Weapon Help

[krutonu]

I have 3 lances that i am planning to use on my barb. 1 of them is a normal lance, I am planning on keeping it until i reach lvl 80 with one of my chars and imbue it. Another is a magic lance that i put into my cube and it came out as a 1 socket Lance of Carnage, good dmg, and a P Skull in the socket. The third one is the one i'm having problems with. It's a 3 sock lance and i have no idea what to sock it with. I was thinking 2 P rubies for extra dmg and a P Skull for dual leech, but i am not sure. Please help if you can.

Other sugestions are welcome, not only on lances, but other useful weapons. This is a Titan Barb, and i think that the lance is the most powerful weapon in D2 Classic. Please correct me if i'm wrong.

Thanks in advance,
Krutonu.

[HegemonKhan]

if i understand u right, u have a normal (white) lance u are gonna imbue, a 1 socketed magical (blue) lance, and a 3 socket (grey) lance.

u can use these now but they are useless to what is out there. your ultimate goal is a godly rare (yelow, not to be confused with the bronze colored uniques). a rare lance's perfect damage is 360+ (200% enchanced damage +20 max damage + any elemental damage mods). u also really want 75 durability as 25 durability breaks annoyingly frequently. also -30% req reduction (so u need less str=strength and dex=dexterity). cold damage is nice. and LL (life leech). and ML (mana leech). not sure if u can get all these mods at once of course, but this would a dream godly rare lance. rares can get up to 6 mods on it. 3 prefix and 3 sufix. magical (blue) can only get 2 mods. 1 prefix and 1 sufix.

as for your grey 3 socket. grey socketed weapons can get up to 6 sockets (mainly only dropped in hell difficulty). not sure if this is for all weapon types. not sure if a lance can. as for what to socket a grey socket lance with. when d2 first came out, 6 perfect emerald (poison) socketed lances were all the rage. emerald (poison damage) is nice because the poison cancels out the monsters' life regen. unfortunately, grey weapons are for for the most part useless. only base weapon damage. this is way too weak to kill anything in hell difficulty. u really ahve to find rare (yelow) lances. rares (yelow) rules diablo 2 classic.

as for what to socket your lance with. use either (perfect of course) saphires (for cold) or emeralds (for poison). rubies give fire damage which is NOT very useful as fire is the most resisted/immune elem damage of monsters. topaz gives lightning damage but lightning is problematic with its low min in its damage range and is the next most resisted/immune elem damage after fire by monsters. skulls are nice for the life/mana leech but u need high damage weapon which a grey (socketed) weapon does NOT give.

i hope this kinda helps. a good spot to check out is the item evalation thread or item show off thread to get an idea what u wanna strive to have. also take a look at orphans on the mods (prefix and suffix) to see what these are and understand it.

[krutonu]

Thanks a lot for the help.

I see where you're coming from, however i am not strong enough to take on hell just yet with my barb, and i'm having difficulty finding any yellow lances with my hell sorc. I'm either unlucky or just bad spots to search for, because i have 270% MF and i have never found one. I'm gonna keep on searching, hopefully finding something.

I will take into consideration everything you said, especially since i realized that u are right about how hell is full of fire immune and lightning immune. I am going to socket the lance with 2 P Sapphires and 1 P Skull, as it is enough for my lvl.

Thanks again, and i'll be back once i find a nice yellow lance.

Krutonu.

[WarlockCC]

Grey items also get more(or rather too) expensive to repair when you stick more gems in them. :)
You can also imbue at lower levels to get a high damage one. So if you find another white lance, use your normal imbue on it. Be sure to check out the imbue guide listed in the FAQs and Build guides sticky. You can check what level you need to have to get a chance at a nice damage lance from a imbue.
Note though, that imbues produce something remotely useful once out of every ten imbues. So don't count on your imbue too much.

