Master Gold Finding Character Help

[Conner Macleod]

Ok, several questions about gold finding mechanics, and since the software change, I'm still having a hard time figuring out how to locate archived info and I apologize if this may have been discussed before.

1) Is there a cap to Gold Find (GF for short)?
2) Is GF nerfed or bugged (or partially) for chests?
3) Does anyone know how to calculate the total amount of gold that will drop from particular monsters?
4) Merc stacking, do mercs stack GF like MF? From observation I would say yes, but my merc tends to only kill on rare occassions. Any advice on a good GF merc that can survive long enough to kill? I'm guessing I should rebuild an Act 5 baba merc.
5) I have noticed that gold drops are better when in party and another area. Is there a reason for that?
6) Tell me if my GF char is missing something (besides charms) and will still be able to kill.

Level 99 Nova/Cold Sorc - out of retirement for this duty
Crown of Thieves Lem'd (Total 148% GF)
6 socket Crystal Sword Lem'd
3 socket Troll Nest Lem'd (she doesn't have the strength for a Monarch)
Wealth Armor
Chance Guards
Goldwrap (67% GF, best I have)

This is 1,313 GF before charms. Average GF drop is around 3-4k from a Hell cow. I've tried Dwarf Stars, but good luck killing anything with those on.

As for mercs, I'm guessing that an Act five merc with a simple 3 socket CCB (Lem'd and 225%GF), Crown of Thieves Lem'd (12%LL should do the trick), and some high def Wealth Armor would do very nicely in Cows if stacking truly works. PM your ideas on the Merc just to keep the post on topic. Thanks!

As always...

[ldw]

1) No
2) No idea. Why would it be bugged for chests?
3) Can't help here
4) Yes
5) Like everything else gold drops are improved with large party because the chance of game rolling a 'no drop' per each monster is decreased with each extra player IIRC. Hence a monster may drop gold (or an item) instead of dropping nothing. The area should no be relevant unless its a higher act (where gold drops in greater amount per monster on average).
6) Magic boots can get up to 80% GF I believe (same cap as magic gloves.. but chance guards beat that of course).

For merc you might also consider Goldskin for extra resists if he dies easily from the elements.

If you use a sorceress another good area is wherever there is large amount of chests.
Lower Kurast and ends of arcane sanctuary are ok for this.
If you just want the gold you can just teleport, raid the chests and leave.
I like doing those if I have a bit of MF as well (with wealth you will but might not be enough)

Dwarf stars seem more suited to a Melee build as leech can be covered by weapon/circlet/amulet quite easily


As for charms grand charms is what I use myself. Have several with 30-40% GF.
Since GF% on Grand charms is a suffix you could get some nice prefixes like 'snakes' (30-60 Mana) or 'shimmering' (up to 15% resist all). Thiks would help out if you sorceress is lacking mana or resists because of her GF equipment.

[Conner Macleod]

Thank you.

As for chests - they are not monsters, as is says, x% more gold from monsters. Just wondering if it's a game bug or not.

Elements aren't a problem. He mostly dies because of sharp objects. lol :)

I didn't want to go over my charms in inventory, that would take up space and I have several 30-40s with skills on her and a Serpents/Greed PERFECT.

Any other helpers? It's appreciated.

[ldw]

As for chests - they are not monsters, as is says, x% more gold from monsters. Just wondering if it's a game bug or not.

No, its a feature now ;) .

From memory this got changed with 1.06 (I think! .. or it could have been 1.08). Twas when the D2C and D2X realm code got unified just prior to D2X release (same time when blizzard unwittingly stuck the 800x600 res code into D2C and just disabled it :lol:). I was so very happy when I could make a chest spill a lot more gold than usual in 1.06/1.08 since all the monster drops in around about then got screwed and it was hard to find even a decent armor drop (for sale .. repair bills were higher then too). I remember it being discussed on here also.

I guess nobody at blizzard bothered to rename the description '% more gold find' ...
after all .. magic find is not called (and never was) 'from monsters'.
Actually I don't recall anymore if MF was ever working on chests prior to 1.06 in D2C. Gold surely wasn't.

[Ruvanal]

1) Is there a cap to Gold Find (GF for short)?

There is no cap that you should be running into. On a per item basis there is a cap of 411%, but nothing in the game will normally come that close. The total to be used is probably a signed 2 byte variable (effective cap woud be +32767%) which again you should not be able to get to with normal items in the game.

2) Is GF nerfed or bugged (or partially) for chests?
Not to my knowledge and I have seen no sign of it.

3) Does anyone know how to calculate the total amount of gold that will drop from particular monsters?

Yes.

