This ACTUALLY TRUELY works to get better drops!

Ok, here is the story behind how my friend and I found this out (mostly him)<If you don't want to read, scroll to the bottom with the technique/answer>

I started to use D2JSP while he was using MephBOT.
After a while of playing, I found a SS, some raven frosts, some WT, some chance guards and lots of 7mfsc.
Then I realized I was getting owned by Pindle and his minions (I was level 78).
So I decided to buy myself a Mercenary to take the hits for me.
At about this time, my friend got D2JSP and he was running it.
He found lots of good stuff (Wamp Gaze, Shafts, etc)
Then he realized he TOO was getting owned by Pindle and minions.
He decided to buy a Mercenary as I had.
We both gave them insane stuff so they too would not die.
Then the downfall hit us; 2 weeks of finding jack-shit.
So my friend got an idea, "Every since I've had my merc, I have found nothing but SHIT"
That night I went home and secretley took off my merc (without telling my friend)
That night, I found my second SS and a Buriza.
I IMEDIATELY realized it WAS the MERC!

Anyway, the solution is:
Get rid of your merc if you have one.

Other TIPS:
Lower/Increase your MF to the mid 100's (like 150, 450, 98423650 <Wasn't mentioned in the story, but it also helps>)
Don't Kill zombies (faster/more runs)
Don't chicken (except for health/mana)

This has no logical explanation except:
Me: (over 2 days) 2 Tals armor, 2 WF, 2 HC (Harlequin's Crest), 3 Shafts
My Friend: (Over 3 days) Valor, 2 Baranars, GF, Vamp Gaze

So, try it out I guess, make sure you have lots of Resistances (maras helps)

ahh..I see...

This post was edited by uniquecollector on Feb 15 2003 10:59pm

mercs have nothing to do with it. I've heard lots of stories about how mercs screw up mf or valk's screw up mf or how grizz screws up mf and i think its all a big fat stinky pile of bs. its simply luck. u toss a coin 100 times and get all heads. then suddenly u realize that at the time u had only one sock on. conclusion: wearing only one sock makes u toss 100 coins all heads. right? hehe. try running your bot with the merc for say a month. and then without a merc for a month. dont base your conclusions on one-time experiences.

This is just a response to the question of whether u could have 1200 mf and still do fast runs, my respose is this I have exactly 1,000 mf (/w merc stall,kill) and I average 21 sec runs i'd kinda like to bump that down a touch but , Y bother for the 3 or 4 seconds per run. So I could ist my mercs Wf and add a couple things to get 1,200 mf and not damage my game speed by more than a couple seconds.

If you can lower your mf, and speed up your run by say 5 seconds, then every 3 games you would run, now you run 4.

If you were running 20 sec runs, and went to 15 seconds, then over 20,000 runs, you would do 5,300 more runs - thats alot of runs.

When you figure in that more MF = diminishing returns, More runs = incremental returns. (IE 2x the runs, 2x the stuff, 10x the runs, 10x the stuff) So time always gives a return in proportion to what you put into it (or dont in this case)

You also have to consider that you can only get a unique when that item is going to be dropped, say a Hydra Bow, that is when MF kicks in... the more chances you get at that Hydra Bow the better.

Odds of getting WF with No MF: 99342:1
Odds of getting WF with 450 : 28795:1
Odds of getting WF with 1100 : 24836:1

So, if you go from 450 mf, to 1100 mf (650 more MF) you have a 16% extra chance to find WF (for 250% increase in MF)

20 second runs, 1100 MF, you will find a WF in about 6 days (not counting game creation time, chickens, deaths, ect)

15 second runs, 450 MF, you will find a WF in about 5 days (again, not counting failures ect, though this build will be stronger due to less MF equipment, and more uber equipment generally and die less, but Im giving them both a 100% sucess rate here)

So having a 25% faster run time vs 2.5x the amount of mf, allows you to find WF about 17% faster, with LESS MF (1 day)

This is a great example of why MORE MF AND FEWER RUNS DO NOT PAY OFF!!! Diminishing returns hit you in the ass.

People never do any sort of statistical analyisis, and just assume that more mf is better, but dont realize that time is a bigger factor than MF after a certain point.

Anyone spouting supersitious nonsense about having a merc meaning you wont find anything, or having a certain amount of mf (149.23% mf is leet I swear) is just totally ignorant. Much research has been done on MF, both from players, and direct info from bliz. I laugh at anyone that belives something from someone who doesnt even know what they are talking about. Hell none of this info is mine - its just information that I have put together from other sources to illustrate my point from a factual basis.

Just because you flip a coin and it can only come out 2 ways, heads or tails, doesnt mean that in 1000 filps you will ever get tails. Its totally possible to get heads 1000 times.

This is why its called PROBABILITY and NOT CERTANTY.

The bottom line is even if your MF char runs with the same stability at 1100 MF as you would at 450mf, you are doing it alot slower, and the MF isnt doing as much for you - and you are actually finding less uniques over a period of time. (Most are not worried about set items - sets and rares do not have as large a diminishing returns with MF, but again, who is looking for set stuff generally?)

Some people are just superstitious fools, and take as fact any coincidence they see.

