Blizzard on Random Drops and Nasty Keywardens
Posted 19 October 2012 by FluxA few more useful forum posts from late Thursday.
We’ve seen an amazing amount of paranoid, “y u no understand ‘random’ means?” posts of late, mostly about item drop rates, but this one is about my favorite. Realize that this is from the second day of the patch, and this is a very partial quote from the OPs rambling manifest. Click the link to read all of the tinfoilhatism:
Don’t know why blizz had to nerf the drop rates again. It’s almost back to 1.0.4 levels. I’m talking about legendary and set items. Yes, I farm a lot non stop, and I can honestly say something is different. When the patch launched, I was running the same thing and I would get at least 1 legendary per run, or 1 every 2 runs. Same goes with my friends, none of them are getting any legendaries now, and they farm a lot. I farm the same amount of time each day. usually 8 hours. Today been farming 6 hours, still 0 legendaries, 0 sets.
Lylirra: Item drop rates do not Deep Breath more, guys. =/
- We haven’t made any changes to drop rates or drop quality.
- They are same as they were yesterday, when the patch went live.
- We implemented some hotfixes this morning, but they weren’t related to items at all.
- Those changes can be found here.
In all likelihood, you’re just experiencing normal RNG. If, however, you feel like something may be bugged, go ahead and drop a line in the Bug Report forum so we can investigate.
Elsewhere, someone feels that 
Xah’Rith the Keywarden is too fierce.
Lylirra: It’s not a bug, but we’re definitely paying close attention to player feedback about Xah’rith’s current difficulty — not just in Inferno, but in all difficulty levels, and at all MP levels too.
We agree that he may be a little bit too challenging at the moment, and are discussing the possibility of either reducing his outgoing damage, tweaking what affixes he spawns with, or moving his spawn location (right now, he’s kind of hard to avoid if you’re just questing normally). We’d like to hear more from the community on the topic first, though, before we make any decisions.
In the end, we want the keywardens to provide a fun challenge for players, and be a little more difficult than the surrounding wildlife (i.e. a fight you have to put some thought into), but we don’t want that to happen at the expense of being able to progress through an Act.
I haven’t tried Xan’Rith yet, but I had time to bag Odeg the Keywarden a couple of times this morning, with the difficulty cranked all the way up to MP1, and got no keys. He popped 4 rares each time though, so at least there’s that. He didn’t kill me, but he tried; I’d never before seen a boss cast Jailer that repeatedly and frequently.
Update: In the comments there’s general agreement that Xah’Rith is too much of a difficulty spike. Not just on Inferno either; a couple of players say he destroyed their Hardcore characters when they first encountered him while leveling up on Normal or Nightmare, so beware.
this nonsense about blizzard this and that around item drops gives me headaches, random is random. I doubt they have an employee watching each and every player manually adjusting their drop rates based on that.
the problem is, everyone wants everything NOW. it is not like it was back in diablo 2, they want to go int he game and get 1-2 legendaries and they want the game to last only 30 minutes at least being able to easily beat the content.
in terms of Xah’Rith the Keywarden, you know, i ran into him the first time last night. He gave me a scare at the start, but once i adapted i killed him first attempt no problem. i just had to kite.
no key drop though, and only level 1 mp. I am testing the waters out progressively. He is a challange but a doable challange.
Not sure how much you guys play/farm, but this has happened every patch and is reported my many folks. First day or two after every patch people see quite a few drops, then the drop rates seem to disappear.
Blizzard has never explained it as anything other than RNG is RNG, but when it consistently happens I’m pretty sure there is a reason behind it. All conspiracy theories, but it makes sense that waves of people come back to D3 each patch to “see if it is better” and when they find loot they want to play more.
I think that this behavior after 1.0.3/1.0.4/1.0.5 kinda proves that RNG is not RNG in this case.
We got a loot switch it goes from 0 to 1.
I give order when and how to activate the switch.
I have full control over the item flow in D3.
I have full control over the AH and the RMAH.
If you think you’re in control think again.
-Supreme D3 Loot Overlord Bobby K.
Still highly doubt blizzard is doing this, perhaps random is random, but people are STILL getting lots of drops
I agree with FruitLord there is most definitely something about a patch that ups the legendarys for the first day or two..
You mean like the fact that people play MORE the first couple of days after a patch and are thus more likely to find something, only to gradually cut down on their farming time as they hit streaks of no legendary drops?