Gold-to-drop formula is:

Gold = RND(ilvl*5)+ilvl

Then, the gold drop is modified further by the monsters gold drop bonus (found in treasureclassex.txt, ' gld,mul="goldbonus" '):

gold = gold + (gold * (goldbonus / 256))

Add in %goldfind:

gold = (gold * (%goldfind + 100)) / 100

Now, calculate how much gold is possible to drop

From Hammerman

Note that the RND(X) function will generate a range of 0 to X-1. This means that for typical normal monsters the gold drop would 1-5 gold per level of the monster.

The goldbonus is 1280 for champions and most boss type monsters. This makes their gold drops effectively x6 that of a normal monster of that level. The special bosses and act end bosses have a goldbonus ranging from 1280 to 2048.

For drops from containers, the level of the map area is used.
http://forums.rpgforums.net/showthread.php...&threadid=73890

4) Merc stacking, do mercs stack GF like MF?
Yes. No advice on which to use or how to equip from me though.

5) I have noticed that gold drops are better when in party and another area. Is there a reason for that?
See Idw's answer.

[Conner Macleod]

Golly gee, I always love it when Ruvanal answers a thread - you always learn something new and super detailed. :D

Quote: Gold = RND(ilvl*5)+ilvl
So I guess gold is determined by the game code after the monster dies, hence the reason we use ilvl and not mlvl. That code would insure a minimum drop of at least the mlvl of the monster. And for highest chests, 75 gold minimum when dropped.

I have noticed in rare instances, that the game does ignore my GF% and drops a lousy 100 or 200 gold on me, I guess it's just a game bug. And when bosses die, for example Radament, the amount of gold that drops is insane.

I started this because a buddy of mine made a GFer, and I said me too. We are both crafters and this makes it nice for gambling for stuff.

Ok, so my GF sword is capped out. It has 450% GF on it, but you say that it is capped at 411%. :( Well, 39% isn't going to make that big a difference.

Question 5 I should have reworded. What I meant was, when I play multiplayer with this character, I usually will run and get the leg in cow games (which is why I said "in party, another area") and I will notice that the amount of gold that drops is usually 30% more than in a cow game. Those little Fallen's sure do carry alot of gold on them - the average drop is about 3.5k. Given that they are mlvl 67, that's a lot of gold to be dropping for them.

But questions answered - appreciate it!

[ldw]

I have noticed in rare instances, that the game does ignore my GF% and drops a lousy 100 or 200 gold on me, I guess it's just a game bug. And when bosses die, for example Radament, the amount of gold that drops is insane.

I dont know about 'bug' but certain pre-set objects in the game seem to have their gold bonus preset.
e.g. Wirt's body in Tristram does not seem to be affected by GF.
Loose gold already lying around in fallen camps is also like that (I know.. no real drop involved.. I wonder how Wirt was coded though).

Regarding gold cap. I remember just now that I did some testing with this. On single player I've stacked a few hacked charms with gold per clvl (around 700% at lvl 90 or so). There was no problem in obtaining about 5-20k from monsters... Council dropped about 50-90k each .. mephisto over 100k in each pile. I probably had about 3500% GF there.

[Conner Macleod]

You know Idw, you just reminded me of something, I answered my own question - I completely forgot that on open I have those +7 skill charms with 727% extra GF. I put like 20 of them on one of my characters during that weekend that East was down and he was finding 50,000 gold on average from Act 3 Hell (yes, I was playing the actual game, quests and all), and by the time he got to cows I remember the drops were like insane.

Duh, totally forgot about that. Given that the game's actual mechanics are not going to vary from open to closed, I guess Ruvanal is right as usual. (I swear, I'd like to take him aside someday and ask how the patch is going, he knows too much - J/K Ruvanal, I love ya!)

Re: low drops... Actually, it happens more with chests on the low drops, I was being too general there. Every so often though I will notice it from monsters. Wirt's leg, Meph chests, etc, always low drops - to be expected.

Anyhow for now.

[Mael-Storm]

Hey, umm, I just wanna ask what the point to a character like that is. In my opinion gold is pretty worthless. I dont want to offend but just ask why you wanted to make such a character. ;) :lol: :huh:

[Striker]

Hey, umm, I just wanna ask what the point to a character like that is. In my opinion gold is pretty worthless. I dont want to offend but just ask why you wanted to make such a character.

Gambling and maybe repairs.

[Animation]

Conner,

A gold finding necromancer can be cool also. I load him up on revives and I use a thorns merc. Monsters fall down, gold pops out. I avoid Physical Immunes.

I planned on using no +skills at all, and I dont. I have 20 in Skeleton Mastery, 9 in Revive i believe, 5 in summon resist, 20 to golem mastery, 1 in each golem, 7 in corpse explosion, 1 in lifetap, 5 in amplify damage, 1 in terror. and of course pre-reqs. It comes to exactly 77 skill points, which let me get to level 70 in nightmare and complete it. It is fun. I havent bothered taking it to hell yet because I get plenty of gold in Nightmare. I may see what the 1.10 patch does to physical resists and stuff before I decide whether and how to bring him to hell.

