First time participant of a season. (thought id give it a try) i usually play non ladder sc
How do i find good gear with resorting to using jsp or other sites? i literally can’t afford that.
MF doesn’t seem to affect loot quality.
what am i doing wrong?
any pointers are much apprectiated
You don’t need good gear to complete all of the content in the game. In fact all content can be done using gear that drops in normal difficulty.
MF is the single most over-valued modifier in the history of any aRPG. You’re right to be underwhelmed, not only are there extreme diminishing returns, it’s not that important anyways. Just accept that loot in this game is extreme RNGsus and it largely revolves around grinding/farming.
MF definitely affects loot quality, but focus first on making sure to improve your clear speed, and if you’re just trying to get certain gear, look at the drop calculators to see what’s most efficient. Just make sure to consider how much time it takes to do each run. For example, Baal may have better drop odds than Diablo, but you can run Diablo faster because the map layout is mostly fixed and you don’t have to wait between minion waves - just the 15 second delay after the 5th seal.
Assuming you just mean can’t afford real-money sites, no issue there. (Even if you could afford it, you shouldn’t have to pay for a game you already bought.) There are sites that are just to facilitate trading items for other items, like Traderie. Or the D2R discord server.
Yes you can play without JSP or any other trading site. Because thats what it is, a trade site to help enhance you. It has the benefit of a currency that you can use on any item, where other sites are item for item bartering.
Sure you can pay money if youre desperate, but you can do that on any RMT site. You do not need to go down that route to succeed in this game.
If you are a sorc. Equip a Spirit Sword/Monarch (Rhyme or Ancients Pledge or Caster shield until you get a Monarch) Lore helm until Shako, res gloves and boosts, Stealth armor as cast rate and speed is your friend, any res belt until tals or better, fcr res rings…
Target areas of your skills strengths. Cold does well with Andy runs, Ancient Tunnels, Meph. These are good areas for farming. TZ zones are great for weaker characters, go farm them.
Lots of low gear guides out there, bottom line, you do not need jsp or the best gear to compete until you can upgrade.
It does, but its not the be all end all, kill speed and efficiency is just as or more important. 200-300 MF is perfect as long as you can kill and survive. Down the road, get more as you get stronger.
Completely playable in single player.
Trading makes your play and upgrading gear much easier.
JSP makes trading the easiest it can be.
You don’t have to “afford” jsp. Completely free. Trade off your extras, then get what you need.
MF does help loot quality, but if you’re losing kill speed to stack MF you’re doing it wrong. There is a point of overkill, but that could be addressed far later into the game.
Of course but if you aren’t prepared to play efficiently (start sorc/horker > gear up char you want to play) and spend a good bit of time, highly unlikely you will fully gear even 1 character with end game gear by the end of the season… last season, I played SSF online, only had one or two hours a day a most, got hydra sorc and foh to about 90, got a good portion of end game uniques, got zod, sur, ohm, and a couple other hrs…sure wasn’t able to create enigma but who cares, teleport is nice but is so overblown on these forums don’t get why there are so many cry babies about enigm/tele smh…
But is this thread about finding stuff or the challenge of playing alone? To be clear, JSP and those sites do not require any money so I’m a little confused about being unable to afford what exactly. On d2jsp, you can sell pgems, crafting packs, unid packs whether rare or unique, etc…there are many ways to make FG without having amazing items…there are lots of bored users with FG that do not want to farm those basic things so they would rather pay for someone else to group them and then they can craft hundreds away…then you can use that FG to get the nice items you want…mesnwhile there are folks who are sad that since their 26 res viper can’t be traded for an enigma, it means d2jsp ruined the economy…jfc…
never used jsp in og Diablo 2 or resurrected. Found a grandfather last night. and a Sur dropped in pub hell cows, missed it 
Upped some ists to make a hoto rolled 38. You dont really have to use the trading sites at all if you really dont want to.
Magic Find increases the chance of an item becoming magical/rare/set/unique, so it doesn’t increase the chance of items dropping, nor change type (sword, axe, armour etc) just whether it becomes magical or better.
