One other tip: you’ll improve the odds of finding an item you need by increasing the number of items you need! Don’t get too stuck on playing a single character. If you play multiple characters, you’ll learn the items that each needs, and so will be on the hunt for more items. More fun too!
I always look up about the items I find. When they are good, I drop them on the account for that character. It is super rewarding to know that when I decide to play that char, it will have a lot of good gear for me to choose from.
It's also helpful planning for endgame. If you know a hot farming area has a ton of every kind of immune besides Cold (for an example), you can make a *Blizz Sorc* and have no problem. If you get walled against cold immunes somewhere else, maybe a Trap Assassin or Poison Nova Necro could handle it.
What blew my mind when discovering d2jsp is just how many items have value to people that I never imagined. Between all the special blue/yellow item rolls that people covet, and low level dueling having such a big scene, there's a massive learning curve to knowing what people will value. It's probably the single biggest learning curve in D2, just knowing what to loot and ID and how value is assigned. I'd bet that almost every D2 player (myself included) has left 10s of thousands of FG worth of items on the ground or sold them to a NPC after IDing because we didn't know the niche value.
Been playing since 1.08, can vouch for this video 100%, although I did find 4x arach's and a sur rune in one day a few weeks ago, but like he said THIS IS NOT NORMAL at all, and then I didn't find a damn thing for 3 days after that, even in p5 and p7 games. Good luck out there boys, may the rng gods be with you.
One extra tip is: do a variety of runs! You'll get bored if you spam the same thing so many times, mix it up. Even if somewhere is slightly sub-optimal it'll be nearly as good.
Even the lesser farmed areas have been great for my barb- problem is that he can handle all immunities and phys immunes. Def find the places you can clear effectively and that are high enough area level to net you awesome drops.
Not going to lie, it worked wonders for me. I decided to go up from Lower Kurast to Trav. Stopped in the Sewers in a3 and has been a real winner. Not huge monster density but great drops generally.
Absolutely agree. I never farm one single place over and over. I stablish a route. Start on act I up to act V, skipping places that are hard for me (fire sorc), then I go back from there. As a players 1 offline player, I have INSANE luck. Also think that the self found stuff is much more rewarding than trading shit.
Another couple of tips: Players 3, 5 and 7 are the ones that increase the number of items drops by monsters. Check out drop calculators to see what is the Boos/Mob tha has the best chances to drop the item you are hunting for, and check out how the different Player settings affect the drop chances, sometimes going to Players 3 shaves like 400 runs but going to Players 5 after that only shaves like 20 runs so it is not worth it to increase the difficulty past Players 3 in that instance.
Thank you! Due to my crappy internet, I HAVE to single player! I have been using all your tips & have beaten Hell difficulty on 4 separate characters. (Amazon, Assassin, Necro, & Sorc.) & working on a Pally & a Druid. Sure, I ain't got the best gear, but, like you said, most of us have "real life" to deal with. Thanks for all your helpful videos & Keep Slayin'.
@@MatthewSmith-uf6tr I have the same problem. Mine is "rendered periodically unstable by outside interference". That means every few seconds the neighbor's asinine bunker security "pings" for intruders. Half a mile away. It pops on TV and radio signals but destabilizes wifi. Frickin FCC says paranoia comes first. I can watch 4k movies but games kick me off every 10 seconds.
You speak the truth when it comes to finding items/runes. I also read someone else's comment on expanding your item search criteria by playing with multiple characters......great idea! I've playing D2 for over 20 years and still have yet to see a Zod drop in game. This is both what makes the game frustrating at times and keeps bringing me back day after day.
don't know how or why i ended here at this point in time but what this guy here says is true. i've played d2 back in the days from 1.08 - 1.13 (in LoD. even played 1.07 for two hours or so but didn't get a shako or anything like that) wich spanned multiple years and Cow + Baal Run meta and the amount of high runes i've seen dropped can be counted on one hand. if nothing's changed since those days (and that's what people telling me) there is no guide to find high runes plain and simple. there is also no guide to finding high level uniques (gf or wf for example). farming for this stuff is unreasonable
dropped a Zod before i ever saw a cham rune drop ;d these days if i want high runes, i do LK chest runs or hunt for those ghostly mana drainers all over the place. They have a reduced item drop table, which means the separate rune drop is more frequent.
"Don't believe random assholes on the internet" may actually be the best advice you can give in the year 2021. Applies to D2 and so many other things! Great video.
They could add player 7 difficulity for online characters, so you could play with friends when they are online or play alone with same difficulity when they are not.
I agree. Instead of having random assholes join your game, just to go do their MF using your playercount without actually following the purpose of the game you madd, they could farm alone... Biggest counter-argument I see though, is that the /player command is meant for SP charaters to emulate the MP experience, and giving MP characters the ability to use that command takes away the multiplayer factor from... well multiplayer.
It would be a complete mess, and a mess to code. Imagine starting a game with 2 friends at players 5, then 1 or 3 random players join the game, does the difficulty increase? Does it stay at p5? Then 2 people wants p5, 1 guy wants P1 and 3 guys wants p8, it wont work..
or if you dont have friends to play with but could use help when needed. Right now I am stuck with making a decision of playing single player,keep with online or stop all together.
As a veteran player in d2, I had several enigmas, ctas, hotos and more over few years of playing.. also used to dupe ocu rings, ran mephisto and pindle bots and never found a higher rune than IST. Now in d2r which I started around 2 months ago, I've found ber, 3xLo, vex and more.. The best way to find them is to never look for them - focus on playing different chars, enjoy them. The items and runes will come
I duped a Ber rune twice to hack my own Enigma. Still highest rune I've ever found. Have yet to find Ist or Lo for many useful RWs. Have found a few Vex & Mal tho.
If you wanna get the items that streamers have, you have to make D2 your job just like they do. To be able to have Top-tier builds in a month requires no-lifer play, or spending money for forum gold to get good items from item trading websites.
Im over 300hours in farming 85’s fast. Zero and i mean Zero Hrs. Rng is rng these videos should come down to this. 1500runs in for me and im still using meh gear 448% mf
@A Bell I have a buddy like that. I dont get gg drops but i get decent stuff and he makes me feel guilty. Im like bro u play a few hours a week i play 3x that.
Been playing this game for 20 years, with untold thousands of hours under my belt and I have never seen a Zod rune drop. The name of the game in Diablo 2 is persistence. Just keep farming, and you will get what you need eventually.
best place to farm Zod....Worldstone Keep, Pindle and Nitlathak(not great but decent and you get keys too :P)...any other area is pretty much...good luck, suffer well.....anyway...who need zod when u got grief for way cheaper :S.......Zod also cant drop from Act 1 to Act 4(at the exception of the Hellforge guy(Hephasto) and Izual)....thats the only 2 pre-act 5 that can drop a Zod but awful to farm them XD
Another note is that Andariel might not drop loot when killed near pillars etc. There is a loot bug in that regards, but i forgot exactly what it was like over the last 2 months
Playing with other people increases the drop percentage on better items, BUT make sure you're playing with friends... because there is nothing more frustrating than spending weeks looking for a certain item, then seeing it drop, and having a complete stranger that already has it pick it up, and leave the game.
Exactly the reason i dont play in groups, i have only one friend irl whom i play, eitherwise no way. I focus on killing mobs and stay alive, while other come to leech only or autopick up tricks desperates.
I had D2 on my Win 95 comp. I've played for years. I still watch this vids now and again just to get a quick refresher cause sometimes I still forget runewords or breakpoints or Treasure Class.
We need to remember Diablo 2 was never designed with max gear in mind. It was designed to be "Lets see how far you can get with the gear you do find". Yeah we all like to min/max but I stopped looking for BIS gear a long time ago and now just focus on seeing how far I can get with the drops I do get. It stops the power creep and makes the game more fun in my opinion. Also great video, you earned my sub. PS. Online is not better or worse than single player, just very different and equally as amazing.
Great video. I watch so many D2R videos at this point that my perception is skewed; I used to think high runes were dropping like hot cakes. Not true at all, and I think we all forget that the amount of items and item variations in this game are in the hundreds of thousands…so just keep killing and stuff will eventually drop 😅
Great tips, best tip I've found myself is getting on a D2R discord channel like Chaos Sanctuary. Really easy to trade and always people willing to rush and help out. I had a group of guys show me how to do Ubers and they just gave me a free torch and smiter items. It was a crap roll...but it's still a torch. It's a great community.
The last point is so true. I got bored of d2 online because of the bots, the ladder resets, the frustration of having another player pick a jah rune right in front of your eyes... Single player pluggy was by far the best experience i had with the game
@@Fivefingas 100 cow runs 200lk runs 200travi runs 300mephisto runs I got 2 ums... But at least I also got 2 arachid meshes And some other cool uniques like stormshield
1. Farm lvl 85 monster level areas 2. Open every chest, flip every body, and anything else that has drop chance. 3. Play with atleast 3 people in room at all times. 8 for best results, if you can farm efficiently. 4. Lastly Drop chances are what your going for. As long as your character is killing efficiently (or your in a place like the kuraust with many chests to open) your doing it right. Now do it 1000 times and I promise you won't believe what you will find.
@@vSwaGGerMoDz Subjective... Anything that results a chance at dropping a good unique or high rune, suddenly makes it *not* a waste of time as soon as you see it drop... My first zod rune was from a random corpse... Didn't feel like a waste of time to me...