Anyway, I use the following gear (gold find %)[resist all %]:

Ring: Dwarf Star (100% gf)
Ring: Dwarf Star (100% gf)
Amulet: Blue Amulet (66% gf)
Helm: Blue Circlet [24% ra]
Shield: The Ward Shield + PDiamond [67% ra]
Weapon: Ali Baba + 11% ra jewel and 30% gf jewel (205% gf) [11% ra]
Armor: Wealth Dusk Shroud (300% gf)
Belt: Blue 16 potion belt (80% gf)
Boots: Infernostride (varies, mine is 60% gf)
Gloves: Chance Guards (200% gf)
Other: 6 grand charms (212% gf)
Other: resist quests [20% ra]
Other: 1 small charm [4% ra]

This brings me to 1323% gold find and 115% resist all ... exactly max resists in nightmare. Not too shabby. I don't need +skills since I actually invested the points in the skills I need. I see some insane cash drop over a short amount of time. :) It's super fun.

Anything my merc kills of course adds his gold find on ... AND the thorns aura from one of my revives, if it gets the killing blow (it usually does) transfrers my merc's gold find over to the equation. I'm not currently using any gold find equipment on him, but I'm thinking about getting my hands on GoldSkin because it will give him resists and 100% gold find, and compliment his BlackHorn's (for lightning buggers) and 3-amn Hone Sundan life leech setup decently.

Once the patch comes out, I may try to get him into hell, depending on what they do. If it is feasible, I might flesh out his CE or maybe even his fire golem if they make that worth a darn. For hell resists, I would probably lose the 66% gf amulet and put 25% ra amulet there, and drop about 63% worth of grand charms of greed and replace them with a +14 ra and +12 ra grand charm setup, which would be 9 short of making up for his hell resistance loss, and dropping his gf to just under 1200%, but the ali baba would grow some more so I could still easily surpass 1200% in hell.

It is amusing, no doubt. :)

Now, just let me say, this baby wasn't my idea. I think I read about the idea from someone here on the Lounge some time ago, or maybe another forum. You'll have to dig around for proper credit. The good part is that it is pretty fun.

Lewis

[Occhidiangela]

At level 71 I gambled a +2 Assassin Skills 40% Ias Katar, rare, with a few other mods. For a pure trapper, that is better than Bartucs, since it only has 20% IAS. :) I dont need the extra 20 strength and Dex . . .

I gamble circlets because I . . . like them. + skills can be a huge bonus to some builds, like Elemental druids.

I gamble boots because I love rare boots with extra resists, magic find, and extra run walk all in one.

I gamble belts and gloves for the same reason.

*sigh*

[Conner Macleod]

Well, to answer the question as to WHY I need so much gold find? Well, I am a gambler, and I like to make KB and Blood gloves. It takes several million to fill a mule with good quality base gloves for crafting that are either good defense or sellable in the channels when they are the, "Meh, maybe good for someone else."

Gold is also nice for my teleporting zon. Wanna guess what that ammy costs to repair?

I get the usual suspects spying on my sorcy with their Maphack wares and making fun of me in cow games, but let them laugh when I'm popping chests and spilling an average of 7-8k gold now. I found a super nice amulet just recently - Powered Amulet of Wealth. +3 Lightning and 70% more gold. And someone sold me a perfect set of Infernostrides too, and I picked up 110% more charms. After a tally, I have 1,590% goldfind total on my sorcy. Watch her kill a champion in a hell cow game and that will make anyone unparty before picking it up. The merc just makes it insane (his is an extra 598% GF for a total 2,188% GF). ALWAYS a crowd pleaser.

Generally, when I need lots of gold, I'll share the wealth with a friend or two and run 5 or 6 cow games with them. Usually we get about 250,000 in gold drops a piece (per game) and then sell some armors. I usually am the one popping chests and killing everything, they just help pick up all that gold.

As for that Necro idea - Oooooooooooooooooooooooo, you're speaking to the right man. Only prob I see is the merc idea. Do revives truly stack with your merc's gear for total GF? That would be absolutely nasty if so because I have the exact build in mind for equipment for him. Lem'd Golemlord's Wand (2 socket), exceptional GF gear (Wealth, Lem'd Venomous/Golemlords of Wealth helm), Act 2 Thorn merc, Cruel Colossus Blades 3xLem for the Iron Golem (yeah, not a smart thing to do, but hey), with a Merc running around with Wealth, Lem'd Crown of Thieves, and a 2xLem'd Cruel Pike. MMMmmmmmmmmmm.... I'd build a SuperKeeper with max summoning resists and revives, Max CE, couple of points in Amp, and forego the IG for a FG just for the killing power and low maintenance. Add summoning and P&B charms with gold find, Oooooh, daddy like, daddy like. Now I gotta locate a Graverobber's Ammy of Wealth and I'm set. I'd have to pick up every mana pot in the land to make it a working Necro tho, otherwise we're talking Lem'd Trang Helm, Armor, or Trophy for some regen.

