07-28-2004, 04:28 PM
1) The popular sorc for questing these days is Blizzard I believe, however for MF I am currently playing (and can strongly recommend) one which is usually referred to as Meteorb. It uses FO primarily and Meteor for CIs. The guts of the build is max FO and CM, max Meteor and then work on Fire Mastery and Fire Ball (FB is a synergy for Meteor, the new 1.10 buzzword, you pump it purely to make your meteors stronger). You can probably find better guides if you look around the various forums.
Warmth is worth a point, but not much more. The wide availability of +skills and regen mana on uniques in 1.10 makes Warmth less important.
2) In a sense MF "is as simple as that". It takes the base chance of an item dropping with a certain quality, and multiplies it up. However, there is diminishing returns and all sorts of other complicated stuff. I will go into more detail at the bottom :)
3) There is much much much better MF gear available now than there was in Classic. 215% is a fine amount to start with, but you are costing yourself useful power increasing mods by using those old items. I recommed MFing NM Meph to get off and running. I'd also suggest, as you say, levelling with power gear on for a while before getting down to the MF.
4) You can gamble Chancies at clvl 26 but gambling is much harder than it was in Classic (much better than 1.09 though). I recommend just killing normal Meph a few hundred times for those.
5) When an item drops, the game first checks to see if it unique, then if not, if it is set, then if not, if it is rare, then if not, if it is magic. Your MF is used for each of these checks in turn. So more MF certainly does improve your chance at getting uniques. More below.
6) Heh. Gambling for Griswold's Valour :) It is actually a 0.05% chance of a unique (whee) and 0.1% chance of a set item. Do not see gambling as a way to get sets and uniques. It is primarily a source of rares (which are pretty good in 1.10) and if you score a unique one day, good for you. The only real way to get the name-brand gear is to kill things.
OK, MF. As I stated, the game checks for unique/set/rare/magic in turn, and your MF is used each time. Base chance of each depends on the item type (class-specific items are more likely to be higher quality) but for regular stuff it is 1/400 unique, 1/160 set, 1/100 rare and 1/34 magic. This is modified slighlty by the difference between the monster's level and the item's level (ie Hell Baal dropping a Sash is more likely to be high quality).
Your MF is applied to the chance next. However, it is put through a diminishing formula, slightly different for each test. For the unique test your effective MF is MF * 250 / (MF+250). This is capped above at 250 no matter how high your MF gets. Your 215% becomes 115% after diminshing, which means an item is 2.15 times as likely to drop unique, or about 1/186 of the time. For sets, the formula uses 500 instead of 250. For rares, 600. For magic, it is not diminished at all, so you do have 3.15 times the chance of an item dropping magic, or about 1/11.
Next you apply boss bonuses. Random uniques, fixed uniques and particularly act bosses get a further improvement to their quality chance here. For example, Mephisto is 1024/41 times as likely to drop a unique, set or rare as a regular monster, and always drops at least magical. That brings your chance of getting a unique from Meph up to a healthy 1/7 or so - just about one every time you kill him. It doesn't take too long to fill up your stash running Meph.
There are some details I have omitted for simplicity, but that is probably enough to get you going.
Good luck, and welcome to 1.10.
Warmth is worth a point, but not much more. The wide availability of +skills and regen mana on uniques in 1.10 makes Warmth less important.
2) In a sense MF "is as simple as that". It takes the base chance of an item dropping with a certain quality, and multiplies it up. However, there is diminishing returns and all sorts of other complicated stuff. I will go into more detail at the bottom :)
3) There is much much much better MF gear available now than there was in Classic. 215% is a fine amount to start with, but you are costing yourself useful power increasing mods by using those old items. I recommed MFing NM Meph to get off and running. I'd also suggest, as you say, levelling with power gear on for a while before getting down to the MF.
4) You can gamble Chancies at clvl 26 but gambling is much harder than it was in Classic (much better than 1.09 though). I recommend just killing normal Meph a few hundred times for those.
5) When an item drops, the game first checks to see if it unique, then if not, if it is set, then if not, if it is rare, then if not, if it is magic. Your MF is used for each of these checks in turn. So more MF certainly does improve your chance at getting uniques. More below.
6) Heh. Gambling for Griswold's Valour :) It is actually a 0.05% chance of a unique (whee) and 0.1% chance of a set item. Do not see gambling as a way to get sets and uniques. It is primarily a source of rares (which are pretty good in 1.10) and if you score a unique one day, good for you. The only real way to get the name-brand gear is to kill things.
OK, MF. As I stated, the game checks for unique/set/rare/magic in turn, and your MF is used each time. Base chance of each depends on the item type (class-specific items are more likely to be higher quality) but for regular stuff it is 1/400 unique, 1/160 set, 1/100 rare and 1/34 magic. This is modified slighlty by the difference between the monster's level and the item's level (ie Hell Baal dropping a Sash is more likely to be high quality).
Your MF is applied to the chance next. However, it is put through a diminishing formula, slightly different for each test. For the unique test your effective MF is MF * 250 / (MF+250). This is capped above at 250 no matter how high your MF gets. Your 215% becomes 115% after diminshing, which means an item is 2.15 times as likely to drop unique, or about 1/186 of the time. For sets, the formula uses 500 instead of 250. For rares, 600. For magic, it is not diminished at all, so you do have 3.15 times the chance of an item dropping magic, or about 1/11.
Next you apply boss bonuses. Random uniques, fixed uniques and particularly act bosses get a further improvement to their quality chance here. For example, Mephisto is 1024/41 times as likely to drop a unique, set or rare as a regular monster, and always drops at least magical. That brings your chance of getting a unique from Meph up to a healthy 1/7 or so - just about one every time you kill him. It doesn't take too long to fill up your stash running Meph.
There are some details I have omitted for simplicity, but that is probably enough to get you going.
Good luck, and welcome to 1.10.
"Thank you. We always have a shortage of unfounded opinions, so this will really help us. " - adeyke