So hard to find an unsocketed monarch shield

All the guides say pit runs, chaos run, cow run…, surely not very applicable for D2R which was just out for less than a week. What’s your suggestion? Running mausoleum? Keep progressing with the quest line praying that it will drop somehow?

Do you mean monarch? I got one off an armor stand in countess runs last night. Try to open all chests, hit armor stands, do hell cows with no MF, ultimately it comes down to kill a lot of monsters and have a lot of items drop.

Thanks for the correction, I got the name of the item confused.
My char is not that powerful, and she progresses very slow now in act 2 hell. Have been farming tons of NM andy, mephisto and chaos but key items like occulus, vipermagi, SoJ just won’t drop for me (216MF in NM). And the blizzard sorc sure feels a bit clunky to play.
I’m at lvl75 now, maybe I can switch to pure lightning sorc after getting the crescent moon runeword, is that better than how I am now? My ultimate goal is the pure lightning sorc build.
P.S. Forget it, only conviction from infinity can break immunity, crescent moon can’t

  • Magic Find makes white items drop less frequently - they’re blue instead.

  • Hell Cows is where your going to find the majority of the games base elite items.

That said, Hell Countess is another place where you can get lucky by finding armor stands.

I’m not switching prior to Infinity and probably Griffon Eye but I’m playing Nova ES. A regular light sorce probably would be fine earlier but until I hit my 105% cast rate BP I won’t be.

Level 75 though is pretty big and you should be able to get into Hell Cows I imagine.

I run meteorb, fun and flexible build. not a fan of single element builds for leveling and general farming. Blizz is great for straight mephisto runs, but struggles elsewhere.

And just kill and open everything. It has a chance to drop as much as any other shield. People suggest cows just for all the normal drops you can get. Make sure you don’t have any MF on so you have a higher chance of normal items.

Do tons of mephisto + pindle + shenk today, the best I got is Chance Guards, but I got a +2 to jav skills glove which is nice. My next char is definitely going to be javazon, already get +2 skill yellow 1h spear and +1 amulet.

Just now I rush to act 3, all the way to travincal (can’t do the quest so I can’t proceed). So I start doing lk run. Got a ber rune at 2nd rune which is nice. If I drop another ber, where do you guy suggest farming the other 2 (mal/ist)? Lk hell or lk nm?

I finally found my first monarch shield I ever saw from my solo hell cows, and it was 4soc as well. I was hyped. Hell cows seems to be where everyone is finding theirs

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I just lost mine, not sure game bug or what. I died while running LK, immediately quit and re-logging in. I got everything back except my shield is gone. F**k that sh*t.

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Exchange your other items for one.😮‍💨I did.By 5 PG

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Fcr break point is higher for lightning sorc. I beleive its 113% if im not mistaken.

https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Breakpoints

It says 117 :upside_down_face:

I don’t use lightning. Nova+ES sorce.
63|105|200 for me.

I’ve been running Mausoleum as i’ve heard it drops often there but with no luck. Anyone know if you they drop from barrels?

Found mine farming hell cows and frigid highlands (which is where it first dropped). Can’t drop in NM btw.

I had one drop in tristram, just luck but that’s d2 for you

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get the plain ones from hell runs → use the socket cube formula ( 1 Tal Rune + 1 Amn Rune + 1 Perfect Ruby + Normal Shield = Socketed Shield of same type)

but it may not necessarily get the max sockets for that ilevel though… got lucky on my first try.

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The reason Monarch is so Popular is because the max sockets are 4. If you find one with no sockets your in luck. I’m not sure where the Monarch has to drop from but I believe it would be Nightmare past act 2.
Take it to any Larzuk quest act 5 and bam you have a 4 socket.

Run the mausoleum and crypt a few times. It’s there on the rack.

Monarch don’t drop in nightmare, only in hell.

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Thanks for the info I didn’t know where I dropped mine I thought it was late nightmare or early hell. Last night I found a Arakan shield or w/e its called with 4 sockets and +43 res all