Where to find the (semi-rare) runes?
#1
I'm looking for runes to make runewords and so far I've found a bunch of runes from the "common" rune group (El to Thul), but I'm having trouble looking for the higher runes like Amn to Um. (My character is still not high level enough to use the "very rare" runes Mal upwards yet).

So far my character is in Nightmare difficulty, level 40+ and looking to do some runewords on items like Honor, Lionheart, Smoke, etc.) He's playing in Single Player v1.09d. So where's the best place to find runes?


BTW, does "+% magic find" help improve rune drops? Also, do some specific monster types (or perhaps bosses) drop runes somewhat more frequently than others?

Also, any idea starting which places can drop the semi-rare runes? Eg. where's the earliest place that can drop a Sol rune? How about the Lum rune? Nightmare Act 3? Act 4?

I think a Mal rune can drop in NM Act 4 but it's very rare.
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#2
I don't know must of the rune numbers very well, but magic find doesn't help in finding runes at all. All runes are "normal" level and magic find only helps in upgrading equipment to magical/rare/set/unique.
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#3
The hellforge is a good place for Sol-Um, though you can only do it once.

The single best monster for runes is the countess. She has a separate rune drop chance in addition to her item drop chance. In hell, the rune drop is up to Vex (the only rune above Um I've ever found is a Vex from her). In nightmare, the rune drop is apparently up to Io. She's about 30 times as likely to drop one of the runes in her rune drop than anyone else, and many more times as likely to drop them as normal monsters.
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#4
In 1.09d you can only upgrade your runes up to Thul, but in 1.10 you can upgrade them all the way to Zod - by finding a couple of semi-rare runes you may be able to get the rune you want. Check the formulae at the Arreat Summit. This still takes a long time though, odds of finding good runes are pretty slim. My advice - keep all the El runes you come by, you only need 1,853,020,188,851,841 of them to cube a Zod ;)
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#5
Yup, been upgrading the runes up to Thul (I've found a good number of El to Ort runes so I could upgrade to Thul rune). Am playing 1.09 Single Player so can't upgrade to Zod (will need a lot of Ort runes...).

Hellforge can only be done once so that can't be too good a supply of runes...


Adeyke, you mention the Countess being better at dropping runes (I did read the Countess runedrop message thread but it centers on v1.10beta so I'm not sure if the Countess is also at least somewhat better than other monsters in dropping runes in v1.09?)

Are there any monster types that have a separate probably to drop runes (eg. are any bosses or SuperUniques more likely to drop runes?)

Since someone mentioned 'magic-find' doesn't help, how about the "players x" command (I'm playing Single Player) -- will it increase the chances of rune drops or would I be better off repeated killing of some boss monster?


Can someone also tell me whether I can find a Sol rune in Nightmare Act 1 or Act 2? What's the limit of each rune to drop -- maybe the ilvl of the rune and the mlvls of the monster that can drop that rune ilvl -- so which monsters mlvl is that of the Sol rune ilvl? Itching to find a Sol rune now...
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#6
dta,Jul 25 2003, 07:07 AM Wrote:Adeyke, you mention the Countess being better at dropping runes (I did read the Countess runedrop message thread but it centers on v1.10beta so I'm not sure if the Countess is also at least somewhat better than other monsters in dropping runes in v1.09?)
Yep, the Countess is your best bet in 1.09. You can get up to 4 runes to drop at once, and in NM she's got a pretty good chance of giving you the mid-level ones. I believe there were some tables and things like that on the previous forums here. You could try digging around the Amazon Basin too.

But remember that 1.09 has the "Bishibosh" bug. Once you enter the last level of the Tower, if you leave the Countess's area of influence, her drops get reset to the Bishibosh TC and you lose the increased chance of runes to drop. At least, this applies to the realms. I would assume it's the same for single player as well.
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#7
But remember that 1.09 has the "Bishibosh" bug. Once you enter the last level of the Tower, if you leave the Countess's area of influence, her drops get reset to the Bishibosh TC and you lose the increased chance of runes to drop. At least, this applies to the realms. I would assume it's the same for single player as well.

Does this apply to Town Portals? If yes, I understand why my Hell Countess runs weren't giving me lots of runes, I had to TP frequently to avoid death. Pretty annoying bug :(
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#8
Jedi Knight,Jul 25 2003, 11:58 AM Wrote:Does this apply to Town Portals? If yes, I understand why my Hell Countess runs weren't giving me lots of runes, I had to TP frequently to avoid death. Pretty annoying bug  :(
Take a look at this screenshot.
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#9
Quote:But remember that 1.09 has the "Bishibosh" bug. Once you enter the last level of the Tower, if you leave the Countess's area of influence, her drops get reset to the Bishibosh TC and you lose the increased chance of runes to drop. At least, this applies to the realms. I would assume it's the same for single player as well.

