And +skills were never random rolls - you couldn't roll between 1 and 50 +skill. In D3, all relevant stats have pretty huge ranges, which adds to the perception that the itemization sucks.
I'm still messing with the item ranges to figure out a good balance of random and pointless.
If I'm understanding this whole discussion at all (somewhat difficult to extrapolate from varying opinions but trying hard), +1 skill was an easy way to boost DPS.
Perhaps in my game a good way to do this would be to have items that give +1 fire skills, or +1 melee skills, or +1 area skills
Yes, lots going on in this thread!
What I was trying to say with regard to +skills is that they have three main benefits: first, they scale well. +1 to All Skills was just as valuable to a level 50 character as it was to a level 70 character. Second, there wasn't a huge range - you could find +1 or +2 to All Skills, and that was it. This means that you can't get a bad roll, unlike D3 where STR can add a lot of damage, but an item can have between 1 (terrible) and 300 (amazing). Finally, it was usually guaranteed - unique items either had it or didn't, there was no randomness.
People forget that although D2 had a "random" item system, most builds used primarily unique weapons which had fixed stats. They had ranges, so your Doombringer might have 250% damage up to 300% damage, but that was about it. Even a low-roll Doombringer was decent. Thinking about your standard Hammerdin, for example, the normal setup was all uniques and runewords. You could get away with rare jewelry if you wanted to, as long as it had certain stats.
So the main point is, don't make your high-end loot as random as it is in D3. The random stuff should be for leveling up, and then when you get toward the end, you get into the uniques which are pretty specific.
How would you say UI affects itemization specifically? A few others fave mentioned this but I can never seem to get a clear response on it.
My game uses a pretty basic itemization UI: 25 inventory slots, 5 equipment slots, 4 skill gem slots. You can right click to equip, left click and drag, etc. Is there something intrinsic I'm missing that is unnoticeable at a glance but makes an under the hood difference?
Ui influences how people gear by giving them information about how their item choices affect their damage output, defensive stats etc. In diablo3 its generally very clear which items make your build more effective, because calculations like DPS are done for you and displayed so that you can make the best decision for your character.
I think the similarities between the game are uncanny but in the process of trying to make a sequel without making the same game twice they shit the bed. A lot of the stats are arbitrary in both games, but I do feel that they put too much importance on the items themselves in Diablo 3. Itemization was better in Diablo 2 not in the fact that the items were so much more cleverly designed, although they were, but mostly because the characters themselves had intrinsic value. What I mean by this, and we've all seen this argument a hundred times, is that the characters just had more inherent *oomph*, they could get through the game more fluidly because of what the character had to contribute to the equation of damage and EHP.
One other thing, is that items had a very consistent value across the online experience. For example, if you were to find a Vampire Gaze, or a Windforce, or Shako, Oculus, etc, you were basically always guaranteed a certain amount. I never had any problems trading online in that game, never had any problems with dupes, except Ith weapons which disappeared on 1.1 patch day, but thats a different story. I handled thousands of SOJ's myself, and my brother easily handled thousands himself, never had one disappear. Ever. Even when highrune currency came into play, the economy was very consistent, the items you found were predictable which led to a predictable market. That was really important for my experience. There wasn't such a large perpetual deflation problem.
I think that having the players do a little work is intriguing and creates this mentality of ownership and commitment. In Diablo 3 so much of the work is done for you that, I believe, turns a lot of people off. DPS, Toughness, all that, it's just too transparent if such a thing existed. That's just my thoughts.
-There were character builds where skillset was not even a second thought, but gear made the character.
-The items made the estabilished skill-trees creatively branch-off; I.E.: "I wonder if this could work with a hand-to-hand combat sorc because of these attributes..."
-The items were so varied; All the attributes could be skill bonus for outside the given class, but in a generally accepted class item..." Barbs could use a wand to cast something...or a flail or whatever...
-To asscribe to the above...prefixes and affixes worked in a more versitile way. Classes regularly interchanged items and even rarer builds could be affected by itemization of a more straight-forward build path.
