Blacksmith Plans

[RiotInferno]

Does anyone have any advice for finding Blacksmith Plans?
I'm currently in A1/Inferno, 80+ hours in, and have only had 1 plan drop, and that was the staff of herding.

Does anyone have any advice?

[Magicbag]

Does anyone have any advice for finding Blacksmith Plans?
I'm currently in A1/Inferno, 80+ hours in, and have only had 1 plan drop, and that was the staff of herding.

Does anyone have any advice?

I'm in the same boat. 2 drops for SoH though.. (yay)

[Dozer]

I have plenty of anecdotal stories from friends of them getting the same pattern five times - I'm going to guess that when (if) the commodity AH comes back up, the plans will not be very expensive. That being said, they are totally random and very rare all through inferno, as far as I can tell/read.

[Chesspiece_face]

There is no advice other than to get 5 stacks of valor and kill stuff. I've yet to see a Staff of Herding, but I've given away plans for both Helm and Chestpiece I believe and I still have an extra plan for the Chest and Shoulders lying around.

[FoxBat]

There is no advice other than to get 5 stacks of valor and kill stuff.

I could be wrong, but plans don't sound like magical or gold drops, Valor might not do anything for finding them.

[Chesspiece_face]

There is no advice other than to get 5 stacks of valor and kill stuff.

I could be wrong, but plans don't sound like magical or gold drops, Valor might not do anything for finding them.

I was under the impression just from how I've seen them drop that they fit somewhere in the magic item spectrum. When killing champs or bosses and having them drop they have taken up one of the magic item drops as opposed to dropping in addition to the normally expected magic items.

This doesn't mean that they are, in fact, increased by valor though. But if you are looking for Plan drops you will still be best served by farming normally with 5-stack champ/rare kills.

[FoxBat]

I was under the impression just from how I've seen them drop that they fit somewhere in the magic item spectrum. When killing champs or bosses and having them drop they have taken up one of the magic item drops as opposed to dropping in addition to the normally expected magic items.

If Magic Find works anything like Diablo 2, then it doesn't increase the chance (or numbers) of base items to drop, only the chance that the base item will upgrade to magic/rare/legendary/whatever. (Maybe there's some NV benefit when killing event bosses though, as that actually increases the amount of items that drop.) If plans or gems get rolled instead of a sword, then the MF wouldn't be doing anything. Really the MF hasn't done anything when you get your minimal blue either, it's just there to help upgrade that blue to a rare+ sometimes.

[RiotInferno]

I did find my first rare plans last night, for the 4-affix chest piece, en route to killing the Butcher. Oddly enough, another guy in my party received the same plans from the Butcher.
So apparently I just need to kill more things. Like they said in that one movie: "If you kill it, they will drop".

[Taelas]

I found the Cataclysm plans (legendary 2H 52 mace) today in Act 3 of Hell. They must have dropped off of a random mob; I was busy fighting an Elite and only noticed it after the Elite gutted me.

[Archon_Wing]

Only found one so far. I'd say you should go down the act 1 crypts with large concentrations of easily killed skeletons and valor stacks.

[Elric of Grans]

Oooh, my first one just dropped! Exalted Sovereign Mail, from a Villager's Corpse(!). It is Blacksmith level 10, so I am a few Tomes of Secrets away from being able to use it, but was very excited to see it drop.

[BellaStrega]

I just had my first set of plans drop after ~25-30 hours in act I inferno. At the time I had five stacks of Nephalem Valor. It looks like rare plans can be purchased fairly cheaply on the AH, though.

[Quark]

Note the difference in plans for Level 10 blacksmith items. They're all ilvl 62.

Exalted -> 4 random properties.
Exalted Fine -> 5 random properties.
Exalted Grand -> 6 random properties.

Exalted Grand recipes look to cost a pretty penny on the AH, minus some slots that are less likely to produce a valuable item (class specific slots).