MF Guide for 1.10/1.11

[Billybgame]

Hmm. For some reason, I'm still not grasping it. I thought, even on Arreat Summit's site, the word was kill faster, get better drops. Hrus, it sounds like you're saying it both ways. It does and it doesn't?

If a character is a slow, plodding killer, like a Concentrate Barb vs a Frozen Orb Sorc in a non cold immune area, and both kill all monsters eventually, then if their MF is the same, and they're both on the same p(X), then their drops should be equivalent, throwing the factor of luck out?

At the risk of being the master of the obvious, here's that quote from Arreat's:

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.
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.
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.

So, what I've always wondered is what is this elusive "general amount of time"?

[Hrus]

@billybgame: The powerful coldsorc clears the area 2 times faster than a Concentrator. With the same Player settings and the same MF, she gets 2 times more unique and set drops in the same time, because she is able to clear the area twice, while barb will clear it only once.

So after a 2 hours of intensive MFing in the same area:
number of white drops: sorc 2x more than barb
blue drops: sorc 2x more than barb
rare drops: sorc 2x more than barb
set drops: sorc 2x more than barb
unique drops: sorc 2x more than barb
runes: sorc 2x more than barb

That's why faster character is better. In the tourneys where number of runs is limited (like SPUMF or Pindlethon) - only MF matters, because your time is not limited, but in the real life, you need to get the most uniques per time invested. And that is the elusive amount of time: the time you spend with the game.

[Jesterrm]

Holy Crikies that's a lot of good info, well done indeed!

[Billybgame]

@billybgame: The powerful coldsorc clears the area 2 times faster than a Concentrator. With the same Player settings and the same MF, she gets 2 times more unique and set drops in the same time, because she is able to clear the area twice, while barb will clear it only once.

So after a 2 hours of intensive MFing in the same area:
number of white drops: sorc 2x more than barb
blue drops: sorc 2x more than barb
rare drops: sorc 2x more than barb
set drops: sorc 2x more than barb
unique drops: sorc 2x more than barb
runes: sorc 2x more than barb

That's why faster character is better. In the tourneys where number of runs is limited (like SPUMF or Pindlethon) - only MF matters, because your time is not limited, but in the real life, you need to get the most uniques per time invested. And that is the elusive amount of time: the time you spend with the game.

Ok, now that makes sense, logically speaking. If you only can play for two hours, and kill twice as many monsters, naturally, you have twice the chance.

But, Blizz's Arreat statement makes it sound like something more. But, I know they have had moments of misinformation.

[Aerwynd]

Hrus --> you are one CRAZY MFer :P

Mods --> Plz don't ban me

Hrus --> Great job with the MF thing... Quite interesting...

When searching for something specific, rather than try and figure out the ATMA item calc... I will come here and take my chances on figuring out which monster to attack

Great job and keep up the UBER MFing

Aerwynd

[Frosty_The_Snowman]

Very nice guide, I've learned some interesting things !

Some feedback :

- In the MF equipment section, you should mention HeadHunter's Glory as a very nice alternative (3*Ist = 75% MF).

- What are those stashes "around the fire in LK" ? LK = Lower Kurast ? It's not in the glossary. And where are those fires ?

- You should mention Andy's Drop Quest permanent bug.

That's all I could see ! Congratulations again !

- Frosty

[Hrus]

Thank you for feedback. If there will be another version I will try to mention these things.
I wrote something about Andariel's bug in MF targets chapter, Andariel section, though at the time I wrote the guide, I wasn't sure if this bug was present on BNET too.

[Slothman]

An amazing and helpful guide Hrus!
Thanks for the time you have put in to pass on such a wealth of knowledge that relates to one of the main addictions of the game - allowing new (and old) players to gain a better understanding of whats actually going on in MF'ing :smiley:

[bill_n_opus]

Very nice Hrus.

Oh, can I mention that a decent Poisonmancer can decimate the Pits and other areas dedicated for MF'ing with a good amount of MF ... not so good for Pindle however.

Safety, incredible killing power with even a not-that-hard-to-find Trang's Set (well, it's not super hard anyways) plus you have CE as backup and your minions and merc to add the might aura plus curses. Add a Death's Web and it's insane. Add a BRAMBLE and I can't imagine how powerful it would be.

Anyways, just a thought.

[Hrus]

Very nice Hrus.

Oh, can I mention that a decent Poisonmancer can decimate the Pits and other areas dedicated for MF'ing with a good amount of MF ... not so good for Pindle however.

Safety, incredible killing power with even a not-that-hard-to-find Trang's Set (well, it's not super hard anyways) plus you have CE as backup and your minions and merc to add the might aura plus curses. Add a Death's Web and it's insane. Add a BRAMBLE and I can't imagine how powerful it would be.

Anyways, just a thought.

How much MF he can wear? My thoughts - not as much... Anyway I did write in build section that I can't list all the viable builds and I never build a venomancer, so I have no experience with them. Maybe I should try to build one.