So there are a whooping *2* choices per slot, and only if you are a specific class. Wow, the depth of D3 itemization. D2 had at least 5 viable items in every slot. Probably more but I don't want to overstate as some people here seem to take things too literally.
Totally. Like for chest, right? What were the top 5 chests in D2 again? (Good luck trying to find 5 different ways to write Enigma.)
Why are most of you saying D2 Hell difficulty could be "beaten nude" / retardedly easy etc., when that is not the case at all? I don't remember the earlier patches too well, but from v1.10 on Hell was hard, far harder than D3 Inferno mp0 is nowadays.
NO CLASS could beat it nude, and some classes (sorc for example - or basically any that relies too much on 1 element) could not beat it at all (except by skipping a lot of mobs - and even then, some parts like Travinical Council just weren't possible without Gosu items like Infinity)
It only became easy once you outgeared it by a huge margin, just like it is now in D3. So the fuck is up with all the talks of D2 easiness.
Yeah, good point (though slightly derailing the thread), but I just don't get it despite people writing that in every one of these discussions. As a self-found player and someone who refrained from using duped high runes and other stuff, hell was sometimes a pain in the ass for my Blizzard sorc. But then, I'm also not a pro gamer. It could be beaten nude though, there were some groups doing that (there was even one group who did the entire game including uber events nude).
There's a guy who got to 75, naked, hardcore, in 1.11, with an Amazon.
There are tons of people who did stuff like this. These were just the first two Google results I pulled up.
I'll stop saying D2 was easier than D3 when people start showing that they can clear all of D3 naked (they can use a weapon for obvious reasons), on hardcore. The bar was set by the D2 players who did it. The only thing that keeps me saying it is that no one in D3 is recreating those feats. The minute people start doing it in D3 you can bet your ass I'll stop using the "people beat D2 naked" argument. Until that point, it's completely valid and based in fact.
EDIT
Also can we please keep this on-topic? The OP isn't asking people to debate whether or not people did beat D2 naked, especially since everyone knows it was done many times, and it's been archived on many sites. He's asking about what he can do to draw from D2 (and presumably other ARPGs) to make his game better.
Excuse me for chiming in late, I mostly lurk elsewhere these days, but spreading such things about D2 catches my attention
Both views are too drastic from my point of view. NO, you did not need BERMALBERIST to even beat the game, everything was doable with reasonable self-found gear.
And that "naked" stuff is hilarious. That second guy used his merc with equipment to beat the game. Everyone could have such a companion and watch him kill stuff. Most people actually had them for mobs that were immune to their specific damage element. So that doesn't count as beating the game without items to me.
The first crew, ok, they probably "abused" the fact, that skills weren't tied to weapon damage like they are in D3.
D3 isn't abusable in such a way, because you need certain numeric dps and ehp values to beat the encounters at hand. Let's just call them gear checks. The existence of such requirements doesn't make encounter A harder than B -which might not have them- in terms of player skill. I suppose a lot of people remember Patchwerk/Brutallus from camp A and Kael'thas Sunstrider from camp B
For they guys who say that Hell was easy with poor items... guys, Travincal, I died so many times there... what are you talking about, without decent items, you didn't have a chance.
Also, the mini bosses that Baal spawns before the final battle, were impossible to beat without really nice items.
I didn't mention amulets and gloves as single choice item in my first post. People use Rares on this slot so they aren't tunneled into one choice.
Viable D2 chests: Enigma, Chains of Honor, Bramble, Fortitude, Skin of the Vipermagi, Arkaine's Valor, Tyrael's Might, Tal Armor, IK armor, Shaftstop, Guardian Angel, Ormus' Robes.........................
As you see, CHOICE. D3 is ok with regard to for example gloves and amulet - you can potentially use legendary/ set/ rare, depending on build/ rolls/ budget. But that's only Gloves, Rings and Amulet atm, the only "variable" slots of any build, where you get the missing stats from your main pieces. Diablo 2 had this in EVERY slot, and even better/ more choice.
