Actually, this is what a real guide should be. Almost all the "guides" on this forum are more or less just character skill point distrobutions and equipment suggestions.

shameless bump because I can.

Hi, I have some questions about drops.

What is Act 1 (H) H2H B? (H2H is?)


What does TC has group=7 and level=66 mean?


Why is the TC is upgraded to "Act 5 (H) H2H C" TC because Mlvl=85? What exactly are TCs :S Talking about TC87 (with numbers) and then like "Act 5 (H) H2H C" is confusing.


Is there TC 90?


"ProbSum=21+16+21+2=60.
NoDrop=100.
N=4.
NewNoDrop=int( 60/(1/((100/(100+60))^4)-1) )=11."
What is N, what does that expression mean?


What does Picks=1, NoDrop=0 mean?

Well, someone who took the time to read all of it and then attempting to make sense of it all. Bravo, bravo. Let me see if I can have it make sense to you.

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#1 Broken down "Act 1 (H) H2H B" roughly translates to:
Act 1 = the current act you are killing in
(H) = Difficulty setting of the current game, (N) normal (M) nightmare (H) hell
H2H = Hand 2 Hand or weapon TCs. This really is not used much since the TCs used to be seperated between armo ( armor ) and weap ( weapons ). Now all the armors and weapons are grouped together in unified TCs but the drop mechanics were not changed. If a critter is going to select an item to drop it needs to find what TC it can drop from. The H2H used to mean to pick a weapon. Now the game just selects a TC.
B = Bad? Not sure if this is where it is choosing the 3 different types of drops. G = good and this is where you want the selection to come from. However there is nothing you can do to force the game to choose the "good" category. Bad would be the crap like:
pots
potions
arrows
bolts

#2 TC has group 7 means that a normal Flayer in "the Pits" in normal difficulty in act 1 has a TC drop of TC7. The level=66 refers to the mlvl of a normal flayer in hell dificulty. HOWEVER, because the flayer is in "the Pits" and this area is alvl85, the normal flayer gets a monster upgrade to mlvl85. Due to this upgrade, the flayer will not drop from TC7 but TC84 with a very very slim chance to upgrade that TC to the next one.

#3a The TC is upgraded due to the way the game determines what the mlvl is for the critter you killed. Sticking with the same normal flayer found in the pits in hell we do this:

Monster dies
game drop sequince begins
Game asks "what is the monster's level? (mlvl)"
The game sets up a series of if..then.. statements like:
If mlvl>alvl then mlvl=mlvl
If mlvl<alvl then mlvl=alvl
This process just upgraded the mlvl of the critter from mlvl66 to mlvl85
Once the mlvl is known, the TC is now chosen. A normal flayer has TC=7 but since this is hell, it is redefined to TC66
Game asks "what TC should I start to choose from?"
More if..then.. statements
If mlvl>alvl then used predetermined TC in monstats.txt
If mlvl<=alvl then TC=mlvl ( or there abouts )
In our case, since the mlvl is 85, TC84 will be the starting point.

#3b TC=Treasure Class. These are the subdivisions of how base items are selected for dropping. There are many base items per TC. There are many TCs per drop choice (Act 5 (H) H2H C). TCs start at TC3 and go up by 3. In the old patches the highest was Armo90 and Weap90. These contained the very rare, but awesome, uniques and were rather dificult to obtain. In patch 1.11 Armo90 and Weap90 were consolodated into Armo87 and Weap87. After this consolodation, these items then formed the TC87. The list of what is in what treasure class can be found here -> http://forums.d2jsp.org/index.php?showtopic=6920419&view=findpost&p=56085864

#4 Back in 1.10 and prior there was a TC90. However since there is not a monster with a mlvl high enough to achieve this TC, the consolodation as explained above was performed. Back in the day, Pindle was mlvl90 and was an easily obtainable target for attempting to get these ultra rare uniques. In 1.11 blizzard performed this merge and lowered Pindle's mlvl to 86 preventing him from dropping some of these items. This is known as the "nerfing" of Pindle.

#5 You are refering to this part of the guide, I am going to repost it here for others to see:


The items are :

* NoDrop (100); This is the chance that the fallen critter will drop nothing at all
* gld (21); This is the cance that the fallen critter will drop a pile of gold
* Act 5 (H) Equip C (16); This is the chance that the fallen critter will drop from this selected TC with the probability to lower the starting TC at a high rate
* Act 1 (H) Junk (21); This is the chance that the fallen critter will drop junk such as bolts, arrows, potions, pots
* Act 5 (H) Good (2). This is the chance that the fallen critter will drop from this selected TC with the probability to lower the starting TC at a high rate. This is where we want to be anyway since this is where TC87 items reside.

ProbSum=21(from the gold above)+16(from the Act 5 (H) Equip C above)+21(from theAct 1 (H) Junk (21) above) +2(from the Act 5 (H) Good (2) above)=60.
NoDrop=100.(from the NoDrop (100) above)
N=4.(number of partied players near the kill. This was set when we said this above - "Say you kill non-boss Devilkin in The Pit level 1 in Hell in /players8 mode (or in the full game in Battle.net)."
NewNoDrop=int( 60/(1/((100/(100+60))^4)-1) )=11. (this expression is recalculating the chance the monster has at a "nodrop". We are redefining it since we upgraded the monster's mlvl.)

#6 Picks=1 means that the critter can drop only 1 item, OR the critter can only run through the drop sequince one time. Act bosses get the Picks=7 set and there are some other superuniqes that have a special drop sequince setup so that their Picks=6. A normal superunique has the Picks=2 set. The special superuniques are;
Countess
Summoner
Nithalwhatshisname
Nodrop=0 means that there is no chance that this critter is going to not drop you something. This is typically set for random uniques, champion packs, and superuniques. This is not set (Nodrop=0) for act bosses. There is always that ever slim chance that when you kill Andy, Duriel, Mephy, Diablo, or Baal that they will drop you nothing at all. Well except for Duirel. It is set in Duriels drop sequince to drop you a scroll of town portal as in the older versions of the game, there was no way out of that chamber.

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I hope that this helped you understand what is actually happening in these sequinces. I want to thank you for taking the time to read through this guide and try to make sense of it. I also want to thank you for giving me an excuse to exercise my brain and try and remember what all that crap means. I am sure I got something wrong up there, but the basic meaning behind what is happening is there. Any follow-up questions can be posted here.

This post was edited by The_Morpheus on Dec 5 2007 06:29pm

Nice one.

The only thing I would point out is that the TC changes were made in 1.09->1.10, not 1.10-1.11.

It's been like that since 2003/4 whenever it was they introduced 1.10 full patch. Not sure if it was fully changed in the trial patch they had.

It happened that long ago? where have I been?

Wnjoyed reading your guide thank you for sharing I will certainly be making one.

I thought B was just a label since you said Act 1 (H) H2H B" TC is upgraded to Act 5 (H) H2H C" TC.



But you wrote "In TreasureClassEx.txt file "Act 1 (H) H2H B" TC has group=7 and level=66.", so you said that a hell TC has group 7 which is normal difficulty?



For Good and Equip C you wrote the same thing, 'This is the chance that the fallen critter will drop from this selected TC with the probability to lower the starting TC at a high rate'. Also I dont understand what is meant by "probability to lower the starting TC at a high rate".

Theres other stuff I dont understand but its too complicated and tiring to think about.