Just wanted to say that i live this game! Played it since its first release!
But i am sick of trying to find runes and gear to make my chars better! It is impossible to casually play this game and enjoy it.
I dont want to have to grind to find one rune after several hours… It sucks!
I have never during the 20 years playing on and off found a BER or IST or any other nice rune…
As a casual player, I have found that you must “go with the flow” when it comes to items.
When it comes to items, you don’t choose what class you want to play, the game chooses that for you depending on the items that drop.
For the past several ladders, the game has dropped Windforce. Yet I can’t find something that’s several times more common, the Oculous. Obviously the game wants me to play a Bowazon. Now had the strafe attack rating bug been fixed, I would have!
The Sorceress is a popular class because she is far less item dependent than the other classes… Plus she has that Teleport skill, but that’s besides the point.
Play with what you have, not with what you don’t yet have.
So you are doing it wrong, extrapolate numbers about your farming and efficiency and now you want blizz to give you freebies?
I give you a task. Run 500 countess runs in a row. Tell us about your run finds afterwards.
Thank me for your first Ist
If that’s the case, then you should be well aware of how it is.
There is a trick to fooling the RNG, that is: Never, and I mean NEVER! look for a specific item! The game can sense when you are target farming.
Suddenly you start finding nice items left and right, when you aren’t looking for anything specific.
You’re comparing your progress with people who use trading websites, bots, or /player 8 in single player. These same people also frequently run farming builds and will run specific zones ad nauseum.
The fun of Diablo 2 is in the journey not the destination. I’ve used editors to give my character all the best items and you know what? I was bored after 5 minutes.
Odin is a fake casual, and you should ignore anything he says. His constant refrain is “git gud”, which really means “get involved in d2jsp”. His opinions about the game and its pacing exist in a clown world. He is the man who honks.
Runes have generally always been a poorly implemented system, and some band aids have been sloppily applied, but you will not find many playing casually if you expect to find them all yourself. For the casual player, the best thing you can do is make a sorc and farm. The next thing you should make is a smiter that can clear out ubers. That’s a very reliable way to generate value via torches. A sorc+smiter is the cheapest way for you to get time efficient uber clears.
Make a nova/orb sorc until you can get a cold sunder charm, then go blizzorb and just farm. Once you can clear runs efficiently, playing casually becomes more possible.
Doing 500 countess runs is not casual play. That is long time grinding.
We adults have jobs, we don’t have time to do 500 countess runs in a row. If you had a job you might know that. Do NOT claim to have a job and still think 500 countess runs are possible. We also have wives and kids to deal with. You must be some kid, or adult living in mommy’s basement, or on government handouts to think 500 runs is some how casual play.
The OP is not wrong. I also found windforce so easy. Never seen a silkweave or waterwalks drop. I never see 90% of mid level items, and far less high level items.
It’s easy for you kids, and jobless adults to make assumptions on how we play. But you simply do not know.
He also didn’t ask for “freebies”.
You obviously want to horde the game and don’t want any one else to have anything so you can feel big and strong compared to the rest.
Asking for drops to be made better is not unreasonable. WHat IS unreasonable is YOU wanting no one else to have good stuff. Thinking that better drops are some how freebies. You obviously pay for your gear because you relate some kind of monetary value to drops. Maybe you run a web site selling them and it would hurt your income.
I think I just nailed it right there.
Yep, this. It’s like we have anti-control over our luck. The only way we can control it is by… Not trying to control it. 
so far sense D2R launch I have found 3 gul and 3 Lo runes. for my big rune finds. Traded Pgems for ists, to up to get more stuff. it can some times be a pain but it feels real nice to finally make that eexile or something.
Haha i would love to do 500 Countess runs! But working full time, two kids and girlfriend it is impossible to play that much…
Just wanted to say what i feel! It is easy to lvl up and do a decent char… but I feel like even after 20 years I never felt that I have completed it all and have one or more fully speced chars!
Do not “look for” hrs. Just kill as many mobs quickly. Also don’t skip chests, pots, graves.
You don’t have to do it in one go and why are you playing a gear grinding game when you are not willing to repeat runs?
You will be shocked that I not only have a full time job, but also family including a 1 year old daughter, a house with garden and pool that need maintenance and friends and other hobbies.
It’s still no problem to run repeatedly zones over days/weeks/months to achieve a goal. Countess is the most reliable source for Ist runes.
None of that, but it clearly shows that you failed to choose the correct game for yourself and that you suck at the game.
More wrong assumptions, accusations and personal attacks. You must be a very awful person.
Didn’t expect anything else from man children crying for more loot and freebies.
Maybe you should rethink your life choices and choose games more suitable for your time, skill and fun. Maybe D3 is a better choice for your kind.
get over it ! this is how d2 has always been!!! a grinding loot finding monster slaying game, i play 2 hours a day maybe and i find tons of items useful ones at that!
Look else where cause what ur doing is not working! try somethign else
100% 2020202020202020
i’ve found about 30 HR since d2:r release. learn how to play instead of complaining about things you cannot achieve.
and ist doesn’t even count as a HR, probably found 10-15 of them. i haven’t even played in months either… if i had continued i’d easily be at 40+ HR by this time.
So you can’t play ~15 hours in a month? Maybe it’s the wrong game for you.
Grailing takes time, but if you don’t have much time, you need to be very efficient.
Town/lobby is lava, every second you can shave off a run helps with little playtime. Repeating the same run helps you to do it faster and allows you to get more runs/drops in the same time.
Don’t waste your playtime thinking about what you want to do or where to farm and switching through the acts and different tasks. It slows you down and wastes your time and doesn’t reward you.
If you say you got 30-60min to play and already know that you are running countess, you can directly start and get as much runs in as possible. That might be just 30 runs but it will add up
here is some math i did
averagely, its 1/22k runs to get any rune from ohm to jah in ancient tunnels, elite hunting farming methodology
obs: this excludes any rune above or lower the mentioned and also any gear worth trading for a HR so take this as from ssf perspective
obs²: there are places where this ratio is much better like travincal or cows
obs³: the drop calc used was the one from maxroll
Casual playing…that’s like 10 Countess runs eating up my play time, maybe 30 on the weekends when I get some ‘time to myself.’ I’m in the camp with the rest, just a casual player these days. I remember when I was able to do 500 runs within a day or two, but these days. That’s half the season…
A good trading spot that is streamlined so I don’t have to be online constantly just to buy/sell something would be invaluable…
Play d3 then? I mean seriously, d3 pleases casual players, d2r is not supposed to do that.
Haha thanks for all the input! I will try to do as you mentioned! 