Having MF is good if your looking for uniques, if your looking for bases for runewords having having no MF is better (since any base dropping has more chance to become magic or better due to the MF).
Runedrops are unaffected by MF (MF does not change the type of item, just the rarity).
One thing to think about is the amount of MF vs the cost in terms of killing speed.
Sacrificing a little killing speed for the first 100 mf is pretty ok, but MF has diminishing returns and the higher it becomes the less gain you get from more MF, so kill speed is more important quite early in the process (I personally raise it above 200% only if it’s basically free, as in not losing kill speed or increasing the chance of dying, but like to try and get at least 100% if I can).
That said, running specific places also increase the chance of better items, which ones however vary upon your build.
Aim for dense places like Cows or Flayer Jungle if you can kill many critters fast and can kill elite packs.
If your very mobile and have a good single target damage Andariel and Mephisto are decent choices.
Many builds can do Pindle/Eldritch/Shenk at a decent speed.
Council at Travincal is always a good one aswell if you can run it.
You just need to find a place where you can A) kill many critters fast or B) kill elites/bosses in high speed.
Terror Zones are a very easy place to farm, its easier to do Terror Normal than normal content on Nightmare, but the rewards are better on average if you have the right level.
Hell Terror is hardly more difficult then non-terrorized, but the drops are way better on average.
And finally you don’t need super gear to finish the game, if your goal is to make your character as powerful as you can then by all means go grind, but if you want to finish the game I would only try to upgrade when you feel your stalling and even then it’s often simpeler to see what you have or can create (cheap runewords for example) than trying to farm for specific gear.
And look at the skills your character has, many people focus on certain skills but don’t even realize that in D2 there are many 1 point wonders that can change the tide of battle as easy for 1 skill point as your main skill can while at maximum (before you are able to 1-hit everything).
if your goal is not fastest to 99(aka not playing with an organize team)
i recommend 2 builds if day 1 fresh ladder…otherwise if your few days in just go for a sorc
Paladin make baal run go extremely smooth by running conviction with a bunch of undergeared players…however Paladin wont be your best farming asset for hell early on if you play solo you can opt for this build to help the community break trough smoothly to then work on your own sorc(most ppl dont like being support role and rather start with own benefit class when going unorganize)
alternatively the go to option is sorc for self benefit//be everyone taxi
rule no 1: dont be a chicken wuss when it come to teleport(unless you have serious lag issue then i suppose thats understandable to go chicken)…you gotta be everyone taxi as soon as your lvl 18…even if you die trying(although most good players dont die while teleporting in norm/nm with scrap gear)…but if you have no lag issue…do the job and no chickening out(paladin should not have to charge around because your a coward)(aka making it an handicap to the group)
for hell difficulty its safe to teleport around untill great Marsh(your first road block in junk gear that even good players can’t rly get around without upgrading or playing as an organize team)…for this area you either have Barb Bo you so you can teleport around…OR have a paladin with 1 point wonder in Salvation or Lightning Resists aura
to make it safe for the group to waddle around in there
if your not playing with a full organize team…at this point in game i’d recommend going norm cows real quick to slap a bunch of them for a crystal sword followed by a bunch of nightmare countess runs for tal thul ort amn runes…make your spirit sword to have an easier time with hell(easy +2 skills and great fcr along other neat stats bonus)
then back to hell…do NOTE: if you went for Lightning build over blizz/fire sorc during your lvling process your better off farming hell countess over nightmare one for quicker netting(drop rate for amn will be much highter than nm countess + chance to get a solid mid rune & keys on top of that)
although while hell A3 is gonna be your first roadblock without upgrading gear…you can actually take a break after hitting 50 from norm baal run to fetch the crystal sword to socket(that bonus fcr and +2 skills from spirit sword will pay off for nm-hell A5)
once your trough to A4 hell, do chaos Sanc runs(LOT SAFER THAN BAAL RUNS)
lvl up untill your 92 then consider starting to MF to upgrade your gear
