I think the rune furmulals look great.

[Wrathraven]

Personally I'm looking forward to getting my hands on Amn, Sol and Shael when I want them. B) That'll cover all the crafting recipes and also the Normal Unique to Exceptional Unique recipe. B)

ack, I need my Lums for Smoke!

[whereagles]

Hey I once got a LO rune from a basket in the Ancient Tunnels, hell diff. I also found a MAL from a monster somewhere in A5/hell.

This was after almost 2 years of D2X. LMAO. Runes are way WAY WAAAAAAAAAAY to rare.

[Bun-Bun]

That's something of a pity (and a PITA) about the Exceptional to Unique weapon upgrade. Lum runes are already integral in the only two high-resist armor runewords, and the only general-purpose staff runeword. If I ruled the world, I might have chosen a less in-demand rune, maybe Io or Hel, or maybe even Dol, althought that may be too common.

I hope that there will be new non-Lum runewords for armor, staves, and (dare I dream it) orbs.

On the other hand, I would expect rune upgrades from Io and even Hel would make the "Lum shortage" more bearable.

As for Amn, Sol and Shael, bring them on! "Strength" and "Honor" are a big elements in arming my mercs (and occasionally an unlucky character). And you just can't have too many Shaels.

[Wrathraven]

Who knows, maybe Lums will be the next SOJs! ;)

[Guest]

I mean if the currency of the game was actuallu useful and was being used up over time.

I suspect that a couple of key runes will be viewed as denominations of currency.

[davcol]

This new formula got the mathematician in me to thinking about how much being able to upgrade runes will really help game play.

So I went over to diabloii.net and used their calculator to find the chances of the Countess dropping various runes in a single player hell game. I actually have no idea if these numbers can be trusted, but I'm assuming they are correct.

So with these probabilities in hand I computed the expected value in Lum runes for a single Countess run. I chose Lum runes since they are in the middle of the list. Using Els makes the numbers get out of hand in a hurry. So in this scale a Lum is 1, a Ko is 3, an Io is 1/3 and so forth.

I get an expected value of 6.63 Lums per run. That means (roughly) 6.5 million Countess runs to get that Zod. :)

But on the other hand its only 37 runs to get an Um and 330 for that Ist. Discounting the extra ingredients, and assuming the drop chances stay the same, I'd say we will be seeing a lot more higher level runes on the 1.1 ladder.

-davcol

[pbrain]

I get an expected value of 6.63 Lums per run.  That means (roughly) 6.5 million Countess runs to get that Zod. :) 

But on the other hand its only 37 runs to get an Um  and 330 for that Ist. Discounting the extra ingredients, and assuming the drop chances stay the same, I'd say we will be seeing a lot more higher level runes on the 1.1 ladder.

Your 37 runs to get an Um rune has one flaw-you can't downgrade the runes. The 6.63 "Lum's worth" of runes is very heavily weighted towards the higher runes, Vex alone counts for 3.44 of this, Gul 1.72, and so on. The higher runes also have an extremely low chance of dropping, so to approach the 6.63 runs you need to do millions upon millions of runs. Of course if you hit the jackpot with a vex on your first run, your average Lum value per run is astronomical :D .

To actually make your own Um, you can look at the expected Lum value of Um runes and lower that drop. This is a meager 0.326, which translates into 745 runs to build your own Um. This is about half what you'd need to do without upgrading, and will require plenty of auxiliary ingrediants for the cube. It's also essentially guaranteed that you'll have an Um at the end of your 745 runs (or thereabouts), and that's what's nice for the masochists in the audience :blink: . Making an Ist works out to about 1486 runs and a kings ransom in auxiliary ingredients.

[D-Dave]

wow, someone over at Blizzard must have read my sig :D

Sooo, let me think what else is on my wishlist. I better update my Sig fast or it may not make the patch :lol:

[davcol]

I was wondering if anyone would catch that :)

And of course you're absolutely correct. But I was assuming (without saying so ) that either new cube recipes would allow you to split runes into their component pieces - which would go a long way towards making runes a viable currency - or that people would be willing to trade a higher level rune for 3 of the next lower one. Probably wishful thinking on my part.

But as you point out , even if runes can't be downgraded, higher level runes will be much more common in 1.1 than they currently are, which was more or less the point of my original post.


-davcol

[Dozer]

or that people would be willing to trade a higher level rune for 3 of the next lower one. Probably wishful thinking on my part.

If I needed a Cham or a Jah, I would certainly NOT trade THREE Jah/Ber for one, even if by some miracle I did have them.

[channel1]

I thought a formula to downgrade Runes and Gems would be a good idea. Too bad that it is probably too late for it to be added, if they didn't put it in.

The way I see it working, would be to cube a socketed item with an Exploding potion. The components of the socketed item are broken out, with any excess landing on the ground, i.e. doing this with a 2x4 item with 6 sockets occupied.

This would be great for recycling items that you socketed with lower level stuff, or socketed by accident.