[HegemonKhan]

the godly rares that i mention is what u wanna STRIVE (hope/pray u lucky enough to get) for. this becomes the life of d2. keep mfing in hopes that one of the rares u find has some high or godly mods on it. this is what we are all doing.

and yes, hell is a big step up from nm. its much easier to do nm (and mf in nm) than in hell. unfornately, nm really doesn't give u top notch godly rares. u really got to do hell for the upper "strong" rares and their mods. u can if lucky get decent damage but lots of the better mods aren't available until u get to the areas/monsters near the end of the game in act 4.

this is only in general, from MY EXPERIENCE. i'm no where as expert in drops as many others on here. and if i'm wrong about all this i hope they correct it.

it is really difficult when u dont have a good damage (or godly) rare. i know your pain. my poor phys strafe zon only has a 1-50 damage (ouch) rare bow. i myself have a very hard time trying to mf in hell without dying easy. and gothic bows/ballista xbows seem to be rare item type drops at least where i try to mf at.

ps,

if anyone knows where gothic bows or xbows drop more frequently plz share this with me!!!!!!

so far, with griswald (hell gris is better odds, but here and there nm gris can drop too), i have seen a few times drop a gothic bow, problem is its very very rare.
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as for lances,

i think i remember seeing them able to drop from (rarely) end of nm, and anywhere in hell from act 1-4, though for best/godly mods u probably have to do hell act 4 if u want a chance at a really godly rare lance.
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i'd say this:

any exceptional rare that gives 150% - 200% enchanced damage is very good. (200% is max for rares)

100% - 150% is mediocre

any thing less than 100%, sell it or drop it!
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one of the few character/builds that do NOT need godly rares (at least until near hell act 4), is a mace ww barb using CB from goblin toe and BS (bone snap, unique mace type with CB) and possibly rattle cage if u dont mind the flee.

but all oterh characters who do phys damage needs their weapon to have high damage to get the skill's enchanced damage bonus.

if u got skills/stats (stats: str or dex) that give 200% - up to 1200% u can see how having only a 100 - 150 damage weapon doesn't help much. but now take an at least 250+ damage weapon...big difference.

[TraderScope]

HegemonKhan, in what realm are you playing in, since I could have a MF amulet (free) for your Amazon..

[HegemonKhan]

west realm, SC, Ladder, classic (of course)

as for times i get on, very erratic and shifting

but if u interested here's my accounts:

HK_1
HK_2
HK_3

not too interested in mf amulet for a zon. i got a sorc and barb for mfing. but whatever, if u wanna meet sure, not many people on this site who are in west realm and softccore (SC).

[TraderScope]

I'm in Europe SC ladder :/

[krutonu]

Thanks again.

I actually just found another normal lance and i will try and hope to get a rather good lance by imbuing it. I will definetly check out the best lvl to imbue for good ED.

I do 1K dmg with WW, and i still have to invest points in WW and 20 in Mastery of Spears. I hope that with a good lance and more points, the dmg will go up to 4-5 K. (A really good lance :) )

Thanks you again for all the help.

[krutonu]

Ok so i've started looking for rare lances and it seems i got a bit lucky. First i found this really cool guy looking for lances as well, him being a similar build as mine. I ended up doing around 20 cs runs with this one guy, just looking for lances.

I imbued one (Thank you WarlockCC) that was almost the same as his, slightly better, in one game before. I ended up with a Grim Barb Lance with 73% ED and a 7% ML mod, as well as 2 other not so good mods. His was 72% ED, however no leech.

While looking for more lances, we stumbled upon a few not so good ones, however i found one with 63% ED, but with 75 durability. I ended up keeping it, just to see if that was rare. Only that one out of all was 75 durability. I use that when my main one breaks, or comes close really fast (thank you HegemonKhan).

I know these aren't very good, however at my level they are useful and the fact that i've started finding them means that at least i'm doing something right. Thanks for the help. :)

[HegemonKhan]

i presume u running nm cs?

since u are getting lance drops i'm pretty sure u can't be runing norm cs runs. and if u were doing hell cs runs, u'd (if lucky) be getting 160% + enchanced damage.

probably for now those lance are really good for u.

but jsut note that 73% is very far from the 200% max enchanced damage. so that 73% isn't that good to whats out there.

however in another thread we been discussing how soon u can (though extremely rare) get that perfect/max 200% enchanced damage on rares.