It would be like scratching your ass and flipping heads 10 times in a row. Conclusion? Scratching your ass makes the coin turn up heads. Sounds stupid doesnt it? You bet.


Here is the site I used to get the chance of pindle to drop WF: clicky

EDIT:

PS all this false crap about MF ect is the same way the Cow King mess got started. Go into a game, and announce that you are going to kill the king while in the party and see how fast everyone leaves the game - Ignore the fact that you have killed the king before, and your killing it will in no way effect anyone elses ability to make the cow portal. People take any coincidence as fact, and then even when proven wrong, wont admit it. With the way things work Rumor is taken as fact far far to often, and then it spreads, and the more it spreads the harder it is to counter.

This post was edited by Gshock on Feb 13 2003 10:29pm

Well, shoot down my theory as much as you want.
But I belive it helps...
Gained about 7 levels, now i am almost to a clean hundred(ish) MF and have been finding nothing.
But still find more than with my merc out...

Just give it a try for like 1 night, then make your decision...

Not everything needs to make sense on B.Net

1 night isnt enough to make any kind of statistical study. If you are makeing judgements off of one night, no wonder why you are so superstitious.

There is no superstition thing which can help in D2, only pure *luck*.

Make the test for 100,000 runs and you will see it average out correctly with and without.

Thats all Im trying to say. The superstition / rumor only grows worse as more people read incorrect information and pass it around as true without a doubt. I have botted with, and without a merc, and there was never any noticable difference in drops, nor would I expect there to be one. Here are some interesting quotes from www.diabloii.net and their MF info

QUOTE

How much Magic Find do I need? There is no answer to this, but the more you have the better.  Noticeably better results start around 80-100%, you'll really start to like it by 200-300%.  By 500% or more virtually everything that drops is magical. Since v1.09 introduced diminishing returns, it's not especially useful to get higher than 350% or so, in terms of finding more Uniques and Sets, but the higher the better for normal play.

QUOTE

I've heard 149% is better than 150%? - Not any more.  After v1.08 the find item values are smoothed out to be much more uniform.  Previously to this there was a rounding issue, and up to 149 was mostly a steady increase, but at 150% you suddenly would never find any normal items (just magical) and had a slightly lower chance to find Exceptional Rares.  This persisted until 190% or more, when your chance for Exceptional Rares climbed higher than it was at 149%.

(you can see here that this was a glitch that was fixed, and is no longer true)

QUOTE

Here are a few of the most common, "My friend's roommate swears this works!" superstitions.  None of these are true!

QUOTE

(Some players say you should only MF when there are over X number of users or X number of games, while others say you should only MF when there are under X number, etc.  Everyone has their own magic high/low numbers.  No.

QUOTE

Some swear MF'ing is better in the evening, or the morning, or late night, etc.  Item drop seeds were set by the second the game was created in D1, but even if this worked there wouldn't be any way to exploit that in Diablo II on the realms.

QUOTE

Some people hold that if you use the same game name with an added number, "Meph Run 1", then "Meph Run 2" etc, that drops will decrease in quality, as if Bliz is somehow tracking MF'ers and consecutive games.  This isn't true, and in fact we've had many mails from people who say that they often find their best stuff after 20 or 30 games of the same name, going up a number at a time.

QUOTE

Some players say too many Meph runs in a row downgrades his drops, or that each run takes 1% or something off of their effective MF%. No.

QUOTE

You'll hear theories that Act Bosses drop better items with more or less players in the game, or in that act, etc. (More players in the game does increase the total number of item drops, making normal monsters much more likely to drop something, but has no effect on what or how many items Act Bosses and SuperUniques drop.)

QUOTE

Players often say that they had better luck with a lower % than they have now, if they have just gone up in % with a new item.  This isn't true, it's just a streak of bad luck, and usually people romanticize the item drops they got in the past, remembering the good items and ignoring the dozens of runs that netted them nothing of use.

QUOTE

This one seems bizarre, but many people have mailed it in.  Some claim that if there is a town portal anywhere on the level with Meph or Baal when they die, this somehow screws up the MF%.  Uh huh.

QUOTE

Some players insist that carrying or wearing a given Unique makes that Unique more likely to drop again, or that once they've found one particular item, they are more likely to find another one soon afterwards.

QUOTE

None of these superstitions are true. You could probably figure this out for yourself by seeing how often the lucky claims contradict each other.  On a more scientific note, Jarulf and others who have have looked in the game code say there is nothing there to limit item finds based on any of these superstitions.  The game knows only your MF%, and what you are killing, in terms of item drops from monsters.

(Note that people have even examined the games code!)

As you can see, there are some reasons for the starts of some of these superstitions, and several more for you as well.

A good and funny example is this:

QUOTE

Lower/Increase your MF to the mid 100's (like 150, 450, 98423650 <Wasn't mentioned in the story, but it also helps>)

If you look at the real reason this superstition exists, its with the bug that used to exist with MF at 149% up to about 190ish, and even this superstition isnt really even right - if you had 150 like stated in quote (if this bug was still in effect) you would get more magical drops, but less exceptional rare drops. Your unique MF wouldnt change much at all. So this superstition came from a bug that didnt even apply to uniques. Pretty funny.

This post was edited by Gshock on Feb 14 2003 07:37am