Some VANILLA Hellfire help? Staff of the MAGI

[Red Hairdo]

Hey guys 'n' gals, I'm not sure how many will see this question, but here it goes:

For the past month, I've been playing VANILLA Hellfire 1.00 (single & multi) and 1.01 (only single available) more than a reasonable person probably should...

... And I came across something I simply would LOVE advice on.

It is simple:

WHERE CAN WE FIND ANY "STAFF OF THE MAGI"?

Y'know, that Hellfire-only spell that is basically a Full Mana Potion, and occurs only on Staves.

Reading Jarulf's guide again and again, and checking EVERY source online out there, I could not find ANY special or distinctive information about how to farm for one.

From reading these resources, it seems to be understood that Adria should be able to sell them, like she does for EVERY other spell.

However, no matter how much I try, she simply WON'T sell it. Of any prefix. She just won't, period. I tried this mostly on Single Player Hellfire 1.01, in case that matters.


Any advice? I figured I would ask, because i.e. Jarulf's guide can sometimes be wrong or misleading, for example it doesn't tell you that Book of Apocalypse is Single Player only, since only Na-Krul drops it, and his dungeon is unavailable in Multi Player.

P.S.: Heck, I even got a 8-16 War Staff, "Bountiful Staff of Apocalypse", with perfect 36/36 castings from Adria, but just NO Magi-infused staff of ANY kind. Something is amiss.

I will try grinding Wirt with a Monk next, but man, something is just not right about this.

[LennyLen]

Adria cannot generate a staff of the Magi, as the highest qlvl for a spell she can generate is 16, and Magi is qlvl 20.

I don't remember if Wirt can generate staves with spells, but my gut feeling is that he can't (and JG only mentions how to calculate ilvl for affixes at Wirt, not spells), so I don't know if he'll be much help to you.

In the dungeon, it can drop from any mlvl 20+ monster, which occurs from dlvl 10+, but you really want to be in the Hell levels to maximise your chance of it dropping.

[Red Hairdo]

Thanks for giving an answer! I didn't think I would get one, especially so soon, within just 2 days after asking.

Yeah, you're right, I actually just realized the issue myself earlier in the day: I thought that a spell's qlvl was treated much like other suffixes, but I wondered if I got that wrong, and so I kept scraping Jarulf's guide for info, and indeed, it turns out the final value was actually divided by 2. I knew Magi was 20 (Apocalypse, the 2nd highest, is 15), and that Adria's qlvl limit was 32, so I thought she should have been able to sell it, but like you said, she is limited to spell qlvl 16, because the calculation for her limit is 32 / 2 = 16, rather than just 32, which is the case for suffixes and prefixes. When writing this post, now I see it being explicitly mentioned in Page 47 of v1.62 of Jarulf's guide:

"[...] there is a cap at qlvl 32 for prefixes and suffixes at Adria. For spells and base items the cap is at 16."

The part that I saw earlier in the day that made me realize what was up was on Page 44:

"Range of qlvl for spell on staves from unique and special monster: 1 to [(ilvl+4/)2]"
"Range of qlvl for spell on staves from all other sources: 1 to ilvl/2"

As for Wirt and spell-infused staves, as with a lot else in the guide, it only has a "sneaky" mention of Wirt's ability of selling them in an entirely different section, on Page 21:

"In Hellfire, Wirt will also sell staves both with and without spells."

I can confirm this is true, as just the other day I was offered some Staff of Stone Curse by Wirt. That too as a Rogue, even though the guide suggests this to be impossible and that a Monk would be required (although a Monk is still the best option for this), but it turns out that, just as how Wirt (and Griswold) will try to sell you items that are at least 80% of the price of what you currently have with you (in Hellfire), and "give up" after a certain number of tries, the point at which the "giving up" occurs can be, in the case of Wirt, with an item type that otherwise he would never sell to the player. This is more likely to happen if we have all eligible item types in our inventory with an extremely high value, but even under such circumstances, it is RARE to see it happen. Hence why the Monk is still best for the job...

Anyway... So I think Wirt can sell it, in particular to a Monk, if clvl is at minimum 20, or higher. (Wirt range: clvl to 2 * clvl, meaning at clvl 20, range is from 20 to 40, and 40 should be good enough for Magi, since 40 / 2 = 20.)

If getting it from monsters, though, I think mlvl 20+ would be too low, no? From what I understand, the monster would have to be mlvl 40+, due to the division by 2 that is applied to determine the spell qlvl. Since monsters "cap" at mlvl 30 for drops, and unique monsters 34 (30 + 4), the only 2 other enemies capable of dropping it would be Diablo himself since his mlvl, in Hellfire, is 45 (lootable only in Multi Player, though) and Na-Krul whose mlvl is 44 (40 + 4) (fightable only in Single Player). I wouldn't be surprised if I was wrong about this, though, it's just too easy to overlook some tidbit or the other of info.

TL;DR It seems having a Monk spam Wirt is the "easiest" way to get it. Geez... I don't want to imagine the effort required to get it prefixed with "Bountiful", and that too managing to get 90 (30 * 3) charges out of it, and on an 8-16 War Staff...

Nonetheless, I can't believe no side mention of any of this was done in the guide! No other spell in Diablo and Hellfire is as hidden as this! And no mention of it in Wikis etc. out there, too, nor much discussion over the topic, even when people in general discuss Hellfire specifically. How odd...
Kinda neat that a Hellfire-only spell can stand out in such a way, though, certainly not the kind of grind one would ever need to go through in vanilla Diablo...

[Red Hairdo]

OK Adria, time to hand over the Witch Shack to Wirt.