and IK, off of meph? Can meph drop any item? Is there somebody else I should be killing instead? I heard Pindleskin is a good person to kill. Is this true?

Edit:

Regarding what you said about increasing MF without hurting my killing speed...

I'm wearing the following:

Topazed Shako
Topazed Skulders
Occulus
Lidless Wall
2x Soj
+1 sorc skills ammy
Gold Wrap
Magefist
Silkweave


I was considering replacing Magefist with chance guards. My friend also uses Nagel Rings on his MF sorc. What do you think?

[Fragbait]

Hi unrealshadow,

It all depends on your play style. You have to know thyself if you kill fast enough, but if you want numbers, I think someone in here did a Meph run in 28 seconds, so you got a rough idea.
Your gear already seems to be fairly nice,

Topazed Shako
Topazed Skulders
Occulus
Lidless Wall
2x Soj
+1 sorc skills ammy
Gold Wrap
Magefist
Silkweave

but imho the ammy and the boots aren't too great. Try finding a +2skills, resall or a +3skilltab ammy, and perhaps you could change your boots to some good (>40%mf) War Travelers?
You could always try to get the charm Gheeds Fortune for another 20-40%.
You can get your +x to skilltabs also from grand charms, got to reroll a bit, and then change the rings to nagels or good rares, if you need resists or life or sth.
In my eyes however, your gear already is pretty good. I want one of those shakos, too :)

Greetings, Fragbait

[Obi2Kenobi]

I need to know if this is HC or not. This advice is for HC, so if you aren't playing hardcore, then it's still applicable.

I like to (at least I would, if I had gear, but since you've got some good stuff, I'm assuming you could trade for this) get Tal Rasha's Armor, amulet, and belt. The armor and belt give you MF on their own (and the belt has 4 slots, very useful [hope you've upgraded that Gold Wrap]), and with 3 items, you get another MF bonus. Also, Tal's Amulet gives 2, count 'em, 2 skills. The reason I mentioned hardcore is that this adds a lot to resists (with my "main" items equipped (meaning no boots or gloves, and no charms) on my single player test sorc, I had mediocre resist all except poison. And since you can get tons of resists from boots and gloves (if you aim for those, you can even get a rare with MF and resists), add in some charms, and presto! you've got a sturdy sorceress. I do like the Harlequin Crest and Occulus, though. For my shield, I have a tough time deciding between a Rhyme Heater and Lidless. Depends on your playing style, really. Rhyme just gives some nice resists and MF, so it war useful to me. For the SoJs and Silkweave, it depends on your mana pool for teleport. SoJs also give a nice +1 all, which can increase your killing speed, which equals more runs, which means more drops. Magefist, I would trade it out for some rare resist+MF gloves if your mana pool is fine, if not, then use Frostburns. Unless, of course, you're a fire sorceress, in which case it would be a tough decision between them and the rares.

But still excellent gear as is. I think you just need to do more runs. If you feel up to it, you can also pop into act 5 real quick and kill off Shenk, Eldrich, and Pindle, as they are so easy to get to.

[vor_lord]

I built this character specifically for doing meph runs. Will I be able to find game finishing items, like Shako, Occulus, Stormshield, and Sojs, as well as good sets, like Natalya's and IK, off of meph? Can meph drop any item? Is there somebody else I should be killing instead? I heard Pindleskin is a good person to kill. Is this true?

If you are able to run Meph consistently without dying, then by all means bump up your MF more.

If you are dying, that really can slow you down. It's better to sacrifice a bit of MF to stay alive.

Meph will NOT drop all of those items (IK armor, Nat's claw specifically). You certainly can pick up Harlequin Crest (Shako), Occulus, and Stormshield with a little time invested. I figure, if the item you want can be dropped by Meph, then just keep trying. It's amazing how many uniques he will drop.

Anything else I want, I just trade mid-level runes for ;) I think any unique in the game can be had for an Ist these days...

If your eyes are set on the high-end rune words, that's a lot harder to get ahold of...

[Guest]

This is Softcore.

I really don't have much good items for trade; my current equipment is stuff a friend gave me.

I am a fire/cold mage. I used Frostburns until I found a Magefist. I want to keep using the magefist, for fast cast, mana regen, and +1 fire skills. I tried switching to Chance Guards for a while, but I started dying more often.

I forgot to mention all of my charms -_-; whoops. I'm using a +1 fire skill grand charm, Annihuls, some increased walk/run speed small charms, and 15 or so mf small charms, which are either 6 or 5 mf. Note that I have been switching to a gull dagger on my swap for the last kill.

I'm dying a lot! I just spent the past 3 hours doing Meph runs (yielding nothing particularly useful (is tals mask any good? cuz he dropped 3 of them)) and I died every 4th run or so.