If you use a drop rate calculator like the one on Maxroll you can see that at 175 MF you actually HALF the ammount of runs needed to get an item, from 1:3000 odds to 1:1500, after that you start getting into diminishing returns. If you can get up to 500-600 MF you can shave like 400 more runs, but really the sweet spot is 175 MF to halve the ammount of runs.
33 seconds in, id like to add, ive got 1 player bnet finds of Zod & Jah runes while leveling my 2nd character. i dont do trades i'm pretty sure a majority of people kill only certain areas, i cant even craft a treachery and my sorc is level 85 with terrible gear compared to offline geared characters.
I did find 2 Ber runes in a single day a few weeks back. what an insane day that was. For those who are gonna ask, it was in chaos sanc. one was on p8 and about 2-3 hours later the second came on P1
Let me join this cool Bois club. Was soloing hell and a cham dropped from a random beetle in act 2, then continued to fight my way to izual and a Jah dropped from a finger mage. Maybe it's because it was a first hell playthrough, or because I was a barb with 0mf. I think that is as lucky as I'll ever get though.
I got 2 jah runes in one night and then another 1 day later… sounds like a lie, right? But thats rng for you… now if only 2 of those drops couldve been ber runes…
@@bennyfrank5262 im trying to make an infinity and CoH for a sorc. Im trying to do self found because I dont like to get involved with this games community when it comes to trading. Technically the jah rune is more rare due to its higher level on the rune tier list but ber is considered more valuable due to the variety of runewords its used in. Prior to these runes dropping, I ran chaos about 300 times and didnt get jack shit in terms of runes. So yes, this made up for it in a way but they werent quite exactly what I needed for the build im aiming for.
Joe Schmoe from the internet here: Not lying though! I think a lot of people new to the game don't realize how hard it actually is to find some of the items, and that it takes a mix of luck and persistance to get the nicer drops. My best day in D2R was two Sur runes and a Vex. The odds are insanely low for this to happen, but they increase with amount of runs and farming the CORRECT places. Not all things can drop from all monsters, and some monsters have increased chance. Where you farm should reflect what you are looking for. Also, I disagree with what someone else wrote in a comment about mixing it up for fun. No. You want runes, you hunt runes. Over and over again like a human bot. You don't stop to chat or trade, you eat before you sit down by the pc, and you apologize to yourself for wasting time if you need to take a piss. I'm a couple of thousand travincal runs deep now, and I have yet to find a Jah or a Ber. Not complaining though, it's RNG!
One more thing for singleplayer: Use mods. There's a bunch of Quality of Life mods that make running D2 a lot less tedious, faster or can give you stuff like increased storage space. You don't have to feel bad about using mods. As Phil said, not everyone has 7 hours a day to dedicate to running and you're not in a competition. The long and short of it is: If it increases your enjoyment of the game, do it and ignore what haters try to guilt you into thinking. Your 500 runs of Countess are no less valid than the guy running on ladder just because you made things easier for yourself or might have a better drop chance. You still did the runs and as long as you had a good time, that's all that matters.
Phil just one thing man, I found a Jah, a Ohm and a Cham in a couple of hours from each other doing Arcane Sanctuary runs in the same day, so the part you said it's not true when people say they have these insanely lucky runs, well I'm nobody famous, just a guy, and it happened to me..
Ghost hunting for runes in arcane/tower and throw in a tomb run killing the ghost packs and you'll get even more runes. Ghosts have the highest rune drop rate in the game
I have found 2 ever. One on Legacy a few months ago (after over 3 years of playing religiously) and another on D2R just a couple weeks ago. Will lose my $#!+ when a Jah finally drops for me. 🤞
I got two things I want to point out. First, I primarily hunt runes and the issue that is happening even with numerous runs, and now currently in 4 months of play daily with a significant amount of hours. I have still not found a single high rune. I understand that you need to do 100's and 100's of runs, that's fine. But with that already being achieved I am not sure what's going on. Once I got my first character strong enough I hit 1000 runs of countess and trav, and no high runes. Got my characters even stronger, as having more people in a game provides a higher chance of drops and I did another roughly 1000 runs of strictly trav as countess is limited. Still nothing. So there's something really wrong with this game. In fact I point to other people that in the entire 4 months that I played I've only seen 3 hr's drop in total in every single game ive played. I got a 94, 93 and 92 so I've done a lot of runs with full houses, not that throne is the best place to farm runes but after playing all that it's nuts to only see such few fall. I honestly do not care if I get those runes, I just want to see them fall. Second, the last time I played was 1.12 and to my understanding something was done to the random drop generator to increase or technically decrease the chance of runes dropping. I say this because I recall the last time I played way back when I used to find multiples of every rune, I would say 3 of each rune in a period of about 3-4 months. I recall I used to have multiples of every runeword for all my characters and trading wasn't really my thing besides in game. JSP already existed and thought it was pointless really. The same came with skillers, I used to find on average 3-5 skillers per character per class and my inventory used to be full of charms with no issues. Now I have the same problem with runes with skillers, in 4 months I've found only 2 skillers and everything else has been rolls or trades and still to this day I do not have a single character fully stacked with max skillers. They've done some tweaks to this game and makes absolutely no sense, ive currently been on a long haul of cows, trav and chaos for my journey for HR's and I cant find any even when playing with 4-5 people in game. Not sure what gives but they're killing the game
I used to play a lot back in 2007 with my horker and in those versions the loot and drop rate were way better for all items. Ever since patch 1.13 came out my loot got worse
Hero Editor is the only way to get Hero Shako with +600%mf. Also makes rune 1000x easier to get, BER and TIR became the same drop rate. I am surprised OP didn't mention it as a feature of single player.
I appreciate the good knowledge you provide, but also just wanted to say that you have a pleasant, relaxing voice and are easy to listen to. No annoying bullshit music. Thanks for the video.
Back when I played the original game I set my magic find % value according to a curve that I have found... Idk where. But the main thing is that 250-300% was the best to find uniques because above that the uniqe chance doesn't increase considerably but rare, set and magic increases much more. So if an enemy drops 10 items, if your magic find is too high all those items will be magic/rare.
THIS - everything you mention here is so very true and well... reality bites :-) STILL I think they really nailed D2R and I find myself more immersed and neckdeep into the grind than ever before. Now... where (whack!) is....(WHACK!) my...(Whackiwack!!!) LO RUUUUNE!??? (Starting new game)
Man, don't even start me on that fucker. My rune rng is great, got 1 ber, 2 sur, 1 ohm, 1 vex, 3 mal, 2 pul, 2 gul, 1 ist, lems and fals and today a fricking CHAM but the piece o shit Lo doesn't show up. Got keep grinding.
@@owningkoning haha exactly! I somehow find it easier to put on my grinding pants and with all the quality of life additions it’s actually not all bad :-)
I found one, but I can't remember where it was... I traded it for a sorc torch, but I should have been more patient and gotten a higher roll. Mine was 12/18, but I was desperate for a torch lmao
Drop highlight vids are a doubled edged sword. On one hand, you might be in a drought, and seeing a GG drop can keep you motivated to stay on the grind. On the other hand, it might skew your expectations when all you see are the highlight drops between hours of nothing.
To put it into perspective mrllamma after completing his holy grail (every unique/set/runeword) he didn't have a single Zod actually drop he had to cube one up and that was playing constantly for multiple years
Again, good advice from you. What I can add is that people have really no clue about what RNG is and how it works. If the expected value to find something is say, 500 Meph runs, then it doesn't mean you will find it after 500 runs! (in fact, there is around 63% to find one item after one EV, around 89% after 2 EVs so 1000 runs). So you can get it after 10 runs, but you may not find it after 1000 runs too! While very unlikely, it isn't impossible. Get around 160-230 MF if you can, but mostly: prioritize kill speed. And have fun, no point in forcing yourself! You can also take ideas from streamers.
I've noticed I find way more just randomly playing and killing mobs. I got an Eschuta's Temper and a unique tiara getting to Mephisto. Not a shako but still good off randoms.
7:36 Thank you for saying this! This is the elephant in the room that a lot of big content creators dont acknowledge, and look I get it. Blizzard is quick to punish streamers for mentioning sites like JSP in a positive light (even though they cant stop P2W sites from spamming bots in the chat lobby). But I cant tell you how valuable they have been for me. I found a Griffons Eye early on and unloaded it on JSP and that has bankrolled literally 3 of my characters. Ive never even seen a vex rune drop in a game yet both my Sorc and Druid are rocking HOTOs thanks to that Griffons. If I tried in game trades id of gotten a bunch of people trying to rip me off offering like a Pul or some shit. Never paid a cent for FG and JSP has been a lifesaver for me.
Not saying jsp isn't better, and that people don't lowball like crazy in game, but in game trading still works pretty well if you know the fair value of stuff. I got a shako on my 2nd chaos run after finishing the game and a ber rune the next day, so very lucky. But I actually decided to keep it. And I found a bunch of other decent stuff that was useless to me and still managed to trade for full kicksin gear in a couple of hours so I could kill ubers.