200% requires getting 2 mods (mercileus and kings, each CAN give 100%)

the mercilous can be found in nm as its a low level mod. but for kings...we've been discussing on it. it seems it can't drop until hell act 4 (and from hell both councils, but NOT hell meph). though some say u can get it from hell meph or hell andy..so there's still a bit uncertainty here...

i think mercilous and kings give ~80%-100% so if u wanna get 160%-200% u have to be in hell. but we don't know if u can get it from as soon as hell andy, hell meph, hell both councils, or hell act 4.

*if your wondering about "both councils" :

council=council members. they are unique monsters in act 3 travincal and doh3 (durance of hate 3=meph area). so these are the two (both) councils.
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* heres orphan's link for the mods:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=435372

*here's a link to the discussion we were having about when u can get kings mod:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=676084&page=2

also look at page 3 too and onward.
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read creon's post, it's probably the final say on the matter:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=676084&page=4

according to creon and lorg, u can only get the kings mod to spawn from hell both councils (but NOT from hell meph), and act 4, as long as the monsters are:

mlvl 78 = ilvl 78 = alvl 57 > alvl 56 kings = able to spawn kings mod on weapons

if (ilvl<(99-qlvl/2))
then {alvl=ilvl-qlvl/2}
else {alvl=2*ilvl-99}
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as for who can drop "lances" (item types) check out this wiki info about TC's and item generation:

http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Category:Item_Generation

[krutonu]

I am running nm cs, as i feel I'm not ready yet for hell.

Again you have enlightened many things for me. I was checking out the affixes section on the site and i saw that there were the Ferocious and Cruel mods available on magical items, however it did not click to me until now that those mods are only in expansion.

You are right, the lances i find now are very good for me, however they fade in comparison to the 150-200% ED weapons some people have.

I checked out Orphan's post, and it makes sense the mods i've been finding are not so good as the avg lvl for NM CS is 58. Should i move on to NM Cow Level, which is lvl 64, or should i stay in CS?

I also read the discussion about the affixes and when u can get them, which i found very useful. I've decided that at the right level, i will move on to hell, hopefully increasing my chances of finding rare items with good mods.

Creon's post made me realize that i can start imbueing for king's mod at lvl 75, as well as start looking for 160-200% ED in both councils and act 4.

Thanks so much again. I'll be back and I'll let you know when i get something good.

[HegemonKhan]

i myself am having a really hard time trying to mf in hell.

with the sorc, u need resists and/or FCR to not die, but than that means no (or less) mf gear. this makes it very difficult. (note that getting bo'ed helps tremendously, though still dangerous)

in taking into account what i just said above, late hell act 3 (trav=council and doh3=council and meph) and hell act 4 are very dangerous. if u haven't done meph quest yet and join games of a maker who already has meph quest done, you can (i think) use non-mf gear and kill meph for the quest drop which will give lots of good drop qualities despite not having mf because its a quest drop (i think). u could also do the same (i think) with the trav council as they are the completion for quest 5 just like meph is completion for quest 6. u can also do the same with hell diablo. but otherwise u are gonna need mf gear and that makes it much more difficult. also, hell meph (and hell andy, duh, so doing the 2nd glitch with him will net u tons of rares, but those rares can't get kings mod) can't spawn the kings mod anyways. so i'm stuck as how to mf godly rares. i guess u have to do some kinda balance between resists/FCR and mf gear. have enough resists/FCR gear so that u rarely die but also enough mf gear that u get decent number of rare drops for your runs.

* of course there's the otehr option of doing the hell cs/diablo runs and hope u snatch the rares before the others do if your playing with otehrs in a party for the run.

*maybe doing gambling and imbues is a better way to go if u have trouble with trying to get drops from monsters.

*though i find gambling a pain, having to look at all the items to see if they are exceptional....which rarely happens...and even made worse that u are looking for a certain exceptional too, argh!!

*imbueing is quite limited and time consuming and rarely do u get lucky with good mods anyways. some one mentioned it was roughly 1/10 imbues u get a decent one.
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if any experts out there, wanna give me good gear combos (resists/FCR+mf gear) for mfing in late hell act 3 and 4, please do so, i am need of help!

