Additional information from the various posts in the original thread:
More players in the game = more drops, not "better" base item drops:
Quote (The_Morpheus @ Fri, 15 Jun 2007, 20:51)
The amount of players in a game only effects the "nodrop" chance in the formula for dropping items when a monster dies or a chest, pot, basket, ect is opened.
The game has no clue as to what is good or bad. As far as the game is concerned, a magical dimentional shard is better than a unique swirling crystal.
Quote (AyeCaramba @ Sat, 16 Jun 2007, 08:16)
Following on from that, basically more players in game means more items will drop since as Morpheus says, it reduces the chance of the game selecting no-drop.
The effect though from dropping more items is of course that you will find more good items as well as more bad ones. Doing your MF runs in full player games is therefore more efficient as long as you can still kill quickly with the increased monster HP's.
Treasure Class BasicsFollows on from a couple of questions from Lifeaintfair.
Quote (AyeCaramba @ Thu, 12 Jul 2007, 17:25)
No, yes, but, no but, Here goes:
Base item Quality levels (Qlvl) and Treasure Class (TC) basics1. Every item has a Qlvl (Quality level) for the base item. These are set by the game definitions.
2. The base item Qlvl's are used by the game to classify which TC (Treasure class) it belongs to.
3. TC's are from 3 to 87 in steps of 3.
4. Each TC contains all items with a Qlvl <= the TC. Ie, TC 3 contains all items with a Qlvl of 1-3, TC 6 contains all items with a Qlvl of 4-6 etc.
5. Each TC also contains all TC's with a lower number, meaning TC 87 contains all items.
6.
Important! TC's ONLY relates to base items. Take this on trust for now and read on.Monster TC's 1. All normal monsters drop from the TC <= their monster level (mlvl). Mlvl = area level (alvl).
2. Champions have mlvl = alvl +2, random bosses and minnions are mlvl = alvl +3
3. Superuniques and Act bosses have predefined TC's which are unrelated to their mlvl.
TC's for Uniques and set items1. The TC for a unique or set item is the same as the TC for a cracked version. Always.
2. However, set items and unique items also have one additional restriction. This is an individual qlvl (note the smal q
).
3. This qlvl is the same for an entire set, whereas each individual unique item has a qlvl set in the game item code.
3. Note that the qlvl can be greater, lesser or equal to the Qlvl of the base item.
4.
The qlvl does not determine which TC the item goes into, but it determines the minimum monster level required to drop it.5. This only causes a problem where a monster has the required TC to generate the base item, but NOT the required mlvl to drop the unique. A well known example is Pindleskin. He drops from TC 87 (defined by the game as he is a super unique monster), but he is only mlvl 86. Even though he drops from the highest possible TC in the game, he is unable to generate the three uniques that have a qlvl of 87. (Azurewrath, Tyreal's Might and Arachnid Mesh). Arachnid is actually a good example here as it is actually in TC 63 (Spiderweb Sash base item is Qlvl 61). Lots of monsters can drop the base item but cannot drop the unique version because it requires mlvl 87.
6. When the quality roll passes, but the mlvl is not high enough to drop the unique or set version, the game drops a trippel durability rare item instead of the unique (failed unique), or a double durability magic item instead of the set item(failed set). This also happens if the quality roll passes but there is NO applicable unique or set item to pick at all.
The only part of any of this that is influenced by MF% is the roll on the base item drop to see if it's Unique / set / rare / magic. ALL items have exactly the same chance of being upgraded once selected. The base item selection is completely independent.
@LifeAintFair - The game only knows quality as Unique / Set / rare / magic etc. It does not "know" that a CoA is better than a Pelta Lunata or Biggins Bonnet. To the game they are the same quality.
Finally:
The what if there are more than one unique to chose or the monster is not high enough level questions answered:
Quote (AyeCaramba @ Fri, 13 Jul 2007, 09:20)
When a base item is picked and the roll comes out unique, the game looks up all available uniques for this item,
based on the mlvl of the monster that dropped it.Taking the Lightsabre / Azurewrath example:
Phase Blade (Qlvl 73)
[U] Lightsabre (qlvl 66)
[U] Azurewrath (qlvl 87)
As we can see the the unique qlvl for Lightsabre is less than the generic base item Qlvl of 73, so therefore any monster that can drop a Phase Blade can automatically also drop the Lighsabre unique version. For all monsters < mlvl 87, Lightsabre is the only item that comes up when looking for a unique PB to drop.
IFF the monster is mlvl 87 or above, AND the game drops a Phase blade AND the unique roll passes, then it brings up a list containg both Lightsabre and Azurewrath and choses randomly
according to their designated rarity values betwen them before it drops one of them. I have no idea what the designated rarity is between these two items, so please don't ask. Atma will tell you I'm sure.
This happens even if the item has already dropped in the game, though if the game selects a unique that has already dropped in that particular game, we end up with a tripple durability rare.
The extreme example of this is for rings and amulets:
All monsters can drop rings and amulets. They essentially have a Qlvl of 1. The list of available uniques just gets longer as the mlvl gets higher (again this is checked against the individual qlvl of the unique item), up to mlvl 85 when all rings and amulets are available to populate the unique list. This is the reason that NM Andy is the best target in the game for SoJ since at her level she can only drop 3 different unique rings, and the relative odds of selecting an SoJ is therefore at it's highest.
I hope that's what you were looking for me to say here Morpheus, though i know damned well that you knew all this already
Edit: Here is a list of all the 1.1x TC's for armour and weapons -
http://www.diabloii.net/items/110tc.shtmlNew ladder, old information, but hopefully useful to new readers.