Another server down time -
Has anyone noticed anything with Countess drops? Normal is fine, I haven’t farmed a ton on Nightmare but seemed to have awful luck, I ran probably 100 or so Hell countess runs last night, not a huge amount but only gotten one low-mid tier rune like a Shael or something at best everything else is complete bottom tier runes.
Has her drop table changed? It almost feels like I’m farming her on normal just getting eth/rals, etc.
I’ve played the game for years but never quite had that luck, usually can get at least a few mid tier/‘nightmare’ level runes to drop after 10-20 runs or so on Hell, let alone feel like im making some progress lol. Don’t mind the grind but seems off. Anyone else?
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Probably just bad luck, I hate to say. My first run to her in Hell netted an Ist rune. Since then she has dropped everything from Tal to Fal and a couple of Terror Keys. Nothing spectacular, but I can confirm that she can drop up to her max Ist.
I have yet to see her drop better than dol. A few times she hasn’t dropped any runes. Something about her is borked.
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Did quite a few runs and had her drop 2x Um and 1xIst so she definitely can drop them.
Rate is low as it should.
There was a Gull (dagger) but got eaten by the rollback
Something that greatly decreases her rune-drop rate is MF. If you have high MF she will drop less runes. Runes and MF items are two separate loot tables. There’s a ton of research on reddit about MF vs Runes. Its a pretty interesting read. If you want more rune drops, drop all your MF 
I don’t think that’s accurate at all. The rune drop rate is not affected by magic find and the Countess has a special rune drop, which is why she is a good place to to farm runes. That rune drop is capped to specific runes per difficulty, so it’s not like she can drop anything spectacular. If memory serves correctly, the highest she can drop in Hell is an Ist.
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Magic find has no effect on runes. You can have 0% MF or you can have 500% MF - chances to get ant Ist from the Countess is the same. The only thing that will affect rune drops is number of players, the fewer the better.
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Agree on all points, but isn’t it the more players the better? Isn’t that why in Single Player, it’s desirable to set players to 8 for Lower Kurast runs, or did I mishear that? (I never play Single Player, so I could be way off.)
The more players there are, the more chances for an item to drop instead of a rune. From Wiki:
Even though she’ll never drop more than two items, her rune drops come from special treasure class sequences that are accessed if the game doesn’t think she should drop other items. Since she’s more likely to roll to drop additional items when more players are in the game, even though her drop is hardcapped at two magical items, this cuts down on her odds of dropping a rune.
Oh, gotcha, specific to the Countess. Cool, I did not know that one. Thanks!
My Countess quest drop was an Ist so am happy about that. I also got a Mal a day later but an entire week of runs I got low runes typically a single Eth or Ith and if I am lucky a Sol. I want to find a Lem so I can make Treachery for the merc. This is just weird. The best I could do was a Hel drop on the way there.
100 runs is nothing, RNG is RNG. Drop tables seem fine.
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