EDIT: Added Ormus's Robes to viable D2 chests.
What you are pointing out here is a game / expansion that has had the benefit of how many years worth of balancing? No game is ever going to have that sort of balance and attention to such fine details right out of the gate with such complex systems, etc.
Did you actually cite the story where ownership of the Elder Wand is precisely what allows an otherwise-inferior wizard to vanquish one of the best wizards ever as reason that gear doesn't matter?
Also, Harry Potter is a terrible example because, aside from the Elder Wand, each wand is basically an extension of your person (the wand chooses the owner, not vice versa). That OBVIOUSLY doesn't apply to a game where you slaughter monsters and then pick up their loot. Could you imagine picking up a breastplate and trying to equip it and getting an error message "sorry, that item is meant for someone else, try again!" It makes ZERO SENSE as applied to an ARPG.
Things that are written in fiction novels provide a basis for fantasy-type games like this, of course, but not every aspect translates into appropriate gameplay and that's exactly why your argument makes no sense.
Good fiction is not the same as good gameplay. Ignoring weapon upgrades because "that's how it would work in Harry Potter" doesn't make a game which is based on finding items and slaying monsters very fun. I mean if they were pulling from Harry Potter then wizards should not have meteor and blizzard but they should have Avada Kedavra and Crucio and we can't forget Alohomora. But they don't... because Diablo and Harry Potter are different and, more importantly, games and novels are different.
In Harry Potter wizards could teleport to anywhere in the world. In Diablo, teleport has a range. I could keep going with examples as to how gameplay trumps fantasy in a video game... but I hope I don't have to. It should be obvious that, in order to have compelling gameplay, not every single fantasy or RPG element can be implemented exactly as it is described in a novel.
If every character got a wand at level 11 that they never had to upgrade for the rest of their life... that would be true to how Harry Potter worked, but it would also be awful boring gameplay.
I seriously can't believe I just got trolled into explaining that a Diablo video game clearly doesn't have to stay true to the Harry Potter novels.
U got and example and declaimed as pure true
Mages should not care about their base DPS weapon since he does not even hit a monster it should be all about magical stats
Warriors use wepons to hit hard ,Mages use their minds ,creations,spels to do dmg not their weapon, weapons should have magic enchantments no DPS ones
Example Ligthing Spells do X more dmg etc to resemble a magic artifact not a piece of metal
And u Avoid saying that one of the best weponry on diablo2 for Sorceress was Eschutas,Crystal Shards etc.. and those were not easy to find at least a good one
And those could be found only on hell As an example Death fathon i think was a freaking hard dificult item to find easier on baal hell if i remeber
What made d2 good on itemization was variety u could have a non perfect breath of the dying but it stll being a breath of the dying
U got Sorceress going meele ,Sins doing whrils barbs shapeshifting (enigma was just bad design)
D2 was excellent comparing with what the market had by the time
Nowadays when it comes to itemization POE crushes diablo in every possible way
I do not even like POE in general but Itemzation is great look to the currency system basically everything u grab is usefull at some way
^you misread my post. I said it became *easy* once you outgeared it by far. It was doable with a proper character build with just a bit of MFing on NM baal or meph for uniques/ sets . Still, it was way harder than Diablo 3 Inferno mp0 is nowadays. And let alone D3 hell which is a complete joke and an obsolete difficulty (well, not necessarily Hell, but 1 difficulty is pointless/ obsolete, I think even the most hardcore fanbois would agree).
For they guys who say that Hell was easy with poor items... guys, Travincal, I died so many times there... what are you talking about, without decent items, you didn't have a chance.
Also, the mini bosses that Baal spawns before the final battle, were impossible to beat without really nice items.
Shade, I'm closer to your opinion than to that of shaggy. Hell wasn't a pushover, especially not with your first char through (1.10), it was literally Hell
But you said that items like Infinity were required to make it easy and that was a tad too much. Infinity is an automatic dupe, ergo cheating and that's simply not necessary to beat the game or to make it easy. That's the reason I quoted you.