This 'ist rune' that you speak of, can Meph drop it?

Who is 'eldritch?' Where is he?

Is pindleskin on the same level as the waypoint?

[adeyke]

This 'ist rune' that you speak of, can Meph drop it?

He has a 1/104,226 chance of dropping an Ist.

Who is 'eldritch?' Where is he?

Eldritch the Rectifier is at the Frigid Highlands waypoint.

Is pindleskin on the same level as the waypoint?

Pindleskin is right through the red portal Anya makes, in the temple.

[Caaroid]

Hello

I'm assuming you're Ladder, since everyone and their mother is ladder.

First of all, the things on your sorc are rather valuable (mostly the rings), and should give you a useful setup. There are ways to improve matters, however.

(1) Fast cast. The problem with taking off magefist is that you loose a significant amount of fast cast. You don't have a lot to begin with, I simply hate playing a sorc under 65%, and without the gloves you fall below that level. You become too slow, and speed is the thing that keeps a sorc alive.

(2) Dieing a lot. Not good. Solution: STORMSHIELD. Yes, you don't see as many people zipping around in storms these days, but they're still the best shields out there. Blocking and PDR is a huge friend, and it gives you cold and lightning resist, which are obviously needed against Meph. Of course, if one is building a Storm sorc, you have to take the str requirements and dex into consideration, for me it has proved irreplacable (my sorc does not ever die).
Another thing would be the full Tal set (then again, you can have full tal AND Storm, now there's a thing). Partial tal with shako and occy is also neat, see if you have sufficient resists.

(3) Why sorc? If you can pay the price (4 SOJs at the moment), you can have yourself an enigma. It is undoubtably the best armor in the game, and lookie lookie, it has some MF as well. If you put it in the hands of a necromancer, you got a teleporting angel of death (yes, it feels good to be this cheesy at times); or if you put it on an elemental druid you can also have good results (especially against meph, since he is unable to touch a druid -- in Storm :)

Happy hunting

[Guest]

I'm not on Ladder.

Getting Enigma is kind of tough. I don't know what realm you're on, but if I offered 4 sojs for an enigma, people would laugh -_-;

I just like my Sorc; it's working swell. Stormshield would mean getting the shield, and then rebuilding my char. Isn't there a less drastic way to get my resists higher?

[Caaroid]

Well, on Europe LADDER, Engima is 4 SOJs. Of course, off ladder...

Well, moser's is always a favorite. 6x resists all with 2 gems or even higher with UMs. If you can max your resists, and you really truly don't get hit by melee attacks as you stated in your other thread, you should be OK.

[Stolb3rg]

Since were on the topic.... My sorc wears a topazed shako (usual) occy, atmas wail, 2 perfect nigels, rare mirrored boots , chancies/frostburns, and an upgraded goldwrap. she has 2 lidlesses, one for each flip, and a gull for the Mf. That all sounds great and all, but ive done 1000's of Nm andy runs, (mindnumbing and I dont like them) 1000's of Hell mephy runs, and I have yet to find anything. Well use full that is, (managed to get io rune from mephy today!!!) I have about 400 Mf and I hardly die. Does anyone know why im not getting any drops? I try tp alter the runs between andy and mephesto but Im not getting anywhere eith them. Should I try pindle?

I have a habit of not capitalizing my (i's)

[adeyke]

That can be attributed to bad luck, too high standards of what's good and what isn't or an exaggeration of how many runs you did. I'm sure that, with thousands of runs at 400% MF, you would have gotten something I'd consider good.

[Guest]

Why don't you do hell Andy runs?

If you do too many runs of the same guy, they start dropping worse. Try doing Andy for a long time, then switching over to Meph.

[adeyke]

If you do too many runs of the same guy, they start dropping worse.

Wrong.

[Rinnhart]

It's true.

Cross my heart.

I swear.

Really.

It is.






/insert giggle edged with insanity

[lfd]

Wrong.

I heard that sigh from here. :D

[Guest]

Wrong.

There's a long thread on this forum about this somewhere. Don't want to look for it at the moment, but I think it has 'diminishing mf returns' or something in the title.

[ShadowHM]

If I am recalling correctly, the thread you refer to is about whether there were changes made server-side on the Realms to make MF have less value.

It was not about whether running the same high-level monster repeatedly would yield diminishing returns.

[adeyke]

There's a long thread on this forum about this somewhere. Don't want to look for it at the moment, but I think it has 'diminishing mf returns' or something in the title.

I'm well aware of that thread. I'm also aware that all it had was unfounded rumours, which have no place here. There is no reduction in drops from repeatedly running of a boss.