need help with 8 players hell hammadin MF/rune hunt (single player)

i'm trying to make a solid build for MF. but having hard time negotiating with FCR break point(at 75). and building up resistences as these hell mobs can sap me quick...
using a tancerd combo with amulet for 78
some rings,

Boots, and

Chance Guards for a total of 177 MF.
damage is not great almost 5k at level 80. (2 spirits)

1)there is the option of Smoke.
2) lower players, but lose rune chance.
3) lose the MF and

Concentrate on defense and attack, so I'll hit more. perhaps i should get MF after i have solid build?

option3 is the most reasonable?

thoughts?

The game would be too easy if you can farm effectively P8 using a bunch of MF gear and dual Spirit

Better farm P3 or even P1.

MF is great and all but very quickly isn't worth the investment if it comes at the cost of direct or indirect clear speed (direct = lower dmg, indirect = lower survivability forcing you to slow down to recover).

Generally speaking, you usually want to focus on clear speed and survivability first, getting MF from items where it "doesn't matter" at that stage. So that's things like war travs as

Boots typically make precious little difference in clear speed (esp. as a hammerdin), mf suffix on your small charms and obviously stuff like Enigma and harlequin which you want anyways and happens to add a good bit of MF at the same time. Breaking 200 without focusing on MF isn't unusual and a perfectly sufficient starting point imo. Once gear picks up across the board, you can then shift to more of an MF focus if you'd like because you have the wiggle room to still keep solid clear speed. Until then, speed tends to beat MF. Also until then, moving to higher /players may simply not be worth it. Sure, it decreases your nodrop chance but if it slows you down by a higher factor at the same time, the end result is a net negative.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

end result is a net negative

depends what your goal is-
i never got high end room above

Um or

Mal in 1 player.
but here i got

Mal on nightmare cows 8players on the first run.

I'm guessing runes are big increase on drops with X players. so getting more runs, or "farming" spots is not a fun way to play also.

I will however remove the MF and go straight to survivability.

thanks...

looking for more suggestions if anyone has something creative..

rikus wrote: 2 years ago

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

end result is a net negative

depends what your goal is-
i never got high end room above

Um or

Mal in 1 player.
but here i got

Mal on nightmare cows 8players on the first run.

I'm guessing runes are big increase on drops with X players. so getting more runs, or "farming" spots is not a fun way to play also.

I will however remove the MF and go straight to survivability.

thanks...

looking for more suggestions if anyone has something creative..

If your goal is solely fun then yeah, it depends.

If your goal is farming success however (as your initial post seemed to imply), which a lot of folks view as a means to an end and don't focus on 'fun' for, then that is simply a function of drop chance by mobs killed over time. In essence, it becomes simple math. As player count goes up, so does drop chance (because nodrop decreases). However, as player count goes up, so too does mob health, in turn reducing your mobs killed over the same amount of time. If that drop in mobs killed is relatively larger than the gain from lowering your nodrop, the end result in terms of farming efficiency will be a net negative no matter what.
Higher player count doesn't affect what can drop, it merely affects the odds of it dropping.

You certainly could do 1000 /p1 runs and find nothing and do 2 /p8 runs and find a

Ber. You could also do 1000 /p8 runs with nothing and 1 /p1 run with a

Jah though. That's simply the nature of RNG. Either way, in the long run, on average, the equation above holds as it becomes a matter of simple statistics.

On a related note, since you brought up runes while talking about MF initially, just to make sure you're aware: rune drops are not affected by MF, neither positively nor negatively and neither in terms of the odds of getting a rune to begin with, nor the quality/level of a rune when you do find one. They're their own item type and not influenced by magic/set/unique rolls.
In terms of increased drops, they merely benefit from the same drop chance increase via lowering nodrop as everything else.

But be that all as it may: The single best way to find stuff is to keep playing. So if being as efficient as possible (in gear, build, player count, whatever) results in you enjoying it less and actually playing less because of it..then yeah, optimizing = bad.

I say drop down to players 3 or maybe 5 if it's an easy area.
If you really just want high runes,

Lower Kurast is your very boring friend, players 8 there but just pop the super chests

More kills faster will give you much better drop odds than slow kills at higher level, players 3 is a pretty good balance

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

just to make sure you're aware

very much aware as i've noted in 3).

its not much the players 8 that kicks my butt, but rather my lack of good resistances. but lowering hp of mobs obviously can help.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

1000 /p1 runs and find nothing and do 2 /p8 runs and find a

Ber. You could also do 1000 /p8 runs with nothing and 1 /p1 run with a

Jah though

as you've mentioned it could be either way, so my bet is stil to ahve fun while "farming".
I'm also aware of the numbers of kills per HR drops, and people doing that here, have said that it is still very much RNG god dependent.
If I'll die too much i'll have to drop the X players count in anycase. to survive, at least until i get decent resistances(-54% fire is very bad against fire skelis bosses)

rikus wrote: 2 years ago

so my bet is stil to ahve fun while "farming".

Hands down the single best approach you can take imo.

I actually had to lower players to 5, now its less crazy dying all the time

i guess the less insane strategy would be to raise to 8 back again AFTER i get some good gear.

i thought hammadin can do p8 with budget gear on hell. guess not..

What gear you got?

To keep up clear speed you’ll want to hit level 90+. If you can get to 93 or higher that’s when rares start being consistently really good

My recommendation would be to have a sorc first to farm decent gear from Meph and

Lower Kurast. From this you’ll get enough gear and runes to get your Hammerdin dealing decent damage. Other options are a javazon for cows, and a barb for trav.

By far the “funnest” build to farm with for me has been the bowazon, but it’s damned expensive to kit out.

