Rune ilvl

[BOB2]

Hello,

I was wondering about where a rune X could drop. My concern is about where to find a cham. In others word, is it possible to get a cham in an area level 68 ??

1 - First assumption (and question) :
Runes clvl is equal to thier ilvl. For example cham requires a clvl=67, so its ivl should be 67 too.
Is this true ?

2 - Second Assumption
If area lvl is 68, could any monster of this area drop any item which ilvl<68.
So any monster in stony field (MonLvl13Ex = 68) could drop any item which ivl is 68.
Is this true ?

If both are true, a cham could be dropped in stony field.

Thanks in advance for your insights,

BOB2

[Thrugg]

I was wondering about where a rune X could drop. My concern is about where to find a cham. In others word, is it possible to get a cham in an area level 68 ??

Short answer, no.

1 - First assumption (and question) :
Runes clvl is equal to thier ilvl. For example cham requires a clvl=67, so its ivl should be 67 too.
Is this true ?

This isn't true for any items, and especially (?) not for runes. Runes don't have an ilvl in the usual sense, they are "simple items" and their origin is not recorded.
That isn't really important though, as in general, required level is no indication of where something can be found.

2 - Second Assumption
If area lvl is 68, could any monster of this area drop any item which ilvl<68.
So any monster in stony field (MonLvl13Ex = 68) could drop any item which ivl is 68.
Is this true ?

This bit is more or less right. Monsters in an area of level 68 will drop items of ilvl 68, which is one of the factors involved in exactly what they can drop. More importantly, they will, where possible, upgrade their TC to a TC of level ~68 (as near as they can get) which in this case is the key determinant of what can drop.

Cham is rune 32. This means to drop one, a monster must be able to drop from at least Runes 16 which is the lowest rune TC that contains it.
Runes 16 is only dropped directly by Act 4 (H) Good. The "Good" TCs drop all the runes, charms, jewels, gems and jewellery you see in the game.
Act 4 (H) Good is contained in many monster TCs, but typically require a TC of at least level 78 to drop them. Less than that, and you only get a chance of Act 3 (H) Good which only contains up to Ber.

So, you need to look in at least level 78 areas and above.

Of course, this doesn't really require you to go much further beyond the Stony Field, as the Den of Evil, Hole and of course Pit are all that high.

[BOB2]

Short answer, no.
This isn't true for any items, and especially (?) not for runes.&nbsp; Runes don't have an ilvl in the usual sense, they are "simple items" and their origin is not recorded.
That isn't really important though, as in general, required level is no indication of where something can be found.
This bit is more or less right.&nbsp; Monsters in an area of level 68 will drop items of ilvl 68, which is one of the factors involved in exactly what they can drop.&nbsp; More importantly, they will, where possible, upgrade their TC to a TC of level ~68 (as near as they can get) which in this case is the key determinant of what can drop.

Thanks for your replies.

Concerning ilvl, I was completely false so :( (there is a glitch on dii.net where ilvl is told to be clvl for gems and runes.)

For the monster area, I express it badly, but I grossly understood what you replied to me here and in the basin.

Cham is rune 32.&nbsp; This means to drop one, a monster must be able to drop from at least Runes 16 which is the lowest rune TC that contains it.
Runes 16 is only dropped directly by Act 4 (H) Good.&nbsp; The "Good" TCs drop all the runes, charms, jewels, gems and jewellery you see in the game.
Act 4 (H) Good is contained in many monster TCs, but typically require a TC of at least level 78 to drop them.&nbsp; Less than that, and you only get a chance of Act 3 (H) Good which only contains up to Ber.

Do you know where I could get rune TC? which columns from which txt files?

Thanks again.

PS: I really like your which only contains up to Ber :D

[whathuh]

Can you explain the act 4 (H) good tc? I have no idea what that means. Unless of course the good tc is like tc3 or tc 51 in that it has a set number of items of equal chance to drop if this tc is chosen with the exception of class-specific items. It seems it would be easier to just create a separate tc for each though.