*full mf gear gets u killed. and no mf gear means no high quality drops.
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so whats a good gear balance (specific gear please) ??

what and how much resist+FCR gear?

what and how much mf gear ?
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note that all of the above in this post is about using a sorc to/for mf'ing.
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a barb "could be" a better mf'er than a sorc. he does get nat res (for the resists). though he has trouble killing in hell act 4. though u could maybe make him so that he's able to do trav council for king mod running for (damage godly rares). though a barb has his own issues,

*and it might be easier to make a sorc that can do trav council.

but doh 2-3 is too dangerous for a barb to do. act 4 the barb has a hard time killing, as some one mentioned, unless possible u do a high str with a huge damage weapon. cs isn't an option for a barb (unless u don't mind doing a really slow cs-mf run) cuz of IM. the barb can do flayer jungle really well, but no kings mod.

the one other GOOD option is a mf barb popper for river-cs, but u would need others to do the killing, and NO paladins or CE/summon necro's removing the corpses (especially the special monster corpses like seal bosses and the other random special monsters that are generated). than u got to pick up the pop before some one else does.

[TraderScope]

Having completed already two hell Meph Q's accidently (duh I'm a noob, no first drop for me before I make a new glitcher) I am now running both Meph and Andi, usually in games that have 4-8 people in them. I got around 150MF atm with a Gull dagger and I still am getting 4+ rare drops from Meph (with luck) and ofc more so from Andy.

My Meph tacs with my orber is to teleport on Meph's skin (ES on) and start spamming shocks, then proceeding with orb. I usually get by with 1 town visit inc. Meph+Andy, but I guess I got a pretty decent gear, all res (expect poison are 60-75 with my setup.)

[HegemonKhan]

well trying to do late hell act 3 and hell act 4, with full mf gear doesn't work to well:D

the no resists and no FCR gear really hurts u.

obviously, i need to give up on some mf gear and put on some resist and FCR gear. *laughs*

i have a decent orber, but i messed it up a bit (putting pts into static instead of warmth or firewall. the pts into static haven't really been that useful. having warmth for faster runs or firewall for killing cold immune special monsters or normal monsters would be much more helpful than the increased static range which i wish i didn't do) and baroned it, thinking that i could still use mf gear and do mf runs easily....maybe i still can with more balanced gear and less mf gear. full mf gear isn't possible for me.

unfortunately, i don't yet have gold skin or the str to wear it with my orber. the goldskin would probably be most useful armor, as i need those resists. i have a near pure vit orber, that is clvl 84 or 85 with 65 str and 51 dex for shard option. i didn't realize i would want/need goldskin or silks which require more str. i am planning/trying now on getting 100 str for the option of silks. but this won't occur until i clvl up to 92 grr... and gold skin not until clvl 87 or 89 grr...at least i still can get even the 100 str, but clvl 92 takes quite a while but it is reachible, at least. though i get bored fast with cs running for higher levels, but i wanna get at least one up thereeventually, so i can finally have a gambler that can get the +2 amulets :D

*of course, if anyone wanna give me godly rings with FCR, resists, and +str, i'd be soo happy. and for amulets: a +2, fcr, resists, +str *lol*

[krutonu]

Ok so everyone talks about a boss glitch. Does that happen when a char who has completed the quest makes a game and allows a char, who has not completed the quest, kill the boss for the "Virgin" drop?

HK u are completely right, my mf hell sorc has a hard time doing hell act 3 and 4 so i can't use that to find lances. However, my barb is growing nicely and is able to do nm cs runs easily now, only that random IM might endanger me, so i'm moving on to hell, hopefully finding some there.

Today i found a trading game in which one player had a 265 dmg lance. I had nothing to trade that he wanted, but i'm wondering what something like that is worth?

[WarlockCC]

256 damage lance ? maybe a 40-ish tarn, certainly less then a gull.
If it has 75 durability, it'd be worth a gull.
some leech would help the price up further to maybe add a 40-ish tarn for dual leech.

