Rather Vexing(!)...

[crumpuppet]

Is it just me or is it impossible to get good runes?

I've been playing with the same sorc for a while now using Memory (now lvl82), and when 1.10 came out I set my sights on Heart of the Oak (who wouldn't?). No matter how hard I try, I don't come NEAR any good 1.10 rune-words.

No matter how many Countess/Meph/Baal runs I do on Hell and Nightmare (I find Countess drops even lamer runes on Hell, but probably just less frequent) the best ones I've found are a Gul and a Mal.

I have noticed better runes dropping after say, lvl80, but how much does your Clvl factor into a rune-drop?
Does MF have an effect on rune-drops?
Does Area lvl have an effect?

I can only play single player. (South African internet SUCKS)

btw: I have also never, ever even seen a Stone of Jordan. is it even possible for me to pick one up in single player, or is my sorc permanently cursed?

What am I doing wrong, or is this game just that difficult?

[GoshoHubaveca]

You're not unlucky, the runes are just extremely rare.

I have noticed better runes dropping after say, lvl80, but how much does your Clvl factor into a rune-drop?

It doesn't.

Does MF have an effect on rune-drops?

No.

Does Area lvl have an effect?

afaik, the only effect it has is on the top rune that can drop. 82 and above can drop zod.


Running countess/meph/baal is not a great idea for finding top runes. The countess very rarely drops runes above lum or so, and after ist, they become almost impossible to find. Mephisto and Baal both drop mostly items. Basically, your best bet is to run an area with lots of monsters that you can kill quickly. River of flame is a good choice, because I believe the ghost type monsters (the mana drain flyers) have a higher than average chance to drop runes and Hephasto drops them often also. I haven't found any runes but I've only done a few runs.

Also Stones of Jordan are extremely rare as well. Andariel has a pretty good chance to drop unique jewelry so you can try running her. However, the chances of it actually being a SOJ are very small (I'd guess 1 out of every 100+ unique rings).

[Sporky Smurf]

I believe (correct me if I'm wrong), the more players in game increase the chance of a rune dropping. Now, these runes may be good or bad, but I'm guessing they're not too shabby. Besides, you can always cube three of the same runes to get the next level run.

If this is true, type 'players8' in a chat box and then hit enter. This will make a single player game act as if there were eight players in it. If your Sorc can't fight these new, beefed-up monsters, you can always lower the number at the end to tweak difficulty.

[adeyke]

In 1.10, the commands is /players 8 (note the slash). More players will reduce the chance of a NoDrop. Against the Countess, however, it'll actually decrease the number of runes; you'll get more non-rune items instead.

[crumpuppet]

Thanks for the reply.

Yes, I do sometimes play with /players 6 or 7 and find that I get more frequent (and a bit better) runedrops, like hel, shael, maybe io, but still not the extreme ones.

I usually just play with /players 2 or 3, then you just sit back and let the orb take over. B)

I guess I'll just have to get busy then.

(On another note, while I have you guys going here;
If Cerebus' Bite is Ladder Only, why did I pick it up in single player? Hell/Meph)

[adeyke]

If Cerebus' Bite is Ladder Only, why did I pick it up in single player?

"Ladder Only" means "Ladder realms, open, SP or TCP/IP, but not non-ladder realms."

[whereagles]

I think the only realistic way to get high level runes is the hellforge quest. All the good runes I found came out of it.

Hellforge running requires some preparation though - making new chars over and over, swapping gear and stuff. Quite boring.

[Samka]

I'm amazed at how little information there seems to be regarding rune-hunting. Although I'm willing to admit that there may be no 'good' ways to find high-level runes, there must be a 'best' way. The Hellforge seems to be currently accepted as the best way, but it is arduous and there are few additional benefits. So I've been trying to figure out a better way. I've initially come up with two possibilities, neither of which appears to be very successful, but then with the drop probabilities for high-level runes being what they are, it's hard to tell. PLEASE let me know if I'm making an error at some point.

First idea was killing carvers. Going by D2Data.net's stats (which I'm now dubious about), carvers can drop reasonably high-level runes (at least up to Sur) with a reasonable chance. I think about 1 in 50,000 drops will be a high-level rune (higher than Vex). Carvers are easy to kill, and are pretty numerous, so they seemed a likely candidate. However, I killed a couple of thousand of them on 5 player, and got a total of 2 Ith runes, so I was disheartened. Still, if the drop rate is accurate, it can't take too long to get a good rune from the little blue guys.

Second idea met with a bit more success. I noticed that I was getting most of my runes from chests, barrels, urns etc. And in other rune-finding stories I've read on the net, it seems that a lot of them mention good runes dropping from non-monster objects. I can't find any data on drop probabilities for these objects, but runes must feature fairly highly on them (or perhaps they just can't drop many TCs?). Anyway, gearing my barb up for defence and running around Durance 2 only opening chests netted me a Dol and a Lem (and a Herald of Zakarum, strangely enough) in under 30 mins. It was 8-player (from my experience, I think this does make a difference with chests). But this may have just been luck, because the next hour didn't get me anything more. Might be worth investigating.

[Vash]

Interesting...I think I'll give those two methods a try!

[Samka]

Adeyke wrote :

In 1.10, the commands is /players 8 (note the slash). More players will reduce the chance of a NoDrop. Against the Countess, however, it'll actually decrease the number of runes; you'll get more non-rune items instead.