[Thrugg]

There are more TCs than just the TC3... TC87 that most people are familiar with. Almost all item drops go through the TC structure in some way. Generally, a TC is defined as a list of sub-TCs with a chance of dropping from each one.
Each monster has a base TC (special monsters like Baal or the Countess have their own one, but most drop from a more general group of TCs (eg Champions, Uniques, Casters, Wraiths, etc). The grouped ones may upgrade to a higher level one in the same group in NM and Hell.
These TCs then break down into sub TCs like Equipment, "Good" items, "Junk" items, Potions, etc.
The Equip TCs further break down into the TC3-87s that are bandied about. Good TCs break down into Jewellery, gems, charms, runes...

The entire structure is defined in a file called TreasureClassEx.txt. It isn't too hard to understand what is going on just by reading it, each TC is listed as a row, and each row lists the smaller TCs (or at the lowest level, individual items) and the relative chance of each one.

An example. Suppose you kill a Fallen in Hell Cold Plains. That Fallen's natural TC is "Act 1 (H) H2H A" (from monstats.txt), meaning it is found in the early part of Act 1 Hell and is a Hand to Hand monster. Act 1 (H) H2H A is a level 63 TC in TC group 7 (which is all the H2Hs). Because the Fallen is actually mlvl 68 (area level of Cold Plains), the TC will upgrade, to Act 1 (H) H2H C. Not a big jump, but still worth having.

Act 1 (H) H2H C is defined in TreasureClassEx.txt as having no-drop 100, gld 21, Act 1 (H) Equip B 16, Act 1 (H) Junk 21, Act 1 (H) Good 2. This means that on a random roll of 1 to 100+21+16+21+2 = 160, there is 100 chances of nothing dropping, 21 chances of gold, 16 chances of an equipment item from Act 1 (H) Equip B, 21 chances of a junk item and 2 chances of an item from Act 1 (H) Good.

Act 1 (H) Equip B is listed higher up as having chances of dropping from TC57 up to TC66, so the best equipment item that Fallen can drop is from TC66. It also has a (very high) chance to drop down to a lower Equip TC with lower TC items, and this can continue all the way down to TC3.

Act 1 (H) Good has a chance of Jewelry C, each Gem type up to Flawless, and Runes 13. Jewelry C contains all rings, amulets, jewels, and the three charm types. Runes 13 contains runes 25 and 26 (Gul and Vex) plus a (very high) chance of dropping down to Runes 12. So a Fallen could drop a Vex, although it is much more likely to drop down, probably all the way to El.

There is other info in the TCEx file, mostly affecting chances of a dropped item being magic/rare/etc, which is also a property of the TC.

Just to give you an idea of how the probabilities work out, note that initially you have a 2/160 chance of the drop from the Fallen going to the Good TC. The Good TC has a 14/130 chance of going to Runes 13. Runes 13 has an unappealing 2/8825 chance of dropping a Vex. So altogether your Fallen has a 56/183560000, or about 1 in 3.3 million, chance of dropping a Vex.

[Jarulf]

Thanks for your replies.

Concerning ilvl, I was completely false so :( (there is a glitch on dii.net where ilvl is told to be clvl for gems and runes.)

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Just a few comments on the whole issue of levels. The game has tons of numeric values that in some way can be said to be levels, or indicating how "good" something is. Typically the higher this level value is, the better sort of. Now, to help making discussion clear, people add some sort of meaning to the level and says "character level" when they talk about the level of a character/player. When we talk about the level of a monster, we say "monster level". When we talk about the level of a base item (like short sword), we usually say the quality level and so on.

This is great when having text, but when we want to write down formulas, or make tables telling how different levels are calculated or used, it gets cumbersome, so we make up some sort of abbreviation to use instead. For character level, we use clvl, for monster level, mlvl and so on. This is all good, however, with some many different levels and so many different people and sites, it will no doubt exist different abbreviations for the same thing and an abbreviation might mean different things. In addition we only have so many letters to put in front of "lvl". Thus, always try to see how a specific abbreviation is defined.

Also, always try to avoid using the abbreviation when there is no formula or table to be written. That way one avoid having people toss around ilvl not really understanding what it mean or relate. Instead of asking what the clvl of a rune is, try writing, what is the character level of a rune. That way one would immediately realise that something is wrong (a rune would not have a character level) and that somewhere something is wrong in whatever formula, table or text one saw it. That avoids many confusions.

What is bad about diabloii.net is that they use multiple different meanings and definitions of the abbreviation "ilvl". In addition they are simply wrong on some relations about different levels and how item creation works. So I can understand your confusion.