The lance itself is definately not very special, any sub 300 damage lance needs 75 durability to be worth anything. In Hell, you will find out why. Be sure to give your lancer some Goblins in Hell to level.

[HegemonKhan]

see the trade thread or the item evalueation (man i can't spell right now) thread (u can ask how much stuff is worth there) or look at the rare item showoff thread.
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there's TWO types of "glitching" :

1. quest drop glitch

do NOT complete the quest so u can keep killing the quest boss over and over for its quest drop (quest drops are like as if u had lots of mf on regardless of whether u do or not compared to normal drops. aka quest drops are much better quality than normal drops, independant of how much mf u got, and they "stack" too).

to do this u do NOT have the quest completed and u join games of a maker who already has the quest done so that u can't complete it. than U must kill the quest boss for the quest drop to drop. and since u cant complete the quest your safe to do over and over again as long as u make sure when u join a game that the quest is Unavailible so u or some one else doesn't complete it for u.

but this means u are stuck at that part in the game. to advance further u'd have to complete the quest and end getting quest drops.

2. the andarial glitch

complete andarial quest (any difficulty) and talk to only warriv (some say this doesn't matter, but to be safe only talk to him, jsut in case) and GO to act 2. THAN u leave the game. do NOT leave the game before u go to act 2!!!

now u are andarial glitched.

what does this mean u ask?

every time now that u kill andarial of that difficulty u get glitched drops, but there's one trick to it that produces 2 types of HIGH quality drops:

*if u have *NO* mf on your character, andarial WILL drop nearly ALL RARES (number of drops can be increased with number of player in game, for those who don't know)

*if u have (high) mf on your character, andarial WILL drop nearly ALL UNIQUES (number of drops can be increased with number of player in game, for those who don't know).

*this is where its at for finding sojs!!!*

glitched hell andy with as much mf as u can=best way to "farm" sojs

nm andy can NOT drop sojs. andy gives more jewelry (rings, amulets) type drops than any other monster in game. so that makes it hell andy for sojs in classic.
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*u can NOT have both glitches working on andarial. its one or the other. as the quest glitch requires u NOT to complete the quest and the andarial glitch REQUIRES u to complete the quest.

*most people would complete andarial quest (so they can go to meph or diablo) and just use the andarial glitch for drops, so that they can also do meph or diablo in the same game.
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unfortunately, i now know, that hell andy and hell meph can NOT get the kings mod. which i've already mentioned. TOO BAD for all of us!!!

[TraderScope]

unfortunately, i now know, that hell andy and hell meph can NOT get the kings mod. which i've already mentioned. TOO BAD for all of us!!!

What's your information source on this? To my knowledge Hell Mephisto CAN drop anything but +2 skill amulets :scratchchin:

[HegemonKhan]

here traderscope:

i presume u running nm cs?

since u are getting lance drops i'm pretty sure u can't be runing norm cs runs. and if u were doing hell cs runs, u'd (if lucky) be getting 160% + enchanced damage.

probably for now those lance are really good for u.

but jsut note that 73% is very far from the 200% max enchanced damage. so that 73% isn't that good to whats out there.

however in another thread we been discussing how soon u can (though extremely rare) get that perfect/max 200% enchanced damage on rares.

200% requires getting 2 mods (mercileus and kings, each CAN give 100%)

the mercilous can be found in nm as its a low level mod. but for kings...we've been discussing on it. it seems it can't drop until hell act 4 (and from hell both councils, but NOT hell meph). though some say u can get it from hell meph or hell andy..so there's still a bit uncertainty here...

i think mercilous and kings give ~80%-100% so if u wanna get 160%-200% u have to be in hell. but we don't know if u can get it from as soon as hell andy, hell meph, hell both councils, or hell act 4.

