Increased item drop rate in D2R?

[Asmodeous]

I should start with a brief history, I used to play a lot of D2/LoD back in the day. I mean a lot.
Glad to hear about D2R and even happier to buy it and play this game once again in HD glory.
Where this story is going is that I kept all of my original characters, items, stashes and copied them into D2R save folder. Initially it was for nostalgia. To run Baal once again with my Schaeferdin, to visit familiar haunts, age old enemy, you get the picture.
Eventually, I ended up visiting the countess, with a Tal rasha equipped level 96 Sorceress packing 169% total magic find, just for the heck of it, let's see what drops. Hell difficulty off course.

A snap shot of 20 runs, I received one key of terror, three unique/set items (steel clash, sigons gloves and Artic horn. It was the runes however that raise the brow. Every run I received a rune. Well actually, sometimes two and even three per run. Lowest was Eld, highest was Lum and most common seemed to be Ral/Ort/Tal. Hmmm.

Back on the subject of sets and uniques, probably a dozen more or so, not sure because I left most of them on the ground or sold them. Hey, I already have every item in the game. But the drop rate seems much better than I recall back in the day.
It's not that I'm running a lot of Magic find either. While I have been playing my Tals soser with 169%, most of my game play has been with my Avenger (68%), Schaeferdin (zip) or my Eletemplar (50%). Wondering if I should actually dust off my MF hammerdin, it will probably rain Unique/set items, like D3 maybe? Ok, maybe not that many...

So have other players noticed an increase in the rate of finding sets, uniques and Runes? Or is this old fuddy duddies memory all mixed up and muddled over the years and I have no idea?

 

[art_vandelay]

I assume you left before 1.13? If so this table might interest you:

[Guide] The Time Traveler's Vortex - Part 1 - A guide to SPF Time Travel

Originally posted by helvete on Jul 9, 2016 [Allright, here goes! I'll continually update this for as long as I'm around. I'll authorize in advance whoever may be the authority at whatever time to edit this guide, for the purpose of keeping it updated] (best read with the accent of Londo...

www.purediablo.com

It's the very last quote in the thread, just expand it and there's two tables detailing chance for runes across the patches.

The countess dropping around one to three runes is not unusual since 1.10. Check out this guide for the exact numbers:

Updated Countess Rune Drop Chances for 1.13b+

[reposted from July 12, 2019] Hi all. I have seen countess rune drop chances for past versions of the game posted here, but never have seen an update for 1.13b through 1.14d. This is probably because the runes are so bountiful from countess and LK that people either don't care as much about the...

www.purediablo.com

Since they said they didn't change drop rates those tables and the info about the countess should still be accurate.

 

[jjscud]

Like you, one of the first things I did in D2R was run an old target to see how it compared to normal D2. I ran LK until I got a reasonably high rune. I took a screenshot and compared the items in it to the ones that dropped with it in 1.13b+ (the most recent rune drop improvement that @art_vandelay mentioned). The items matched up which is a good in game confirmation that rune drop odds, basic TC odds and make up are all unchanged.

Special chests ignore MF iirc so the one thing that doesn't verify directly is that the effectiveness of MF hasn't changed, however, I've put in quite a few hours and I can confidently say that there is no easily noticeable increase to set and unique drops.

 

[Asmodeous]

Oh hey jjscud! It's been a long time!

Ok, my memory is coming back to me. Tip. Don't make meaningful posts late at night when your tired and not thinking straight.
I do recall the 1.13b patch and reading about the increased rune word drop rate back then.
I only transferred 8 characters over from my old single player characters. One that I didn't was my Charged boltress which I used to use for Countess runs, in between Baal runs with my Schaeferdin and MF runs with Talorber and Hammerdin.
Anyway, I transferred the electric blanket spammer over and lo and behold, she had 14 runes and other assorted items from countess runs in her stash. When I did a countess run with her (single player maps save), An all too familiar telewalk path to the countess bought those old memories back. I could telewalk to level 5 with my eyes closed cause I'd done it who knows how many times.

After I completed the self found Holy grail, I embarked on finding runes to make every Rune word in the game. Hey, highly ambitious and probably never get there but then again, I think I said that about reaching level 99 with a Schaeferdin and finding every item in the game....

...I have 27 rune words. Most of the common ones and none of the Sur/Jah/Ber/Zod/Cham one's. So I have a very very, long way to go.

 

[Kartongen]

Hey @Asmodeous, quick noob question. What is a Schaeferdin? Could not find it on a quick search.

 

[Babyhell]

Hey @Asmodeous, quick noob question. What is a Schaeferdin? Could not find it on a quick search.

I guess there's something around this video from @Kitteh to be found:

 

[teddeeboy]

Welcome back to the SPF @Asmodeous . The Maxamillian SC Schaeferdin was the amazing build. I still remember reading the guide back in about the efforts you went to hit the final zeal BP and balance the character utility with the Schaeffer's.

And with the improved rune drop quality you are closer than you think to that RW grail.

 

[saracen85]

Welcome back!