New 1.07/1.08 Magic Find Meta?

[ziambe]

Thanks guys @frozzzen @Pyrohemia <3

I will ease up on the runs now and maybe try to grab a Naj's Puzzler from Moo Moo Farm. I really hope you find the Golden Archon Staff!

I think there is a little more to uncover on this hunt...I want to look a little more closely at the treasureclass.txt file because it seems like certain mobs are just a little more likely to drop equipment than junk. I think I had the most luck from Greater Hell Spawns and of course the various types of Defiled Warriors. Whereas the demon sprites and succubi I want to say were downright worthless. I want to see if there is any info in the .txt files that might explain this.

Also in the .txt files is the concrete answer regarding the nodrop chance question. I don't think that this calculation has changed since 1.07 so I think that a rough estimate of the difference between p1 and p5 is about 40%! (i.e the nodrop chance on p1 is reported in 1.10+ as 62.5% vs p5 is 24.05%)
edit:
I watched a video about map generation, so I want to add that there are only 3 possible locations for the link between the Outer Steppes to the Plains of Despair:


also, I noticed that sometimes even when you dont get souls in the Plains of Despair, there can still be a boss/champion pack of a 4th type of monsters. If souls didn't spawn as one of the 3 monsters in Plains, then there is a good chance that this 'extra' monster is souls. And it seems that you can do the ritual with champion souls!

However, Attacker Takes Damage will eventually kill them :/

 

[ziambe]

Highest drop after a few runs today:


Just when I was thinking that Lich Wand (above) could've been an Elder Staff, I decided to get cocky vs a fanat group of cows and got squashed. Of course game is cruel:

 

[frozzzen]

Yikes on that Elder Staff. It's not horribly rare drop so you should get it soon enough. I'm not going to focus on getting 1.08 grail or anything like that, so I'll send all my Elder Staves drop odds your way.

So I bit the bullet, got rid of my map and tried p5. Drop quantity is super obvious and is probably a way forward tbh. There's a lot more drops than I expected, but also, you actually have to build for damage. I kinda wondered why you keep 150 maxdmg worth of charms in your inventory to clutter your stuff, but yeah... you kinda want damage.

Some things that I realized immediately: bosspacks are very tough to kill on higher player settings. Snapchip took crazy amount of time whirling over him, any frozen monsters/abominables/frenzytaur bosspacks are also super tough to kill, and PI Blood Lord bosspack I had to skip (mana burn extra fast). Also suicide piglets crits/high rolls are serious threat. I'm really not sure what to think, as this lasts much longer. At any rate, run was very good, it broke my TC90 drought.

Spoiler

When it rains it pours Got it from Colenzo apparently.



Didn't even think he can drop TC90, but apparently he can, and I'm happy for it. But that's not all. After realizing I don't have inventory space to pick Windeh, I opened tp, cleared inventory, picked it up and horked remaining of p1 wave (I'm always trying to leave 1 add alive so I can hork the boss) and I got another Grandfather, probably from minion

Spoiler

I dropped Windforce to take a screenshot of both drops on the same screen; both from fucking wave 1 of Baal. Pretty crazy stuff but I can somewhat rest now. Ironically, neither of these drops came from player setting, but it was first run I used it on. I didn't want to drop the bow ever again in that game, and completed run thinking I will get second rare Hydra Bow so the game can spite me, but mercifully it didn't happen.

I was forcing myself rather a lot to keep up you but with that pocketed I also can chill a bit. Time will come when I devote more time on that last remaining prize. I still didn't get Schaefers ever, nor Cranium Basher, but I don't particularly care about either of those. Scary thing is, if I want Stormspire, according to math, it would take me getting ~25 Windforces on average to get just one Archon Staff. I'm definitely losing hope, but all that's needed is just one drop, just one time for the stars to align. Will see how it goes, but for now I am content

 

[ziambe]

Holy moly woly boly! That's a nice start to /p5 Let's start an Official Windeh Club? Membership = 2!?

Some thoughts today:

• iirc minion drops would however be affected by /p5 so that should've helped the Grandfather

• Damage is pretty important indeed, although I only notice it on the mobs you mentioned (and stone skin). Snapchip always takes noticeably longer than anything else, still then I can handle him within 10 seconds. Looking back at your gear, I dont see any crushing blow...why no Guillame's? Also, I think now is the time to make a shameless plug for my 1.08 Deadly Crafts guide in case you have a reasonable stash of HF rushee runes - you could craft some boots beginning tomorrow for a little more CB.

• I am still wary of the numbers in the drop calculator, TC90's are so f'ing rare (btw neither hydra bow nor colossus blade are 90, they are 87). I think in my 25-30 hours or so of running I saw one, maximum two, TC90s - including armor. At he moment, I can only visually recall one War Pike, dropped ofc by a very easily missable, lone Greater Hell Spawn (WSK2) in the corner, of a dead end.

