Diablo Hellfire Loot ( Drop Rate ) issue.

[Eight_Bitt]

Diablo Hellfire Loot ( Drop Rate ) issue. A.K.A Why Does Hellfire hate your favorite unique items.




The Original Diablo is one of my favorite games. I played it a lot as a kid and once I got a little older (around 16 maybe) I looked up online a list of all the items in the game and came across a unique item called "The Grizzly" ( http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/The_Grizzly )

This sword just so happens to be the highest damaging unique sword in the game (if my calculations are correct) So naturally I created a Barbarian build that used it. The reason for this being its a two handed sword and the Barbarian class can use two handed swords in one hand. Now as you probably already know the Barbarian class is only available in Sierra's expansion for Diablo called Hellfire and only after some fiddling with the games data.

So I started a new Barbarian character with the express intent of finding The Grizzly at some point. So I played through the game once, twice ..... 11 times and turned up nothing. Well as anyone would I said screw it and gave up. Every couple of years I'd revisit the concept and play through the game one or two more times and still get nothing.

Finally this past week I got to the point I decided to do some research into how the drop rate system in D1 and Hellfire works and I wont bore you with the details but it turns out the unique item loot algorithm used by the base Diablo game and the one used for unique items in Hellfire directly clash with each other in a few places making a few of The Diablo Unique items impossible to find in Hellfire. Basically when ever Hellfire calculates a drop for The Grizzly it instead drops the Hellfire unique sword called "The Eater of Souls." ( http://diablo.wikia.com/wiki/Eater_of_Souls )

and so The Grizzly simply wont ever drop in a game of Hellfire.

I'm currently Playing the unofficial 1.02 Hellfire Patch as it attempts to fix the unique item problem, to quote the patch notes "In order to fix a fatal combination of BlizzLogic and Sierra's utterly confused attempt at creating a functional unique item drop system, many changes were made to base items, qlvls, and even attributes." The important term there being qlvl.

My one remaining doubt is The Grizzly isn't really mentioned in the patch notes outside of the modification of it's qlvl from 15 to 17. So Im still worried I might play through the game a few times and get nothing because the problem wasn't fixed entirely. As The programmers of this "Fixed" version of Hellfire did manage to make a few mistakes in the programming of there patch that I had to fix manually.... like for example the patch deleted Ardira's greeting audio and replaced it with the audio of the cows in the game.... Imagine my surprise when she started mooing at me. I simply Hex edited the right Wav file back in but little things like this don't fill me with a lot of confidence. so I'd like to hear what anyone who has input on the issue has to say. I even welcome simple conversing about how ridiculous and silly this whole thing is.

Final notes. For toughs that are curious just how bad the unique items drop issue is in Hellfire I'll include a full list of the unique items that can not be found in Hellfire because its simply impossible for them to drop.

..........Items Hellfire Hates.................................................................

..........Item................

Demonspike Coat

.....................................................................................................

Sparkling Mail

.....................................................................................................

Armor Of Gloom (Funny enough this armor is unique to Hellfire and impossible to get in Hellfire because it will only drop after the Demonspike Coat has already been found and the Demonspike Coat wont drop in a game of Hellfire )

.....................................................................................................

The Grizzly (That Sword That I apparently care so much about)

.....................................................................................................
Inferno (Not a bade Sword for lower lvls )

[Thenryb]

I do not know the answer to whether the Grizzly drops in the 1.02 version or in Hellfire "Fixed" for that matter. I know that in "Fixed" the Demonspike Coat drops (as leather armor-nice for the monk), and that Adria "mooing" was something deliberate by Lemming and not a "mistake".

[Eight_Bitt]

Well then that does give me a bit more hope. So far i've gotten Inferno to drop as well so things are looking more and more likely that this will work out.

Also Adria mooing was intentional? What are they calling her a cow? That's not very nice.

[Thenryb]

I suspect the Grizzly is there. It has been so long since I have played, I do not remember ever finding it. If I had, my barb would never have used it anyway since 1)it is a sword without the bonus of an axe or maul and 2) I hated knockback on a melee weapon. Adria's voice change was a joke. Many players, including Lemming, found her greeting annoying. Lemming also changed the wimpy monk voice with the sorcerer voice so we no longer had to hear "rest well, Lorric" or listen to his grunts and groans.

[Eight_Bitt]

Well the choice to use the Grizzly isn't really about character optimization so much as look I just like the look of the sword and shield sprite more then the axe or Mace/Maul and shield.

As for Adria's voice fair enough it never annoyed me but I can see how it would for some people. It seems an odd choice to change the Monk's voice though some players might have liked his voice and finding it different would only serve to frustrate them.

[Nystul]

Grizzly cannot drop in regular Hellfire due to qlvl conflict with Eater of Souls. They are both qlvl 23 and both two handed swords. The game will always try to choose the same item from the list in such cases, which this time is not the Grizzly. If the Grizzly was lowered to qlvl 15, then it should drop from enemies that are strong enough to drop the Grizzly but not strong enough to Eater of Souls.