*if your wondering about "both councils" :

council=council members. they are unique monsters in act 3 travincal and doh3 (durance of hate 3=meph area). so these are the two (both) councils.
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* heres orphan's link for the mods:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=435372

*here's a link to the discussion we were having about when u can get kings mod:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=676084&page=2

also look at page 3 too and onward.
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read creon's post, it's probably the final say on the matter:

http://diablo.incgamers.com/forums/showthread.php?t=676084&page=4

according to creon and lorg, u can only get the kings mod to spawn from hell both councils (but NOT from hell meph), and act 4, as long as the monsters are:

mlvl 78 = ilvl 78 = alvl 57 > alvl 56 kings = able to spawn kings mod on weapons

if (ilvl<(99-qlvl/2))
then {alvl=ilvl-qlvl/2}
else {alvl=2*ilvl-99}
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
as for who can drop "lances" (item types) check out this wiki info about TC's and item generation:

http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Category:Item_Generation

[Akse]

Friend traded 304 lance (25 dura only) for gull in hc europe ladder :) Lances are cheap nowadays, no one wants to use one at least with only 25 dura.
In ladder 1 I bought 277 75 dura lance with goldskin hc also.

I've had so bad luck with weapons ever since LOD came. They changed the affix suffix level requirements so basically good weapons only drop act3-act4 probably only act4 river of flame or cs has best potential to drop the good stuff. Well anyways even when I do a lot of River of flame doesn't mean you get good weapons :) Few days ago I did some river and when I entered wp I clicked the hung soldier and it dropped rare martel, well I killed a few packs of mobs another rare martel! I was like OMG OMG can I get an upgrade for my weapon... no 101 dmg +1 pala skill and 17x dmg.. ffs!

Anyways the weapon I use now is 138% -30% req martel. 238 dmg which is decent, it dropped from Hell andariel. So if you want easy chance to get decent weapon I guess hell anda could be one option. I suppose it can give up to 150%, which would be Lord's merciless or something? 150% ed lance would be around 260-280?

[HegemonKhan]

ya u can still get good items from hell andy just not the 160% + enchanced damage. but around 150% too still isnt bad, espeically if u got other nice mods on it.

and doing hell councils and act 4 doesn't mean (as u pointed out) u will get 160% + it jsut means u CAN get 160% +. u probably will rarely get mercilous and kings mod. more likely most of the time you'll get the lower enchanced damage mods.

remember for mods u can always spawn the lower mods. this makes getting the top/best/most desired mods very rare even if u are at and fighting monsters than can drop them.

its kinda like trying to gamble the +2 amulet. at clvl 87-88? u CAN get +2 spawned on amulets but its very rare. but in case of gambling, as your clvl goes higher th chances increase. but the closer u are to the min of clvl 87-88 its very unlikely u'll get the +2 mod since ANY of the lower mods can be choosen as well as the +2 mod on amulets.

so by killing hell diablo (mlvl 90 and highest mlvl in game) u probably also have a much better chance of getting mercilous and kings spawning than lets say the hell council in trav (or doh3) which have a much less mlvl.
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quick question about the armors:

1. am i correct in that:

both magical and rare armor can get max of 100% enchanced def ?

in terms of def, magical and rare are the same, but of course rares can get 6 mods where magical only 2 so rares are beter overal, jsut not in enchanced def ?

2. when (what area or monster) can the heavenly (i think..this is the name for the 80?-100% enchanced def mod) mod first spawn ?

[TraderScope]

Hege, hmm I took part in some of these discussion about the affixes, but I thought we came to the conclusion that only Hell Andariel couldn't drop items that spawn with the King's mod..but that Meph actually could (he's lvl in classic is higher than the affix lvl of the King's.)

[HegemonKhan]

i think he can't according to creon and lorg. creon's post showed it. and now i'm sure meph can NOT drop king's. and lorg also says meph can't.

i'll go with those two, as i don't have a clue myself.

[Akse]

The biggest problem of finding good weapon is not the character level :) I think the bigger problem is getting the mods to the right weapon.. how many **** normal weapons have you found with 180%+ ed? I can count dozens and never since LOD have I found an exceptional top end weapon with such stats.

IIRC before LOD you got a lot more exceptional stuff in hell.. did you even get any normal items there back then? Can't remember now it's so long time. Well anyways I can't really remember finding short swords in hell act4 back then.