Lets try to make some sort of summary of different levels and their abbreviations. I will try to use the meaning and use that has existed since back in the Diablo 1 days.

character level - clvl, the level of player's characters

monster level - mlvl, the level of a monster

skill level - slvl, the level of a skill or spell

area level - ????, the level of a specific named map area in the game (Diablo 2), I am not familiar with any abbreviation, alvl could be used, but it is already in use as the abbreviation of affix level, so could be confusing. In Diablo 1, since we had dungeon levels, the abbreviation dlvl was used. Had I written a guide to Diablo 2, I would probably have used that.

quality level - qlvl, the quality of various item properties. This is primary used today for the level of the base items, that is the items as they are with no additional properties, like a short sword, a circlet and so on. Each has such a quality level. Even items that can't have magical properties has such a quality level, like a rune and even keys and such. However, the quality level for non magical items (that is those that CAN be magical) is for the most part uninteresting and not important or even used. Back in the Diablo 1 days, and I think even for Diablo 2, quality level was also used as the level of the different affixes. Each affix has a level that in some way tries to tell how good it is. Typically the higher such quality level, the higher are the modifications on it. Don't confuse this with "affix level". Affix level is as far as I have seen something completely different, see below. Also, each unique and set property an item can have also has a level which typically is referred to as the quality level of the unique and set. Consider unique and set, not as special items themselves, but really a base item with a unique or set property added to it (that is really how the game do it). So a unique item is one that instead of a prefix, got a unique property. The quality level of unique and set is used to tell if a specific dropped item is good enough to get the unique or set property, see more below.


Now, all the above are fixed values, set in stone so to say and are always the same for all items and cases. They can be looked up in data files and listed in tables and so on. Sure, Blizzard can change them in a patch, but they don't vary from game to game, or item to item and so on.

So lets look at the more variable levels.

Item creation level or item level - ilvl, one of the most misunderstood levels and also one of the most misused and wrongly defined abbreviation I would say. The item creation level (or simply item level as many say) is a numeric value assigned to each item when it is dropped. This value is set based on the source of the item, and is used by the game to determine what magical (and non magical) properties the item can possibly have. This is usually done by either direct comparison of the quality levels of properties and the item creation level, or through various formulas and calculations that turn the item creation level and the quality level of the base item into a new value that is then compared to the quality levels of item properties (yes, confusing, but it is a bit complicated, I won’t go into detailed item creation here though).

This value is specific for each item created by the game and even otherwise identical items, can in fact have different item creation levels. There is really no way inside the game to know the value of this level although, if one knows the source of the item, one can often know its value. For example, if the item comes from a monster, the item creation level will be set to equal that monsters level. If you buy an item in town, it will be based on that characters level and so on.

affix level - alvl, just as with item creation level, is a value inherent to each individual item that determines how good affixes the game could pick for the item. As I mentioned above, when an item is to have affixes (prefixes or suffixes, the game uses a relatively complex algorithm to transform the items item creation level and the base items quality level into a new value, or level. This new value is the one that is compared to see what affixes is possible. People writing formulas and wanting to explain this wanted a new name and abbreviation in formulas for this and apparently came up with affix level. So it is really just a modified item creation level, used to compare with the different quality levels of affixes.


That is basically it. Sure, there are other levels as well, but these are the important ones to most people. One thing that might be seen above, is that there is no real relationship, numerical or formula for determining what base item is possible for a specific item drop (from monster, chest and so on. The reason is that base item determination can, from a practical point of view, does not really factor in the quality level of the base item. Instead a highly complex treasure class system is used, which in itself would need a post far greater than this one to explain with all its own internal levels and so on.


So, going back to your initial question, on were to find a Cham rune, there is really no direct connection to the Cham runes level (each rune is its own base item with a quality level, but the quality level is really of no use or importance). Runes are by the game inserted into various rune treasure classes which in turn is assigned to various monsters and areas through higher treasure classes (as explained some previously in this thread). As Thrugg explained, there is really no formula or so to go from the Cham rune to what areas can drop it. One have to basically dissect the treasure classes and its system to pick item and end up with a “yes or no” answer or information (for nightmare and hell difficulty) on what area level is needed for it.


I really think the above might not have turned out as well and clear as I intended. Feel free to ask or comment on it so we can clarify. I should probably post a very brief explanation on how the different levels relate for item creation for example.