I can no longer complain about getting no drops....I found ber and jah in the same chaos run over Thanksgiving weekend....I was completely blown away. I went out immediately and bought a lottery ticket....which lost so I guess I used up all that luck on the rune drops. But you're right it doesn't happen that way most of the time. To date in d2r I've found: 2 jah, 1 ber, 1 Lo, 1 vex, 1 mal, 2 lems, 1 shako with no other really mentionable uniques. I did get a 20/20 necro and pally torch and a couple of mediocre sorc torches outta some Ubers though and I've been hitting it pretty hard since release. I disagree with the single player points though. Yes sure you don't have to worry about ladder resets and you get static maps but there's no multiplayer, no playing with friends and no trading (this one's huge). Sure in single player your items will not depreciate but also they never really had value to begin with. They are only useful to you and cannot be traded so thier value is null. Economy determines value so with no economy there is no value other than personal satisfaction. if you play bnet and traded for whatever you needed you still receive the personal satisfaction of having attained whatever item and actually have an item of value. Also given enough time all items depreciate enough to be nearly worthless but ladder resets actually aid in restoring value to such items you just have to find them anew. This is all Just my opinion though ;P so if it differs from others that's fine. Everyone should play in the manner that is most fun to them.....except those that pk in hc. These people are just douches literally wasting other people's time...really Despicable. Though it is incredibly satisfying when they try to pk you and you wreck them instead 🤣
Started paying single player 1 week ago love it, found a SoJ on Andy felt so good. Can't wait to find a Shako, War Travelers and Tal Rasha armor!! 🙂 And i love that they are bringing new patches with some changes after so many years!! Just wish I had more storage as i horde everything! 🤣
My best suggestions are to mix em up. I usually find the best items while doing random runs, both solo and party. If u can't clear Baal runs solo, then work towards that. Farming keys and tokens are easy ways to get some mid/low runes.
@@____GoMeZ____ same, dude! I've been farming keys but always do other things in the way. Also, playing on console sucks. The loading screen takes so long to get back in the game that I always try to do as much as possible before quiting and coming back. Only do it when I find good stuff.
thank you phil, i used to play battle net but after the first reset i just kinda lost interst in the whole thing, and i was like why is ppl playing on single player i dont get it. but after rewatching your videos the last week i went in and started playing single player and once again i have not been able to play any other game but d2r when i have time to play, and while it is hard to play on player 4+ it is much more rewarding as you say when you find your stuff your self, on battle net i had to trade for some of the runes becourse running countess was insane and took so long, but on singleplayer it is much easyer with my timelimit/playtime, so never going back to battlenet now, thank you for that, and keep up the great videos and guides, they help more then you know. :)
There's a good graph kicking around where it shows how much the set and unique chances drop off above about 200%MF, pushing it all the way out to 1000%MF barely doubles the set/unique drop rate. Players 3, 5 or 7 is far more effective.
One day I found sur and 4xgul, next day a vex. I've found jah, 3xber, probably 5vex and 1 ohm since start. Which dwarfs the amount of runes i've found since playing D2 since it released lol. I run a fishymancer and usually clear from act 1 to act5 bosses/lvl85 areas and superuniques.
I bought D2R about a week ago and I don’t even know what an SOJ or shako is and I’m watching this video anyway lol. Big Ups for making a compelling video.
I do countess, pit, ancient tunnels, arcane sanctuary, councils, Izzy, Pindle, thresh socket, shank and all the bosses in one run and repeat. Covers everything like keys, essence and other stuff. Keep things fresh and there’s enough farming in one run
This is where it's at. I basically run the hot spots of the entire game in one sitting and if i have time, I'll do it again. But it keeps things fresh and you have a chance at anything and everything
Great, pragmatic, honest advice. I’ve been playing d2 since the beginning and I’ve never bothered with ladder. I enjoy the collecting aspect and evolution of a character - trying to perfect gear and stats over time - without knowing it’ll all be gone soon.. but that’s just me. I don’t play offline either- I like playing solo battlenet as well as with others and friends 🤷🏻♂️. Having a real life and playing d2 is definitely a balance. Remembering that this is supposed to be fun is something to never forget…. And don’t listen to random a$$holes on the internet! 💯. +1 sub, brother 🤘🏼
Unless something has changed you don't lose your character after ladder. The character just turns into a normal non ladder character when the season ends.
about 2 weeks ago i found a Zod, then the very next day i found another Zod. i have played this game for over 20 years and ive found 4 Zods total. keep at it and youll have your lucky day eventually
11:26 as a new diablo player cant wait to have that feeling, finding items etc that I saw from Diablo content creators. Im playing d2r on my own pace :D
Legit, biggest failure of the game to me was NOT making personal loot drops a thing. I absolutely despise playing near any randoms and watching them steal everything. It's not fun AT ALL to deal with. And it NEVER WILL BE.
When I find absolutely nothing worth a while. I stop playing and spend more time on my job. Work extra time on the weekend and bam! I found all those high runs I desire on eBay with the extra cash I made. Now I am gaming with godly characters and game is fun again 🤣. So guys there is another way to “farm” 😉
Just a note, if you choose to play single player, I would recommend finding a third-party program for muling purposes. In multiplayer you'd need to create lots of mule characters for your equipment, which makes your character selection screen extremely cluttered. In single player, you can create unlimited "virtual stashes" with certain programs and save a lot of headache.
@@jeffholmstrom8713 D2R is basically the same game underneath. The save files, character files, etc. should have the same structure. At least the program I’m using works with it. Look for d2 single player forums, they should have stickied posts with links.
Knowing what your build is good at destroying efficiently is as important as knowing where to target the types of drops you are looking for. For example, if I am looking for runes as a barbarian, I am not going to run cows - I am going to run trav instead with that character and leave my cow farming to another character. Second thing is recognizing what has value so you know what to pick up to ID/stash to try to trade for something to advance your toon(s). That is the secondary advantage of the trade sites that are out there - you can get a feel for what has value. There are a lot of non "sexy" items that have quite a bit of value for specific builds or play patterns that players will pay for when found and traded. I see this come up with various charms where some are quick to dismiss charms that are not skillers or have resistances with +life or have magic/gold find.
the thing about Zod runes, i dont totally remember where i heard from, so i could be wrong, but somebody did the math and it turns out that out of the entirety of D2's existence of 100s of thousands of people that have 1000s of hours a pop in this game, a naturally dropping Zod run has probably happened only a few thousand times lol. most other zod runes were prolly cubed up from close enough runes that are much more relatively common by people on ladder. also, if you're having problems playing in an "8 player" singleplayer game, here's something you can try: keep it on 1 for most of the time, and then just before you kill the boss you are farming crank it up to 8 player. that kinda gives you a middle ground between the two, you wont get the best drops from _everything_ but you'll get some. I have a couple bits of advice I can tack on here as well: 1. You may not be finding a lot of items because you're *only* bossrushing. Monsters, especially Uniques, also have pretty decent chances to drop good items. If you *can* kill all the monsters up to the boss you're farming particularly quickly, there is pretty much no reason to not also kill them, they may not have as high of chances to drop uniques, sets, or good rares, but they have pretty good chances of dropping runes, gems, and they _can_ still drop good items. You exponentially increase your chances of having something good drop the more shit you kill _in general_ becauese the more shit you kill the more total rolls you're getting for something to drop in likely not much longer of a period of time. this is more useful if you're trying to holy grail, but can help you find good items for your actual builds too. 2. Try to abuse boss resistances if possible for your build (ie if you'll actually get more damage out of it). For example, Diablo's lowest resistance is magic on Hell difficulty (Uber Diablo breaks even with physical and Pandemonium Diablo's lowest is physical). it will definitely help you kill the boss you're fighting much, much quicker. quicker kills mean you can do more runs.
super video mate! I tried the closed and open beta on PS4, but with the multiplayer crapfest that we were given, I asked Sony for a refund. You've made me now go and buy it again lol... Back in the day, I played on PC, but never played with rune word items or sets etc, and didn't use a build. Hoping to be a better player now lol. I sucked back then.
Great vid. 👍🏼 from me. I’ve built my orb/fire wall mf sorc to have 105 fcr and 530+ mf and it wasn’t all that difficult… just collecting piece by piece since launch and I haven’t spent a real life dime or anything on jsp to get there. Imo I honestly believe she is the best mf character you could ask for. Now that I have her done I’ll now expand to gearing other characters. I want to make a yt video of her build eventually… but I can’t stress enough how important it is to maintain that 105 fcr breakpoint and then gain as much mf as possible around that. I don’t have my gear in front of me at the moment but I believe the absolute crucial pieces to reach 105 fcr are: 3 piece tals- armor ammy belt Occy Magefists 35 fcr spirit mon. Add it all up and you get your 105 exactly. 35 fcr on spirit is a MUST. Reroll your monarch until you get 35.
@@mandreadfg it’s by no means the only way to go, but once you get to hell you’ll find the areas you can farm limited if you’re only one type of sorceress because of immunes. This orb/fire wall build helps solve that problem.
Are you going to respec now that fw is fixed? I've been running orb/fireball and I love it because I'm actively casting and moving around a lot. And meteor is a synergy to fireball so I can always throw a meteors if the setup is right. Long term I'd like to go lightning but I want gear for it first
@@GoDLiKe211 as of now no I’m not going to respec, it’s still hitting the bosses hard enough to be viable in private games. I think the build is done for if you like to join games with multiple people though. But key runs and meph are still a breeze solo. And yes obviously lightning is the dream scenario eventually if you manage to get an infinity.