• Regarding the grail, I noticed something extra annoying. At the moment I am doing 4 rituals before cows and I saw a rare GMB which got me thinking. Consider seaching for set GMB... The breakpoints for set vs. rare items for normal mobs are very close to each other(11,392 vs 12,672, respectively), meaning you would need to be VERY precise about collecting stacks. And then the only thing you would be able to find would be exceptional+ class specific sets >.< The worst part is, you cannot hunt an Elder Staff and a GMB with the same amount of stacks...because the stacks required for an Elder Staff will push the GMB to rare quality instead of set

Spoiler

• tldr: Naj's Puzzler, Mavina's Caster and Windforce/Stormspire all require different amounts of MF rituals
• sidethought: if you're only after the set items, maybe its not worth horking cows if it takes more time than getting new stacks

• Optimization: I fear that something as insanely rare as Stormspire might require even more tuning in terms of optimization - something in the lines of running multiple MP games where one (ore more) characters collect stacks on p1 while the other does a 'run' on p5. Otherwise there is just too much downtime and that kills the fun.

• Some more finds on Rituals
  • It seems that boss pack minions can do rituals too:
    Spoiler

    

• And after the ritual has started, the souls don't seem to mind of other monsters wander in
  Spoiler

  
• However the ritual wont start again if other monsters are present
• Taunted souls will never start a ritual, but you can move them to the area of the map you want
  
  • To remove taunt, tp to town

Anyways, big grazzerino and go, go, go!

Back to Moo Moo Farm for me today Say a prayer for my barb's lungs (have you noticed that many corpses are horked twice? Not sure if this is a desync issue with tcp/ip and whether there is an effect. I have seen successful horks on the first or second hork of the same corpse)

 

[LprMan]

Ha! Totally unexpected and hilariously awesome

It seems this has been in the game all the way since release. The ritual works in 1.00 and the MF bonus is applied too. My WW barb has no MF on his gear.

Spoiler: Apologies for the partially borked screenies

Now pls someone, find a way to spawn Reziarfg...

 

[ziambe]

1.00?! Haha figures... ill be playing this till im 75

 

[frozzzen]

Same as far as TC90 goes. I'm certain I had Collosus Gridle somewhere (I'm think it was WSK3 frenzytaur), and I do have screenshot of Mythical Sword drop in Halls of Pain from yesterday.

Spoiler

I genuinely thought Hydra Bow is 90. Referencing your tables in post 89, in TC87 I've seen everything except Diadem and Berserker Axe, majority of them multiple. TC84 I'm still missing Archon Plate and Legendary Mallet (ofc -_-). To be fair, I've spent a lot of time MFing wrong areas and doing things poorly so I guess things might improve as I move forward. HoP has a ton of TC90 eligible monsters and is probably best area.

I do share your sentiment that harpies and imps are pretty bad in terms of drops. Forget TC90, I haven't seen anything useful from them except one Shako. If you decide to play with .txt files and figure something out regarding drops, do let me know the results. For now I stopped doing Frozen River runs completely despite harpies supposedly being capable of dropping TC90 and kinda absurd monster density. I just don't see them drop useful stuff.

Double hork or double cast bug is absolutely TCP/IP issue. Compared to 1.14d where we PvP and have similar bugs (WW positional desynch, invisible projectiles, black walls and all that), but they happen very rarely, and only on ~250 ping. My guess is that 1.08 is very poorly optimized because even in self mp on host, I have more input issues than when I join someone else's game in modern versions. One way of fixing double cast is dropping fcr breakpoints, which I might just do because it's huge waste of time.

I'll see regarding Stormspire project. Now that I got all normal drops from this patch it's kinda difficult to motivate myself for next step. I don't mind the downtime between the runs, in fact I welcome it. 2 runs/day is absolutely maximum I would do, let alone running multiple hosting games to squeeze more runs per day. I'll have to see.

 

[ziambe]

Confirmation that cows can drop TC87

Spoiler

Same game >.<

Spoiler

Different game

Spoiler

Would be nice to see a TC90 just to confirm that they can drop it. Hopefully I see another elder staff before a Hydra bow!

Edit:

Cows were extra generous in this run:

Spoiler: Mission Accomplished

With another TC87 to boot!

Edit edit:

Before I could even finish the run

Spoiler

Final Tally:
Cow King's Hide = 11
Cow King's Hooves = 15
Cow King's Horns = 3

 

[frozzzen]

Nice. how many cow runs total did this take?

