Welcome to Diablo 2.
I agree, you can definitely go through dry spells, which is why MF’ers join public games to increase their chances of loot. Another reason why /players x should be allowed in private games online.
But the low drop rates are what makes finding something valuable more enjoyable than it would be if they were raised. That rush of dopamine hitting you similar to gambling at a casino which is what makes this game addicting for many people.
Tweaking the drop rates would cater to some people for sure, some who might quit, while at the same time leading to many other people quitting. You can’t please everyone. D2R with QOL changes is ideal. Changing drop rates isn’t QOL, it’s changing one of the main, and IMO, most appealing characteristics of the game.
My gear would suck if it weren’t for trading. I’ve probably found 1/3 of the gear I use, and then traded many other items for the things I need which is the most efficient way to gear out.
That’s the nature of the game. You can go awhile finding nothing or everything drops in one night. You don’t “NEED” any of these items, they are supposed to be hard to get. Although it is really difficult on players 1 to find stuff, you always have the choice to make farming groups at least on players 3 or 5.
Just get more magic find then your problem is solved. More you have, easier will you see good Unique items front of your eyes while playing the game.
Not everyone is lucky to get great items in 1-2-3. Sometimes It takes time, stop complain and play more instead of sitting on this forum and complain about everything.
Like most, I use an MF character to farm certain areas, but I also enjoy my Zealer that I tank Ubers on but want to play him more than Ubers so I farm runes and socket bases with him in the areas that normally yield higher rune drops which aren’t impacted by MF. Keys and half the essences have some value as well. There are different ways to increase wealth in this game.
Just takes an absurd amount of patience and low expectancy of reward vs time invested
It being thanksgiving weekend in Canada I had a plethora of hours to spare, decided (against my better judgement) to throw most all of it, at D2R, My near 60 hours of farming in 4 days was all a bust besides a small spurt I got early sunday morning, nothing major but ended up with a few Pul runes, Ist and Vex, aside from that the highlight of close to 60 hours of farming was Arreats face (low rolls) 154ed / 5% leech or something.
Throw on a netflix series, youtube playlist, audio book que, and just… wait for that serotonin drip.
edit; My sorc is sitting around 480% MF
MF Route is (in order) - mausoleum / cows / Pit 1 & 2 / Andy / Ancient Tunnels / Lower Kurast / Trav / Meph + Council / Chaos + Diablo / Eldritch + Shenk / Pindle / World stone 2 & 3 + Throne room / Baal.
Complete and repeat.
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sadly i agree, with folks useing pickit, and game controller to spam pickup loot before it hits the floor. most folks are playing only 1-4 hours a day let alone 6.
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You mean dead like D3? 
Cabal once said “The human element, as always, is riddled with imperfection”. The OP and, by extension, all of us gamers are ill-equipped when it comes down to assessing drop rates, especially our own. The conjecture isn’t what the OP could/should do to get better odds, but rather to look at the odds themselves. While debatable, it is a far better ground to debate on what the odds should be and why they should either be modified or left as is.
Say that, hypothetically, you have unresolved grievances with your neighbors. After years of setbacks, deliberations and different ideologies, you opt for the path of war. Initially, it seems like a fun adventure; being able to enforce your demands to your advantage invigorates you greatly. However, the demand on your war industry keeps on growing to the point where you have no money left, jeopardizing your main goal. So you start printing money, that you lend people in exchange for bonds that you say you’ll repay later once you won against your neighbors. This influx of money into your local economy means people are now initially richer (from their perspective) and can access consumer goods that they couldn’t otherwise buy. The problem is, there are not more consumer goods available, if anything there are less because your whole neighborhood now produce goods for the war effort. The fewer goods available are now in high demand, the prices goes up and, voilà, inflation is born. Your dollar is worth less. Not that it ever happened in the real world or anything. This hypothetical analogy that never happened in the real life would compare to boosting rune drops and them only. If you flood the market with Vex and Ohm, suddenly a lot of players can join the “Vex for Shako” bandwagon. All available Shakos disappear and any new one found is now more desirable and the price goes up the runes rarity (ber, jah, etc).
While this seems like I’m advocating against this increase in drop rates, several options are available to counteract this since this is a video game with no real life limitations. In my previous analogy, consumer goods could not be created from thin air. In D2:R, you could increase the drop rate at large, over all item, that is if your PRIORITY is to maintain a balance that a Shako is worth a Vex on ladder resets/initial launch. More Shakos and more Vex would just make more people get their Shakos. Another way to phrase that would be that people would get their Shakos quicker.