That's also IF the stacking of GF on revives actually works. Thanks a ton for that idea. Not only would mine be super irritating to the low Bandwidth ppl, it would be hilarious to watch people's reaction.

Like I said, the topic is building a Gold Finding Master, anyone else have a creative build?

[Refrigerator]

Well, I don't have a creative build, but with my fairly low lvl zon, just wearing chance guards, Izual dropped 2k.

Just a suggestion....

[Conner Macleod]

2K? Nothing compared to what mine will cause to drop in Normal from him. I killed him in Normal with my gear on and he dropped me about 30,000 total. That was one kill and the fact that he allowed gold to drop in that drop. To give an idea of the power of GF, my fully equipped sorcy with all her gear makes a Skeleton in Act 1 Normal Blood Moor drop about 80+ gold. Normally you can find them giving you about 1-3 gold.

I think I'm gonna go on a Skill Charm buying spree. Lightning or Cold with 39/40% more Gold I'll pay uber for them. Just to drive everyone nuts out there who throw away those charms. lol Wait, sojs, are worthless now, but oh well.

[Jarulf]

I dont know about 'bug' but certain pre-set objects in the game seem to have their gold bonus preset.
e.g. Wirt's body in Tristram does not seem to be affected by GF.
Loose gold already lying around in fallen camps is also like that (I know.. no real drop involved.. I wonder how Wirt was coded though).

Wirts fountain, as well as for example the countess fountain of item and other quest related drops like that are handled by the quest code and does not involve the character at all. They usually always have special item selection codes to pick what items to spit out and so on. Basically there will be set a sort of timer on them and at regular updates they will generate a new item. The gold for example should (if I recall correctly) be determined (the amount) inside the quest code. So yes, all such cases are special.

[Vash]

Well, to answer the question as to WHY I need so much gold find?  Well, I am a gambler, and I like to make KB and Blood gloves.  It takes several million to fill a mule with good quality base gloves for crafting that are either good defense or sellable in the channels when they are the, "Meh, maybe good for someone else."

What is KB? And why do you need good quality base gloves? I thought crafting erases all original mods?

[Animation]

Conner,

HAHA! I like your enthusiasm. I'm pretty sure the thorns kill off a revive is considered a merc kill. The reason I am pretty certain is that when a monster beats itself to death on one of my revives (covered in merc thorns aura), I get the huge gold drops as usual. The merc doesnt have to be the one to get the kill, and I still pop like 4 or 5 k sometimes from nightmare enemies when my revives reflect-kill em.

OH but i suppose that its possible I'm getting credit for the kill. DUH!

I'll have to check, but if you have a spare necro around it should be easy to check. Just drop a wealth and crown of thieves on him, and have no other gold find, and thats a nice 380 percent or so, depending on the crown. Then take it off and compare.

I'll try to remember to double check tonight. :)

I do feel pretty dumb for putting a 30% GF jewel in my ali baba (I dont regret the 11% resist all). I had a spare LEM and it didnt even occur to me. ARGH :)

One option for mana is that you could find grand charms with both gold find and mana. My prize grand charm of greed has 40% gold find and I think +47 or something to mana. Very sweet.

My only real concern with this necro is ... can he prosper in Hell? I wont have any way to kill physical immunes, since I'm not planning on going with Bone Spirit.

Also, while I do have a crown of thieves I could drop on my merc, I almost prefer a BlackHorn's face with an Ort in it (and at high levels possible a BlackHorn with a LEM) just because I dont want LEBs to kill him so easily.

I was planning on giving him goldskin when i find one for 100% gold find, and I still could, but it would be tempting to make a wealth for him too. I guess I'll also need a high damage 6-socket elite spear or polearm weapon to put 3 lems (hah! as if I'll ever have 3 lems) and 3 amns in it. :)

Lewis

[CelticHound]

Check out these GF Necro threads at the AB:

http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/in...ST&f=53&t=13736

http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/in...ST&f=53&t=21653

http://www.theamazonbasin.com/d2/forums/in...ST&f=53&t=21195

-- CH

[Conner Macleod]

Yep, that's officially Disgusting! Here's my 1500%+ GF sorcy going nuts.

Goldfinding Nightmare Council

Too bad she can't kill the Hell Council that easy with her gear! :(