@@Shortskeez I was fortunate enough to do some research before leveling and I still have 2 respecs left. Thought about going full blizz if I can get my merc some super gear or try fw for a bit. Saving the last one for light
5:47 I know I'm just too pick but i'd rephrased it as /players x only decrease the "no drop" chances from monster. People might argue that it's the same thing but that's not the game's mechanic. Great video man, really remind the complaint dudes about they don't know how long it takes for to find that item. Of course mins the RNJesus factor 😂
Great video. I picked up D2 again like 4 years ago and got super into it. I got REALLY frustrated I wasn't finding anything while everyone else was rich, so I was like, "Screw it, I'm just gonna run a bot since everyone else is". It was actually a really good experience in just understanding what runs are worthwhile and how to get a character up to speed really quickly (also it was really fun to setup and tweak everything if you're into that stuff). Obviously botting is bad, it puts a ton of load on the servers and is most definitely cheating. Even running a single bot (the more the better) I was able to get 2 Ber runes within a few weeks, due mostly to the sheer number of runs (like 10 hours a day) but also due to the map hack so you could spam super chests which is a really good way to get high runes, but unfeasible for human players. I definitely don't recommend anyone do this in D2:R, it kills the joy of actually finding things through your own work (a pile of JAHs is actually pretty boring after a while). Due to this experience though, when D2:R launched I was able to manually get to a full build Hammerdin (Enigma and all the jazz). It did however, take FOREVER and required a lot of trading to get what I needed. I also had to figure out good farming spots that you can run well as a human, which is pretty different than what you run with bots. Anyway, from my experience everything said here is super accurate. I would also recommend though for new players to learn what items are valuable. Things like 4os and 5os flails and bulk P gems and some bulk low runes can be traded for a really good value. Additionally Max Def 3os Mage Plates and Dusk Shrouds (enigma bases) and eth Elite 4os Polearms. You really want to focus on making small trades for Lems, Puls, Ums and Mals which will allow you to buy the cheaper gear you need (Shaco, HoZ, etc) in order to farm effectively. Also to note is certain areas are better for farming high runes because they cap at Ber or Jah (like Lower Kurast) so you dont get Chams and Zods which are worth way less. The more players in the game also changes the Runes that can drop in an area, so some areas are only good with 2+ or 4+ players.
Awesome video and I totally agree with everything said. I've started playing offline and one quick heads up, the maps are static as Phil said but if you swap the difficulty of the game, then it will reset the maps. This way if you get a map layout you don't like, that is an option. Love the vids dude, keep it up!
Hate *RNG* stuff and I most definitely *HATE GRINDING FOR A RANDOM CHANCE TO GET "X" ITEM!* That's why I wish there were *cheats/codes (Singleplayer only)* that gives you all those items so you can just JUMP STRAIGHT AWAY to *building the character and get to the actual gameplay* rather than *waste thousands of hours farming for something that you might NOT get at the end of it.*
the biggest thing is to play with more players, the difference between playing alone and playing with just 2 other people is pretty huge. Especially with keys/runes
Yesterday: decide to do cows. First Thing: Teleport to Stony, random carver approaches. First kill of the day, drops Ist rune. *Do happy dance* Go to Tristram and kill Gris *nothing to see here* Go kill the champion pack in the middle: Harlequin Crest Shaco. ..... WTF Diablo, I've been farming for a month now and this is so anti-climactic, lol
Honestly starting offline characters was the best decision I ever made. I cant give up and try to trade up I have to earn all of my gear. Its very rewarding.
I had that question in my head aswell. Then i started the search for answers. Really good guide:) U missed one thing what can really help find rare items or many HR. Search for pub baal runs with 4-5 players. Get 2 friends with u. The best would be if All 3 can tele. I always do that with an friend that has an barb with eni hork build. Now just pre spawn All good farm areas on p8 while they do baal. And start farming when they leav. Start with the areas that are always hot.
Another thing to note is when people are comparing their drop rates to their favorite streamer, remember that they have a hoard of fans funneling items to the streamer. Like you said, it can literally take years for some of the GG items to drop for someone
Really helpful tips! Congrats for this video! My humble opinion is, that SP is for family guys like me. I used to play MP for a long time, but now I'm tired of it.
I think the main reason why ppl think, they are not finding anything is they simply do not know their odds. And it can take the double or even triple amount of runs, which still is normal. Bad luck but normal. Persistence is the very key.
I went single player after discovering the Players vs Monsters forum on jsp 10 or so years ago. Loved it. Then D2R came out and I went bnet. I was still more or less solo on bnet. I was attempting a holy grail on online… leveled my sorc to 94 solo bnet and finally said “forget this, I’m going offline so I can /p8”. Much more fun! I’m allowing my grail to continue offline. I was soooo soooo soso lucky that a jah dropped while working my way through hell and then a ber dropped while farming LK early on. (Dropped off a mob….). I can’t impress how crazy that is.
I've been looking for res charms for a while and it didn't matter what I did I couldn't get them to drop and I hit the right spot in trav and boom they started dropping. Just keep grinding
I got a Vex Rune today off of Griswold. In my opinion if you want runes the best way is either kill everything fast, Farm fire resistant+ fire absorb Farm Trav and hit up mephisto, kill him and the council and loot the super chest
Another reason for not finding good items: Wasting time by picking up and/or identifying too much. Don't pick up and identify any rare item you find. There are just a few types of rares and magical items worth doing that. For example, don't ever bother to pick up rare armor, regular helms or shields. Yes, there are affix combos that are useful for a few builds, but these are extremely rare. For example, 99.99% of all rare shields are probably worse than Moser's Blessed Circle. So if it needs 5 seconds to pick up, identify and evaluate a rare shield, you would have to invest 50,000 seconds = 14 hours just for that single kind of shield that is as good as that unique shield which can be bought for 5 perfect gems (and which I stopped picking up after having found three of them, by the way). That's a huge waste of time! After a short amount of playing it's not worth picking up any gems below flawless ones in order to upgrade them. Some people don't pick up any gems at all, although I like rerolling grand charms and crafting caster amulets and blood rings. Don't pick up anything just for selling it to a vendor, except in the very early stage of the game or if you are in dire need to revive the merc or to repair equipment. D2R has auto-pickup for gold, so you will probably run out of gold rarely anyway.
Understood! Thanks to your tipps I got ridd of my wife and kids and could find shako right away! This actually works guys!
Uuuhhh think you took the wrong message from that comment 😆😆😆😆
Hahahaha. So happy for you.
Same! Had my wife pack the bags and as soon as she walked out a shako dropped! It really works guys!
Well I found 3 shakos and a eth Mangsong but no rune higher then an IST and still no HOZ, SOJ, BulKatho or Maras. So random is a b***
Gold 😂
One other tip: you’ll improve the odds of finding an item you need by increasing the number of items you need! Don’t get too stuck on playing a single character. If you play multiple characters, you’ll learn the items that each needs, and so will be on the hunt for more items.
More fun too!
Good idea I have new character anxiety since I’m new to game got all the end game sorc gear and Druid gear
I always look up about the items I find. When they are good, I drop them on the account for that character. It is super rewarding to know that when I decide to play that char, it will have a lot of good gear for me to choose from.
This is good advice, and the best way to get rich fast.
@@bizylizzy99 wich one are you playing right now?
It's also helpful planning for endgame. If you know a hot farming area has a ton of every kind of immune besides Cold (for an example), you can make a *Blizz Sorc* and have no problem. If you get walled against cold immunes somewhere else, maybe a Trap Assassin or Poison Nova Necro could handle it.
What blew my mind when discovering d2jsp is just how many items have value to people that I never imagined. Between all the special blue/yellow item rolls that people covet, and low level dueling having such a big scene, there's a massive learning curve to knowing what people will value. It's probably the single biggest learning curve in D2, just knowing what to loot and ID and how value is assigned. I'd bet that almost every D2 player (myself included) has left 10s of thousands of FG worth of items on the ground or sold them to a NPC after IDing because we didn't know the niche value.
basically d2jsp creates values for those niche items, because GOOD LUCK trying to sell or trade those in public games
after 20 years of playin this game i can say, he's absolutely right.
YEP!
Been playing since 1.08, can vouch for this video 100%, although I did find 4x arach's and a sur rune in one day a few weeks ago, but like he said THIS IS NOT NORMAL at all, and then I didn't find a damn thing for 3 days after that, even in p5 and p7 games. Good luck out there boys, may the rng gods be with you.
One extra tip is: do a variety of runs! You'll get bored if you spam the same thing so many times, mix it up. Even if somewhere is slightly sub-optimal it'll be nearly as good.
Yeah and I play 2-3 characters run/day
This
Even the lesser farmed areas have been great for my barb- problem is that he can handle all immunities and phys immunes. Def find the places you can clear effectively and that are high enough area level to net you awesome drops.
Not going to lie, it worked wonders for me. I decided to go up from Lower Kurast to Trav. Stopped in the Sewers in a3 and has been a real winner. Not huge monster density but great drops generally.
Absolutely agree. I never farm one single place over and over. I stablish a route. Start on act I up to act V, skipping places that are hard for me (fire sorc), then I go back from there. As a players 1 offline player, I have INSANE luck. Also think that the self found stuff is much more rewarding than trading shit.
Another couple of tips: Players 3, 5 and 7 are the ones that increase the number of items drops by monsters. Check out drop calculators to see what is the Boos/Mob tha has the best chances to drop the item you are hunting for, and check out how the different Player settings affect the drop chances, sometimes going to Players 3 shaves like 400 runs but going to Players 5 after that only shaves like 20 runs so it is not worth it to increase the difficulty past Players 3 in that instance.
***unless you’re also trying to level, of course. But yeah, for MF generally players 3 is best.
Divorce wife, quit job, acquire high runes
Man, I been playing d2 since I was 13. Now im 33, i can simply say that u are the best d2 streamer by far. U sweet Phil, regards from Spain
Good balance is the key, good Magic Find and Kill speed...