I agree that D2 hell was harder than Inferno mp0.
Indimix, true, Travincal was a tough place. Especially with your first char through. The Flayer Djungle might have been even harder without Teleport (No, not Enigma , people like me used to play a Sorc first to gather stuff on a fresh D2 start )
The real roadblock to me used to be the Ancients. But they came after Meph, so no real problem.
1. the items looked Awesome both when equipped and in your inventory IMO diablo 3 items look average in inventory.
2. There were many low level unique's and sets which were easy to acquire.
3. Items you found in normal and nightmare still had the potential to be useful and usable in Hell difficulty.
2 + 3 meant that progression through the difficulties was smooth, farming nightmare was a Viable way to progress to hell.
4. Damage was not absolutely determined by your gear and stats, In diablo 3 the problems which Bleu mentioned above are accentuated because of the gear and main stat dependence.
5. Etheral items + self repair mod.
6. Huge variety of Socketables.
Note many of these D2 strengths/D3 critques are adressed in some way by ROS/ next patch
Harlequin Crest was one of the most popular heads and that looked like a turd sandwich -.-
Infinity is basically required in order to kill everything as any kind of pure-element sorc. Due to so much immunes. I guess you could leave your merc to kill them if he's good enough, but that'd take ages/ tons of gold to resurrect him and if something rolls Lightning+Physical resist you are screwed
For example, Hell Travi is nearly impossible for a Lightning Sorc without Infinity. (I think they are all lightning immune by default?)
But well, sorc has its advantages in many ways so it's balanced imo. You can either be able to kill everything, but kill slowly, or you can be specialized and faceroll non-immunes, but have to skip immunes
This is so wrong, it almost hurts. I can only repeat myself: Cheating is not required to beat (every aspect of) D2.
Use your merc! Give him a Reaper's Toll and he can kill any mob, even those with physical immunity (because of the Decrepify-proc). It may take a while but with enough life leech he doesn't die unless you let him get swarmed.
And the obtainability of that Reaper's (droppable by Mephisto) can't be compared to that of an Infinity in numbers. It's rather simple: some limited farming time vs cheating. And unless the mobs have that dual immunity (your element and physical), it's not even necessary, though it's still the best choice as that debuff buffs his damage.
This is so wrong, it almost hurts. I can only repeat myself: Cheating is not required to beat (every aspect of) D2.
This is so wrong, it almost hurts. Infinity does not equal cheating. If you haven't acquired one by yourself yet, I can't help you though. I got a selffound one in each ladder saison, even though not within the first two months.
Of course it can be done without infinity, but very very tough and painful. So much harder than anything D3 can throw at you (basically only gearchecks >.<). The original point was that D2 was/ is hard unless you outgear it, which we all agree on, and we can agree to disagree on Infinity
Also why would it be a cheat? I easily get an Infinity after 3-4 weeks of every new Ladder season. Just MF, find stuff, trade for runes, get enough, trade. I don't care how the infinity was made, as long as I get it by trading stuff I found myself.
I don't even need to say anything about that, you do it yourself. If anyone ever found two BER runes in his D2 time, he should be very sad he didn't play the lottery.
2) trading? find stuff, sell for runes. Runes lose value quickly due to duping and can therefore be easily traded for.
Now you are feeding him. Willingly trading duped runes IS cheating. But getting them selffound is no problem either.
I don't feast on virtual food, you'd rather get me some sandwiches. We're in the same country, so you should be able to provide them!
I thought of undusting my self found saves later today, when I get home and find out, how long it takes me to do a CS clear on /p8, then do some calcs with those recent probabilities. We agree that that's the place to go for those runes?
I can already tell you that I have played more than enough D2 in my time. Those save files contain every piece of every class set for example, yet no more than 1 BER rune.
