My understanding is the a RNG requires a seed value, where does that come from, and is it possible to influence or change it to improve drop quality?
When playing offline, is changing the player difficulty setting in Options the same as being in a party with that number of players?
The rationale for increasing the number of players is presumably to improve drops, but in an old forum post I came across the explanation that increasing the number of players by 2 reduces the chance of a zero drop. Is this correct?
thanks
The seed is randomly assigned when you create a character. There is no known way to pick a seed on console. On PC you can enter a command to play a particular seed, and it does influence drops. There is a video where mrllama uses a seed command and drops a map rune from the same LK chest 3 times in a row.
The only thing that you can really influence are weapon and armor racks. Take this video for example, notice how he drops a sacred targe almost every time? At the end he shows off a ton of 40 all res sacred targets.
If you approach the rack from the same direction, it should drop the same item almost every time. But there are a number of factors that affect rng such as nearby enemies and summons. Watch this for a more detailed explanation.
Yes, the players setting in single player is supposed to simulate what happens online with multiple players. Since there is no way play with other players offline, they gave us a setting.
The No drop chance means that when a monster dies, and it rolls items to drop, nothing is also one of those choices. Players 3 greatly reduces the No drop chance. You should notice a big difference in the number of times on the ground.
I am currently playing a lvl 89 Summon Necro, I can summon up to 12 skeletons and 14 Revives. This is definitely not as powerful as my lvl 91 Hammerdin, but less physically demanding on my right thumb. I started some Cow runs at player lvl 3, the trade off is that it takes longer to clear the area, and the one player 5 run I ran took forever. I am basically into farming now, seeking an SOJ and Bul K wedding band, and enough runes to create an Enigma (I have one Ber, need 2 more to craft, or find a Jah). My assumption is that the best way to increase the power of a Summoner is by +skills gear, are there any other strategies to consider?
If you come across another Ber Rune, I would suggest making Infinity. It’s best in slot and it will help the damage of all your minions. Enigma is great for moving from place to place, but you can’t telestomp like you can on pc, because it’s not that precise. If you just want to reposition, use a staff, or amulet with teleport charges.
I’m not sure what your gear is so in general I would beef up your merc. Since he is your strongest minion. If he is still using insight, look to make one in a better base to increase damage. I would suggest looking to make obedience for him. If you find you need the mana from insight, then make an iron golem out of one. It should be cheap enough to occasionally replace at this point.
Have you found a fire sunder charm yet? Corpse explosion is half fire. Those 2 suggestions alone should improve first kill, and clear speed in dense areas such as cows.
Have you tried crafting amulets? You might get lucky and roll a +2 to necro skills.
You could also use the Ber Rune to make Beast. Fanaticism more than makes up for the +skills it replaces, plus you improve your own survivability if you choose to run around as a bear. You could use it summon a grizzly too if you wanted, but it dies if you switch
My summoner is lvl 94. Mostly budget gear. I went full trangs using arm of king leoric. Act 2 merc (Thorn) Obedience, Treachery using Blood golem.
From my experience. Corpse explosion doesn’t scale with players count.
I focus on Thorn to return some damage and getting first kill with merc. Skeleton aren’t there to do damage but act as a wall and return damage with Thorn.
Any + to skill benefit your summoner overall.
I never played necro but what you suggesting regarding insight (golem) + obedience makes sense and cheap. The main power of necro is CE, isn’t it? If so, does infinity really worth it (for first 2 BERs)? I personally find it not so much. I have used it on my mosaic sin, everything dies fast before the aura kicks in, too OP, see not much value there. Over the weekend, I decided to make my first self-wielding nova sorc, started testing… She is still 89, full ES build and without SOJs, I do lack of mana so I feel squishy from +P3 and at hard areas, I can only do P1. So in short, I think it is a bit overrated, it is powerful with sunder and mine rolled well -54 light res after numerous attempts but… I still feel it to be too expensive for its power in return. The rest of my gear isn’t bad, I have near perfect Griffons, everything else is BiS, the only thing I am missing is a 2/20 ammy or at least 2/10 so I can free up my ring slot(s) I mean’t not to hijack the topic, I personally just question the value of infinity in general and wanted to share my experience since you mentioned it.
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Infinity lowers enemy resistance, so it also improves the damage of corpse explosion. In addition to boosting the damage of skeleton mages, and the physical damage from skeletons and the merc. It’s an upgrade for every minion, and it makes a noticeable difference. Although a summon necro does have a lot of tools at his disposal, so he doesn’t necessarily need it.
In your case, the mosaic assassin is overpowered, she doesn’t need much of anything. But for a Nova sorc, infinity completely breaks lightning immunities. Infinity is the only reason we had single element sorcs capable of doing everything prior to sunder charms. But even for non immunes, take it off, use crescent moon, or HOTO, I guarantee you will feel a difference in kill speed.
Thorns are really good for summoners. While I personally wouldn’t use a thorns merc over a might merc, I will equip Bramble on him. Also a budget/starter character can make an edge bow cheap.
Thorns also break immunities. Not that it matters to a necro, but a summon Druid can equip and edge bow for thorns, and then shape shift and melee with it!
I’ve also love the full trangs set, it has the coolest effect in the game. It’s also a ton of fun to run around and use firewall/meteor, I just wish it were possible to make it a little stronger. It’s players 1 viable, but that’s it. In any event, CE is useless on bosses, so you might as well cast firewall/meteor while you are waiting.
