TL;DR:
Don't do it. Just don't. Save up for a Vex, or whatever the current market price is and just buy one. Trying to farm this amulet is soul-crushing.My Setup:
When I started farming Tal Rasha's Adjudication, it was the last part of the set I needed. In other words, I was already wearing a full set of tals, but opted for a Shako instead of wearing the Helm. I was also a lvl 85-86 Meteorb sorc. I had around 350% MF (more on why this doesn't matter later). If you're planning on farming this amulet with any other class, DO NOT DO IT. Having Teleport or Enigma is absolutely required to do this. If you shrug this off, you might as well be adding a x4 multiplier to every time related approximation that I give below. I'm not joking. May Cthulhu have mercy upon your soul if you ignore this warning.Farming Tactics:
Alright, let's start getting into the juicy bits. Andariel is our target, because she has the greatest chance to drop amulets. It also helps that she's quest bugged, meaning we get far better drops from her than normal monsters or other bosses. Farming her in Nightmare was ideal for me, because my merc wouldn't be killed by her, and having his Insight aura really helped with teleporting through the catacombs in a quick and cost effective manner. You could also farm for Tal Rasha's Adjudication in Hell, too if you wanted. By farming in Hell you could find better loot along the way, however, this does change the probabilities, and I will not really be discussing Hell probabilities in this forum post (If you get down to it, it's actually slower and you get worse odds in hell). Really, I just want to say that while you're doing this, you should be doing each run as resource free as possible. What I mean by that is each run should cost you zero gold except for the cost of identify scrolls. If you're using any potions at all, or rezzing your merc, you're NOT ready for this. You will go broke too fast for it to matter. Each run should net you only gains, and you should be using no mana or health potions. If you can do that in Nightmare, you should be good.Next we need to talk about the layout of catacombs. When you take the waypoint, the stairs are normally to the right. I say normally, because sometimes it's not true. However, you should always go right after taking the waypoint into Catacombs Level 2. Just do it, and get used to it, because trust me, it gets annoying real fast when the stairs are right there and you decided to not go right first. As for level 3 of catacombs, it's completely random. I cannot give you any tips about this floor. You just have to Teleport around fast and find the stairs. Given time, you will start to identify how limited the layout is for catacombs, and that will greatly speed up finding the stairs. After about 600+ runs through catacombs, I started to recognize corners and layouts I had already seen before. I "knew" where the stairs were immediately in lvl 3 sometimes, just by teleporting around a few feet. This takes time and experience; you will see what I mean when you exceed a few hundred runs and are actually paying attention.
Next let's talk about speed. Speed is what really matters here. I would ballpark most of my runs to roughly < 30 seconds per kill. These are fast. Sometimes I even got stairs quite literally side by side and getting to Andariel took a matter of seconds. It should also be noted that it's possible to kill Andariel too fast. As of the time of writing this, (10/20/2021), Blizzard has implemented a lockout timer for runs. I don't know how this works, but I know that if you kill Andariel in < 15 seconds or so, you will be prevented from remaking a game for about 30 seconds. This may not exist at the time of you reading this in the future. Lucky you! This means that although you do want to be fast, you don't want to be too fast. I suggest that if you're going too fast (Good layout with stairs right next to each other), that you slow down and kill a boss pack or two along the way. This is better than sitting and waiting in the character page for your timer to expire.
Probabilities:
(Sources: https://dropcalc.silospen.com/item.php and https://d2.maxroll.gg/d2-drop-calculator)The chance for Andariel to drop an amulet is different for both sources above. Silospen claims 1 in 25, and maxroll claims 1 in 21. I personally feel like 1 in 25 is more accurate, but I actually don't know. Either way, let's just assume for the sake of argument and the probabilities below, that we take the high estimate of Silospen and say that Andariel has a 1 in 25 chance to drop an amulet. Good? Good.
Ok, so each time we kill Andariel, there is a 1 in 25 chance (4%) that she will drop an Amulet. If each run takes us 30 seconds, that makes the total estimated time for a chance to find one amulet roughly 12.5 minutes. Yes, you read that correctly. It will take you roughly 12.5 minutes to find one amulet. Non stop runs; no breaks.
But we're not done yet! At 350% and greater Magic Find, there is a 60% chance that amulet will be a green set item. It should be noted that anything higher than 350% magic find is completely redundant. Diminishing returns nets you fractions of an increase (The difference between 350% and 400 is literally +1% and the odds of +1% helping you is 1 in 100). Essentially, it's meaningless to go over 350% MF for farming tals ammy. You should be focused more on killing speed instead.
Ok, so if the amulet only has a 60% chance to be a green set amulet, that essentially doubles our time. Instead of 12 minutes, we're now looking at roughly < 25 minutes for a chance to find a single green set amulet. Non stop kills. No breaks. 25 minutes between each green set amulet.
So we spend those 25 minutes grinding hard. We finally get a green set amulet. We joyously identify it and.....it's not Tal Rasha's Adjudication.... So what happened? Well, my friend, now you get to truly start hating yourself. You see, there are other set amulets that can roll, too. And most of them have a higher spawn rate. here's a table to illustrate this:
But hey, you want to truly feel the insanity? You could also just drop Tal Rasha's Adjudication on your very first kill.... or none after thousands.
Can you feel it now Mr. Krabs?
ekimnotlat
human_being
Krythic
505