I'm using 194 Magic Find at the moment. But I'm not sure whether to believe this has any effect or not, because I do remember reading that Magic Find does NOT work on act bosses. But this is contrary to belief in the Diabloii.net forums where people speculate Magic Find DOES work.
As for the trick to finding the stairs. I pretty much explained it above, but I think the only way I can make it any clearer for anyone is basically linking to some pictures. I've taken screenshots and in fact was ready to post the idea back in 1.09 since the trick/method whatever worked so well. In 1.10 it's not as effective and all it does is just raise your understanding of how the map spawns and allow you to make good educational guesses as to where the staircase should be located. I'm sure you're very familiar with what rooms typically hold the stairs to the next level.
Anyway I'll attempt to explain.
EXPLANATION STARTS HERE (Warning: long and wordy!)
I hope you can pick up on what I'm saying. You start out on the waypoint, and the room faces NorthEast. You will find that you will ALWAYS enter into a room NorthWest to get to the stairs which are located at the far end of the room.
For a Waypoint Room that faces NorthWest the exit room will face SouthWest and will always be one of those rooms that appear to look like a box with two interior walls and the exit will be on the left I hope you know what I'm talking about hehe.
Waypoint Room that faces SouthWest will correspond to an exit that faces SouthEast and the room will always be one of those with a slightly higher middle ground with small stairs protruding in 4 different directions and the stairs should always be visible on the right hand side of it.
Lastly if the Waypoint Room faces SouthEast the exit will always be facing NorthEast and the stairs will always be located at the far end of the room.
So in conclusion how does this help? Basically if you're hugging the left wall as you usually do you're going to avoid going silly directions and taking left turns when you don't need to as you know the waypoint room MUST face a certain direction. So if you're hugging the left wall and find yourself curling around turn back and try to climb the other direction and look for a hard swing in the right direction.
An example when it can be useful is, say you start in a NorthEast Waypoint room. You turn left as you normally would since that's where the exit room should be facing and you find yourself turning and going SouthEast more than anything as the map curls around. You can probably conclude that the exit is in fact BEHIND the waypoint room as sometimes the map will spawn it there since there doesn't appear to be any room for the exit room to spawn a NorthWest exit in front of the waypoint. And I can safely say this is true for 90% of the time for me when it happens. Sometimes you just need to persist in the hugging of the left wall and eventually you uncover the NorthWest exit but if you find yourself doing a complete U-Turn you know you should cast a TP and start from there.
EXPLANATION ENDS --
I hope this isn't all gibberish and hadn't wasted your time as you might have already known this information or this isn't helpful at all to you hehe but this is what 10k+ runs of Hell Mephisto did to me in 1.09 :P and yes the above information is 100% true hehe, just the use of it isn't 100% useful, but it helps you guess better. Also note: after running Hell Mephisto long enough, I'm concluding that he can't drop higher than TC 78 like in 1.09. I haven't found a single item higher than that.
Oh and yes I run in private games. I don't like the idea of taking more than a minute to kill Mephisto and people trying to player kill me.
As for the trick to finding the stairs. I pretty much explained it above, but I think the only way I can make it any clearer for anyone is basically linking to some pictures. I've taken screenshots and in fact was ready to post the idea back in 1.09 since the trick/method whatever worked so well. In 1.10 it's not as effective and all it does is just raise your understanding of how the map spawns and allow you to make good educational guesses as to where the staircase should be located. I'm sure you're very familiar with what rooms typically hold the stairs to the next level.
Anyway I'll attempt to explain.
EXPLANATION STARTS HERE (Warning: long and wordy!)
I hope you can pick up on what I'm saying. You start out on the waypoint, and the room faces NorthEast. You will find that you will ALWAYS enter into a room NorthWest to get to the stairs which are located at the far end of the room.
For a Waypoint Room that faces NorthWest the exit room will face SouthWest and will always be one of those rooms that appear to look like a box with two interior walls and the exit will be on the left I hope you know what I'm talking about hehe.
Waypoint Room that faces SouthWest will correspond to an exit that faces SouthEast and the room will always be one of those with a slightly higher middle ground with small stairs protruding in 4 different directions and the stairs should always be visible on the right hand side of it.
Lastly if the Waypoint Room faces SouthEast the exit will always be facing NorthEast and the stairs will always be located at the far end of the room.
So in conclusion how does this help? Basically if you're hugging the left wall as you usually do you're going to avoid going silly directions and taking left turns when you don't need to as you know the waypoint room MUST face a certain direction. So if you're hugging the left wall and find yourself curling around turn back and try to climb the other direction and look for a hard swing in the right direction.
An example when it can be useful is, say you start in a NorthEast Waypoint room. You turn left as you normally would since that's where the exit room should be facing and you find yourself turning and going SouthEast more than anything as the map curls around. You can probably conclude that the exit is in fact BEHIND the waypoint room as sometimes the map will spawn it there since there doesn't appear to be any room for the exit room to spawn a NorthWest exit in front of the waypoint. And I can safely say this is true for 90% of the time for me when it happens. Sometimes you just need to persist in the hugging of the left wall and eventually you uncover the NorthWest exit but if you find yourself doing a complete U-Turn you know you should cast a TP and start from there.
EXPLANATION ENDS --
I hope this isn't all gibberish and hadn't wasted your time as you might have already known this information or this isn't helpful at all to you hehe but this is what 10k+ runs of Hell Mephisto did to me in 1.09 :P and yes the above information is 100% true hehe, just the use of it isn't 100% useful, but it helps you guess better. Also note: after running Hell Mephisto long enough, I'm concluding that he can't drop higher than TC 78 like in 1.09. I haven't found a single item higher than that.
Oh and yes I run in private games. I don't like the idea of taking more than a minute to kill Mephisto and people trying to player kill me.