How many Cows?

[Live]

This might be a stupid question, but does anyone know how many cows there are in a cow level? Has anyone actually taken the time to count them? It would be nice to know, so if anyone is up for a challenge, try counting them in a single player game.

Best way I guess would be having a char that kills cows one at a time and just count.

[ZandarKoad]

I'd say its random. I suppose you could do a few hundred cow runs, counting the kills each time, and come up with a range of possible cow counts... but it begs the question:

What's the point? Why in the world would it be "nice to know"?

[Keldaris]

I think that this would be one of the most useless peices of trivia i have ever heard of.....

[LD50]

Best way I guess would be having a char that kills cows one at a time and just count.
How about kill that one cow and check how much exp you got from it. Then kill the rest and check your exp again. Should be a bit easier ;)

About the usefulness of this tidbit, I'm sure you won't need it in a math class, but if you want to know your chances of getting a certain item from a 100 cowruns, it could be useful. And anyway, there's a hell of a lot of information in this world that nobody has no use of whatsoever.

[krischan]

I think that this would be one of the most useless peices of trivia i have ever heard of.....
Hey, this is the statistics forum. Never tell us statistics guys that there's something not worth knowing ;)

If you know the number of cows in the cow level, you could make statictics about what items, xp etc. to expect on an average cow run, for example.

However, I don't believe there is a fixed number. There possibly isn't even a fixed number of bosses or champions.

[Merick]

I remember someone counting while cow runs were the way to get exp. He watched his exp and divided based on how much exp cows give. I think it ranged from 350-450.

[Live]

If you know the number of cows in the cow level, you could make statictics about what items, xp etc. to expect on an average cow run, for example.

Thats exactly why I would like to know how many cows there are. To see how many cow runs it would take me (statistically) to get a certain item. I find cows less boring then other mf areas and by having a character that plows through cows, it sounds like a good idea.

[Thrugg]

Monster placement is systematic but not regular. The cow level is 80 tiles by 80 tiles, but of course random chunks are removed from the equation (the fenced off bits that make the level not a perfect square, plus the islands in the middle).

Cow packs are laid down in a pattern, but there are edge effects to worry about. If you lay a polka-dot pattern on a square grid, you don't alwyas get the same number of dots per square - it depends on whether some dots are just inside or just outside the boundary. The missing chunks of the area make this even more significant.

There are 6-8 boss packs per cow level in Hell (not including the Cow King pack which is placed separately). These have a 20% chance of being champion packs.

Altogether too many variables to really give an answer. I'd agree with the consensus which is simply to clear it a few dozen times and count the average.

[Live]

I did a few runs and it came out to be 700-1200 cows in a run. I did not count Cow King or the cows inside the pen.

[Darnoc]

I'm pretty sure it varies depending on the number of town portal scrolls you have in the tome you use to make the portal. So include a full tome and you'll get more.

[RTB]

I'm pretty sure it varies depending on the number of town portal scrolls you have in the tome you use to make the portal. So include a full tome and you'll get more.

That is one old rumor. And false too, the amount of cows in there is random, especially on bnet.

[Fearlessone]

It's just too hard to kill one at a time and jot each down while u are being wacked. My own guess was that there are 225-300 cows, so let's test it.

I brought a lvl 91 barb into a single person cow and received a glorious 32 exp per regular cow kill, for each and every one. I found about 6 bosses, each with an avg of about 5 minions ("about" because in single player and with a powerful ww attack, they dont last more than 2-3 seconds, and I dont like to stand around in a cow). They gave 160 exp each, and yes, that included the bosses. I left the King alone (this is of course nearly impossible for most ppl here in this game, attracted to him like a moth to the burning light bulb).

With no cows left (exc for King) my exp had gone up 17,760. With 6 boss mobs each with about 6 total members, that leaves 36x160 exp = 5760 to be subtracted from the total. Ahh, but dont forget the 5 King minions, so that's another 800 exp. So subtract 6560 and I got 11,200 exp. That divided by 32 comes out to exactly 350 cows. With the approx 41 minions and bosses + King that's a grand total of 392 critters.

But with Bliz's well known variability, 350-450 sounds about right. I noticed in this single run in classic D2 that the areas near the portal were unusually empty of any cows. Other areas seemed normal. So a few dozen more cows on the avg is possible. I used a full tome, usually I dont use a full one, and did not notice vastly more cows as explained, so prove it if u are so sure that a full tome will bequeth more.

There are not many hundreds or thousands of cows, not unless u are using some sort of mod version.

[LorveN]

Yikes, if there were 700-1200 cows in one game, it would be plain crowded, computers wouldnt be able to run the game once a javazon entered and started to spam furys :P

But yes, it is very random, and is not affected by scrolls in the tp-tome or anything like it.
Though, i'd say that a heavy-crowded game surely must contain twice as many cows as a low-crowded one.
Number of bosses are also random, i have been though games with 1 boss, as well as games with 10.