Thank you! Due to my crappy internet, I HAVE to single player! I have been using all your tips & have beaten Hell difficulty on 4 separate characters. (Amazon, Assassin, Necro, & Sorc.) & working on a Pally & a Druid. Sure, I ain't got the best gear, but, like you said, most of us have "real life" to deal with. Thanks for all your helpful videos & Keep Slayin'.
Crappy internet??? How do you have crap internet in 2022???
@@MatthewSmith-uf6tr I have the same problem. Mine is "rendered periodically unstable by outside interference". That means every few seconds the neighbor's asinine bunker security "pings" for intruders. Half a mile away. It pops on TV and radio signals but destabilizes wifi. Frickin FCC says paranoia comes first. I can watch 4k movies but games kick me off every 10 seconds.
@@rjonboy7608 can you just hardwire your PC
You speak the truth when it comes to finding items/runes. I also read someone else's comment on expanding your item search criteria by playing with multiple characters......great idea! I've playing D2 for over 20 years and still have yet to see a Zod drop in game. This is both what makes the game frustrating at times and keeps bringing me back day after day.
don't know how or why i ended here at this point in time but what this guy here says is true. i've played d2 back in the days from 1.08 - 1.13 (in LoD. even played 1.07 for two hours or so but didn't get a shako or anything like that) wich spanned multiple years and Cow + Baal Run meta and the amount of high runes i've seen dropped can be counted on one hand.
if nothing's changed since those days (and that's what people telling me) there is no guide to find high runes plain and simple. there is also no guide to finding high level uniques (gf or wf for example). farming for this stuff is unreasonable
dropped a Zod before i ever saw a cham rune drop ;d
these days if i want high runes, i do LK chest runs or hunt for those ghostly mana drainers all over the place. They have a reduced item drop table, which means the separate rune drop is more frequent.
"Don't believe random assholes on the internet" may actually be the best advice you can give in the year 2021. Applies to D2 and so many other things!
Great video.
“Don’t believe random assholes on the internet.” Best point in the video, and just a great bit of wisdom for real life in general lmao
They could add player 7 difficulity for online characters, so you could play with friends when they are online or play alone with same difficulity when they are not.
I wish.. that’d be great
I agree. Instead of having random assholes join your game, just to go do their MF using your playercount without actually following the purpose of the game you madd, they could farm alone...
Biggest counter-argument I see though, is that the /player command is meant for SP charaters to emulate the MP experience, and giving MP characters the ability to use that command takes away the multiplayer factor from... well multiplayer.
It would ruin the game- way too many items would start dropping.
It would be a complete mess, and a mess to code. Imagine starting a game with 2 friends at players 5, then 1 or 3 random players join the game, does the difficulty increase? Does it stay at p5? Then 2 people wants p5, 1 guy wants P1 and 3 guys wants p8, it wont work..
or if you dont have friends to play with but could use help when needed. Right now I am stuck with making a decision of playing single player,keep with online or stop all together.
As a veteran player in d2, I had several enigmas, ctas, hotos and more over few years of playing.. also used to dupe ocu rings, ran mephisto and pindle bots and never found a higher rune than IST.
Now in d2r which I started around 2 months ago, I've found ber, 3xLo, vex and more..
The best way to find them is to never look for them - focus on playing different chars, enjoy them.
The items and runes will come
I duped a Ber rune twice to hack my own Enigma. Still highest rune I've ever found. Have yet to find Ist or Lo for many useful RWs. Have found a few Vex & Mal tho.
you are one of the few streamers to just go with a no-bullshit mentality in here and no sugar talking shit. Keeping it real, way to go Phil!
If you wanna get the items that streamers have, you have to make D2 your job just like they do. To be able to have Top-tier builds in a month requires no-lifer play, or spending money for forum gold to get good items from item trading websites.
Im over 300hours in farming 85’s fast. Zero and i mean Zero Hrs. Rng is rng these videos should come down to this. 1500runs in for me and im still using meh gear 448% mf
@A Bell I have a buddy like that. I dont get gg drops but i get decent stuff and he makes me feel guilty. Im like bro u play a few hours a week i play 3x that.
Been playing this game for 20 years, with untold thousands of hours under my belt and I have never seen a Zod rune drop. The name of the game in Diablo 2 is persistence. Just keep farming, and you will get what you need eventually.
Zod? I have never seen higher than Ohm...
@@RandoBox How much have you played in the last 20 years though?
I just had 9 Zod runes drop in one game
@@slaykittens Shit that's nothing, I had 9 Zod runes drop off the same cow.
best place to farm Zod....Worldstone Keep, Pindle and Nitlathak(not great but decent and you get keys too :P)...any other area is pretty much...good luck, suffer well.....anyway...who need zod when u got grief for way cheaper :S.......Zod also cant drop from Act 1 to Act 4(at the exception of the Hellforge guy(Hephasto) and Izual)....thats the only 2 pre-act 5 that can drop a Zod but awful to farm them XD
Your daily pep talk/huddle with uncle Phil . Keep your chin up erbody, I hope everyone gets an enigma today, good luck and stay awesome everyone!!!
Another note is that Andariel might not drop loot when killed near pillars etc. There is a loot bug in that regards, but i forgot exactly what it was like over the last 2 months
Ty for the PSA. That's annoying
Playing with other people increases the drop percentage on better items, BUT make sure you're playing with friends... because there is nothing more frustrating than spending weeks looking for a certain item, then seeing it drop, and having a complete stranger that already has it pick it up, and leave the game.
Exactly the reason i dont play in groups, i have only one friend irl whom i play, eitherwise no way. I focus on killing mobs and stay alive, while other come to leech only or autopick up tricks desperates.
Facts! I stick to my own in games with other players.
@@cipiloshenieminion9097 that's why you need to find a clan to run with otherwise you're going to decrease your chances of finding loot that you need
@@onelumpsum6594 same logic applies to you
My griffons eye gets yoinked every time i see one drop....
Also keep in mind that these zones all have a level. Higher level zones, higher threshold of drops.
I had D2 on my Win 95 comp. I've played for years. I still watch this vids now and again just to get a quick refresher cause sometimes I still forget runewords or breakpoints or Treasure Class.
We need to remember Diablo 2 was never designed with max gear in mind. It was designed to be "Lets see how far you can get with the gear you do find".
Yeah we all like to min/max but I stopped looking for BIS gear a long time ago and now just focus on seeing how far I can get with the drops I do get. It stops the power creep and makes the game more fun in my opinion.
Also great video, you earned my sub.
PS. Online is not better or worse than single player, just very different and equally as amazing.
Great video. I watch so many D2R videos at this point that my perception is skewed; I used to think high runes were dropping like hot cakes. Not true at all, and I think we all forget that the amount of items and item variations in this game are in the hundreds of thousands…so just keep killing and stuff will eventually drop 😅
Great tips, best tip I've found myself is getting on a D2R discord channel like Chaos Sanctuary. Really easy to trade and always people willing to rush and help out. I had a group of guys show me how to do Ubers and they just gave me a free torch and smiter items. It was a crap roll...but it's still a torch. It's a great community.
'dont compare' is the best advice ive ever heard anyone say about anything
The last point is so true. I got bored of d2 online because of the bots, the ladder resets, the frustration of having another player pick a jah rune right in front of your eyes... Single player pluggy was by far the best experience i had with the game
I found 2 Sur runes in 3 days of LK running. Best high rune streak ever for me. Probably over 1000 runs tho
I did over 500 Lk runs and got a stupid ist lmao...
@@Fivefingas 100 cow runs 200lk runs
200travi runs
300mephisto runs
I got 2 ums...
But at least I also got 2 arachid meshes
And some other cool uniques like stormshield
Definitely more rewarding playing single player. Finally found a tal army and I was so excited
is a tal Army both the armor and ammy at the same time? Dope!
It really is.
Issue is sp is kinda like cheating cause the maps always shown as well if you find a gg u cant doing anything with it.
i found a tals ammy at like level 29 on my sorc.. level 67 ammy.. pretty crazy right? its like the diablo gods shined down upon me.
1. Farm lvl 85 monster level areas
2. Open every chest, flip every body, and anything else that has drop chance.
3. Play with atleast 3 people in room at all times. 8 for best results, if you can farm efficiently.
4. Lastly Drop chances are what your going for. As long as your character is killing efficiently (or your in a place like the kuraust with many chests to open) your doing it right. Now do it 1000 times and I promise you won't believe what you will find.
Nah lootables are a known waste of time unless it’s meph chest or LK chests on p8 or unless you’re botting it pops everything anyways
@@vSwaGGerMoDz Subjective... Anything that results a chance at dropping a good unique or high rune, suddenly makes it *not* a waste of time as soon as you see it drop...
My first zod rune was from a random corpse... Didn't feel like a waste of time to me...
If you use a drop rate calculator like the one on Maxroll you can see that at 175 MF you actually HALF the ammount of runs needed to get an item, from 1:3000 odds to 1:1500, after that you start getting into diminishing returns. If you can get up to 500-600 MF you can shave like 400 more runs, but really the sweet spot is 175 MF to halve the ammount of runs.
I always liked to mf with between 2-300% because it was super easy to get on a sorc and still walk through everything
33 seconds in, id like to add, ive got 1 player bnet finds of Zod & Jah runes while leveling my 2nd character. i dont do trades i'm pretty sure a majority of people kill only certain areas, i cant even craft a treachery and my sorc is level 85 with terrible gear compared to offline geared characters.