Sure, thanks, I get all that. What I am saying is that I don’t feel much of a difference. I actually tried Crescent Moon with Infinity on merc before, I felt it was not too bad. For lightning immunes, sunder breaks it down to 95%, Crescent - 35 = 60% and on top, not sure another ~40% maybe coming off the res via conviction making the originally lignining immune mob ~20% resistant!? Not sure, have not done research on this yet.
Since - enemy lightning res on infinity does not apply when the merc is wielding it (only conviction) I expected solid boost to my kill speed with the self wield option but it is not there. My stat page show -78% enemy light res since I also have a 5/5 facet in my griffons. Maybe my situation is an edge case, or a bug and it is weird. I telestomp a mob pack and if I don’t face the group with the proper angle for whatever reason, the conviction just does not kick in. I noticed today during testing that it takes like 1.x second on my series X xbox for the aura to appear on enemy mobs but if I start spamming nova before it does, it just does not come up. Maybe it is just a graphics glitch or the kill is so fast that it has no time to appear correctly.
Never mind. I saved all my high runes for my 1st engima and I thought it was the right decision. It is not just teleport, it is massive MF, DR, life, skills and more.
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In that scenario, the Crescent moon is is slightly weaker, but it’s still benefiting from conviction. It would fell much weaker without it. The difference is negligible working along side it, but it would be much more noticeable as a replacement.
The point of self wielding infinity, is that you can keep insight on your merc, and go energy shield, full mana. It makes you Tanky for a build that has to get so close to the enemies.
As far as Enigma versus Infinity, I guess it comes down to preference. Enigma benefits every non sorc in the game. But Infinity is bis for a lot of builds too. so to each their own.
Most of my gear now is bis (after poaching from my Hammerdin). Harlequin, HOTO, Arachnid’s Mesh, Homunculus, Trang Oul’s claws., plus a Mara’s., all focused on + to skills. A Skullder’s Ire Armor for its +1 skill and MF, and Sandstorm Trek boots are the only things that might need upgrade., other than the rings which I need to upgrade to SOJ and Bul K. My Might Merc has Tal Rasha’s mask, Insight scythe, and a Black Hades Chaos Armor. To be honest, I haven’t paid a lot of attention to the merc, there might be a better armor for him. I am still of the opinion (although I could be wrong) that the exponential increase in improvement from a +1 skill give the most bang for the buck.
Your merc is weak, you need elite polearm: thresher, cryptic axe, etc. You can start with non-eth, its base damage is much higher than your Scythe so your ED bonus from Insight will be bigger too. Armor also needs attention, Duriels shell is great and sort of budget, Treachery is nice too but you need fade proc almost always, without that it is weak. If you make Treachery, make sure you don’t make it in a high defence armor, it makes fade proc harder. Good candidates are like Mage Plate and alikes.
I am no expert on Necro but what I have seen so far is that your dmg is not your summons, they are just distraction. I think the base strategy is that you cast amp dmg, let your merc make the first couple of kills then corpse explode everything. The extra skills on summons make no real dmg bonus as far as I remember.
Just to chime in. There are lots of 1 point wonders as summoner build. More + to skills will increase radius of spells. As for skeleton tree. More defense for all summons.
Overall I agree with your comments.
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At my current levels, Skeleton damage is 334-337, and I can summon 12, so the total damage is 4000. Revives are harder to quantify, but I can have up to 14 revives, so there has to be some appreciable damage there. Increases in Skeleton Mastery increases the damage for both skeletons and revives. I need Insight because this build needs a lot of mana to not rely on potions.
Sandstorm Trek are good boots. The only real upgrade would be Marrowwalks. They have +2 to Skeleton Mastery. That may be the only plus skill on a boot in the entire game. Boots are probably the least important piece of gear. I usually use them for frw, and to fill out any resistances. So hang on to all those dual and tri res boots that you find.
You definitely need to upgrade your merc a bit. Get him Treachery. The 40 iAs will improve his kill speed even with a crappy weapon, and the fade helps with survivability. It’s second only to fortitude, but it’s much cheaper. Also build insight in a better base. The runes should be cheap at this point, so use any elite polearm with 4 sockets. If you an ethereal one it’s worth using a socket quest on it. Remember, he is your strongest minion.
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Based on the responses here, I discovered that the merc on my retired Hammerdin had a better Insight polearm than my Necro’s Scythe (I suspect I still have more work to do here). Its max damage is 699, over 200 higher than the Scythe. In the grand scheme of things, what is considered good damage for a merc?
I also crafted a Treachery. Prior to theses changes, I struggled on Hell Chaos at Player setting 3, almost undoable. With the changes readily doable and Cow farming greatly reduced in time. Thanks to all for your suggestions.
It sounds like you went from a normal base to an elite base, so it should be fine. Can it still be improved though? Sure. When it comes to melee in Diablo 2, attack speed is often more important than plain damage. This is why we recommended treachery. The 45ias will make even that plain scythe do decent damage.
Because of that, I would rank the Elite bases like this.
- Thresher
- Giant Thresher
- Great Poleaxe
- Colossus Voulge
- Cryptic Axe
Ethereal is better than non, Colossus Voluge may never be equippable otherwise.
Beyond that, additional damage would have to come from the other equipment, or sockets.