D2 wasn't hard. I played offline (that is without bnet), single player mostly, with a group of about 12-15 players in which we traded with. Besides the start, once I was able to farm, I played solo "players 8" difficulty at all times. This was without high end runewords (1.09 and before I believe, my memory is hazy but it was before they raised the drop rates of high end runes) or duped items. We all used ATMA a program that acted as a shared stash, thats it.
Edit: I played up until 1.12. 1.13 was when they increased rune drop changes.
You can do runs all day and not find a Ber rune. That's why I said I don't get an infinity within the first two months. But the chance was increased by 6 times roughly. And the area you do the runs in doesn't matter as long as it's a tc85 area, which the CS is.
I don't intend to waste an entire day of my life
I'd just clock some runs and count the runes overall. The probabilites to find a special rune are given on a per rune drop basis iirc. I have found this chart regarding that:
Concerning the area to go to, I feel, I'm a little ahead of you: The CS has those ghosts which can't drop regular equipment and therefore have an increased chance to drop a rune.
edit: And yes to that 1.10+ was way harder than the game was before statement. That patch changed everything.
Concerning the area to go to, I feel, I'm a little ahead of you: The CS has those ghosts which can't drop regular equipment and therefore have an increased chance to drop a rune.
I didn't know that, but I always did CS runs anyway.
But what do you want to achieve with your calculations after you have done a few runs? Show us that it's not very probable to get 2 Ber Runes in one ladder season?
There's nothing to achieve aside from personal knowledge. The table already shows how drastic that increase in 1.13b (released in 2010) was. After that you'd need about 3k rune drops to get those 2 BERs. Prior to that, for the duration of about 9 years, it required 27k rune drops. And since MF had no effect on them, there was no way to brute force them like Uniques or Sets.
You do agree, that it was highly unreasonable to achieve before the latest change?
So, I got to play a little D2 after some time. I have used my Hammerdin for this:
This is the latest version of the game modified by PlugY, which enables a shared stash and ladder-only content. I suppose, you recognize the items by their icons. The highest rune is VEX, which you can aquire by cubing ISTs from the Countess for example.
After 7 times this (players 8):
I gathered a grand total of 9 runes. The good runs lasted about 8 minutes, let's not talk about those where I ran mindlessly into some fast mana burn shit
So, while this sample size is waaaaay to small to give conclusive results, I think, it's not too far-fetched to grant someone the ability to find 10 runes per hour in tc85 areas. In 1.13 that someone would roughly need 140 hours of grind for one BER rune. The second wouldn't take as long because of cubing possibilities. I shouldn't call this impossible though
Pre 1.13 however, that same guy would have required 1,350 hours for just 1 BER rune, which is ridiculous
The runes are still really rare, considering I played a lot and had a drop rate of (just a guess from my memories) around 1-3 per week.
Did you play 100-300 hours per week? I wouldn't expect you to clear CS much faster than me without a serious gear advantage. And I doubt, that another zone is as effective.
Yes, lots going on in this thread!
What I was trying to say with regard to +skills is that they have three main benefits: first, they scale well. +1 to All Skills was just as valuable to a level 50 character as it was to a level 70 character. Second, there wasn't a huge range - you could find +1 or +2 to All Skills, and that was it. This means that you can't get a bad roll, unlike D3 where STR can add a lot of damage, but an item can have between 1 (terrible) and 300 (amazing). Finally, it was usually guaranteed - unique items either had it or didn't, there was no randomness.
People forget that although D2 had a "random" item system, most builds used primarily unique weapons which had fixed stats. They had ranges, so your Doombringer might have 250% damage up to 300% damage, but that was about it. Even a low-roll Doombringer was decent. Thinking about your standard Hammerdin, for example, the normal setup was all uniques and runewords. You could get away with rare jewelry if you wanted to, as long as it had certain stats.
So the main point is, don't make your high-end loot as random as it is in D3. The random stuff should be for leveling up, and then when you get toward the end, you get into the uniques which are pretty specific.
