Can anyone confirm if Sir William is still live in Season 17?
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If he was removed it would be in the patch notes.
I can confirm that just prior to the start of Season 17, I got him in non-season.
He’s just really really rare. Some folks have looked for him over months of time.
As a personal note, when I got him, he was right next to Evil Oliver. In a few videos I’ve seen that’s also been the case. It could be just coincidence, though.
Anyway, keep looking, you’ll get him eventually.
I have not seen him in quite sometime but a friend of mine killed him a few days ago. He’s just super rare.
500+ runs, no spawn – HC Seasonal
Concerning Sir William’s appearance rate, this just occurred to me: every time I repopulate the game means another chance for him to appear. So, that means that until his appearance, my best chance at finding him means I have to play every game in Whimsyshire until I get him; otherwise, if I decide to not play a couple games looking for him, I might miss my chance? Any thoughts?
Get a super fast, super easy build and run the highest torment level you can, as fast as you can. I used WW to get him years ago on T3, and Princess Lillian on a random T10 bounty a month or two ago? Literally just wanted a couple bounty mats for Act 2 and killed a rainbow gobbo before I saw it. And there she was. All random.
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Hes still here, got my rainbow portrait after years of farming 3days ago… only the wings left to get now.
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Confirmed, I got my rainbow portrait after about 100 runs
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If you don’t run Whimsyshire during a game session, he doesn’t have a chance to spawn, so no, you aren’t missing out on anything. He’s not generated as a potential spawn until you enter Whimsyshire.
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One other question: Is there a way to know the number of times I’ve entered Whimsyshire? I’ve heard/seen many people quoting their number of runs until getting Sir Williams. Are they citing actual numbers or just being anecdotal?
No way, you need to count (as I did)…
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They could be both at the same time actually. It’s entirely possible to factually count the number of tries but still be considered anecdotal because there are no known ways to show others how many times you tried without a recording from beginning to end.
But from personal experience where it took me in the neighborhood of roughly 500 Whimsyshire runs to get Sir William to appear I do know that the range can vary from OMG LOTTERY WIN to eye gouging amounts of runs exceeding 1000.
Sir William is incredibly rare, and since each and every individual attempt is the same chance to get him, odds are you’ll hit at least the midrange number of attempts at 200-300 easily before you see him. Thankfully you can repeat this (ad nauseum) as long as you want once you have the Staff of Herding crafted and in your inventory. That’s one of the reasons he’s got so much lower a spawn chance than Princess Lillian in Whimsydale - you can repeat Whimsyshire infinitely. Whimsydale requires a rainbow goblin and can only be run once per game session regardless of whether or not you encounter another rainbow goblin in the same run.
I have both the happy cloud portrait from Sir William and the Cosmic Wings from Princess Lillian, so I know it can be done, if very, very, very tediously. Good luck and happy hunting! 
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Thanks for this!
As an aside, I committed the cardinal sin, the other day: while in Whimsyhire, I got super-frustrated, and left the game before completing the run. That’s gonna go-around the brain-pan for a bit!
Looks like that would be a no, so sad, RIP Sir William.
So, I don’t have to repopulate the game? I just have to exit and then re-enter Whimsyshire?
No, I’m afraid not. I guess I should have worded that a bit better for you. You still have to exit the game and start a new one to get Sir William to have another chance to spawn. Unlike in Path of Exile, there is no way to manually reset an instance from within the game in Diablo 3, so once you’ve cleared Whimsyshire, you have to exit and make a new game.
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I kind of figured that’s what you were getting at. Thanks for clarifying.
Only the Vault rerolls in the same game as the portal closes after opening Greed’s chest at the end. Just like a standard rift.
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Sir William on the first run today!
This was after about 20 hours over three prior days since I watched Raxxanterax’s maxroll rainbow-goblin-farming-guide.
Absolutely key to success is to always check the chat log for the entire run before leaving instance as most of the time I downed the mobs before recognizing who they were.
During the first run this morning, it just seemed odd that I saw a chat message for Evil Oliver, when I thought I had already dropped him. Sure enough, the log showed the first drop was Sir William.
Once the Whimsyshire Portrait Frame does drop, you must pick it up. When you do pick it up, the game won’t let you drop it out of your inventory.
All runs were on level 70 Normal mode.
For the heck of it, I went looking for the RIP Pancakes Easter Egg to see if there was any sort of correlation. I have never noticed the Pancakes egg before, and didn’t find it after a thorough search in this instance.
I found that doing these runs are a great way to plow through audio books. Just this week I went through Genius Makers, A Mind At Play, and I was halfway through The Code Breaker when Sir William made his brief appearance. I would get too bored doing the runs with just instrumental music playing.
I would imagine that I probably missed picking up a Whimsyshire Portrait Frame previously from Sir William, because I never checked the full chat logs every time as a process before the last few days.
Also, getting Sir William on the first run today is so mathematically unlikely, it makes me wonder if I somehow set a flag yesterday as to having finally completed enough runs (again?), in order to automatically be given one occurence of Sir William.
The appearance location was not a typical Evil Oliver location, but good luck even noticing this immediately when doing speed runs while distracting yourself from the repetition.
Anyways, happy holiday weekend. I haven’t even eaten breakfast this morning. I think I’ll have some pancakes to celebrate!
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I got him after about 30 runs after my initial farming of this rare NPC. Here is the kicker, I literally was so worried about posting on the forums that I didn’t even realize I killed him until after I finished putting together my seasonal ideas I posted (season 25 ideas). So, basically I was on the forums for about 25 minutes after I completed a Whimsyshire run. After I completed my post, I tabbed back to my D3 game and first, realized I was disconnected. Then, I seen in my chat log that I killed Sir William. He was one of the last NPCs I killed in Whimsyshire for that run. I was so freaking mad and upset that I put a ticket in.
I was literally under the impression that it was like the cosmic wings from Whimsydale where you earn the achievement to know that you killed the appropriate NPC for the collections reward. Hopefully I can get him again before the season ends now that I know it is a white scroll.
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