Weird drops from hell meph

[helvete]

I thought that if he spawns in a full game, then even if everyone but me left he'd always still drop 6 items? This seems to not be the case on ladder.

[krischan]

I'm not sure about that. It might depend on the number of players at the time he dies, just as with MF.

[skoolbus]

It depends on how many people are in the game when he spawns. He will spawn when you get near him on durance lvl 3. How many there are when he dies has no effect. I believe if there are three or more players in the game, he has a 99.7% or something ridiculously high chance to drop 6 items.

[oakienko]

drop calculations are done when monsters die, meph is no exception.

[skoolbus]

I'll dig up a post by thrugg or RTB or Orphan. Give me a minute.

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=136944&highlight=players - this one sort of explains it.
http://forums.diabloii.net/showpost.php?p=1372397&postcount=19 - as does this post.

I play single player where you can change the players setting at will and I absolutely know that meph has to be created when there is more than one person in the game.

[helvete]

Still he drops 4 and 5 items even when spawned in a full baalrun. If I don't get the kill before I'm alone in the game.

[krischan]

I'll dig up a post by thrugg or RTB or Orphan. Give me a minute.

http://forums.diabloii.net/showthread.php?t=136944&highlight=players - this one sort of explains it.
http://forums.diabloii.net/showpost.php?p=1372397&postcount=19 - as does this post.

I play single player where you can change the players setting at will and I absolutely know that meph has to be created when there is more than one person in the game.

Perhaps I overlooked it, but none of these threads mention that monster drops depend on the time of their spawning instead of the time of their death.

[helvete]

I am fairly sure that the nodrop chance used to be set at monster spawn. Else it would be possible to spawn, say, the entire cow level at players1 then change it to players8 and get cheesy amounts of items.

However, I think that has changed. The other thing which has changed is that when reviving a merc with aura items, re-equipping other items on him will cancel out the aura from the aura item, and it has to be re-re-equipped.

I wonder how many other server side changes has been made...

[krischan]

I am fairly sure that the nodrop chance used to be set at monster spawn. Else it would be possible to spawn, say, the entire cow level at players1 then change it to players8 and get cheesy amounts of items.

I never made experiments like these, but perhaps that's possible... or the game neither increases drops or reduces life when the number of players change, only the other way around.

[PhatTrumpet]

The way I understood it to work:

- Hitpoints and experience are determined upon spawn.
- Drops are determined upon death.

Flux made mention of this in his 1.09 Cowazon guide... how you could create the cow portal, trap it with cows so nobody could get in, then run around frantically trying to spawn as many cows as you could before everyone gave up and left the game. This way you could clean up and get all the experience to yourself, although the drops would be the same as a 1-player game.

Unless something's changed since then...

[thegiantturtle]

Nodrop chance doesn't work like other monster properties.

The short form:[/URL]
In short the test results:
spawned at P8, killed at P1 -> drops like P1
spawned at P1, killed at P8 -> drops like P1

The long form: [URL="http://forums.diabloii.net/showpost.php?p=5651861&postcount=18"]here (http://forums.diabloii.net/showpost.php?p=5651861&postcount=18)

[skoolbus]

Wow, never knew this. Guess you have to spawn and kill at the same players for drops to calculate at that players setting. Never really run into this in SP where you generally just keep the players setting constant.