I'm certain I've seen Legend Spike from rack which is TC90 in Halls of Pain. They probably don't share TC? I mean racks and graves and such? I mean it hardly helps, but just curious.
But yeah, TC 90s just refuse to drop. I'm pretty sure I've had more WFs or Grandfathers than combined TC90 drops which is just getting to me at this point.
I'm certain I've seen Legend Spike from rack which is TC90 in Halls of Pain. They probably don't share TC? I mean racks and graves and such? I mean it hardly helps, but just curious.
Racks don't use TCs at all, which is what allows them to drop things otherwise unobtainable in 1.07. Simplified, when you click a rack it creates a list of all droppable objects (for armor thats everything, for weapons only those with the "bitfield1" entry of 3, this excludes bows, staffs, etc.) with base item level up to the area level, and then randomly determines which one is dropped.
Half a year later (and judging by the amount of screenshots) ~50 runs later I did get another TC90 item.
So I'll put my tinfoil hat and ask, is there any chance that when you preload monsters it effects their TC drop? I've read item generation procedure multiple times and it doesn't look like it, BUT... for past months I've left barbarian character to gather stacks of MF while my sorc explored all TC90 eligible zones so mob hp would get reduced when I go killing them with barb. Today was the first time I didn't do it because I forgot about that tech and bam, dry spell is over and I got myself a TC90 item. I do assume it was just rng and all, but for people that know more about those things, am I completely crazy with that theory or what?
12 WF is the bank btw. I'm not really active regarding this project, but who knows, perhaps I decide to pick it up once again.
Second Caduceus. Just one final roll was needed but no dice. Got 5th ethereal Skulder's but not a single ethereal Vamp Gaze. 17 SoJs/16 BKWBs. ATMA stash is starting to lag due to amount of items at this point as well. Come on game, let me finish this
Well, judging by this... I'd say it's improving As long as I see TC90s drop here and there, it really fuels the motivation. One of them will be Archon Staff... eventually. It's just long dry sessions that are gross.
EDIT: Looks like this one is WF #12. Guess I miscounted before or stashed one of them in weird place?
I will do a few runs this month to level a mule up a bit. I think 10-15 runs max.
Last night, first run of p8/p8 resulted in a diadem and bloodlord skull. It is indeed a bit tedious to move mules from zone to zone, but knowing myself there is no way i will not do it.
Last year I set out to level 4 pallies to 99 in 1.07 so that they can afk with some nice defensive auras in 1.08. Well, the pallies (and a few other mules) are 99 and I can say that the auras are no help whatsoever thankfully you noted those 'safe' areas by the stairs @frozzzen .
Have there been any conclusions regarding the value of Frozen River and the 3 red portals? First run yesterday took me 2+ hours, mainly because of the repair cost of my swords and needing to sell stuff constantly to afford it, but id rather not add any unecessary areas...
I know red portals have frenzytaurs which like their relatives in WSK have better odds to drop the 'equipment' version of the tc, but iirc most of the time they're phys immune (and no form of bonus damage to animals) so maybe an idea would be to spawn them p8 and kill them p1.
You were pre-loading the areas you run, right @frozzzen ?
Run 4: Ist rune
Run 5: Stormshield, Winged Harpoon, Grandfather
Edit:
Run 6 - an absolute rofl-stomper of a run
-Grandfather from a hidden stash in Pit of Acheron
-Doombringer
-Schaefer's
-Baranar's
-Stormshield
-Blackoak
-Gladiator's Bane
-Arkraine's Valor
-Oculus/Bartuc's/Titan's/Lycanders Aim+Flank/Homonculous
-Shako
-Wizardspike
-Perfect ED Ravenclaw
-Highlord's
-Knell Striker/Bane Ash
-5 enchant orb
-even a Grand Matron Bow!
And a Bloodlord skull dropped from a Blood Lord!
I'm focusing just on TC90 so I dropped a bit more than you. Are you also preloading runs?
This is my routing:
Preloaded Icy Cellar + Snapchip and Frozen River (sometimes when I have willpower) + Frozenstein.
Preloaded Pindle and Trav. These have higher bosspack density and higher hp mobs so I just preload them.
Then do full p8 HoP + WSK1,2,3 and kill Lister + all frenzytaurs in throne.