I did find 2 Ber runes in a single day a few weeks back. what an insane day that was. For those who are gonna ask, it was in chaos sanc. one was on p8 and about 2-3 hours later the second came on P1
I got 2 Sur, and 2 Ber in under 1200 LK runs. I've never been that lucky before and don't expect to ever see it again.
Let me join this cool Bois club.
Was soloing hell and a cham dropped from a random beetle in act 2, then continued to fight my way to izual and a Jah dropped from a finger mage.
Maybe it's because it was a first hell playthrough, or because I was a barb with 0mf. I think that is as lucky as I'll ever get though.
I got 2 jah runes in one night and then another 1 day later… sounds like a lie, right? But thats rng for you… now if only 2 of those drops couldve been ber runes…
@@69Asspounder you have three jah runes and you complain not having a ber?
👌
@@bennyfrank5262 im trying to make an infinity and CoH for a sorc. Im trying to do self found because I dont like to get involved with this games community when it comes to trading. Technically the jah rune is more rare due to its higher level on the rune tier list but ber is considered more valuable due to the variety of runewords its used in. Prior to these runes dropping, I ran chaos about 300 times and didnt get jack shit in terms of runes. So yes, this made up for it in a way but they werent quite exactly what I needed for the build im aiming for.
Joe Schmoe from the internet here: Not lying though!
I think a lot of people new to the game don't realize how hard it actually is to find some of the items, and that it takes a mix of luck and persistance to get the nicer drops.
My best day in D2R was two Sur runes and a Vex. The odds are insanely low for this to happen, but they increase with amount of runs and farming the CORRECT places.
Not all things can drop from all monsters, and some monsters have increased chance. Where you farm should reflect what you are looking for.
Also, I disagree with what someone else wrote in a comment about mixing it up for fun. No. You want runes, you hunt runes. Over and over again like a human bot. You don't stop to chat or trade, you eat before you sit down by the pc, and you apologize to yourself for wasting time if you need to take a piss. I'm a couple of thousand travincal runs deep now, and I have yet to find a Jah or a Ber. Not complaining though, it's RNG!
One more thing for singleplayer:
Use mods. There's a bunch of Quality of Life mods that make running D2 a lot less tedious, faster or can give you stuff like increased storage space. You don't have to feel bad about using mods. As Phil said, not everyone has 7 hours a day to dedicate to running and you're not in a competition. The long and short of it is:
If it increases your enjoyment of the game, do it and ignore what haters try to guilt you into thinking. Your 500 runs of Countess are no less valid than the guy running on ladder just because you made things easier for yourself or might have a better drop chance. You still did the runs and as long as you had a good time, that's all that matters.
Phil just one thing man, I found a Jah, a Ohm and a Cham in a couple of hours from each other doing Arcane Sanctuary runs in the same day, so the part you said it's not true when people say they have these insanely lucky runs, well I'm nobody famous, just a guy, and it happened to me..
Ghost hunting for runes in arcane/tower and throw in a tomb run killing the ghost packs and you'll get even more runes. Ghosts have the highest rune drop rate in the game
Odds of dropping Ber Rune 1/over 200,000
Everyone: "I can't seem to find anything these days"
I have found 2 ever. One on Legacy a few months ago (after over 3 years of playing religiously) and another on D2R just a couple weeks ago. Will lose my $#!+ when a Jah finally drops for me. 🤞
"Don't believe random assholes on the internet" - thats just all-around great advice
I got two things I want to point out. First, I primarily hunt runes and the issue that is happening even with numerous runs, and now currently in 4 months of play daily with a significant amount of hours. I have still not found a single high rune. I understand that you need to do 100's and 100's of runs, that's fine. But with that already being achieved I am not sure what's going on. Once I got my first character strong enough I hit 1000 runs of countess and trav, and no high runes. Got my characters even stronger, as having more people in a game provides a higher chance of drops and I did another roughly 1000 runs of strictly trav as countess is limited. Still nothing.
So there's something really wrong with this game. In fact I point to other people that in the entire 4 months that I played I've only seen 3 hr's drop in total in every single game ive played. I got a 94, 93 and 92 so I've done a lot of runs with full houses, not that throne is the best place to farm runes but after playing all that it's nuts to only see such few fall. I honestly do not care if I get those runes, I just want to see them fall.
Second, the last time I played was 1.12 and to my understanding something was done to the random drop generator to increase or technically decrease the chance of runes dropping. I say this because I recall the last time I played way back when I used to find multiples of every rune, I would say 3 of each rune in a period of about 3-4 months. I recall I used to have multiples of every runeword for all my characters and trading wasn't really my thing besides in game. JSP already existed and thought it was pointless really.
The same came with skillers, I used to find on average 3-5 skillers per character per class and my inventory used to be full of charms with no issues. Now I have the same problem with runes with skillers, in 4 months I've found only 2 skillers and everything else has been rolls or trades and still to this day I do not have a single character fully stacked with max skillers.
They've done some tweaks to this game and makes absolutely no sense, ive currently been on a long haul of cows, trav and chaos for my journey for HR's and I cant find any even when playing with 4-5 people in game. Not sure what gives but they're killing the game
I used to play a lot back in 2007 with my horker and in those versions the loot and drop rate were way better for all items. Ever since patch 1.13 came out my loot got worse
I’ve had four high runes drop in a day, it was epic and followed by a long dry spell
I found 2 perfect Mara's in 3 Trav runs on Legacy a couple months ago. I was literally laughing my @$$ off. 😅
Be aware that many RUclipsrs also use single player toons with items created in hero editor, usually with max rolls as well.
You are so right about that. You can make any gear impossibly powerful with Hero Editor with no sign. People photoshop all kinds of silly things.
Hero Editor is the only way to get Hero Shako with +600%mf. Also makes rune 1000x easier to get, BER and TIR became the same drop rate. I am surprised OP didn't mention it as a feature of single player.
I appreciate the good knowledge you provide, but also just wanted to say that you have a pleasant, relaxing voice and are easy to listen to. No annoying bullshit music. Thanks for the video.
Back when I played the original game I set my magic find % value according to a curve that I have found... Idk where. But the main thing is that 250-300% was the best to find uniques because above that the uniqe chance doesn't increase considerably but rare, set and magic increases much more. So if an enemy drops 10 items, if your magic find is too high all those items will be magic/rare.
lol that's not how that works. magic and rare items don't "override" uniques.
THIS - everything you mention here is so very true and well... reality bites :-) STILL I think they really nailed D2R and I find myself more immersed and neckdeep into the grind than ever before. Now... where (whack!) is....(WHACK!) my...(Whackiwack!!!) LO RUUUUNE!??? (Starting new game)
Man, don't even start me on that fucker. My rune rng is great, got 1 ber, 2 sur, 1 ohm, 1 vex, 3 mal, 2 pul, 2 gul, 1 ist, lems and fals and today a fricking CHAM but the piece o shit Lo doesn't show up. Got keep grinding.
Haha yeah i have this feeling i already achieved more playing in d2r as i ever did playing the idk 5 years of diablo2 lol
@@owningkoning haha exactly! I somehow find it easier to put on my grinding pants and with all the quality of life additions it’s actually not all bad :-)
@@rohsouto humble brag? Just trade for it ..
I found one, but I can't remember where it was... I traded it for a sorc torch, but I should have been more patient and gotten a higher roll. Mine was 12/18, but I was desperate for a torch lmao
Drop highlight vids are a doubled edged sword.
On one hand, you might be in a drought, and seeing a GG drop can keep you motivated to stay on the grind.
On the other hand, it might skew your expectations when all you see are the highlight drops between hours of nothing.
To put it into perspective mrllamma after completing his holy grail (every unique/set/runeword) he didn't have a single Zod actually drop he had to cube one up and that was playing constantly for multiple years
Again, good advice from you. What I can add is that people have really no clue about what RNG is and how it works. If the expected value to find something is say, 500 Meph runs, then it doesn't mean you will find it after 500 runs! (in fact, there is around 63% to find one item after one EV, around 89% after 2 EVs so 1000 runs). So you can get it after 10 runs, but you may not find it after 1000 runs too! While very unlikely, it isn't impossible.
Get around 160-230 MF if you can, but mostly: prioritize kill speed. And have fun, no point in forcing yourself! You can also take ideas from streamers.
I've noticed I find way more just randomly playing and killing mobs. I got an Eschuta's Temper and a unique tiara getting to Mephisto. Not a shako but still good off randoms.
If that tiara griffon, you are rich
7:36 Thank you for saying this! This is the elephant in the room that a lot of big content creators dont acknowledge, and look I get it. Blizzard is quick to punish streamers for mentioning sites like JSP in a positive light (even though they cant stop P2W sites from spamming bots in the chat lobby). But I cant tell you how valuable they have been for me. I found a Griffons Eye early on and unloaded it on JSP and that has bankrolled literally 3 of my characters. Ive never even seen a vex rune drop in a game yet both my Sorc and Druid are rocking HOTOs thanks to that Griffons. If I tried in game trades id of gotten a bunch of people trying to rip me off offering like a Pul or some shit. Never paid a cent for FG and JSP has been a lifesaver for me.
Not saying jsp isn't better, and that people don't lowball like crazy in game, but in game trading still works pretty well if you know the fair value of stuff. I got a shako on my 2nd chaos run after finishing the game and a ber rune the next day, so very lucky. But I actually decided to keep it. And I found a bunch of other decent stuff that was useless to me and still managed to trade for full kicksin gear in a couple of hours so I could kill ubers.
@@mrkiky what is a chaos run?
