Couple of(tens of) questions

[Barnical]

Alrite let me begin by saying...I'm no newb to the forums nor the Diablo II realm in general, however I feel after reading this post, you may assume so. The simplest way to answer my post so I would understand it would be to number your post as I am about to do, then answer them that way. Lets begin, due know that I'm grateful for any input into my questions, and sorry to any flamers that say this is the wrong forum, since this is a bunch of different questions that should go into different forums, I thought I should put it in this forum, seeing as though my character I'll be using for half the questions is a Sorceress. I digress..

1. When MFing TcLevel85 areas such as Mausoleum, Ancient Tunnels, Pits; I'm right to assume that I probably wont get much from my first run, that's due to experience. But since I just need patience to get good items from these areas, does MF matter? I know that sounds weird, but is it kinda like rune hunting, where MF doesn't matter, simply luck? Kind of a must know, because I'd rather have more survivability rather than MF if I don't need it

2. Since I'm a Meteorb focusing on fire damage, aka Sasja's guide, best places I'm assuming to gain medium to high wealth (I.E. Jalals, gore riders, travs, pul+ runes, SOJs, maras, all the way up to Levi, deaths web, fathom) would be Bosses: NM Andy, NM Meph, NM Baal, Hell Andy, Hell Meph, Other areas: Hell countess (with strong merc), Ancient Tunnels, Mausoleum, maybe Pindle, but he rarely drops anything for me Also she'll probably be used to NM rush for pul-um runes.

3. I saw in the Uber trist with a necro video(included in the post about the sorc uber trist) that his Mercenary was about to die, but became fully healed, but thing is: I didn't see him use a juv on him, is there a hotkey to use a potion on your Merc?

4. Best way to level, chaos or baal. I've been told different things: such as if your level 80+, youll level much faster in a chaos rather than a baal run. Seemed ignorant to me, but then my friend was level 90 as I'm 79. Thus I'm confused.

5. I'm middle class, not poor, nor rich, what would be an ideal MF for the runs above.

*There are many more questions, but I feel I'm burdening you guys enough with these, so any input on these would be perfect and well appreciated, thanks forums* :afro:

[Delreich]

1. MF matters. Probably not more than survivabillity though. Dying takes a lot of time that could be spent killing things.

3. Hold shift and press the corresponding button for whichever pill you wish to slip him.
Not sure whether it's always shift or if it's whatever you use to immobilize yourself, but that should be easy enough to find out.

4. http://forums.diabloii.net/showpost.php?p=4881329&postcount=6

[Are]

1. MF will matter, but yes, patience is key to those runs.. The Unique packs always drop at least magical, and since their chance of dropping set/unique items is pretty low, doubling or tripling that chance will cause the amount of hours spent to be a lot lower than if you run with no MF. Remember that MF has diminishing returns though; I'm expecting to use around 400% MF for my MeteOrb Sorc when she moves from Meph to Tunnels. She'll still have about 75% to all resistances, so survivability shouldn't be a problem :)

2. Mine is doing Hell Meph with next-to-no problems (getting to the Durance 3 entrance is the biggest problem; teleporting into a pack of manaburn Maulers has been known to kill her occasionally, but it doesn't happen very often :) I tested my Tunnels run speed before starting Meph, but decided her killing speed was too slow at the time. After these 1500 Meph runs though, she's got somewhat better gear, and I plan on moving on shortly. Countess was also no problem at all when doing the quest; I will revisit her eventually to get those runes. Those are the areas I plan on doing with mine, and, well, the biggest problem I've seen in any of them have been those manaburn Maulers in Durance 2 she occasionally dumps into (about once every 200 or so runs, with deaths even less frequent).

3. Shift+1,2,3 or 4 gives your Merc a potion from belt slot 1,2,3 or 4, respectively.

4. I'd think Baal gives more XP than Chaos, but it would depend on how fast you do the two runs. If you do Chaos, say, twice as fast as Baal, that could be the better choice.

5. Not sure about this one.

[kuafu]

1. You're right that patience is the key to success in MF, higher MF just means your patience is more likely to pay back earlier. Basically you can think it this way: you find one Spiderweb Sash every 10 runs, and it has a 1% chance of being unique, so you'll need about 1000 runs to find an Arachnid Mesh. Increasing your MF may increase the chance to 1.25%, so you'll need only 800 runs on average now. Of course, MF doesn't increase the chance linearly, so it becomes less important when you get higher MF. And as others have said, death slows down your runs a lot, meaning you'll do less runs in the given amount of time, so survivability is always important too.
2. There's something wrong with the boss you plan to run. If you're looking for Jalal, Gore Rider, etc., the bosses you listed are fine. But none of your listed bosses can drop Levi, Death Fathom, etc., because the highest one, Hell Meph, can only drop up to TC78. For anything above, you should either run TC85 areas like Pits and Ancients Tunnel, or you should run Hell Baal.
4. I think there's break-even point where running Chaos and Baal will give about the same amount of exp, something around lvl93 I think. Below that, Chaos is better; above that, Baal run is better. At least I can still get exp from baal's minions at lvl97; I don't think I can get much from chaos besides diablo himself.
5. I'd say Hell Meph. You can add Hell Andy too, especially if you're using the glitch to get quest drop from her every time.

[Bushka]

5. I'd say Hell Meph. You can add Hell Andy too, especially if you're using the glitch to get quest drop from her every time

please explain kuafu thats a new one to me.

[deademon]

dont quote me but from what i hear...or remember hearing...all u have to do is NOT kill hell andy...then go into a gmae where someone else has done it...so when u kill andy u get drops as though it was ur first time killing her...quest glitch and u dont get the quest...and get to do it over and over..the problem is finding games : / ...i think this is what it is...not positive

[FrostBurn]

1. What everyone said. Nothing more for me to add.

2. Those bosses are fine, but remember what kuafu said about Hell Meph only dropping up to TC78, and that isn't very often either. Hell Pindleskin is a good target as well, since there are only three items that he cannot drop, which are Azurewrath, Arachnid Mesh, and Tyrael's Might.

3. The Shift + (potion keys) trick.

4. Baal runs. They can be done fast, they give you heaps of XP even in the low 80s, and Baal can drop anything in the game.

5. The ideal MF% is the one that doesn't get you killed. In other words, survivability > killing power > MF. Meteorbs have the ability to pile on quite a lot of MF without compromising their killing power, so I would say anything around 300% MF is good, and more if you can manage it without slowing you down.

Feel free to post more questions if you have them.

@Bushka: The Andy quest bug is when you are able to kill her repeatedly and always get the quest drops. This is enabled when, after killing her for the first time to get the quest, you then only need to talk to Warriv. After you talk to Warriv, the Andy quest bug will be enabled for that difficulty level forever. Henceforth, killing her in subsequent games will always result in quest drops.

@deademon: What you described is more in-line with using the quest drops for bosses like Mephisto and Baal, since they don't have an 'Andy quest bug'.