Magic Find Items

I've been playing D2, D2 LoD, and D2R for forever, but never realized how highly coveted Magic Find (MF) items are until I was browsing the WTB market today. Can someone help me understand why that is? I always viewed them almost as junk, because I figured they just helped you find more (blue) magic items.

Now I feel kind of dumb based off the crazy offers I'm seeing on there of people willing to trade high runes like

Ber,

Lo, and

Ohm for MF rings and charms.

Thanks in advance! Also, if there's already post on this, I'd be happy to go look at that.

It helps with finding rare, unique and set items too. I have to admit when I first started D2 original I also thought MF was a useless attribute.

Teebling wrote: 2 years ago

From the new players guide:

1. First 100 MF is worth as much as the next 200. (Every little bit helps a ton at first!)
2. MF starts significant diminishing returns after the first 300 for everything but Magic items. (See MF Curve Here)
3. When stacking MF, first consider if it will reduce killing speed and/or survivability by too much. If you can kill much faster (or spend less time dying), its not always the best thing to just add more Magic Find.
4. Keep extra MF gear in your other weapon slots and swap to them right before you kill a Boss. MF is only calculated on killing blow.
5. If your Mercenary gets the killing blow, their MF is added to yours.
6. MF does NOT help Rune drops.

I know you've been playing for a while but that guide I linked above has a lot of stuff you might have missed over the years

That's very helpful, thank you!

6. MF does NOT help Rune drops.

Thanks for that (unfortunate) reminder.

Maybe another helpful tip: When increasing MF, you lower the drop rates of White and gray items naturally. So if you are looking for good base items for rune words (for example

Thresher or

Monarch), you want as little MF as possible to increase the chance of looting them.

There will be a point where you no longer care too much about mf. After you’ve found pretty much all the uniques you need and are running out of stash space (on mules too) you’ll be more interested in the high runes like

Jah (omg anything fun in the endgame needs at least 1) and very specific bases (where are you 5os staff with +3es,+3enchant & +3

Frozen Armor?!).

Plus after a certain point you’ll want gear that inherently has good mf stats, but you won’t be wearing them specifically for the mf (Enigma, Dream, war travellers)

Took me about 18 months before I stoped caring about my char’s mf

One way to go is also to make some mf char and some without that (for me it's my zon typically to do cows).

Another (or same, but typically hard to build) Uber/Clone specialist is also nice to have.

Sirius Delta wrote: 2 years ago

Maybe another helpful tip: When increasing MF, you lower the drop rates of White and gray items naturally. So if you are looking for good base items for rune words (for example

Thresher or

Monarch), you want as little MF as possible to increase the chance of looting them.

That's a good point!