Pit Runs

[Voices]

Super noob, what are they?

[LorveN]

The Pits are the caves located in Tamoe Highlands, Act1. A pit run is when you simply run through the pits, kill all monsters, and hope for good drops.

[Iwantsleep]

They're only profitable in Hell difficulty.

[thegiantturtle]

"The Pits" refers to any area_level 85 area in the game. All these areas are in Hell difficulty. "The Pit" in the Tamoe Highland is one such example. The Ancient Tunnels under The Lost City in Act 2 is another.

area_level 85 areas are interesting in v1.10+, because in Hell (and Nightmare difficulty), monster level (mlvl) is determined by area_level. mlvl in turn determines the item level (ilvl) of dropped items and the possible treasure classes those items can be dropped from. Do you want to find a Death's Web? You can in the pits, but often times not in the surrounding areas. Champion, Unique, and Minion monsters in the pits can drop every Unique item in the game. The only other 3 monsters that can do that are Baal, Nihlathak, and Diablo.

See here (http://strategy.diabloii.net/news.php?id=551#Area%20Levels) for a list of all area_levels.



FYI calculations:

ilvl = mlvl
normal monsters mlvl = area_level
champ monsters mlvl = area_level + 2
unique and minions mlvl = area_level + 3