Now there is an issue of realistic expectations. Your posts seem to suggest that playing through the entire game a few times should yield all of the uniques, or at least the specific unique you are looking for. Well, that's not how Diablo ever worked. Finding a specific unique can take many, many games, even if it is a "common" unique. In regular Diablo, Jarulf estimates about one Grizzly generated per 46 games. One person will find it in the first game, while another person won't see one in hundreds of games. That's without any Eater of Souls to compete with. It's going to be more rare in Hellfire Fixed. Needing hundreds of games to find it would not be surprising at all.

Now in the realm of action RPGs, these are still very common items. I mean, to acquire a zod rune in Diablo II, you may have to play hundreds of thousands of games. So a group of long time players probably never finds one. I'd guess most people who played Diablo for years found a few Grizzlies. Just not right when they were looking for one...

[FireIceTalon]

As the saying goes, RNG is RNG. But yes, if you play enough games you will eventually find a Grizzly, or a Black Bear, or a Polar Bear Ok corny jokes aside, you can easily find almost every unique in the game w/o too much difficulty if you are patient enough. It would in all probability take several hundred if not thousand games to do this (many players have actually done this, for the sake of collecting every unique item in the game just to have them), but.....

It is those high end, blue magical items that are much better - and MUCH more rare - that can take you an insane amount of games (or rather years) to acquire - and some you may never, ever find. A King's Sword of Haste/Speed is much better and far more rare than any unique sword in Diablo, and this is probably one of the easier high end magical items to get since you can Gris shop it. And if the stats on gear is important to you like it is for me, well, all I can say is Diablo will provide you with many years of slaying foes

The item you want almost always drops when you least expect it, unique or not. Very rarely do they drop when you are actually seeking them out. Of course, luck plays a factor as well - some players have incredible luck finding great loot, others don't. In my case, I certainly can't complain

I will say that I do like D1's RNG better than that of D2 or D3. In those games, the higher end loot might be "easier" to find (D2 zod runes not withstanding), but if the stats are off even slightly they are practically useless. In D3 it is tempered down somewhat because of the Mystic, but even still, finding good legs there isn't the problem, finding them with ALL the right stats is. On D1, most of the high end items are pretty useful even if they roll with low stats or lower tiered affixes. Part of that of course is due to the difference in game play mechanics. I always liked D1's itemization the best for its straight-to-the point simplicity, even if it is somewhat limited, and even if most of the Unique items are too underwhelming.

[Eight_Bitt]

Thank you for your input. I didn't realize that the odds of a particular drop were so low. I figure I can increase my chances of finding the Grizzly if I do runs of just the levels that spawn monsters able to drop it and ignore anything earlier. How ever I do seem to have some rather good luck in finding unique items cuz between my two characters and keep in mind Ive only been playing these characters for 4 days now, I've found "Mindcry", "The Bone Chain Armor", "The Scavenger Carapace", "Naj's Puzzler", "Inferno", "The Executioner's blade", "Gnat Sting", "Aguinara's Hatchet" And "The Needler."

But I'll take your advice and not get my hopes to far up.

---

Thanks for your advice FireIce, I did know that the good magic items are better then the unique items however it's just that finding this dame sword has become personal at this point. Speaking of the really good blue items how ever I've so far managed to find an "Obsidian Ring of The Zodiac" and a "Dragons Ring of The Zodiac" pretty excited about that... My amulet luck on the other hand has been awful the best one I've managed to find is the optic amulet.... and that's just sad.

[FireIceTalon]

Always a pleasure to find Obsidian or Dragon's Jewels of the Zodiac, especially the latter since extra mana just makes your chars incredibly powerful. Not sure if these are the best jewels in HF, but in Vanilla they most certainly are.

This has to be my fav find ever though:    

It's the kind of item one could spend 20 years looking for, and never find (at least not with perfect stats like this). This dropped completely randomly when I was doing a normal Laz run a few years ago (screenshot is new, but the plate itself is about 4-5 years old), looking for nothing in particular.

[Eight_Bitt]

That's one sweet suite of armor.... Also I just found that god dame sword. Took 7 runs through the Hell levels but one of the Warlord of Blood's weapon racks just dropped it. So psyched. Now to go for the Demonspike Coat and The Storm Shield.

[FireIceTalon]

Right on. Well, best of luck to ya. I should try SP again perhaps, its been years. The Warlord of Blood Quest was truly epic and probably my fav quest.

[Thenryb]

I suspect Eight_Bitt is playing a HF version which enables the Warlord of Blood Quest in MP. It also sounds like he is playing a SNOB Barb

[Eight_Bitt]

No Im playing Single Player. I never did manage to get Hellfire Multiplayer working, However I don't really mind as I don't like playing Multiplayer games, I find it frustrating as it seems other player's ether can't keep up with me or I cant keep up with them and the frustration of always being behind or always being ahead kind of ruins Multiplayer for me.