Hosting with my sorc that does teleporting, then load in barb for ritual, then all mules in once I'm ready to start. I don't always do Frozen River since I never confirmed TC90 from that place; mostly depends on if I have time/willpower. It seems best on paper for Stormspire without going into too niche/useless/inconsistent areas. I'm pretty bad with managing my run count so if you do it and keep any results it would probably be more useful than my incoherent ranting
I preload if I dont immediately go AFK after starting the wisp cycles. If I want to watch the news or do something else, I might preload. But were talking less than 10 runs total this year and I'll stop after another 5 or 6 more. I'm really just leveling a mule in p8 cows and anything else is a bonus.
Speaking of bonus:
run #8:
It would be great if I could get a TC90 from the vile temptresses in Frozen river because including the results from last year, by far the best items are coming from Greater Hell Spawns and Unholy Corpses - probably cause there's so damn many of them.
Run 9: zilch! except a giant thresher from a weapon rack.
Run 10: a stormshield from cows, and a very nice circlet!!
Also something weird happened:
This should've been unique:
No other had dropped in this game, so I just sat there scratching my head for a minute...I picked it up and:
It was ethereal...
My guess is that it rolled ethereal then unique but Cranium Basher is not allowed to be ethereal because of the indestructible mod. So it downgraded to a 3x dura eth thunder maul :/
If only it had rolled cruel >.<
Edit:
Run 11: In the Pit of Acheron of all places....(relatively poor zone and from a mob I should've skipped)
Run #12: Winged Harpoon, Colossus Blade, Shadow Plate another Arkraine's, 4 Mara's etc etc...
Some observations:
Evil urns always spawn in the same place! (can't believe I never noticed this before)
There is a Frozen River map with 4 evil urns:
[*]
However in Frozen River it seems to be approx 1 in 4 chance (or maybe less) to get a mob type that could drop TC 90
Evil urns in the same zone all spawn the same type of mob. i.e. if its not a TC90-capable mob, no point in popping the rest of the urns
Hork seems increasingly worthless given the trade-off in time...
I'm rethinking my original theory about running 8 barb games all collecting rituals at the same time for less downtime. I am brainstorming whether 8 sorcs might be the way to go (back to moo moo farm we go!), focusing primarily on boss packs...A bonus would be that you wouldnt have to collect as many rituals if you didn't want to do normal mobs
However almost all of my 'finds' so far have been from normal mobs - possibly because the current route/strategy favors barb+hork instead of sorc/tele+speed
More than 1 drop of the same unique seems to revolve around two factors:
Physical proximity to the first drop - more than 2 screens away seems to be enough for a new unique to spawn and...
How long the unique spends in your inventory...for example I want to pick up every ravenclaw still. I notice if I pick it up and immediately tp to town and drop it, then I continue to get unique long bows (or any other item type I pick up). But if the first one stays in my inventory too long (I estimate somewhere between 5-10 seconds), then all long bows for the rest of the run will be rare instead of unique
Do you still pick up amulets? Have you noticed how 99% of Rising Sun's have a ctc cast level 7 Meteor but that the level can vary? Today I found one with a ctc level 10 meteor...
That eth T-maul seems cruel (even without affix ) if it's like you say, but isn't Basher qlvl 91 so can drop only off bosspacks? Your screenshot doesn't look like it was boss that dropped it (no classic potion spam). I did 2 runs and nothing new to report except SoJ in both games which is lucky. No TC90s and still nothing confirmed off frozen river even if I'm running it for science.
Your idea about uniques spawning duplicates is interesting. It does align with what I've seen but I never pieced it together. I'm however not sure about focusing on bosspacks as they have 1:40k chance to drop archon staff where mobs in right settings are 1:160k. I'm not sure how many bosses you'd need to kill to just be equal with 1 HoP run. I guess it might be worth it in p1 + static map games, but I don't have access to enough pdr gear to make this, and honestly, worst part of the run is getting everything to work together so I don't really plan to. Also rolling maps with good static properties on multiple sorcs... Sounds like logistical nightmare >_>
I will start to do some serious running rough 1-2 weeks from now as RL is rather hectic, but come summer break it should clean up rather nicely.