Whoa, didn't knew about this bug. Almost all the time, I TP back to town to drop some of the items (I'm playing Single-Player v1.09d, sometimes with the "players x" command) that I've found since entering Tower level 5. Maybe that's why after a dozen or so NM and Hell Countess runs, I've only gotten maybe 1 or 2 runes (and they're from the "common" group only).

I'll try not to leave the area again and see if I can get better drops... Thanks for the tip.


BTW, how good or bad is "Bishibosh's TC" anyway?
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#10
Quote:BTW, how good or bad is "Bishibosh's TC" anyway?

It is about the worst superunique drop that you can get on each difficulty. He is normally in the Cold Plains (second area of act 1) and drops items typical of that area of the game.
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#11
Where can I find more information about the Bishibosh TC bug -- I mean what are the exact conditions -- eg. if you're near another superunique boss like The Creeping Feature in Stony Tomb in Act 2 and you Town Portal'ed out of it, its Treasure Class also gets reset to Bishibosh (even though it's Act 2 and not Act 1)?

What monsters are affected by the Bishibosh bug -- all unique/boss/champion monsters or only SuperUniques (ie. only those hardcoded/placed by the game)

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BTW, does the v1.10 beta fix this bug?
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#12
nvm :)
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#13
dta,Jul 31 2003, 07:51 AM Wrote:What monsters are affected by the Bishibosh bug -- all unique/boss/champion monsters or only SuperUniques (ie. only those hardcoded/placed by the game)

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BTW, does the v1.10 beta fix this bug?
It effects all the Super Uniques (they all require specific map placements) and none of the randomly placed bosses. Note that the act end bosses are not SUs.

This is fixed in the v1.10beta. There was a note in the readme file about this.
" Leaving the vicinity of a Superunique monster and returning after 20 seconds, now properly respawns the Superunique for treasure drops. "

In v1.09 the bug could be triggered in as little as .5 seconds of going through a TP or just moving about 2 screens away after activating the SU. The countess was very bad in this way because if you tried clearing teh two side wings first, you ended up activating her and then moving 2 screens away to get to the side chambers.
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#14
Quote:In v1.09 the bug could be triggered in as little as .5 seconds of going through a TP or just moving about 2 screens away after activating the SU. The countess was very bad in this way because if you tried clearing teh two side wings first, you ended up activating her and then moving 2 screens away to get to the side chambers.

So not just a TP but even moving 2 screens away (does that mean, you shouldn't move more than 2 screens away from say, The Creeping Feature (a superunique), otherwise it'll reset to Bishibosh TC. And I often move away (ie. try to lure the Council Bosses in Travincal one by one) from difficult SU's -- so their treasure drops changes to Bishibosh. Therefore it's not worth killing these SuperUniques for their treasure drops if you can't quickly kill them without Town Portaling?

~~~~~

Re the countess, now I try directly going to the Countess chamber before doing the side wings. So far, I've gotten some of the common runes now (previously I got 1 or 2 only) and I've had one time she dropped 3 runes, albeit just an El, Eld and Ith). This in nightmare difficulty v1.09 single-player. Haven't gotten the runes above Thul from the NM Countess yet (but still doing some more countess runs).
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#15
dta,Aug 3 2003, 02:44 AM Wrote:Re the countess, now I try directly going to the Countess chamber before doing the side wings. So far, I've gotten some of the common runes now (previously I got 1 or 2 only) and I've had one time she dropped 3 runes, albeit just an El, Eld and Ith). This in nightmare difficulty v1.09 single-player.  Haven't gotten the runes above Thul from the NM Countess yet (but still doing some more countess runs).
just keep doing them, in about 30-40 NM countess runs I've gotten several Thuls, several Amns, 3 or 4 Sols, a Shael, a Dol, and 3 Hels. So they're out there, and with a Sorc you can do a run in a couple minutes, easy. And remember, you can cube Thuls and the rest now :)
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#16
I actually think that running the Countess for the higher end of her rune drops in 1.09 is likely to be frustrating

If you really want an UM get a friend to cheese you to Nightmare Hellforge, perhaps Hell too. Straight 1 in 11 chance

Just keep repeating with new mules until you get lucky

I do think the Countess is reliable for Amns Sols and Shaels. But once you start getting to very small probabilities it's a matter of luck against some very long odds
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