Ui influences how people gear by giving them information about how their item choices affect their damage output, defensive stats etc. In diablo3 its generally very clear which items make your build more effective, because calculations like DPS are done for you and displayed so that you can make the best decision for your character.
One other thing, is that items had a very consistent value across the online experience. For example, if you were to find a Vampire Gaze, or a Windforce, or Shako, Oculus, etc, you were basically always guaranteed a certain amount. I never had any problems trading online in that game, never had any problems with dupes, except Ith weapons which disappeared on 1.1 patch day, but thats a different story. I handled thousands of SOJ's myself, and my brother easily handled thousands himself, never had one disappear. Ever. Even when highrune currency came into play, the economy was very consistent, the items you found were predictable which led to a predictable market. That was really important for my experience. There wasn't such a large perpetual deflation problem.
I think that having the players do a little work is intriguing and creates this mentality of ownership and commitment. In Diablo 3 so much of the work is done for you that, I believe, turns a lot of people off. DPS, Toughness, all that, it's just too transparent if such a thing existed. That's just my thoughts.
-There were character builds where skillset was not even a second thought, but gear made the character.
-The items made the estabilished skill-trees creatively branch-off; I.E.: "I wonder if this could work with a hand-to-hand combat sorc because of these attributes..."
-The items were so varied; All the attributes could be skill bonus for outside the given class, but in a generally accepted class item..." Barbs could use a wand to cast something...or a flail or whatever...
-To asscribe to the above...prefixes and affixes worked in a more versitile way. Classes regularly interchanged items and even rarer builds could be affected by itemization of a more straight-forward build path.
Totally. Like for chest, right? What were the top 5 chests in D2 again? (Good luck trying to find 5 different ways to write Enigma.)
And amulets and gloves.
Excuse me for chiming in late, I mostly lurk elsewhere these days, but spreading such things about D2 catches my attention
Both views are too drastic from my point of view. NO, you did not need BERMALBERIST to even beat the game, everything was doable with reasonable self-found gear.
And that "naked" stuff is hilarious. That second guy used his merc with equipment to beat the game. Everyone could have such a companion and watch him kill stuff. Most people actually had them for mobs that were immune to their specific damage element. So that doesn't count as beating the game without items to me.
The first crew, ok, they probably "abused" the fact, that skills weren't tied to weapon damage like they are in D3.
D3 isn't abusable in such a way, because you need certain numeric dps and ehp values to beat the encounters at hand. Let's just call them gear checks. The existence of such requirements doesn't make encounter A harder than B -which might not have them- in terms of player skill. I suppose a lot of people remember Patchwerk/Brutallus from camp A and Kael'thas Sunstrider from camp B
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
Also, the mini bosses that Baal spawns before the final battle, were impossible to beat without really nice items.
What you are pointing out here is a game / expansion that has had the benefit of how many years worth of balancing? No game is ever going to have that sort of balance and attention to such fine details right out of the gate with such complex systems, etc.
U got and example and declaimed as pure true
Mages should not care about their base DPS weapon since he does not even hit a monster it should be all about magical stats
Warriors use wepons to hit hard ,Mages use their minds ,creations,spels to do dmg not their weapon, weapons should have magic enchantments no DPS ones
Example Ligthing Spells do X more dmg etc to resemble a magic artifact not a piece of metal
And u Avoid saying that one of the best weponry on diablo2 for Sorceress was Eschutas,Crystal Shards etc.. and those were not easy to find at least a good one
And those could be found only on hell As an example Death fathon i think was a freaking hard dificult item to find easier on baal hell if i remeber
What made d2 good on itemization was variety u could have a non perfect breath of the dying but it stll being a breath of the dying
U got Sorceress going meele ,Sins doing whrils barbs shapeshifting (enigma was just bad design)
D2 was excellent comparing with what the market had by the time
Nowadays when it comes to itemization POE crushes diablo in every possible way
I do not even like POE in general but Itemzation is great look to the currency system basically everything u grab is usefull at some way
Shade, I'm closer to your opinion than to that of shaggy. Hell wasn't a pushover, especially not with your first char through (1.10), it was literally Hell
But you said that items like Infinity were required to make it easy and that was a tad too much. Infinity is an automatic dupe, ergo cheating and that's simply not necessary to beat the game or to make it easy. That's the reason I quoted you.