depending if your hosting the baal runs or tagging, dont spit on these options if your a tagger…kill Eldritch,Shenk and Pindleskin(no idling town ever)…not only will doing them net you bonus exp while waiting on throne tp…but you can also net a solid piece of gear(unique) for killing them…maybe even a nice rune if lucky
now more specific to your question
jsp is optionnal(i,am doing well without it)
MF does affect loot Quality
if your seeking Unique drop you need 200-300% mf(optimally 300% without sacrificing your kill speed)
if your seeking bases items for runeword then 0% mf is what you need…although i CAN’T confirm i think 50% mf prevent the dropping of low quality items…unfortunetly i dont have a source to be certain of that
as for what your doing wrong i dunno…but i say this…once your lvl 92
focus farm Andariel&Mephisto first…they should net you some basic high lvl gear like shako,arachnid mesh,skin of vipermagie, chancie gloves, gheed charm
or maybe even cows for Spirit Shield in a monarch
dont skip Trav guys in Durance 3 while while your there ! and dont forget to pop the racks for chance at a nice base + super chest located behind Meph
afterward move on to more interesting spots like key farm for your first torch, TZ, Travincal, Pindleskin, Arcane Sanctuary, Chaos Sanc,
note: the 2 upper areas in Nilathak map have 2 weapon and 2 armor racks(get them)…its even more valuable than meph map rack as the area is lvl 84
edit1&2: done adding rest of text
What do you mean cant afford to use trade sites?
Ive never spent a dime of money on jsp and ive fully geared out 2 characters this season already.
In fairness to the OP, I know people who have told me they’ve dropped $200 on items (not all at once, but over time). So it does happen and I think word of mouth creates an impression that this is a significant way people get items.
But yes, it’s definitely possible to get decent gear without spending real money.
thankyou to all the replys. i got some perspective now and will keep grinding away and i now have some more things to try
thankyou all
Blizzard please ban these cheater clowns who don’t know how to play the game without RWT 
having mf help alot if you can do one hour or two hour a day you will have a harder time finding you’re gg item end game, then someone who can play 4+ hour a day farming.
depending on ur class affect the effectiveness of you’re farming.
necro(poison nova), barb and amazon(bowazon) need gg gear to farm quickly.
wind druid can farm anywhere but are slower killer than the rest of the class.
sorc, pala and assasin(you go trap then transition to martial) are the go to early farmer with javazon(base and rune)
after that try to reach 250 mf without sacrificing speed clearing.
i mainly do chaos run with my foh i do them in under 3 minute-3:15minute a run and farm multiple hour(broken ankle) i missing 3 pcomb charm and im complete in my build has a foh. but i farmed alot of chaos over 10k+ in 3 week.
Of course its playable without jsp.
Its about farming loot in effective way. You need some knowledge about that and then dedicate time.
Ofc it’s playable. I made my infi on 4th day w/o using a single fg. 1 week later i’ve got like ~ 10 bers and stop playing this season. Actually this was worst season of d2r history but probably it would get even worse next seasons. Bots ruined economic so hard that you literally don’t wanna spend any of your time after you’ve got game change items. And thats not jsp fault at all btw.
Absolutely playable, and tradable WITHOUT jsp. I’ve done both forever without that “organization” involved with me even once.
Play a sorc, make a spirit sword, lore hat, and stealth armor. Run nightmare countess to get the runes. Go blizzard. Leech or run nightmare baal runs until 75. Farm Meph and Andy in hell until you secure additional gear like occy, shako, etc.
Find a monarch, larzuk for 4os and make spirit.
Find an eth elite polearm, roll sockets or larzuk an eth cv for insight.
Now you can teleport around forever without potions and kill all p1 content with 1-2 blizzards.
Get cold sunder from TZ and farm any area in the game.
If you choose any other class, it will be far slower to farm anything and much harder to build trade wealth. You’ll also be much more limited in optimal farming areas.
Once your sorc is up and running, farm and trade for whatever gear and character you want next.
It’s not playable for legit fair players, only for exploiters/dupers/botters or those who trade with them.
Blizzard needs to fix this ASAP by tremendously improving drop rates and getting rid of item sharing/trading. People want to play the video game not use external shady websites.
Use jsp, youll gear up quicker, sell faster and if your good, pay your rent