Magic Find Trick?

[Dimmu Borgir]

So I think I read on Arreat's Summit a while back that your chance to find magic items also increases depending on the number of enemies you kill in a certain timeframe. So in that case would Hell Cows be potentially a better source of MF than boss runs if you have the ability to kill a lot of them really fast?

I remember I was in a nightmare Cow game a while back, and a lv. 90-somthing Dream Sorc popped in and we were just walking around watching packs of 20+ cows drop over in pulses, and some suprisingly good stuff was dropping.

[thegiantturtle]

The more enemies you kill, the more chances you will have to find something good. The chance any specific drop is good will not change no matter how many enemies you kill.

[jakotaco]

pretty self explanatory, do you have a bigger chance to find a unique ring if you kill one cow or if you kill two cows?

[batuchka]

Well monsters levels, area levels on top of %mf/killing speed all come into play so the good stuff would only drop at certain places and with certain monsters :( I find all levels Worldstone jammed packed with critters and once u find a way to nullify those souls its a nice area to magic find. Oh and the occasional 50k for dead iron maidened merc hehe

[Darkflight]

Mephisto beats every normal or unique monster in the game. However, he cannot drop everything, and Pindleskin or lvl85 areas are best for the rest of the unique, set and socketed items people want. For high-runes (VEX-ZOD) you should run cows simply because there are so many of them in a relatively small area.

[TheGoldenArches]

So I think I read on Arreat's Summit a while back that your chance to find magic items also increases depending on the number of enemies you kill in a certain timeframe. So in that case would Hell Cows be potentially a better source of MF than boss runs if you have the ability to kill a lot of them really fast?

I remember I was in a nightmare Cow game a while back, and a lv. 90-somthing Dream Sorc popped in and we were just walking around watching packs of 20+ cows drop over in pulses, and some suprisingly good stuff was dropping.


The OP is asking whether or not you can get better items if you kill more cows FASTER, not whether killing more makes the difference. The idea is that if you kill, say, 100 cows in 5 seconds, you would get better drops than if you killed them in 100 seconds.

Because the differences are likely, if they exist, to be seconds, arguing that it 'just seems like it because you're seeing more at once' is a flawed argument. It feels great to kill 2 guys together and get a Zod and a Jah, but even if you play for 10 minutes before getting the other then you're going to be just as ecstatic.

I'm going to look this up.

Hmm.. I checked the items index and went to the information on % magic find. Neither the MF FAQ nor the 'How do I get good items' FAQ said anything about killing things faster. Nor have I heard of this before. I'm pretty skeptical about the truth of this; maybe that sorc just got lucky?

[Dimmu Borgir]

Here's where I found it. It's in Item Basics on Arreat's Summit:

Finding Good Items
Here are some tricks to use to get "good" items meaning more Rare, Set and Unique Items. You can trade the good items you find that are not useful to yourself for other items that you can use.


Get lots of Magic Find. For more information go here[link].

Open up all Chests, Rocks, Barrels, etc.. Chests and other similar items have increased chances for drops. Combined with a good Magic Find % you can have a pretty good chance of getting a good item from a chest. There are also certain areas where chests are more common. Carry keys (except Assassins) so that you can open locked chests as well. You can carry some keys in your Horadric Cube. If you carry keys in the Horadric Cube they won't work so you have to take them out of the cube to use them.

Repeatedly Kill Champion and Unique Monsters. Always kill these (if possible). They have a much better chance for good drops. You can even go to areas where they are more common or where they are easier to kill.

Kill more Monsters. Generally the more monsters you kill within a general amount of time, the more drops you get and the more chances you have to get something good. This is why areas like the Flayer Jungle are popular. You may wish to find areas where you can kill a lot of monsters at once.

Activate Monster Shrines or Evil Urns. This will create Unique Monsters or Champions that you can kill for better loot.

[TeknoRat]

All they're saying is that the more monsters you kill, the better chance something good drops because there are more monsters dropping items. The faster you kill also would "raise" mf because you would kill more monsters which would equal more drops which then allows for a better chance of getting a good item. However I'm pretty sure that killing those monsters in 5 rather than 15 minutes will actually change the drops you get.

[jakotaco]

Kill more Monsters. Generally the more monsters you kill within a general amount of time, the more drops you get and the more chances you have to get something good. This is why areas like the Flayer Jungle are popular. You may wish to find areas where you can kill a lot of monsters at once.

Killed more monster within a general amount of time => more chances to find something good within that timeframe.

But I must admit they could've put it in a better way.

[Darkflight]

All they're saying is that the more monsters you kill, the better chance something good drops because there are more monsters dropping items. The faster you kill also would "raise" mf because you would kill more monsters which would equal more drops which then allows for a better chance of getting a good item. However I'm pretty sure that killing those monsters in 5 rather than 15 minutes will actually change the drops you get.

How fast you kill monsters doesn't, to my knowledge, chance the way they drop.

[§Hex Vex§]

How fast you kill monsters doesn't, to my knowledge, chance the way they drop.

Believe they mean that the faster you kill monsters, the more drops there are, thus the chance of getting something good raises due to the fact that there are more drops out there.

Yeah, they could've put it another way.