I agree that D2 hell was harder than Inferno mp0.
Indimix, true, Travincal was a tough place. Especially with your first char through. The Flayer Djungle might have been even harder without Teleport (No, not Enigma , people like me used to play a Sorc first to gather stuff on a fresh D2 start )
The real roadblock to me used to be the Ancients. But they came after Meph, so no real problem.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
Harlequin Crest was one of the most popular heads and that looked like a turd sandwich -.-
This is so wrong, it almost hurts. I can only repeat myself: Cheating is not required to beat (every aspect of) D2.
Use your merc! Give him a Reaper's Toll and he can kill any mob, even those with physical immunity (because of the Decrepify-proc). It may take a while but with enough life leech he doesn't die unless you let him get swarmed.
And the obtainability of that Reaper's (droppable by Mephisto) can't be compared to that of an Infinity in numbers. It's rather simple: some limited farming time vs cheating. And unless the mobs have that dual immunity (your element and physical), it's not even necessary, though it's still the best choice as that debuff buffs his damage.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
I don't even need to say anything about that, you do it yourself. If anyone ever found two BER runes in his D2 time, he should be very sad he didn't play the lottery.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
I don't feast on virtual food, you'd rather get me some sandwiches. We're in the same country, so you should be able to provide them!
I thought of undusting my self found saves later today, when I get home and find out, how long it takes me to do a CS clear on /p8, then do some calcs with those recent probabilities. We agree that that's the place to go for those runes?
I can already tell you that I have played more than enough D2 in my time. Those save files contain every piece of every class set for example, yet no more than 1 BER rune.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
Edit: I played up until 1.12. 1.13 was when they increased rune drop changes.
I don't intend to waste an entire day of my life
I'd just clock some runs and count the runes overall. The probabilites to find a special rune are given on a per rune drop basis iirc. I have found this chart regarding that:
Concerning the area to go to, I feel, I'm a little ahead of you: The CS has those ghosts which can't drop regular equipment and therefore have an increased chance to drop a rune.
edit: And yes to that 1.10+ was way harder than the game was before statement. That patch changed everything.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
There's nothing to achieve aside from personal knowledge. The table already shows how drastic that increase in 1.13b (released in 2010) was. After that you'd need about 3k rune drops to get those 2 BERs. Prior to that, for the duration of about 9 years, it required 27k rune drops. And since MF had no effect on them, there was no way to brute force them like Uniques or Sets.
You do agree, that it was highly unreasonable to achieve before the latest change?
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
Edit, I played up until 1.12. 1.13 was when they increased the rune drop rates and other changes. So, my point stands.
This is the latest version of the game modified by PlugY, which enables a shared stash and ladder-only content. I suppose, you recognize the items by their icons. The highest rune is VEX, which you can aquire by cubing ISTs from the Countess for example.
After 7 times this (players 8):
I gathered a grand total of 9 runes. The good runs lasted about 8 minutes, let's not talk about those where I ran mindlessly into some fast mana burn shit
So, while this sample size is waaaaay to small to give conclusive results, I think, it's not too far-fetched to grant someone the ability to find 10 runes per hour in tc85 areas. In 1.13 that someone would roughly need 140 hours of grind for one BER rune. The second wouldn't take as long because of cubing possibilities. I shouldn't call this impossible though
Pre 1.13 however, that same guy would have required 1,350 hours for just 1 BER rune, which is ridiculous
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450
Did you play 100-300 hours per week? I wouldn't expect you to clear CS much faster than me without a serious gear advantage. And I doubt, that another zone is as effective.
http://eu.battle.net/d3/en/profile/Sol77-2972/hero/66110450