Ladder question on ist runes

[pncwd]

Ok heres another question I dont get.

Everyone seems to have like godly amounts of Ist runes, now I know that you can cube all the way up to a zod on ladder, and that the countress can drop an ist in hell lvl. But how does someone get one of these cause I have been running the countress in hell lvl and have done it on 1 player all the way up to 8 player and the only difference I see is more items and not any more runes. I know the max amount of runes she can drop is 3 but I have yet to see anything over a lum, and I only got one of those.
So my question where do all the ist come from, and how offten does the countress drop one?

[DiRolfo]

Hellforge quest in hell difficulty has a nice chance to drop an ist.
Hell countess can drop ist, but don't expect one to drop just like that. I've never seen an ist drop and I ran her plenty of times.

[frygia]

People do Hellforge runs, pncwd. These give a much bigger chance of getting high runes than Countess runs. That means, you do have to rush a char until hell only to have the hellforge quest done, but it will give you a high chance of having an Ist/Mal as your reward.

[pncwd]

Thats cool but thats a lot of rushed chars.,,, unless hmmm ok that is what all those rush for fordge games gets ya. But most of those people getting rush don't pay up. But ok I get it now. I just had heard that the countress was the way to go on ladder because of "ist is her special drop" but I didn't really believe it because I think she can drop up to Lo in hell so how would an ist be her special drop.

[Thrugg]

Whether the rushee pays up the Ist or not, it is still created and now in the economy. The price of Ists does not depend so much on who has them, just how many there are around.

People talk about the Countess' special drop because she has two parts to her drop. The first part is just like a regular monster - armor and weapons and gold and runes - and this includes a chance to drop Lo, but no better than most other monsters (ie very small). The second part of her drop is just runes. As a result she has a much higher chance of dropping runes of some kind than regular monsters, which is why she gets run. But this second part of her drop only goes up to Ist. The runes she can drop above Ist have to come from her first, regular drop, which means a really, really small chance.

[Geralcik]

As far as I know, hell Countess can drop up to Ist from her 'special rune drop' (those runes she always drops, usually two) and can drop up to Lo just as any other monster (I mean, any monster in hell can drop mid-high runes, but with negligible probability). In other words, she has enhanced chance of dropping runes up to Ist which, however, in no way guarantees you get an Ist from here this lifetime :P

[Sammyboyz2]

yes, geralcik, ur correct. she can drop up to ist in special drop, and Lo in normal drop. however, getting even an ist is lucky, cause she can, and does quite often, drop all the way down to el runes. i dont believe i have ever gotten higher than io from her, in hell, so dont expect much. if ur wanting a sure payoff, do hell forge runs. with on character u can do both nm and hell forges. nm can get up to um runes, so even thats great. hell diff hellforge goes up to gul. but it goes as low as hel, so it can be a bit depressing sometimes. theres no sure way to get decent runes, its all luck really. get ready for a trying time my friend