@@music79075 Basically just killing everything in Chaos Sanctuary and then Diablo at the end.
You mentioned Traderie a few weeks back, what a game changer I highly recommend.
I can no longer complain about getting no drops....I found ber and jah in the same chaos run over Thanksgiving weekend....I was completely blown away. I went out immediately and bought a lottery ticket....which lost so I guess I used up all that luck on the rune drops. But you're right it doesn't happen that way most of the time. To date in d2r I've found: 2 jah, 1 ber, 1 Lo, 1 vex, 1 mal, 2 lems, 1 shako with no other really mentionable uniques. I did get a 20/20 necro and pally torch and a couple of mediocre sorc torches outta some Ubers though and I've been hitting it pretty hard since release.
I disagree with the single player points though. Yes sure you don't have to worry about ladder resets and you get static maps but there's no multiplayer, no playing with friends and no trading (this one's huge). Sure in single player your items will not depreciate but also they never really had value to begin with. They are only useful to you and cannot be traded so thier value is null. Economy determines value so with no economy there is no value other than personal satisfaction. if you play bnet and traded for whatever you needed you still receive the personal satisfaction of having attained whatever item and actually have an item of value. Also given enough time all items depreciate enough to be nearly worthless but ladder resets actually aid in restoring value to such items you just have to find them anew. This is all Just my opinion though ;P so if it differs from others that's fine. Everyone should play in the manner that is most fun to them.....except those that pk in hc. These people are just douches literally wasting other people's time...really Despicable. Though it is incredibly satisfying when they try to pk you and you wreck them instead 🤣
Started paying single player 1 week ago love it, found a SoJ on Andy felt so good. Can't wait to find a Shako, War Travelers and Tal Rasha armor!! 🙂 And i love that they are bringing new patches with some changes after so many years!! Just wish I had more storage as i horde everything! 🤣
U can create unlimited mules on single player i believe to store items
My best suggestions are to mix em up. I usually find the best items while doing random runs, both solo and party.
If u can't clear Baal runs solo, then work towards that. Farming keys and tokens are easy ways to get some mid/low runes.
Absolutely agree. Been doing that and rng has been great. I think I had only 1 ugly drought day. All the others, I allways find something good.
Today I fricking gambled a Highlords and found a cham and a pul. Just doing random shit
exactly. Ive found a vex, zod and tal armor in the past week just farming for keys. Crazy luck
@@____GoMeZ____ same, dude! I've been farming keys but always do other things in the way. Also, playing on console sucks. The loading screen takes so long to get back in the game that I always try to do as much as possible before quiting and coming back. Only do it when I find good stuff.
@@rohsouto ive been farming Nilithak like crazy and getting excellent results. He’s easy with a lightning sorc
thank you phil, i used to play battle net but after the first reset i just kinda lost interst in the whole thing, and i was like why is ppl playing on single player i dont get it. but after rewatching your videos the last week i went in and started playing single player and once again i have not been able to play any other game but d2r when i have time to play, and while it is hard to play on player 4+ it is much more rewarding as you say when you find your stuff your self, on battle net i had to trade for some of the runes becourse running countess was insane and took so long, but on singleplayer it is much easyer with my timelimit/playtime, so never going back to battlenet now, thank you for that, and keep up the great videos and guides, they help more then you know. :)
Holy Grail runs ftw
Took me 30 seconds to realize why his name is “sweet” Phil! Dude is super chill an cool!!
There's a good graph kicking around where it shows how much the set and unique chances drop off above about 200%MF, pushing it all the way out to 1000%MF barely doubles the set/unique drop rate. Players 3, 5 or 7 is far more effective.
Wrong. There's no change between 5 to 8 players. I've looked at the source code from the OG game.
Your reply isn't showing up either.
One day I found sur and 4xgul, next day a vex. I've found jah, 3xber, probably 5vex and 1 ohm since start. Which dwarfs the amount of runes i've found since playing D2 since it released lol. I run a fishymancer and usually clear from act 1 to act5 bosses/lvl85 areas and superuniques.
I bought D2R about a week ago and I don’t even know what an SOJ or shako is and I’m watching this video anyway lol. Big Ups for making a compelling video.
Phil you definitly nailed it!
I do countess, pit, ancient tunnels, arcane sanctuary, councils, Izzy, Pindle, thresh socket, shank and all the bosses in one run and repeat. Covers everything like keys, essence and other stuff. Keep things fresh and there’s enough farming in one run
About how long is your one run to your fav spots? Just curious
@@lilselig usually half an hour, I’m using fire/cold hybrid sorc so it’s a little slow and all but then again I’m just playing the game
This is where it's at. I basically run the hot spots of the entire game in one sitting and if i have time, I'll do it again. But it keeps things fresh and you have a chance at anything and everything
Great, pragmatic, honest advice. I’ve been playing d2 since the beginning and I’ve never bothered with ladder. I enjoy the collecting aspect and evolution of a character - trying to perfect gear and stats over time - without knowing it’ll all be gone soon.. but that’s just me. I don’t play offline either- I like playing solo battlenet as well as with others and friends 🤷🏻♂️. Having a real life and playing d2 is definitely a balance. Remembering that this is supposed to be fun is something to never forget…. And don’t listen to random a$$holes on the internet! 💯. +1 sub, brother 🤘🏼
Unless something has changed you don't lose your character after ladder. The character just turns into a normal non ladder character when the season ends.
@@Bitchslapper316 right right
about 2 weeks ago i found a Zod, then the very next day i found another Zod.
i have played this game for over 20 years and ive found 4 Zods total.
keep at it and youll have your lucky day eventually
11:26 as a new diablo player cant wait to have that feeling, finding items etc that I saw from Diablo content creators. Im playing d2r on my own pace :D
Legit, biggest failure of the game to me was NOT making personal loot drops a thing. I absolutely despise playing near any randoms and watching them steal everything. It's not fun AT ALL to deal with.
And it NEVER WILL BE.
When I find absolutely nothing worth a while. I stop playing and spend more time on my job. Work extra time on the weekend and bam! I found all those high runs I desire on eBay with the extra cash I made. Now I am gaming with godly characters and game is fun again 🤣. So guys there is another way to “farm” 😉
So your farming money, and trading it for runes. Very interesting strat. You should get a bot to farm money for you. 😆😆😆😁😁😁
Just a note, if you choose to play single player, I would recommend finding a third-party program for muling purposes. In multiplayer you'd need to create lots of mule characters for your equipment, which makes your character selection screen extremely cluttered. In single player, you can create unlimited "virtual stashes" with certain programs and save a lot of headache.
For d2r as well?
@@jeffholmstrom8713 D2R is basically the same game underneath. The save files, character files, etc. should have the same structure. At least the program I’m using works with it. Look for d2 single player forums, they should have stickied posts with links.
@@1987jjlwhat is the name?
@@SxGaming3390 I have one called “go mule”. Although you may need to update the txt files manually if it’s out of date.
After about 20+ years on and off playing this game, I finally found a Harlequin Shako...from a barrel! I think it was in the Catacombs too. Crazy. lol
Knowing what your build is good at destroying efficiently is as important as knowing where to target the types of drops you are looking for. For example, if I am looking for runes as a barbarian, I am not going to run cows - I am going to run trav instead with that character and leave my cow farming to another character.
Second thing is recognizing what has value so you know what to pick up to ID/stash to try to trade for something to advance your toon(s). That is the secondary advantage of the trade sites that are out there - you can get a feel for what has value. There are a lot of non "sexy" items that have quite a bit of value for specific builds or play patterns that players will pay for when found and traded. I see this come up with various charms where some are quick to dismiss charms that are not skillers or have resistances with +life or have magic/gold find.
This guy is an awesome content creator, very well thought out and presented.
the thing about Zod runes, i dont totally remember where i heard from, so i could be wrong, but somebody did the math and it turns out that out of the entirety of D2's existence of 100s of thousands of people that have 1000s of hours a pop in this game, a naturally dropping Zod run has probably happened only a few thousand times lol. most other zod runes were prolly cubed up from close enough runes that are much more relatively common by people on ladder.
also, if you're having problems playing in an "8 player" singleplayer game, here's something you can try: keep it on 1 for most of the time, and then just before you kill the boss you are farming crank it up to 8 player. that kinda gives you a middle ground between the two, you wont get the best drops from _everything_ but you'll get some.
I have a couple bits of advice I can tack on here as well:
1. You may not be finding a lot of items because you're *only* bossrushing. Monsters, especially Uniques, also have pretty decent chances to drop good items. If you *can* kill all the monsters up to the boss you're farming particularly quickly, there is pretty much no reason to not also kill them, they may not have as high of chances to drop uniques, sets, or good rares, but they have pretty good chances of dropping runes, gems, and they _can_ still drop good items. You exponentially increase your chances of having something good drop the more shit you kill _in general_ becauese the more shit you kill the more total rolls you're getting for something to drop in likely not much longer of a period of time. this is more useful if you're trying to holy grail, but can help you find good items for your actual builds too.
2. Try to abuse boss resistances if possible for your build (ie if you'll actually get more damage out of it). For example, Diablo's lowest resistance is magic on Hell difficulty (Uber Diablo breaks even with physical and Pandemonium Diablo's lowest is physical). it will definitely help you kill the boss you're fighting much, much quicker. quicker kills mean you can do more runs.
super video mate! I tried the closed and open beta on PS4, but with the multiplayer crapfest that we were given, I asked Sony for a refund. You've made me now go and buy it again lol...
