RE: A List Of Questions

[i_Macabre_i]

My Necromancer will be recruiting a Barbarian mercenary soon (replacing a Prayer Desert Warrior) as a transition mercenary until I get my Holy Freeze Desert Warrior. As we know, there are two types; Bash and Stun.

My query for this is simple enough. Is Stun's duration affected by the Difficulty Level?
.
Does ilvl affect the number of sockets an item can have? I am thinking of using the Horadric Cube recipe that "fixes" Low Quality items.

If ilvl does affect the number of sockets an item can have, is there any comprehensive listing of required ilvl for required number of sockets in items?
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Was it at /players3 or /players5 that Act Bosses reach their maximum drop limit?

Cheers.

[Neksja]

1. no idea

2. Yes, ilvl do matter. When you fix low quality items in Cube, their ilvl becomes 1, so you won't be getting max sockets. Here is a list of sockets based on ilvl. (http://www.diabloii.net/items/sockets-list.shtml)

3. not sure, but IIRC, baal is usually runned in /p3

Neksja

[NeoKnuckles]

3. I'm almost certain its 3. Meph should be 3. I heard that Andy does something else at 5.

[Grisu]

3. not sure, but IIRC, baal is usually runned in /p3

That's mainly because XP gain doesn't increase after /p3. Drops increase till /p5, although only slightly.

[Neksja]

That's mainly because XP gain doesn't increase after /p3. Drops increase till /p5, although only slightly.

Oh, it was that way, well old man can't remember everything. I remember that I've read that from somewhere here, but didn't recall it was about xp.

Neksja

[Sir Lister of Smeg]

3. Depends on the act boss, iirc 5 for Andariel and Duriel, 3 for the brothers.

[NeoKnuckles]

So can we get a confirmation on that? Is that 3 for meph, diablo and baal?

[sirpoopsalot]

So can we get a confirmation on that? Is that 3 for meph, diablo and baal?

confirmed for Meph and Baal... mostly. Not sure about bigD, but I'd be surprised if it were different. I think Sir Lister of Smeg is correct about Andy and Duriel too.


IIRC, Meph will drop an average of 5.98 items on /p3, so there is a very small chance that he will have a 'no-drop' and you won't get 6 items with each and every kill. Upgrading to /p5 for that extra 0.02 items seems like it'd slow you down more than it's worth though, IMO.

I'm not as certain about Baal's no-drop, but I do know that you don't gain more experience from him for anything over /p3. I doubt this fact is directly related to his no-drop odds, but I'd be surprised if he still had a (significant) chance of 'no-drop' on /p3.

[Sir Lister of Smeg]

I think I actually did the calculations by hand some time ago using the formulas given in either the item generation or the magic find tutorial. I think I got to no-drop chance nullified for those players settings. But Atma doesn't agree with it, but then Atma gives bosses/unique monsters a positive chance to drop base (that is white or grey) items.

[Tigereye]

Was it at /players3 or /players5 that Act Bosses reach their maximum drop limit?


Mephisto, Diablo and Baal:
at \players 1, nodrop = 15/80
at \players 3, nodrop = 2/67
at \players 5, nodrop = 0.

Andariel:
at \players 1, nodrop = 19/67
at \players 3, nodrop = 4/52
at \players 5, nodrop = 1/49
at \players 7, nodrop = 0.

Andariel (quest):
at \players 1, nodrop = 19/41
at \players 3, nodrop = 6/28
at \players 5, nodrop = 2/24
at \players 7, nodrop = 1/23.

Because of the 7 picks and 6 drops is maximum, the average number of drops becomes:

Average number of drops at /players 1: 5.4537 (Hrus is right in his MF-guide where he found 5.45 without doing the math)

Average number of drops at /players 3: 5.9822

Average number of drops at /players 5 and above: 6 (will always be 6 as the nodrop is 0)

So you get an increase of 9.69% going from /players 1 to /players 3 and an increase of 0.30% going from /players 3 to /players 5.