Bringing up LK superchests once again :P

[EasyG]

First of all sorry for bringing LK chests again, there are so many topics about them and they allways bored me and now Im making one myself :P.
I allways disliked LK superchests, since it seemed a bit cheesy to me and I would prefer to drop my runes from champions using the regular item generation. However, when you get the itch of willing to create a runeword, then it is hard to deny LK. As I understand, there are 65k various drops for the superchests, a handfull of them containing a HR, making the odds for a specific drop about 1/11000 runs.

I started searching the internet a bit more and I heard in 2 topics ppl saying something about a timeseed. Something with time related would generate which drop you get from the chests, but no more info then that. I wondered what kind of time. miliseconds/seconds/minutes/date? Time since game started, time of the day, time of the year?
So I started to google more and especially searched for the item generation guru: jarulf.

Finally I found my answer at this page:
https://groups.google.com/forum/?fro...lo/NSqDNzI1m8U

Sadly it is from 2001, so odds are that item generation has changed since then, but what he writes is this:

>>Time is always used to get some inital seed (there is not much other
>>(simple) ways on a computer to do it.
>
>But is that seed determined once per game, or once per roll of the
>virtual dice?
once per game of course, otherwise the result would not be random :)
random numbers in computers usually rely on a specific formula that is
so constructed that given an initial seed (no mater what the value of
the seed is), it will go through all possible values of the seed once
and only once and the distribution of those values will be even, that
is, a formula that simply adds one will go though all values but will
not have a very well distribution. To avoid always geting the same
sequence of random numbers, one need to make the initial seed

different from game to game, thus using the time is a good thing.

Diablo uses the number of seconds since january 1 1980 (or perhaps
1970, never can remember) and then add a specific number to that, that
will be the initial seed.

In other words: Maybe the game would use the same "timeseed" for LK superchests each 65536 seconds (18 hours. 12 minutes and 16 seconds) to generate your LK chest drops.
I hardly doubt it will work, but if you ever drop a BER from a superchest, you might want to write down the exact time you started that game and try to make a game with similar timeseed every 18 hours and 12 minutes and 16 seconds , getting the same drops from the same chests.

[skiffcz]

You dont have to wait, just set your clock to desired value, D2 surely uses local clock. You then have to have the same map seed (np in single player) and take exactly the same actions to get the rune (doable, thats how racking works).

If this was true though, it may be seen as "manipulating seed" and thus effectively cheating. Interesting idea though

[EasyG]

Yeah, I just realise, this theorycrafting goes to far and IF (which I hardly doubt) this would indeed be true and actually work then that wouldnt be cool, or even very uncool. Maybe better if admin just deletes this topic.

And about the runes, After seeing Fabians HR farm excel sheets, I will likely try my luck at cows, since I dont rly like barbarians and without horking /p3 hell cows seem best option to farm runes. Conveniently I allrdy have a decent trapsin which can do the job perfectly.

[Kitteh]

Yeah, I just realise, this theorycrafting goes to far and IF (which I hardly doubt) this would indeed be true and actually work then that wouldnt be cool, or even very uncool. Maybe better if admin just deletes this topic.

And about the runes, After seeing Fabians HR farm excel sheets, I will likely try my luck at cows, since I dont rly like barbarians and without horking /p3 hell cows seem best option to farm runes. Conveniently I allrdy have a decent trapsin which can do the job perfectly.

Whilst it would be frowned upon to actually do it, these things get us buzzing around here. Something for us to work out!

[kanonfutter]

First of all, the standard procedure is using the full value of the clock for determining the seed. I cannot recall the precision, but it turns into a matter of miliseconds. And a game does not start up at same speed every time, it is dependent on whatever the rest of the system is doing. So I am pretty convinced that you cannot use this to your advantage. Further, someone thought of this 11 years ago. If it had worked, we would be abusing the **** out of it now.

[One nOOb to rule them all]

I am sure there is some way to freeze the clock to a desired value. Is it worth it? Depends on the user I guess, I wouldn't do it even if it meant a ber rune every 10 minutes.

I have doubts that there is even a time seed as it is called anyways. Just because someone posts it on the internet doesn't make it truth.

[EasyG]

Just because someone posts it on the internet doesn't make it truth.

Jarulf isnt just someone:
http://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Jarulf

he made a 207 page long diablo 1 guide

[One nOOb to rule them all]

Well I stand corrected I guess.

[felixbavaria]

Just to explain a little bit about "randomness":

The most common way to generate "random" numbers is to use the number of seconds since Jan 1, 1970 00:00 UTC (the "Unix epoch") as a "seed" x. Every random number x' is then calculated by x' = ax + b mod c where a, b, and c are usually large prime numbers, x is the last random number (or the seed, if the first random number is generated), and mod is the modulo operator (the rest that remains after integer division, e.g., 12 mod 5 = 2). It is likely that Diablo II uses a scheme like that, because almost any C/C++ programme does. Since random seeds are usually 32 bit integers (Diablo is a 32-bit executable even on a 64 bit machine), there are 2^32 = approx. 4 billion different random seeds. So, if you start the game at time t, see a Ber drop, then start the game again at time t' = t + 2^32 seconds and repeat exactly the same actions as you did ~ 60 years before, you are sure to get another one. And, obviously, re-setting your clock to time t would also work. ;-)

If the seed was a 16 bit integer, there would be 2^16 = 65536 different random seeds.

BTW, it seems likely to me that Diablo uses a 16-bit random number arithmetic for generating the superchest drops, since there are said to be 65536 possible drops (don't know how people confirmed that).

Still, I have no idea about the Diablo game mechanics and if the designers did something to prevent the above named exploit.

[pharphis]

This is very interesting and now I know what a modulo operator is. I love maths!
Even if it came down to a millisecond thing, it would kind of be like reducing your chances to 1:3k instead of 1:11k for the specific drop. that is assuming you can start the game within 3 seconds of each other, given you knew approximately when the game should start at. (1/3000 milliseconds are correct, is what I mean). Totally made up numbers, of course, but not too off from the truth? As you perfect your timing (lol) you could reduce it to 1:1000, maybe. Is that worth spending more time to work towards it? Probably not. LK runs can be done very fast, so even assuming you can boost it that much I would be surprised if it ever paid off well, but I haven't really thoguht about how long it would take to reset the time and make a new game.

I do still find this very interesting, though.