I'm not understanding how drops work

General Discussion
1

I just jumped into nightmare mode, and I expected drops to be more powerful than what I have equipped. Well, so far they are very weak, I wouldn’t want anything to do with them. Is it just bad luck or am I missing something?

2

The loot table expands to include literally everything that was dropping plus new occasionally new stuff. If you think nightmare is bad. Wait until hell. It’s hell.

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3

Here is how loot drops are decided (off the top of my head, I may forget a few things but it will give you an idea). When a monster dies or you open a chest/loot a corpse/whatevs those are the questions that are answered, in this order, by generating a random number for each question (think of it like a dice roll - and this is why you see people talk about RNG in games (Random Number Generators)) :

  1. did something drop? [dice roll says “yes” in this example]
  2. is it an item, a weapon, an armor, etc? [dice roll say it’s a weapon]
  3. what kind of weapon is it? A bow, a sword, an axe, etc? [let’s say it chooses a sword]
  4. what’s the type + graphics of the sword?
  5. is it a normal, exceptionnal or elite sword? (elite items can only be found in Hell difficulty and exceptional only in nightmare or hell – the chances to find elites is lower than exceptionnals, and the chance to find exceptionnals is lower than normal items)
  6. is it a plain (white/ethereal/socketed) or magic (all other colors) item? (this is what Magic Find increases) [let’s say it’s a magic item].
  7. is it a Unique item? (very low chance) - if not, it goes to step 8.
  8. is it a set item? (chances slightly increased from the above) - if not, it goes to step 9.
  9. is it a rare item? (chances increased from the above - if the answer is “no” then it’s a blue item) [let’s say it’s a rare]
    RARE DECIDED, RARE-SPECIFIC QUESTIONS ENSUE:
  10. how many affixes does this rare have?
  11. what are the affixes?
  12. which values do those affixes have?
  13. what’s its name?
    Now the item drops (yep, all this is answered at light speed when any monster dies / a clickable is clicked)

Of course, if point 7 falls on “yes”, then there is another dice roll to see which legendary you got, from the pool of items set in steps 3 to 5. That is why you see mostly crappy gear in Nightmare and Hell because normal items have a much higher weight than exceptionnal or elite items.

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4

Just to add to this. If the weapon decided upon doesn’t have a unique variant for the current level, it is downgraded to a rare with 3x durability and the same formulae with set items.

Which is why, to get the full picture on how your magic find works, you have to account for items with 3x durability (they are unique/set drops, just the wrong item type and thus downgraded) People might have found plenty of “uniques/sets” in this way without realising it, and then moan about magic find not working :grinning:

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5

this explanation is very helpful thank you. I may quote it someday soon too. :+1:

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6

You’re welcome!
I just edited it to add a step between 3 and 4 to add the one that asks what the type + graphics of the sword is, since it’s pretty important to decide what the legendary / set would be or if there’s a legendary / set at all for that type amongst other things (attack speed, damage values…).

7

Its a good post and probably took some actual effort to setup, very nice. I hope more people get to see it as there really are some misconceptions on how loot works in Diablo2.

You will often see me encouraging people who say they have seen every type of shako drop except unique ( lol including me)
They may not realize how close they came to a harlequins crest each time seeing one!

EDIT: fixed a sentence, wow im still half awake today…

8

Great write up! I figured you must have edited the numbering because now some of the later numbers like 7 and 8 refer to going to themselves instead of the next number :grinning:

This is a really great point to made as well. I had heard about the “failed uniques with 3x durability” but had never stopped to think about what that actually meant.

9

Thanks! Yeah, this should be fixed now :sweat_smile:

EDIT: I forgot to say that Exceptionnal items have a chance to drop in Normal act 5 (and maybe 4? I don’t remember), but I’m tired of editing that thing lol.

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