Back in the day, I played on PC, but never played with rune word items or sets etc, and didn't use a build. Hoping to be a better player now lol. I sucked back then.
AWSOME video Phil! Now go CUT THAT DAMN GRASS! :D
Great vid. 👍🏼 from me. I’ve built my orb/fire wall mf sorc to have 105 fcr and 530+ mf and it wasn’t all that difficult… just collecting piece by piece since launch and I haven’t spent a real life dime or anything on jsp to get there. Imo I honestly believe she is the best mf character you could ask for. Now that I have her done I’ll now expand to gearing other characters. I want to make a yt video of her build eventually… but I can’t stress enough how important it is to maintain that 105 fcr breakpoint and then gain as much mf as possible around that.
I don’t have my gear in front of me at the moment but I believe the absolute crucial pieces to reach 105 fcr are:
3 piece tals- armor ammy belt
Occy
Magefists
35 fcr spirit mon.
Add it all up and you get your 105 exactly. 35 fcr on spirit is a MUST. Reroll your monarch until you get 35.
I'm a lvl 50 sorc and running lightning is so much fun. Fire skills seem boring. Is orb/fw the only way to go? Bc of hell resistances?
@@mandreadfg it’s by no means the only way to go, but once you get to hell you’ll find the areas you can farm limited if you’re only one type of sorceress because of immunes. This orb/fire wall build helps solve that problem.
Are you going to respec now that fw is fixed? I've been running orb/fireball and I love it because I'm actively casting and moving around a lot. And meteor is a synergy to fireball so I can always throw a meteors if the setup is right.
Long term I'd like to go lightning but I want gear for it first
@@GoDLiKe211 as of now no I’m not going to respec, it’s still hitting the bosses hard enough to be viable in private games. I think the build is done for if you like to join games with multiple people though. But key runs and meph are still a breeze solo.
And yes obviously lightning is the dream scenario eventually if you manage to get an infinity.
@@Shortskeez I was fortunate enough to do some research before leveling and I still have 2 respecs left. Thought about going full blizz if I can get my merc some super gear or try fw for a bit. Saving the last one for light
5:47 I know I'm just too pick but i'd rephrased it as /players x only decrease the "no drop" chances from monster. People might argue that it's the same thing but that's not the game's mechanic. Great video man, really remind the complaint dudes about they don't know how long it takes for to find that item. Of course mins the RNJesus factor 😂
22 years, never dropped an SOJ. Multiple maras and BKs, two each of griffins, grandfather and windforce. HRs up to Cham. Never ever ever found an SOJ.
Great video. I picked up D2 again like 4 years ago and got super into it. I got REALLY frustrated I wasn't finding anything while everyone else was rich, so I was like, "Screw it, I'm just gonna run a bot since everyone else is". It was actually a really good experience in just understanding what runs are worthwhile and how to get a character up to speed really quickly (also it was really fun to setup and tweak everything if you're into that stuff). Obviously botting is bad, it puts a ton of load on the servers and is most definitely cheating. Even running a single bot (the more the better) I was able to get 2 Ber runes within a few weeks, due mostly to the sheer number of runs (like 10 hours a day) but also due to the map hack so you could spam super chests which is a really good way to get high runes, but unfeasible for human players. I definitely don't recommend anyone do this in D2:R, it kills the joy of actually finding things through your own work (a pile of JAHs is actually pretty boring after a while).
Due to this experience though, when D2:R launched I was able to manually get to a full build Hammerdin (Enigma and all the jazz). It did however, take FOREVER and required a lot of trading to get what I needed. I also had to figure out good farming spots that you can run well as a human, which is pretty different than what you run with bots.
Anyway, from my experience everything said here is super accurate. I would also recommend though for new players to learn what items are valuable. Things like 4os and 5os flails and bulk P gems and some bulk low runes can be traded for a really good value. Additionally Max Def 3os Mage Plates and Dusk Shrouds (enigma bases) and eth Elite 4os Polearms. You really want to focus on making small trades for Lems, Puls, Ums and Mals which will allow you to buy the cheaper gear you need (Shaco, HoZ, etc) in order to farm effectively.
Also to note is certain areas are better for farming high runes because they cap at Ber or Jah (like Lower Kurast) so you dont get Chams and Zods which are worth way less. The more players in the game also changes the Runes that can drop in an area, so some areas are only good with 2+ or 4+ players.
I’m glad you keep it real Phil, keep it coming with your informative content!
Awesome video and I totally agree with everything said. I've started playing offline and one quick heads up, the maps are static as Phil said but if you swap the difficulty of the game, then it will reset the maps. This way if you get a map layout you don't like, that is an option. Love the vids dude, keep it up!
Hate *RNG* stuff and I most definitely *HATE GRINDING FOR A RANDOM CHANCE TO GET "X" ITEM!*
That's why I wish there were *cheats/codes (Singleplayer only)* that gives you all those items so you can just JUMP STRAIGHT AWAY to *building the character and get to the actual gameplay* rather than *waste thousands of hours farming for something that you might NOT get at the end of it.*
the biggest thing is to play with more players, the difference between playing alone and playing with just 2 other people is pretty huge. Especially with keys/runes
Yesterday: decide to do cows.
First Thing: Teleport to Stony, random carver approaches. First kill of the day, drops Ist rune.
*Do happy dance*
Go to Tristram and kill Gris *nothing to see here*
Go kill the champion pack in the middle: Harlequin Crest Shaco.
.....
WTF Diablo, I've been farming for a month now and this is so anti-climactic, lol
RnG at its best
@@machopr13to IKR?! I only had 110 MF, talk about wild!
Honestly starting offline characters was the best decision I ever made. I cant give up and try to trade up I have to earn all of my gear. Its very rewarding.
I had that question in my head aswell.
Then i started the search for answers.
Really good guide:)
U missed one thing what can really help find rare items or many HR.
Search for pub baal runs with 4-5 players.
Get 2 friends with u.
The best would be if All 3 can tele.
I always do that with an friend that has an barb with eni hork build.
Now just pre spawn All good farm areas on p8 while they do baal.
And start farming when they leav.
Start with the areas that are always hot.
Another thing to note is when people are comparing their drop rates to their favorite streamer, remember that they have a hoard of fans funneling items to the streamer. Like you said, it can literally take years for some of the GG items to drop for someone
I got my first zod ever from the last 20 years of playing. Personally I would've preferred a Lo but oh well 🤷
I feel your grief.
@@handledhandlehandlinghandler That's a good one.
I got a Cham from travincal… wish it would have been Lo or Jah instead since i got a ber from superchest behind mephisto 😒
Really helpful tips! Congrats for this video! My humble opinion is, that SP is for family guys like me. I used to play MP for a long time, but now I'm tired of it.
I think the main reason why ppl think, they are not finding anything is they simply do not know their odds. And it can take the double or even triple amount of runs, which still is normal. Bad luck but normal. Persistence is the very key.
Simplemente jueguen y diviértanse. Hagan la mayor cantidad de Mf que puedan y en lugares variados.
Great content my man good aspect of pro gamer right there well said buddy
I went single player after discovering the Players vs Monsters forum on jsp 10 or so years ago. Loved it. Then D2R came out and I went bnet. I was still more or less solo on bnet. I was attempting a holy grail on online… leveled my sorc to 94 solo bnet and finally said “forget this, I’m going offline so I can /p8”. Much more fun! I’m allowing my grail to continue offline. I was soooo soooo soso lucky that a jah dropped while working my way through hell and then a ber dropped while farming LK early on. (Dropped off a mob….). I can’t impress how crazy that is.
This is one of the most important video's made about Diablo 2
Im fairly new to D2 but i have shale,lo,etc from nightmare runs from cow runs and countess.people just gotta grind.ggs man keep it up
i played d2 for so long and just started single player a few weeks ago. its such a different experience! i love it.
I've been looking for res charms for a while and it didn't matter what I did I couldn't get them to drop and I hit the right spot in trav and boom they started dropping. Just keep grinding
I got a Vex Rune today off of Griswold. In my opinion if you want runes the best way is either kill everything fast, Farm fire resistant+ fire absorb Farm Trav and hit up mephisto, kill him and the council and loot the super chest
Had so much of an issue I bought a full set off a website for $1.99 and now I’m grinding the way I need too
Another reason for not finding good items: Wasting time by picking up and/or identifying too much.
Don't pick up and identify any rare item you find. There are just a few types of rares and magical items worth doing that. For example, don't ever bother to pick up rare armor, regular helms or shields. Yes, there are affix combos that are useful for a few builds, but these are extremely rare. For example, 99.99% of all rare shields are probably worse than Moser's Blessed Circle. So if it needs 5 seconds to pick up, identify and evaluate a rare shield, you would have to invest 50,000 seconds = 14 hours just for that single kind of shield that is as good as that unique shield which can be bought for 5 perfect gems (and which I stopped picking up after having found three of them, by the way). That's a huge waste of time!
After a short amount of playing it's not worth picking up any gems below flawless ones in order to upgrade them. Some people don't pick up any gems at all, although I like rerolling grand charms and crafting caster amulets and blood rings.
Don't pick up anything just for selling it to a vendor, except in the very early stage of the game or if you are in dire need to revive the merc or to repair equipment. D2R has auto-pickup for gold, so you will probably run out of gold rarely anyway.
You can go in options during a game on console and increase player count in a solo run. I'm sure a lot of people don't know that.
Rule number X: don't play on PS4/pro. Loading times are terrible. Just to reset the run it takes me around a minute. Good job blizz.