EDIT: War Pike found in WSK 2 from Hell Boar thingie. That's another one. TC90 count = 3.
There's also Diadem from WSK 3 Imp so there's that, but at this point TC87 aren't really a thing

 

[DariusTriplet]

It seems this has been in the game all the way since release. The ritual works in 1.00 and the MF bonus is applied too. My WW barb has no MF on his gear.

Impressive find! Pity that SoJs are capped at one per game, or you could quickly scoop them up in 1.00. I suppose that clearing maggots in 1.00 would be the most efficient way to get lots of rares - I could see an evening of maggots turning out fancy rings.

This would go a long way to getting rare Lances and Gothic Bows, although those are still infuriatingly hard just to get to drop in 1.04+.

 

[ziambe]

Nice. how many cow runs total did this take?

About 15-20 I think.

I think those greater hell spawns are the mvps. I can see it now, an army of barbs, all afk in plains of dispair for 2 hours, then 1 by 1 clear p8 wsk2. Rinse and repeat.

I might just be crazy enough to make a project of it.

suppose that clearing maggots in 1.00 would be the most efficient way to get lots of rares - I could see an evening of maggots turning out fancy rings.

That or cows. How many rituals did you do? Did you notice if there are 'breakpoints' as in 1.07/1.08?

Classic provides the best rare rings, belts and boots, so I might just have to pay another visit to 1.00 this year and add my findings too.

For now, I think I will work on some non-mf related goals.

 

[Barl]

Ha! Totally unexpected and hilariously awesome

It seems this has been in the game all the way since release. The ritual works in 1.00 and the MF bonus is applied too. My WW barb has no MF on his gear.

oh man, i updated to 1.05 for NOTHING!! time to reinstall...

 

[frozzzen]

About 15-20 I think.

You are genuinely insane For better or worse. I barely squeezed 4-5 runs in that time.

 

[ziambe]

Cow run is only 4 rituals, i.e. 45 min max! But yea, I love me some D2!

 

[Jpy]

You are genuinely insane

Our purediablo peers in a nut shell, and I love it hahaha

 

[frozzzen]

Well we are all a little bit insane here, but primus inter pares is very much still a thing even in 2023

2 x Scissors Suwayyah
1 x Ogre Gauntlets
1 x Shadow Plate
1 x yellow Balrog Skin (pain.exe)

Finall got my Scaefer's Hammer too. Only Cranium Basher and Stormspire left, how hard can it be?

I died to afk souls because they broke my armor so I decided to fix it with indestructible stuff.



I had to do it.

 

[frozzzen]

The show must go on.

Glorious Axe from WSK2 Boar.

Spoiler

War Pike from Abominable Champion in Icy Cellar.

Spoiler

And last but not least, I did get second Windforce from WSK 2 Defiled Warrior. Let me tell you, second Windforce doesn't feel remotely as good as the first one Didn't I say I should get ~25 on average before Stormspire? Let's keep the count up.

Spoiler

I reduced my runs to just these 3 areas. Pindle/HoP + WSK/Lister + Icy Cellar. Not sure if there's anything else worth running for Stormspire, but these are my targets right now. Kinda have to keep posting these to keep my sanity in check. TC90 = 5

 

[ziambe]

Kinda have to keep posting these to keep my sanity in check. TC90 = 5

I hear ya! Keep em coming, you might motivate me

At the moment I'm really curious about 1.00 hell cows for some gg rare rings.

I'll check it out sometime this week and report!

 

[frozzzen]

Well, so much for ever slandering Icy Cellar. This was really unexpected but most certainly not unwelcome.

Spoiler

The Cranium Basher
Thunder Maul
Two-Hand Damage: 95 to 506
Required Strength: 253
Required Level: 87
Mace Class - Normal Attack Speed
Indestructible
Unidentified
Item Version: Expansion
Item Level: 93
Fingerprint: 0x1dda683c
+25 to Strength
+180% Enhanced Damage
+50 to Minimum Damage
+80 to Maximum Damage
All Resistances +45
20% Increased Attack Speed
150% Damage to Undead
60% Chance of Crushing Blow
4% Chance to cast Level 4 Amplify Damage on striking

Genuinely great way to end the day. Even have this drop recorded in OBS. Didn't ever rack one in 1.07 (if it even exists there) so very cool drop overall <3

 

[Steven Q. Urkel]

Its crazy that a game nearing 30 years old is finding new ways to stay relevant after all these years. I dont currently possess the ability to pre-1.09d D2, but cheers to those of you who do lol.

I remember earlier this spring when I was playing D2 I couldnt even get grouchy old Meph to cough up a simple pair of War Travs and/or Gore Riders in 1.10s. Maybe now I can just bribe one of you 1.07/1.08 lads to find them for me