That seems very plausible and most likely the reason.
I’m sorry guys but this does happen, I’m not saying Blizzard is doing this, more then likely its a bug of some sort but I have 280 hours on my account (Dracon#1255) with 236 hours on my magic find character, due to my schedule when I play its for 5-6 hours at a time consistently. I’ve found around 15 legendarys and 1 set item total in 280 hours. With 5 legendarys and my only set item coming in the first 24 hours after a big patch drops. Last patch I played for 4 hours with one other friend and we found 3 legendary’s and my only set item I’ve ever found. The math on the chances of a 3 legendary’s and a set item dropping in 4 hours play is way to much to say this is just the random chance of the drop rate, put that together with the fact that this has happened on more then one patch and its obvious that something is different after a patch drops, or at least on my account.
Are people really that Hamsterized that they can farm for 8 hours per day?
That raised my eyebrow, as well. 8 hours every day?!
Yeah! Get a job ya’ lazy hippies!
“It’s not a bug, but we’re definitely paying close attention to player feedback about Xah’rith’s current difficulty — not just in Inferno, but in all difficulty levels, and at all MP levels too.”
so you can farm the keys at hell to? >_<
No. The Keywardens spawn on all difficulties but only drop keys in Infero w/ 5 NV.
He killed my hardcore DH on lvl 46 in nightmare yesterday cuz i didnt expect that much damage out of nowhere… asshole…
He smoked my 32 Barb who as decently equipped. I could barely cause any damage and got killed. Long time HC player and first real death in DIII. It sucked but that is what is great about HC. I’ll be ready next time. Happy Hunting!
Yesssss !
I’m considering “Xah” is the new kid on the block from act 4, silver spire lvl1.
I was levelling an alternate monk and was on a public game, normal, for the mantra achievement. After a while, it was only me and a lvl 27 wizard I was carrying through the act 4. Since I always need someone to carry my wizards around because I just can’t play with them…
Anyway, 2 players on a game, no MP and I found Xah along the way. He’s something like a mallet lord that attacks more frequently. Harder, but doable. If the guy was on silver spire act 2, with lots of morlu spellcasters, then it would be troublesome.
The mallet lord elite pack I found, however… That was too-nasty-for-normal.
I agree that some of the keywardens are a bit too strong. All but the act one guy. However I don’t think they should be nerfed. I like difficulty spikes sprinkled into the game.
Let’s say playing any given area in the game you plot the difficulty: Pretty much all your encounter with an elite pack is …idk, 20% harder then the surroundings. The entire game doesn’t deviate from this. How boring is that? What’s the harm of 3 50%’s in the entire game?
Xah’Rith – the Act 3 keywarden – is a bit of an outlier in terms of difficulty compared to the Act 1 and Act 2 keywardens. The Act 4 keywarden is probably the most difficult, but since you need the plan only once I’m fine with that.
The problem with Xah’Rith is due to his abilities compounding with each other, making him quite difficult – especially for melee.
He has the Illusionist ability and a really nasty corpse rain that snares you. Guess what happens when all of his illusions cast that corpse rain? Yeah all those rains stack and if you’re caught in it good luck.
Some ideas to make him more in line with the other keywardens:
- remove the snare, and/or
- put a cooldown on the corpse rain, 5+ seconds
I would rather they leave him in Stonefort, though. Having to hunt through Fields of Misery and Dahlgur Oasis is enough of a hassle already.
I also think the Act 3 key warden is tough, I have to stay far away from him and let the Blizzard/Hydra wear him down. I have ran him at least 10 times on MP2 and no keys have dropped. He did drop a really ****ty Dawn the first time I killed him, so there’s that. I got a Danetta’s revenge last night that was so bad that I immediately salvaged it, I took one look at it, that was all I could handle. Oh well, gotta find the bad ones in order to get the good ones sometimes.
He seemed a bit ridiculous when my new barb (HC) met him in A3 normal. I was playing at MP10 and had NO problems with any of the monsters, but his snare + corpse rain nearly killed me, even after I put the diff down to MP0…
That’s just poorly balanced, imho…
If anything, I found some of the keywardens to be too easy for ranged classes. I killed the Act2 one literally by shooting at him off-screen. The Act3 one was slow as well and it was easy to keep him at a distance.
Yeah, the one in Act2 will sit there being maimed by ranged attacks.
can’t really tell if people that come up with **** like drop rate gets nerfed are actually that stupid or they are a really good troll =)