I got budget gear- 2 spirits. Smoke. Lore. Other for res/mf. I do 5.3k which is ok on p5. On p8 it’s too slow. Now finishing act 2 on lvl84. I did everything on p8 until act2. Where those magic immune started going nuts. I thought magic immunities are rare. They are. But they did also got 2 zones cornered me.

Lost City and temple of snakes.

Ancient Tunnels luckily didn’t have

PS
Also I have a question why the hell is the resist all aura doesn’t effect poison?? It remained unchanged. Luckily I discovered that heal poison aura. That got me toasted quite a bit.

If you can get a

Skin of the Vipermagi it’ll likely help.

For your merc I recommend the

Holy Freeze aura with an Insight. I’d give it a re-roll if the damage is less than +225%

If you can get a

Circlet or ammulet with tele charges they will help as well. Otherwise any

Boots with +40% walk run will really help you get into position to fling those hammers.

At your level the damage should also be a bit higher, got all your synergies and

Concentration maxed? I’d prioritize those over all other skills.

If you don’t have a pally torch yet and can trade I’d recommend it too. even try to get an assassin one, they’re super cheap and still give +attributes and resists even though you don’t get the skills

I think you missed the part where it’s p8. As in single player.. no trade.
I’m doing this because of disappointment from the online play. Counting on farming stuff with p8.

Damage is with all. 3 synergies maxed.

Vigor.

Blessed Aim and

Concentration. With the +5 to skills. So I don’t see how that could be more. Unless there’s some magic damage boost I’m unaware of.
I guess I should switch my Ice zon merc to

Holy Freeze boring Turkish soldier. But that would mean less fun build for me (planning on Delirium).
She could probably kick ass with Treachery. She is using Insight to stop the quaffing of mana.
I am looking for charges of tele and deceprify. Still nada.
Hoping to get to

Lower Kurast then starts camping there for a while until I get some lovin from mr RNG.

Understood, sorry I forgot your ssf. It’ll be way more satisfying when you get everything. I’m about 4 months into my own ssf offline, and it’s fun. I remember when my first

Jah dropped in trav, my jaw dropped irl.

If your just getting through hell the first time do players 1 through act 2 and 3, they suck until your better equipped and get that +10 all res reward in act 5.

To help get the skills up you can also gamble for a +3 pally combat skills amulet, I’m rocking one with +25mf.

You may want to keep you eyes out for a hoz, they give +4 to hammers though you lose some cast rate you get an extra like 1.5k damage, I found one off Meph then other from trav.

Another skill is from hoto, one from cta, another from

Arachnid Mesh, anni, torch and charms for the rest. That should get you over 10k, although I know I just listed off a months’ worth of farming, but that’s how it goes.

You’ll be able to get to 90% of your final goal from LK and Meph farming. The torch and anni get a bit harder - i had to run nightmare Andy like 800 times before she dropped an soj, which I very nervously sold to a vendor to spawn the

Diablo Clone.

Be advised you might lose your mind if your ever target farming for something. I tried to get a skullders from hell Andy and did like 1500 runs with zilch, sometimes the rng gods just curse you...I still don’t have one

rikus wrote: 2 years ago

I think you missed the part where it’s p8. As in single player.. no trade.
I’m doing this because of disappointment from the online play. Counting on farming stuff with p8.

Damage is with all. 3 synergies maxed.

Vigor.

Blessed Aim and

Concentration. With the +5 to skills. So I don’t see how that could be more. Unless there’s some magic damage boost I’m unaware of.
I guess I should switch my Ice zon merc to

Holy Freeze boring Turkish soldier. But that would mean less fun build for me (planning on Delirium).
She could probably kick ass with Treachery. She is using Insight to stop the quaffing of mana.
I am looking for charges of tele and deceprify. Still nada.
Hoping to get to

Lower Kurast then starts camping there for a while until I get some lovin from mr RNG.

On the plus side, if you keep grinding you will get a Skin of Vipermagi. I've found three in the game so far with about 68% magic find. Consider, if you have 300% magic find, but the magic find stuff slows your clear rate, doesn't that lower your end result percentage? without magic find or minimal magic find, I can clear a room three times as fast with virtually no magic find gear. That's 300% more attempts compared to say 300% magic find.

Thanks for the suggestions.
I thought you could do the first run with p8 but I guess it’s after you get the better gear.

I have another question, since you guys are much more experienced than me-
I have 2 skillers of grand charms but for offensive auras. If I reroll do I have a chance to get a combat skill? As I understand as long it’s the same ilvl it’s a possible roll. But I guess it’s too risky, since I could roll +30 mana or equivalent until I get to pally skills.

It depends a little on the ilvl of the skiller (which is impossible to tell unless you remember exactly which monster dropped it), but when re-rolling there's roughly a 1/22-1/23 chance of getting a skiller. There are 21 skill trees, so if you're only looking for a specific skill tree, the chance of getting a skiller with that one skill tree is like 1/460 - 1/483 or something like that. Also, you have to consider what to do with skillers you're not interested in - online you could have been trading them, but offline you need to choose between re-rolling more or keeping it for a different character you already have or intend to make.

Wow. Tough stats. Low chances.
Thanks. I guess I’ll pray for RNG in kurast. When I get there.

Also I don’t know if it was mentioned-

Lower Resist

Wand charges won’t work on magic immune right?

So my bet is to maybe invest in

Holy Bolt? I don’t think it did any damage on those list city zombies. Haven’t tried on the big

Mummy monster.

No,

Lower Resist only affects the 4 elmenental resistances.

For the few magic immunes you have a merc to do the job

I haven't got a decent armor for him..he'll get whacked straight up..chose a rogue..with Insight..i will try though and save her gear in case he'll suck..i saved a polearm for him.