High Runes and the High Council, 1.13 Edition
[highlight]Update[/highlight]
The spreadsheet is now available for download by clicking here.
[highlight]Introduction[/highlight]
When the 1.13 patch and its increased high rune drop rate was announced, it was pretty easy to see that if Travincal used to be a pretty nice rune hunting place (see my old Travincal Rune Thread), it would now be a lot better. In this thread, I will show you just how much better.
This time, I wanted to present the information a bit better, so I made an excel spreadsheet which contains all the information. It shows the drop odds of runes Mal - Cham for each player setting, and it lets you input run time and hork% to calculate exactly how effective your rune hunt will be. Basically, all the information is in there.
Click here to see a screenshot of the spreadsheet.
[highlight]Explaining the spreadsheet[/highlight]
Some of it is pretty self explanatory, some of it is not. I'll go over everything to make it easy to understand.
[highlight]Drop Odds:[/highlight] The big chunk of data at the top of the spreadsheet shows the odds of each specific rune dropping on each player setting. This should be read as how many Council Member drops you need in order to find 1 of the specific rune, on average. For example, in the "1.13 p1" column, the value for Mal is 80960. That means that you need to kill/hork 80960 Council Members, on average, to find 1 Mal. Put another way, for each Council Member you kill/hork, you will find 1/80960 of a Mal.
[highlight]Run Time (s)[/highlight]: This is a value you input yourself. It's how long each Travincal Run takes for each player setting, in seconds.
[highlight]Hork%[/highlight]: This is also a value you input yourself. It applies only for Barbarians; any other Travincal runner would put 0 here. It's how many % chance you have of horking a Council Member with the Find Item skill. In practice, this raises the number of drops you get from each Travincal run. For example, there are 11 Council Members. With no hork%, you would get 11 Council drops on each run. With a level 31 Find Item (55% chance to hork), you would instead get 11 * 1.55 = 17.05 drops per run, making each run more effective.
[highlight]Mal+, Vex+[/highlight]: I've presented the data in two different ways, in terms of Mal runes dropped and in terms of Vex runes dropped. This isn't strictly necessary, and I mostly did it to be consistent, as this is what I did in the last thread. Just look at whatever you find convenient, I look at the Vex+ numbers myself.
[highlight]Minutes, Hours, Runs[/highlight]: These numbers are the most interesting ones. These numbers tell us how many runes we will find on average, over time (the expected value of our Rune Hunt), which is what we're mainly interested in. In order to compare Travincal running with other popular rune hunting methods like LK or HF rushing, we must know what the "average" is over a long time, which is what expected value means. The method with the highest expected value is the method which will yield the most runes over a long period.
These numbers express the average time it will take to find one Mal or Vex, depending on which section you're looking at, in minutes, hours or in number of runs (regardless of run time). For example, with the numbers used in this demonstration screenshot, if you play on p3 in 1.13, you will find a Mal every ~11.4 minutes of playing, on average, or 1 Mal every ~0.19 hours. This does NOT mean you can go and play for 30 minutes in Travincal and expect to have a Mal for your troubles. The reason these numbers are so small is because the very high runes are worth an incredible amount of Mal's (a Jah is 256 Mal's, for instance), so when you do get lucky, the average will be raised by a lot. Actual drops of high runes, even Mal's, are still few and far between.
[highlight]Q:[/highlight] Alright alright, nice spreadsheet I guess, but what does it mean?
[highlight]A:[/highlight] I'm glad you skipped over all that stuff I wrote! Just look at the Hours number in the Vex+ section, and you'll see how many hours it will take on average to find a Vex, on each player setting.
[highlight]Q:[/highlight] Cool. So how do I know if this number is "good"?
[highlight]A:[/highlight] I did some comparisons in the old Travincal thread. I won't repeat the math here, if you're interested you can just click the link at the top of this post. The run times/numbers I used are specific to me and my playing, but I think they're pretty close to some kind of forum average to be useful to everyone. If you want to calculate your own expected value(s), just redo the calculations with your own numbers, it will be simple.
[highlight]Comparisons[/highlight]
1.12a p3 LK running: 1 Vex every 3 hours and 9 minutes (29 second run time; 1 Vex every 391 runs, on average).
1.07 LoD -> 1.12a HF Rushing: 1 Vex every 2 hours and 34 minutes
1.12a p3 Travincal running: 1 Vex every 3 hours and 59 minutes (50 seconds run time, 52% chance to hork. The numbers I used in the old Travincal thread).
1.13 p3 Travincal running: 1 Vex every 1 hour and 40 minutes (55 seconds run time, 55% chance to hork. Note that these are not the numbers in the screenshot, which are just meant for demonstration and comparison purposes)
1.13 p7 Travincal running: 1 Vex every 1 hour and 47 minutes (63 seconds run time, 55% chance to hork).
[highlight]Summary & Conclusion[/highlight]
1.13 Travincal running, particularly at p3 or higher, is the best place in Diablo II history to find high runes. Pretty bold statement, but I feel it is undoubtedly correct until proven otherwise by the new 1.13 LK drop patterns. That doesn't mean it's still not a hunt with very high variance; there will still be many many hours between each high rune drop, just like with LK running. I leave you with some (perhaps dubious) motivation: finding the equivalent of an Enigma (Jah + Ber) will "only" take 80.4 hours when running 1.13 p3 Travincal, on average
As always, any questions or comments, I'd be happy to answer. Thanks for reading!