At least one, and up to all, of the Runes and Gems that are released this way would be reduced a grade. In other words, a Perfect Gem would become Flawless, and an Eld Rune would become an El. A Chipped Gem or El Rune, if affected, would be destroyed.

The downgrade could be controlled, by only having one Rune or Gem in the socketed item.

Besides the practical use of this recipe, I like that it makes some kind of sense within the game physics. The other "logical" way to unsocket something would be to use a dagger-class weapon to "pry out" the Gem or Rune.

Finally, as far as Jewels are concerned, I suppose that it would be best if they were simply unaffected by the process.

-rcv-

[dta]

Just wondering, would anyone know the total number of Zod runes that are ever found/existed in Diablo 2 Realms (one single realm)? Do they number in the thousands perhaps (that's counting since D2 LOD was released)?


On a more personal note, I'm currently playing a LOD single-player barbarian (formerly, I just transferred my D2 Classic single-player Sorc and D2C SP Amazon who were in their L40+ to LOD so I haven't really experienced what a from-the-ground up LOD character will play like). I'd like to do a Runeword Ort-Sol barbarian helm for this barbarian. I've already gotten an Ort rune but my L35+ barbarian still can't find that Sol rune (any idea which places to look for a Sol rune or even an Amn rune)?

He's finished normal Baal, and doing nightmare Act 1 (but I'm not sure if NM Act 1 yields better / higher item types than Norm Act V).

[kandrathe]

On a more personal note, I'm currently playing a LOD single-player barbarian (formerly, I just transferred my D2 Classic single-player Sorc and D2C SP Amazon who were in their L40+ to LOD so I haven't really experienced what a from-the-ground up LOD character will play like). I'd like to do a Runeword Ort-Sol barbarian helm for this barbarian. I've already gotten an Ort rune but my L35+ barbarian still can't find that Sol rune (any idea which places to look for a Sol rune or even an Amn rune)?

It seems to me that like a watched pot, the Rune you really need never drops. So, some ideas are; Wait. It will eventually drop, but it will take time. Meanwhile, go on with your life as if the rune would never drop. It will probably be the very next drop then. Second idea; Get to get to Act 3 nightmare, then sweep Durance levels 1 and 2. Also, do the Black Tower quest. Also, Act 4 the Hell Forge quest. Last idea; Come join us in the mud of multiplayer action.

[Occhidiangela]

And all of the tickets he collected to show that he had memorized the Bible. :)

[Occhidiangela]

I will be saving my Io runes for after the patch.

Looks as though being a packrat has its advantages. :)

[Brista]

If I may be forgiven for cross-posting and even worse quoting myself here's what I said in a similar thread over at the Amazon Basin:

a number of factors will make runes more common

It looks like all runes will be upwardly cubable. As our mathematicians have figured, this doesn't mean you'll be able to cube Zods but it does mean that runes you have plenty of will become more useful runes. (For me even some medium rarity runes such as Dol, Io and Pul became no longer worth picking up in 1.09)

A spin-off from that is that people will probably now squirrel away every rune. All those Rals, Orts and Thuls that I've seen people leave on the ground add up!

Next, we've been told that the drop system has been re-done and that rune drops are better now. This will still mean that Zod is rare - if drops are still rarer according to how high level the rune is - because if Zods were reasonably common and all the lower level runes were more common we'd soon be awash with Ists and Vexs which I'm quite sure is not intended.

Next factor is MF runs. Meph runs in particular had a very low runes to items drop rate. With a change in the culture towards mass killing of normal monsters in order to get set and unique items, more runes, jewels and charms will be a spin-off of that likely change in behaviour

The Countess drops on average a rune per run and we've been promised an improvement in her drops

Potentially the biggest factor is the promised change to quest rewards. There are two quest rewards currently offering runes: Act 4 Quest 2 and Act 5 Quest 2. We don't know what they are going to do but it seems reasonable that the Ral Ort Tal of Normal should be something more significant later on and that the improvement in Hellforge runes from Normal to Nightmare should be mirrored by a similar improvement in the rune drop in Hell compared to Nightmare

Conclusion: don't expect Zods but do expect to be able to operate several grades above your current rune usage (for instance if you now have plenty of Sols and Shaels you should be able to find plenty of Lums and Ums for the same effort). And of course the possibility of a lucky find is always there

[Lokmar Iskaran]

I've found a few dozen amn, sol, dol, and shael level runes, a few ko and hel level runes. Just last week a Ber rune dropped off a normal (non-boss) hell cow... the last cow in a group that I was slowly plinking with my summon druid. I was down in a corner and the rest of the cow rush had moved off to the other side of the map what with how slow I was killing things. So the Ber drops, I pick it up, and EVERYONE is suddenly running around me. Looks like they were all running grabit or maphack to allow them to get notifications of uber drops. They all just ran around spamming the "Die!" voice.

Not a minute later a Sol rune drops from a chest and the same swarm of players gathered again. Was perhaps the best rune gathering game I've ever been in.

[channel1]

I updated the chart in the above post, if anyone is interested.

-rcv-