The current virtual “business” model of D2:LoD and D2:R promotes absurdity such a people playing for 12 years before getting access to a Jah rune. In my analogy, this would mean that furniture, things made out of rubber like shoes and tires, etc, would take 12 years to build while the war your invested in will last 5 years at most. This eventually lead to the collapse of your local economy, also impacting the front line by giving free reign to the black market economy should you try to intervene by price fixation. Once again, never happened in real life. But in D2:LoD, D2 jsp thrived for the very reason that a 12 years commitment for a normal gamer is way too much of an investment. Only Genghis Khan’s horde, bots, hackers, dupers, PickIt users and trading sites would allow a normal player looking for a Jah to overcome such a ridiculously low drop rate.
Most modern gamers enjoy a game for a year, two if they really are addicted, with a minority going the distance past that point, unless additional content through expansion is release, which we all know leads to another topic: power creep. I think that the baseline for the rarest runes should be to get one roughly 1:275000 Hell cows as opposed to 1:654171 (player 1 count). This should equate to the player finding one within a year, playing 3 days a week for roughly 6 hours per day.
The one saving grace for D2:R, is unlike D3 at launch, you don’t need any of these top-tier items to complete the game. They only speed up your process. You can finish all the game’s content, solo, all quests, without them and with a couple hotspots in hell with regards to immunities and melee builds except Smiter being subpar. D3’s increased in difficulty on launch made it that you needed the items to progress further, leading to the auction house fiasco we all came to enjoy, cherish and love. Eventually, people found exploits with low hp build and the dev revamp the game, but that is off-subject. Therefore, since they are not required, one could argue the rates are more reminiscent of Guild Wars precursor, an item needed to craft a cool looking skin (with no impact on the item performance itself). Yet again, I found 2 of these within a year and a half of playing Guild Wars, not 12 years per.
Don’t forget to like and suscribe. Next week we will discuss if Luigi is actually wearing a Shako or not.
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It’s all about that 1/1000th drop. <3
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Bull, if I can’t have all the best gear in 3 weeks then this game is broken.
i have dropper 2 Hoz in the same night …
Well, yes and no. Yes because it feels good when you find something rare, No because you dont need something rare/best Equipment because D2 offers no endgame. So you are farming more or less for nothing… Im waiting now for the fanboys to cry about that 
And no, Farming has nothing to do with endgame, that is Standard in arpgs. You are farming FOR the endgame
the problem is that the loot system has always been trash in diablo 2, Always.
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Loot system in D2 is practicaly close to perfection actualy.
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part of the system are great, parts of the system are terrible there is certainly room for improvement though.
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I dont think so. They way how loot drops is spot on. Game would only maybe benefit from new sets and unique items but thats really not related to how drop works.
You are not supposed to find anything fast but if someone did thousands runs and claim that there wasnt any good drops, i dont believe it. Player probably lacks knowledge what is good or is exaggerating.
Not exactly true on endgame. Ubers, D-Clone, late game mobs are all considered “end game” D2 is different than most AARPG’s because you don’t technically farm for a “late game raid boss, or end game” you are mostly farming for your other characters. You want to make fun builds, PVP builds, wave clear builds. In order to do so, you need the farm. if farming in Diablo 2 is bothersome or not fun for you then I think you picked the wrong game. I am more talking about the over saturation of items that are in D3 that I do not want to happen in D2. Blizzard will ruin this game if they implement any sort of D3 loot crap, I think a lot of people who never played D2 before and played D3 and tried to come over to D2 are disappointed because D2 is harder than D3, drop rates are lower, and that’s the way the majority of the D2 community like it. If everyday is a sunny day, then what’s a sunny day?
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I have been really lucky. Jah, Lo, Shako… I find using different character usually increases my drop rates. Also, you can tell right away of the quality of items dropping in a game. If you see studded leathers dropping make new game.
Here’s a thought.
Stop running meph.
You get garbage gear in 1 player games anyways, so when you DO find something, don’t expect it to be worth anything anymore.
Move to actual 8 player games and get some hustle going, for real.
Ur solo’ing cows if ur drop rate is that bad.
I get 4-5 high runs to drop every 50 cow runs almost.
I’ve personally picked up 2 bers a jah 1 Lo, 1 Vex, 2 Ohm’s and a like 15 Um runes, not to mention well over 20 pul runes, verdungos, arm of king leoric, several skiller charms…and this is all just the stuff I was able to grab before the 7 other players in my games (but to be fair, i’ve gotten most of em that I knew dropped, because I’m pretty quick).
Stop soloing. Ur shooting urself in the foot.