Unique hunting resource help?

[brianc84]

Now, I had never attempted to look for this sort of information before, so I simply *assumed* it would be available on one of the major D2 sites. Since a unique's ilvl determines whether a monster of a given mlvl can drop it (to my knowledge), it would seem to follow that I should line up a list of all uniques by ilvl next to a list of all monsters by mlvl, and see what falls where.

The relationship between monster level and unique item level is one of the many things that determines wether or not a monster can drop a specific unique but it is certainly not the only thing.

The chance to drop a specific unique item is a function of:
-The monster's level in relation to the unique item's level
-Your amount of magic find
-The monster's treasure class
-The monster's ability to drop the unique items base type

The monster's chance to drop a specific base type is a function of:
-The treasure class structure itself
-The monster's treasure class

The monster's treasure class is a function of:
-The monster's base treasure class
-The monster's level, which is used to determine the farthest a monster's treasure class can be upgraded in nightmare and hell

I might have left some things out somewhere. Most are relatively simple except for the treasure class structure. Sparing the details, I'll just point you to ATMA, which has a drop calculator built in that factors in all the necessary information.

As a sample case, one of the items I am hunting for is Skin of the Vipermagi. It would have to be in an area where serpentskin armor could drop, and where monsters' mlvl would be high enough to generate the Skins. But if their mlvl were too high, their overall chance of a Vipermagi would decrease. There would be a minimum cutoff but (afaik) no maximum cutoff. (If there IS a maximum cutoff, by all means let me know). So the chances for a monster dropping the Skin would start at some integer at the minimum cutoff, possibly grow to an ideal "sweet spot" point, then decline over time as the monsters became more likely to drop higher level armors than serpentskin.

The overall chance typically decreases since higher level monsters are able to drop more types of items, watering down the chance of getting the specific item type you want and so lessening the chance of getting a unique item of that type. However, it's not always the case (it's often not the case but only up to a certain point) that the more types of items a monster can drop, the less chance you have of getting the right item type. Typically, picking from a treasure class a few above the first treasure class that an item type becomes available does not water down the chance much. The chance can increase since many adjacent treasure classes pick the same item classses. Certainly you'd want to check as many treasure classes as possible that will pick the right item class, but you wouldn't want to go so high that the chances to pick from other classes water down the chance to pick from the class you want.