[highlight]Update[/highlight]
The spreadsheet is now available for download by clicking here.
[highlight]Introduction[/highlight]
When the 1.13 patch and its increased high rune drop rate was announced, it was pretty easy to see that if Travincal used to be a pretty nice rune hunting place (see my old Travincal Rune Thread), it would now be a lot better. In this thread, I will show you just how much better.
This time, I wanted to present the information a bit better, so I made an excel spreadsheet which contains all the information. It shows the drop odds of runes Mal - Cham for each player setting, and it lets you input run time and hork% to calculate exactly how effective your rune hunt will be. Basically, all the information is in there.
Click here to see a screenshot of the spreadsheet.
[highlight]Explaining the spreadsheet[/highlight]
Some of it is pretty self explanatory, some of it is not. I'll go over everything to make it easy to understand.
[highlight]Drop Odds:[/highlight] The big chunk of data at the top of the spreadsheet shows the odds of each specific rune dropping on each player setting. This should be read as how many Council Member drops you need in order to find 1 of the specific rune, on average. For example, in the "1.13 p1" column, the value for Mal is 80960. That means that you need to kill/hork 80960 Council Members, on average, to find 1 Mal. Put another way, for each Council Member you kill/hork, you will find 1/80960 of a Mal.
[highlight]Run Time (s)[/highlight]: This is a value you input yourself. It's how long each Travincal Run takes for each player setting, in seconds.
[highlight]Hork%[/highlight]: This is also a value you input yourself. It applies only for Barbarians; any other Travincal runner would put 0 here. It's how many % chance you have of horking a Council Member with the Find Item skill. In practice, this raises the number of drops you get from each Travincal run. For example, there are 11 Council Members. With no hork%, you would get 11 Council drops on each run. With a level 31 Find Item (55% chance to hork), you would instead get 11 * 1.55 = 17.05 drops per run, making each run more effective.
[highlight]Mal+, Vex+[/highlight]: I've presented the data in two different ways, in terms of Mal runes dropped and in terms of Vex runes dropped. This isn't strictly necessary, and I mostly did it to be consistent, as this is what I did in the last thread. Just look at whatever you find convenient, I look at the Vex+ numbers myself.
[highlight]Minutes, Hours, Runs[/highlight]: These numbers are the most interesting ones. These numbers tell us how many runes we will find on average, over time (the expected value of our Rune Hunt), which is what we're mainly interested in. In order to compare Travincal running with other popular rune hunting methods like LK or HF rushing, we must know what the "average" is over a long time, which is what expected value means. The method with the highest expected value is the method which will yield the most runes over a long period.
These numbers express the average time it will take to find one Mal or Vex, depending on which section you're looking at, in minutes, hours or in number of runs (regardless of run time). For example, with the numbers used in this demonstration screenshot, if you play on p3 in 1.13, you will find a Mal every ~11.4 minutes of playing, on average, or 1 Mal every ~0.19 hours. This does NOT mean you can go and play for 30 minutes in Travincal and expect to have a Mal for your troubles. The reason these numbers are so small is because the very high runes are worth an incredible amount of Mal's (a Jah is 256 Mal's, for instance), so when you do get lucky, the average will be raised by a lot. Actual drops of high runes, even Mal's, are still few and far between.
[highlight]Q:[/highlight] Alright alright, nice spreadsheet I guess, but what does it mean?
[highlight]A:[/highlight] I'm glad you skipped over all that stuff I wrote! Just look at the Hours number in the Vex+ section, and you'll see how many hours it will take on average to find a Vex, on each player setting.
[highlight]Q:[/highlight] Cool. So how do I know if this number is "good"?
[highlight]A:[/highlight] I did some comparisons in the old Travincal thread. I won't repeat the math here, if you're interested you can just click the link at the top of this post. The run times/numbers I used are specific to me and my playing, but I think they're pretty close to some kind of forum average to be useful to everyone. If you want to calculate your own expected value(s), just redo the calculations with your own numbers, it will be simple.
[highlight]Comparisons[/highlight]
1.12a p3 LK running: 1 Vex every 3 hours and 9 minutes (29 second run time; 1 Vex every 391 runs, on average).
1.07 LoD -> 1.12a HF Rushing: 1 Vex every 2 hours and 34 minutes
1.12a p3 Travincal running: 1 Vex every 3 hours and 59 minutes (50 seconds run time, 52% chance to hork. The numbers I used in the old Travincal thread).
1.13 p3 Travincal running: 1 Vex every 1 hour and 40 minutes (55 seconds run time, 55% chance to hork. Note that these are not the numbers in the screenshot, which are just meant for demonstration and comparison purposes)
1.13 p7 Travincal running: 1 Vex every 1 hour and 47 minutes (63 seconds run time, 55% chance to hork).
[highlight]Summary & Conclusion[/highlight]
1.13 Travincal running, particularly at p3 or higher, is the best place in Diablo II history to find high runes. Pretty bold statement, but I feel it is undoubtedly correct until proven otherwise by the new 1.13 LK drop patterns. That doesn't mean it's still not a hunt with very high variance; there will still be many many hours between each high rune drop, just like with LK running. I leave you with some (perhaps dubious) motivation: finding the equivalent of an Enigma (Jah + Ber) will "only" take 80.4 hours when running 1.13 p3 Travincal, on average
As always, any questions or comments, I'd be happy to answer. Thanks for reading!
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