100 Hell Countess Runs

With ladder ending I decided to do make a couple of Cure and Bulwark helms to dump on nonladder. I ran Hell Countess about 20 or 30 times without seeing an

Io, so I though to myself, "what is the actual value of running Countess a bunch?" So I decided to do 100 runs.

Some preamble, I started in ladder with an 90 FoH paladin, then switched to nonladder with an 89

Fireball sorceress. Some of the runs were TZ's some were not. I made no distinction between ladder/nonladder and TZ or not. I started the experiment clearing the path down to the next level, but once I switched to my sorc I would only stop to kill large packs of elites or big groups of Ghosts.

Countess only drops. 100 runs gave me 184 runes, 5

Key of Terror, and two instances with no drop at all. The most common rune was

Ort with 24. The highest was

Mal at one. 50% of all runes were

Ral or less. 75% of all runes were

Amn or less. 95% of all runes were

Hel or less. For mid to high runes I got 7

Hel, 3

Io, 2

Lum, 1

Ko, 1

Fal and 1

Mal.

My

Key of Terror rate is one

Key per 20 runs.

Mobs on the way down gave me a

Hel, a

Lem, and a handful of

Amn and less. There were also a couple of decent charms and rares that would be good for a SSF or early ladder character.

Notable other drops on the way.

Frostburn,

The Oculus,

Magefist,

Bloodletter, Gavel of Pain,

Hellcast,

Bloodthief,

Jade Talon,

Undead Crown, and

Tal Rasha's Adjudication. That last ties

Mal for the best drops (IMHO).

In summary. Countess is not worth running for runes unless you're making Honor, Insight, or Spirit. I would snag anything worthwhile if you're

Key farming, but if you're looking for mid to high runes, it's probably not a great idea.

The mathematician in me knows that 100 is not a good sample size, so I'll probably keep track of other runs as I go, but I need a break from Countess.

Edit: After posting this, the site gave me a recommended forum post: forums/100-countess-runs-and-average-qu ... 95130.html from three years ago

We have about the same results except @Domin92 had almost twice as many keys.

RackAnewShoe wrote: 10 hours ago

In summary. Countess is not worth running for runes unless you're making Honor, Insight, or Spirit.

That's wrong, although you are on the right track. The low runes from Hell Countess are mostly for crafting (

Hel,

Ral,

Sol,

Amn,

Nef etc) and for rerolling runewords. Apart from

Ith and

Shael, almost every low rune has some value, especially on ladder where even

Io and

Lum are valuable.
By the way, I'm doing 1000 Countess runes right now and in 941 runs so far I got 6 Ists from her (but nothing higher).

mikelessar wrote: 8 hours ago

That's wrong, although you are on the right track....

Perhaps I should have phrased it better. If you're looking for low runes, it's worthwhile. What I was trying to get at is that some comments on this site for The Countess list

Mal,

Um, and

Vex, etc. To me, a 1% chance for anything

Ko or above seems like it would be inefficient farming. I've had better drop rates for high runes in The Pit.

On a direct note/question. What build are you using and how are your times? I was running online so I spent more time looking for The Tower than anything else. Are you planning on posting your results when you hit 1000 runs? I think that would be interesting and I don't have the heart now to do that many runs.

I've had better drop rates for high runes in The Pit.

Tbh, your sample size is not nearly big enough to compare the drop rate for high runes in different areas. The high runes have drop rates at 1:xxxxx (

Ohm at Countess is ~1:30000 for example). So it is just pure luck and you can only increase your chances by killing thousands of mobs. That is why cow runs are famous for rune drops. High council as well, because the minions can drop multiple items at once and the drops have a higher quality.

Btw, I found many runes >

Mal at Countess runs with the highest beeing

Jah from a elite Ghost in tz. But, again, sample size is way too small so that also means nothing.

Edit:

We have about the same results except @Domin92 had almost twice as many keys.

P(5 Keys) ~ 13,4%
P(9 Keys) ~ 9,9%

So almost the same propability. Again, even for a propability of 1:13.6 (drop rate for

Key of Terror) your sample sizes are way too small to come to valid conclusions.

I'm assuming these were non-TZ numbers? These days I pretty much will run whatever is TZ.
Non-TZ numbers are sad.