Would you be able to explain how the increased players can reduce rune drops? At a guess, is it because if the countess hits her 6 item limit, then she can't drop a rune?

Also, how is it that the countess drops runes so frequently? Is there a special bonus chance to drop runes on some objects?

Vash - it'd be great if you could have a go at it yourself, since the more data we have, the better. Unfortunately it doesn't look like the Durance chests offer a significantly better chance for rune finds, if any. Stats on my last 2 hours of chest-popping :

El (11)
Eld (3)
Ith (3)
Tal (6)
Tir (4)
Eth (2)
Nef (1)
Ort (2)
Shael (1)
Lum (1)

And a fair few sets and uniques. Didn't really fulfil the promise of an early Lem though. Also, I think I've opened enough chests by now to know that they won't drop the best TCs - however they do drop lots of charms (and I've had Gheed's twice in two hours) and jewellery. So maybe a good place to run around with a ton of MF if you're looking for unique rings and ammys too.

[Obi2Kenobi]

The Countess has two drop probabilites. Her regular drop chance, and her rune drop chance. Her rune drop chance replaces her no drop chance. This is why she drops more runes in a 1 player game than in an 8 player game. However, it should be noted that her regular drop can drop higher runes than her rune drop can, it just happens very rarely.

[Vash]

Samka, how many players are in the game when you go carver/chest running?

Edit: Also, Samka, according to http://home.t-online.de/home/320071388834-...F_Guide_ENG.htm , it's not really a matter of killing Carvers, it's really a matter of killing anything and everything that moves in Act 1.

The site, however, does not give any information on the mlvl reqs for dropping runes. How did you know that carvers were capable of dropping the runes you mentioned?

[Vash]

Some initial data:

Ran around the beginning of act 1 hell with my orb sorc for about 20 minutes killing every non-cold immune I could find. I failed to find ANY runes. And this was in a 6 player game. The rune drop rates for a1 monsters are probably very low and even killing a lot of them won't do much good.

I also ran around Durance level 2 opening all the chests I could find. All I found was a Tal rune. This was an 8 player game. So far I've only done the Durance thing once. Not sure how long it took me.

Might be a good idea to keep track of how many chests I open next time.

Anyone know if stashes, hidden stashes, chests, hollow logs etc have different drop rates? Excluding gold chests, the chest behind Meph, the pods in the maggot lair, and baskets/urns, of course.

[Samka]

Obi2 - thanks for clarifying that. Out of interest, does anything else substitute for the 'no drop' chance?

Vash - Sorry, I should have been more clear. Essentially what I am talking about is maximising what I will call your 'rune rate'. Rune rate can be measured objectively as your kill rate multiplied by the average chance of a monster dropping a rune.

So for each rune TC, there must be a monster with the greatest chance to drop it. But going after that monster is unlikely to result in the maximum 'rune rate', because you can probably kill other monsters a lot faster. The council in Travincal is a prime case : sure they offer comparatively decent rune drop chances, but (depending on your character), you can probably kill monsters with lower drop rates so much faster that you're actually more likely to have the particular rune TC drop sooner from them. Of course, how you optimise your rune rate is very much dependent on your character type. Zerker barbs might maximise their rune rate targeting Act bosses, while LF zons might do best in the flayer jungle.

I chose carvers because they are numerous and more importantly, they congregegate in large numbers in pre-defined areas of the map. So you can start a game, waypoint to dark wood, and very quickly wipe out a few hundred of them. Rinse, repeat. You'll need to vary players to optimise your rune rate depending on your character type. But the flayer jungle suggestion (which I read about recently) is probably better.

If you're popping chests (which I now won't recommend until I see the drop rates for them), always leave it at players 8, since you'll get a *lot* more items from the chests. I had a very nicely planned run which took just over 3 mins to pop over 50 chests. It ends at the entrance to Durance 3 (I stopped going on there because the chests are spaced too far apart). Pick up keys when possible, because it's very annoying to buy them. You will need a way to get past monsters (I used whirlwind).

Regarding drop chances, I've started another thread.

[Vash]

Also note that I'm playing on SC non-ladder USEast, so I don't have the luxury of running the same exact map over and over again =(

[Obi2Kenobi]

Out of interest, does anything else substitute for the 'no drop' chance?

Not that I am aware of.

[Samka]

Hmm I got the numbers wrong. You actually have to kill about 5 million carvers to expect a decent rare rune...

Site I'm using is d2data.net , but the data is probably off a little depending on the level of the map you're running.

If you're playing over TCP/IP, then yeah, it's probably not worth running chests unless you :

a. Have a really powerful character

or

b. Someone does an analysis of the chest drop chances and finds that they have better than average chance to drop runes

[MadScientist]

Hm. The carver idea is interesting... One would have to arrange this scenario: get a summoner-necro and do not summon mages, remove all sources of cold damage from your merc, arrange carver shamans so that they can see you but cannot be reached by your army and lead a bunch of carvers near the shamans and kill them over and over again. Add MF and GF to taste. The problem is: how can this be arranged?

The Mad Scientist

[Vash]

Why does it have to be a summoning necro?

[adeyke]

Hm. The carver idea is interesting... One would have to arrange this scenario: get a summoner-necro and do not summon mages, remove all sources of cold damage from your merc, arrange carver shamans so that they can see you but cannot be reached by your army and lead a bunch of carvers near the shamans and kill them over and over again. Add MF and GF to taste.

Doesn't work. Resurrected monsters don't have a second drop.