Hi guys, newcomer to Diablo 2 here.

[Veristek]

I got to level 67 off killing Mephisto over and over, plus doing dozens of runs through Act 4's River of Flame. I like that level because it has the nice animated rolling lava graphics and not too many branches to backtrack. Nice n' narrow without being too narrow. I noticed the blue golem guys in there drop a lot of gear, so I might go back there to try for that elusive Grim Scythe for the merc. I took a quick look at the D2 Wiki for uniques, and it seems like there's roughly 100 - 120 unique items, so I'm like 1/5 the way there already. Heh.

Although its nice to have a game with good long term goals that can't be beat in two or three weeks and move on. Thats the problem with a lot of games lately- the lack of replayability and customability. That's why I've been enjoying D2- can't believe I've been playing it for over a month now and am only halfway through the actual game (Act 1 normal through Act 5 hell). Good game design. Makes me wonder what D3 is gonna be like.

[pharphis]

Hmm.. I'm pretty srue there are many more unique items than that. Closer to 300-400 or something?

[hasuprotoss]

If my ability to read Flavie is any indication, I got counted 378 uniques. That's a lot of uniques o.O! I guess I should actually start working on a grail... :X

Edit: Or I could've just scrolled to the bottom and read it there...

[Veristek]

378 uniques? Dammit... I've killed Mephisto about 20 more times and haven't seen any new uniques or sets. Did I milk him dry of them, or is it just a really bad luck streak?

[pharphis]

bad luck. how much mf do you have? what player settings? I'm assuming you can do p7 at a decent enough speed, since you're a high level. If they're taking too long you can drop down to p5, which is only slight worse drop odds.

[FredOfErik]

378 uniques? Dammit... I've killed Mephisto about 20 more times and haven't seen any new uniques or sets. Did I milk him dry of them, or is it just a really bad luck streak?

There is also a lot of gear that NM meph can't drop at all. Some of the rarest uniques like Tyrael's Might, Mang Song's Lesson, etc, etc, can only be dropped in very few areas of the game (lvl 85 areas). This has to do with TC classes, which is a part of the item generation mechanics. I'm no expert on the subject and will leave further explanation to someone who is

the point being: there are tons of people on these forums that have done 10.000+ (and probably 50.000+ or 100.000+) runs in different hell areas without ever completing the grail (finding all the items)..

[Veristek]

I'm doing p1 runs because I *hate* these Blood Lords. These guys that spam walls of fire and meteors all over the place, plus run around like crazy so my fireballs miss them constantly. In fact, I think they're more annoying than the council guys cuz I can kill the council guys in like 3 - 4 fireballs, and only a few spawn on Mephisto's level. However, there's always like 5+ Blood Lords grouped together, and usually 2 - 3 groups on the way to Mephisto. One by the stairs, one by the blood pool and portal, and one in the north area that we go through from the blood pool and Mephisto himself. Ugh!

Does increasing /playerX level increase the odds of sets / uniques dropping? My magic find fluctates between 60% - 100%, depending on whether my merc kills Mephisto or not. I read about that MF trick using mercs, their MF adds both theirs and yours but only if they kill stuff. If I kill stuff, only my MF applies and merc's MF is ignored. Sometimes I kill Mephisto, and sometimes my merc gets in the last blow. I can't tell most of the time cuz I just throw static field a few times then spam blizzard on Mephisto.

[jiansonz]

Does increasing /playerX level increase the odds of sets / uniques dropping?

The odds per dropped item does not increase, but more items will drop since the 'risk' of no-drops goes down with players settings.

Here are the effects:
- Random bosses and SuperUniques: No effect. They always drop 1-2 magical+ items (or misc.good items like runes and gems) and 4 potions.
- Act bosses: small* effect. They often drop their full 6 items even at /p1, but increasing it to /p3 almost removes the no-drops altogether.
- Regular monsters: large effect. At /p1, the risk of no-drop is >50%. At /p7, a large majority of monsters will drop items.
- Chests and most other containers: very large effect. Locked chests can drop up to 8 items.
- Sparkly- and Super Chests: Huge effect.

(* but since act bosses are very good at dropping set/unique items, any improvement on the number of dropped items will benefit the number of S/U items quite a bit)

[Veristek]

I just got TWO of the same unique battleaxe, "The Chieftain". One is normal and the second one is ethereal. Mephisto dropped the normal Chieftain unique and a council guy dropped the ethereal one I thought you could only get 1 unique of a specific item per character?

[Fyourics]

Only one type of unique per game, I think. There's no special per character limit.