OMFG early game was so buggy in terms of item generation and seeds.

Fake unique drops as usual.



Next game exactly the same items dropped. I mean not item types, but EXACTLY THE SAME items.



Dupe.

Hehe, so strange. Wtf that stash size? What are they thinking? And you can't buy mana potions from vendors. Interesting.

If you want to know more about 1.00 look for threads by Treeharl on the dii.net single player forum. I think he has listed the mf "breakpoints" for 1.00 otherwise you should be able to find them on an archived version of lurkerlounge through webarchive.org

Did some further research regarding Cow King drop mechanism. Again, thanks ZOMBY for providing me some links to these very useful information.

According to that here is an update to post 294:

Cow King's drops are divided into 3 scenarios ̶w̶i̶t̶h̶ ̶3̶3̶,̶3̶ ̶c̶h̶a̶n̶c̶e̶ ̶t̶o̶ ̶e̶a̶c̶h̶.

Scenario 1: 60% chance to drop 1 rare item picked from Act4 "end game" item pool and one magic item from the regular (Act1) item pool.
Scenario 2: 30% chance to drop 1 unique item from Act4 "end game" item pool and one magic item from the regular (Act1) item pool.
Scenario 3: 10 chance to drop 1 set item from Act4 "end game" item pool and one magic item from the regular (Act1) item pool.

For Scenario 2 if a failed item has been selected (exceptional one or the item already presents in the game as unique) another call will be made until a unique item drops or up to a maximum 5 unique calls (5x dura rares). This means that whenever an exeptional item is selected it is a default failed call and another call will be made. Also if you hoard certain uniques in your stash and inventory, you will have much bigger chane to control the drops.

Act 4 end game pool consists of the following items: Bone Helm, Crown ,Gothic Plate, Full Plate Mail, Light Plate, Ancient Armor, Gauntlets, Greaves, Plated Belt, Gothic Shield, War Scythe, Pike, War Sword, War Staff, Great Sword, Long War Bow, Giant Axe, Great Maul, War Hammer, Flamberge, Mask, Repeating Crossbow, Ring, Amulet (only seen magical ones so far) and probably a few more. Of course in NM and Hell the exeptional types of the above mentioned items also can be dropped, with the exception of Lance and Grim Helm (due to an item generation bug, these items can not spawn).

What I did not know until now, is that all Scenarios share the same patterns.

So it is based on the actual seed that Cow King will drop e.g. War Axe on a certain spot.
In Scenario 2, if unique version of War Axe is already in the game, another item will drop, always the same according to the seed e.g. War Bow. And if the unique version of War Bow is also in the game, the third item comes and so on.

So Cow King drops in patters, and based on the map seed, position of CK and your way of killing him, you can expect a limited number of patterns.

This means that if you hunt for Rings and Ornates, you shall search for maps which have drop patterns containing these items. Also you do not have to keep all the unique stuff at your character, if the map have no Great Maul pattern for example.
But for example if you keep a War Axe in your stash it can force a War Axe - Ring - Ornate - Ring - Ornate pattern (dont know if it exists, just an example).

For more info you can search for "Treeharls 1.00 Cow King running guide".

Based on the information above I started to search for maps with Ring patterns.

This map for had potential for Ornate (see my dupe post above) and Ring. I made like a hundred runs, on that map. Unfortunately no epic drops, only this Ring woths showing:



Perfect light res, life leech and only lvl18 requirement. Imagine that with an additional 15 all res affix.

This post was edited by -joey- on Jan 20 2018 11:54am

My future 1.00 plans:

1. Get level 92
This will be my end-game level, I have no intentions to make it further.

2. Gamble epic amulets for the nec and barb
I will allocate most of my gold for this.

3. Gamble epic boots
With nearly perfect affixes (fire res - light res - cold res - FRW - FHR - STR/MF). For this purpose I am going to level one of my mule chars (Egyes) to 30-34. Why? This table will explain:



According to that I have much lower chances for epic boots if I gamble with my high level nec. So I am going to allocate some of my gold to Egyes and she will do the gamble.
Before you ask: No, I do not aim for the 14 dex mod, IMO str > dex.

4. Find epic Grim Wand
For that I am going to do regular P5 CS runs in Nightmare with as much MF as possible. Why Nightmare? Because rare items dropped in NM CS can get all the good affixes (with the exception of +2 skill amus ofc).
The table below for wands:



So there is no need to risk my life in Hell, I think it is better to separate MF runs from XP runs, so I can switch between safety eq and MF eq.

5. Find epic rings, ornates, grand crowns or bone helms and pikes for my barb.
For that I am going to do Hell Cow King runs, trying to find the most suitable map.

So, these are my long-term goals, I hope you like them.

Whenever I have time to play, I will keep you updated of course.

This post was edited by -joey- on Jan 20 2018 12:34pm

Great walk, went in all the posts.

Really nice wt, I really like heroes of might and magic 2

Thank you all for the kind words!

Updates:

The pattern hunting has begun.







These were promising, but not very stable ones. Usually I make 20-30 runs on a map before deciding to change.

This post was edited by -joey- on Feb 2 2018 11:23pm

This one was really disappointing as appeared only one time:



Another promising pattern with cool armor drops:



Cute belt. Only FHR is missing and the resists could be a bit higher.