I just prepped a run and can somewhat confirm and deny your urns hypothesis. I opened 3 urns in frozen river and all 3 gave me (allegedly) TC90 capable harpies but I'm not buying it until it's confirmed. Urns in Ancient's way don't behave in same way however as I've spawned one of those shattering monster types, decided to hunt for urns, and then spawned one of those death mauler monster, so idk, might depend on zone or just confirmation bias.
That eth T-maul seems cruel (even without affix ) if it's like you say, but isn't Basher qlvl 91 so can drop only off bosspacks? Your screenshot doesn't look like it was boss that dropped it (no classic potion spam). I did 2 runs and nothing new to report except SoJ in both games which is lucky. No TC90s and still nothing confirmed off frozen river even if I'm running it for science.
I just prepped a run and can somewhat confirm and deny your urns hypothesis. I opened 3 urns in frozen river and all 3 gave me (allegedly) TC90 capable harpies but I'm not buying it until it's confirmed. Urns in Ancient's way don't behave in same way however as I've spawned one of those shattering monster types, decided to hunt for urns, and then spawned one of those death mauler monster, so idk, might depend on zone or just confirmation bias.
Maybe I worded it poorly. I mean all urns in one area will spawn the same mob. All urns in another area will spawn a different one. I have a LOT of evidence piling up to suppor this, and I fear that most of the time the urns will not be worth popping.
In other news, SOB blood boss is off screen turning all his ice boars into bombs while I whirl a death lord pack. After I finish horking it, I move on to him and get insta-gibbed by 4 f'n bombers...GRRRR there goes my after-work run.
Edit: restacked and finished the run (#14)
Another Pul, Schaefer's, Stormshield, Arkraine's, BKWB etc etc but NO tc 90 or even 87 this run!! :/
Also no jewel ever worth keeping, what gives!
Did find this Icy Cellar Map with 3 urns. Try to confirm if you happen to notice
Do you still pick up amulets? Have you noticed how 99% of Rising Sun's have a ctc cast level 7 Meteor but that the level can vary? Today I found one with a ctc level 10 meteor...
wowowow I had no idea it worked like this...that solves quite a few mysteries.
I still have a few runs to go, but by now I've collected enough preliminary data to share.
I've read the levels.txt and monstats.txt files to make a list of all the monsters that should spawn in act 5, in each zone. I then colored them green or red based on whether they can drop TC90 according to treasureclass.txt.
Next I kept track of what mob the evil urns spawned in each zone and have come to the conclusion that an evil urn can only spawn one of the monsters listed in the 'normal' category of levels.txt. In other words, sometimes a zone can spawn a unique or champion version of monster which does not appear in the zone as a normal monster. The monster types which only spawn as unique or champion will not spawn (in 1.08 at least) from an evil urn. Here is the result (work in progress):
I did the same for champion and unique monsters. In this table the evil urn columns which have a number greater than 0 are a result of the fact that the monster type also spawns as a normal monster in that zone:
I also kept track of the types of mobs which spawn outside the cave entrances to Frozen River, Drifter Cavern and Icy Cellar. This seems to be a 50/50 split between 2 types. Note that only 1 of the 6 possible monsters is ever worth killing for TC90:
The above tables are designed based on zones. But I also wanted to have a list which simply goes through all the monster types in act 5, one by one, and whether they can drop TC90 according to treasureclass.txt:
Note how many monsters are not worth killing...including the superuniques...oddly enough, it seems that wave 1 and 5 of Baal can drop TC90, but waves 2, 3, and 4 can't
All in all this has lead to my current evaluation of the 'barb' route as follows:
That's it for now! I'll probably do 2-3 more runs and then call it for a while. One can only withstand so much self-inflicted pain...
edit: run 15:
All in all not a bad haul, but so dissappointing to see a caddy.
Oh and, completed the noATMA grail because why not
Caddy is pain. But I guess this just means it's possible in theory. Combined we got 3 x rare TC90 items and like... ~20 WFs so on average it should happen soon enough
Two runs, one Windforce. My mules got wiped while I was afk. RIP xp. I haven't seen Colossus Blade in ages. I guess you are stealing them all. I'm not even sure why I'm collecting stuff from ground, there's only so many 1.08 Shakos you could ever use.
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