Jewel drop location

[Ferengi]

Is there anything in the Jewel Drop mechanism that favors particular monsters?
Are jewel drops affected by Magic Find?

[adeyke]

MF only ever affects the quality of the item, not the type. For jewels, this means MF will give you more rares and less magic ones.

There isn't any special jewel-dropping monster. It seems jewels do have a better drop rate from superuniques and act bosses than ordinary monsters, but if you can kill a lot of ordinary monsters very quickly, they might pay off more in the long run. You can't really do jewel runs; you just have to kill things and hope one drops.

[Ferengi]

This link (found later) seems to indicate otherwise

http://www.d2data.net/

[adeyke]

This page? (I hadn't seen it before when I checked the site).

At the top (excluding Andy's first drop, which can't be farmed) is normal Summoner, at 0.25974026%. That's the best chance. At the very bottom, the chances are 0.03461538%. So, you just have to kill the worst jewel-dropper 8 times to get the same number of jewels as the best jewel-dropper. If you include the Andariel drop, this number rises to 10. Still not really significant.

Just compare this to the drop rates for the Ist rune. The hell Countess drops it 0.01496170% of the time. The lowest dropper (nightmare cow) drops it 0.00002668% of the time. That means you'd have to kill nightmare cows 560 times to get the same drop as from the Countess. Even the second monster on the list would have to be killed 48 times.

So I really don't think the site disagrees with my assessment. With jewels, it doesn't matter whom you kill; you'll always have about the same chances of getting one. You'd probably want to kill something high-level if you want a high-level jewel, though.

As for the assertion that MF only affects the quality of the item, that's been proven a long time ago.

[Ruvanal]

Off topic for the jewel point but...

At the top (excluding Andy's first drop, which can't be farmed) is

Actually in the 1.10 beta patches, it would be more normal to be getting the quest drops for Andariel and Duriel. They way they are set for these two is bugged. The TCQuestId and TCQuestCP are set up for an intermediate state of doing the quest. Once the quest itself is completed, the state flags for the restriction are changed from the intermediate state that is being checked against and since it does not match, the game ends up using the quest drops instead of reverting to the non-quest drop TCs. To force the appearance of the 'non-quest drop' TCs would require that the player exit the game after kill each of these monsters and restricting which NPCs that they interact with. If the character does talk to certain NPCs, this would cause the changes to the quest state flags that would in turn re-enable the 'quest drop' TCs to be used again. A player would need to be rather cautious about what they do to force the 'non-quest drop' TCs to be used. Doing what is necessary to advance to the next act will cause the reversion to the 'quest drops' in both cases.

[Loschonorg]

some quests need interactions with npcs to be completed (the flashy swoosh quest done animation in dialogue box). so are you saying as long as we don't fully complete those quests, the key monster will still drop items from 'quest drop' tcs?

[adeyke]

Actually, it seems that what he's saying is that the Duriel and Andariel quests check if the quest is in the state of "killed boss, didn't speak with NPCs yet." If it is in that state, you get the non-quest drop. If, however, you do talk with the NPCs, it'll change away from that status and reset the drop to the quest one. So it's the opposite of what you suggest; not talking with NPCs will let you keep the non-quest drop, but if you don't take this precaution, you'll get the quest drop again.

[Crystalion]

With jewels, it doesn't matter whom you kill; you'll always have about the same chances of getting one.  You'd probably want to kill something high-level if you want a high-level jewel, though.

Or the "opposite" viewpoint thus... if I want jewels of Envy, killing weenie (mlvl 1..3) monsters is more likely to get me what I want or, if not, a jewel that I can reroll with 3 perf gems for a 1/9 chance of converting it to what I want. Of course he didn't say that was why he wanted a jewel (and any jewel at all does just fine for crafting) but it is one of the interesting additional qualifications to look at. (Especially if you are farming Hephasto for runes, rushing a lot of characters there, and getting lots of net perfs to burn if you can work your way up to rushing more effectively with Envy).

As I've mentioned in another thread, Envy is a pretty nice twink until you hit clvl 15 or 18. Kinda fun that sometimes you *want* the low ilvl items instead of something "better" (Gull comes to mind, e.g.).

[Ferengi]

to kill the worst jewel-dropper 8 times to get the same number of jewels as the best jewel-dropper.

Well, no. 8x is significant, especially in item runs. Which would you invest in, 1 day for a decent drop chance or 8 days? Item runs are inherently long term and _anything_ that cuts them down by more than a factor of 2 is interesting. On the other hand, finding a crowd 8x in size that can be killed in the same elasped time is interesting too. As a practical matter, I would agree than Andy is probably not the way, and good ole NM Act5 Foothills and Highlands are the places to work (be sure to open all chests).

I was asking for the purposes of creating Suicide Armor using the Rainbow Facets. A vita barb named DyingToGetToHell as a tongue in cheek uber build guide. I wonder at what level and monster the experience loss from dying equals the experience gained from killing....hmm, wait a minute. A Gold Find barb that horks will regain the 50k for a barb merc easily.

[adeyke]

I still quite disagree.

If you want a Countess-droppable rune, it's well worth it to kill the Countess for it. Even though it takes time to go down there, the drops are so much better that you still get the most runes/time by repeatedly killing the Countess.

There just isn't something like that for jewels. Suppose you want to kill Andariel for the jewel. If you end up killing at least 11 monsters (any monsters), those monsters contributed more to the jewel chances than Andariel did. So, there's no single boss monster you can repeatedly kill for a good chance at jewels.

If we only look at normal monsters, the drop chance difference drops to just a factor of 3.6. A factor of 3.6 is easily overruled by monster density and ease of killing.

If you have the choice between farming area A and farming area B, and you can kill four monsters in area A in the same time as you can kill one monster in area B, then area A will give you more jewels, regardless of what the actual monsters are.

As you want Rainbow Facets, though, you need jewels of ilvl 85+. That rather limits your options for good jewel dropping areas. You'd have to go to an area with monsters of mlvl 85+, preferably high concentrations of ones that are easy to kill.

[Ruvanal]

Actually, it seems that what he's saying is that the Duriel and Andariel quests check if the quest is in the state of "killed boss, didn't speak with NPCs yet."  If it is in that state, you get the non-quest drop.  If, however, you do talk with the NPCs, it'll change away from that status and reset the drop to the quest one.  So it's the opposite of what you suggest; not talking with NPCs will let you keep the non-quest drop, but if you don't take this precaution, you'll get the quest drop again.

Correct.

[Ferengi]

I still quite disagree.

I have no idea what you think we are disagreeing on, since we said practically the same things.