Q&A: New Terror Zones, Heralds and new Sunder Charms

imrd2u wrote: 2 days ago

Can any level

Herald drop a Sunder Charm? Or only tier 5

Herald of

Terror?

From what I've heard on Discord, the condition for sunder charm drops from Heralds looks like this:

"ConditionCalc": "\"cond('MonsterTestElite', herald)*(stat('heraldtier'.accr) >3) \""

Credit to @Nishimura_Katsuo (the guy behind https://nishicode.com).

It's not entirely clear what ">3" means, but if you assume that the tiers are 0-based (0, 1, 2, 3 and 4), then it would mean that only tier 5 can drop them. Or, it could mean that it can drop from tier 4 and tier 5.

Also, the drop rates of sunders were apparently not changed. The difference is that in the past, all champions and unique mobs in TZ were eligible to drop one (as long as the TZ level was high enough anyway), but now it's only Heralds, and only the higher (highest?) tier, meaning they're now extremely rare compared to before. ~1/238 on p1 according to Nishi who has looked in the game files.

EDIT: MrLlamaSc has said on stream that

Herald drop rates will be tweaked (and I'm sure plenty other things will be tweaked too, just wanted to mention that as well).

ShadowHeart wrote: 2 days ago

"ConditionCalc": "\"cond('MonsterTestElite', herald)*(stat('heraldtier'.accr) >3) \""

Credit to @Nishimura_Katsuo (the guy behind https://nishicode.com).

That is some valuable piece of information, thank you bringing it over here to the forum, ShadowHeart.

I wonder if the "

Herald Tier" integer keeps increasing as they spawn in the same game? Probably yes. This would mean (assuming 0 is the first value) that "tier>3" matches all subsequent Heralds of

Terror as well -- integers 4 (5th

Herald spawned, first "of

Terror"), 5, 6, 7 etc...

In regards to this:

ShadowHeart wrote: 2 days ago

From what I've heard on Discord, the condition for sunder charm drops from Heralds looks like this:

"ConditionCalc": "\"cond('MonsterTestElite', herald)*(stat('heraldtier'.accr) >3) \""

The following was a misinterpretatipn:

ShadowHeart wrote: 2 days ago

It's not entirely clear what ">3" means, but if you assume that the tiers are 0-based (0, 1, 2, 3 and 4), then it would mean that only tier 5 can drop them. Or, it could mean that it can drop from tier 4 and tier 5.

It seems all

Herald tiers can drop sunder charms (theres a video on Reddit with it dropping from the lowest tier), the highest tiers just have increased number of drops, it’s likely the “>3” has to do with that rather than gatekeeping sunder charms. Or something else entirely.

Hey guys,
I'm on Single Player and having a hard time "ramping up" those Heralds.
Is there any other way than just sitting in the same game? Usually I work through a TZ in a few minutes... rinse and repeat. Doesn't work with Heralds though.

Also: I TZed whole Act 1, I did everything (and I mean EVERYthing) - got one

Herald on the way to Andy. Just bad luck?

Oh and by the way - so far no one talked about the Statues. Within 30 minutes I found 3 from

Duriel - given that a run took some 30-50 seconds,
I'd say I killed him at least 30-35 times. So I think the statues are kinda comparable to the

Tristram keys.
Yeah, I know, waaaay too small a sample to be sure but... nothing else to go on

Hmm just cleared act 2 and 4 heralds were killed so far.. thinking if it's worth to keep going for the fifth

well it took 4 hours to spawn this thing. it appeared as a

Fetish with

Spear and one-shot me although

Energy Shield and

Battle Orders were on. i managed to kill it jumping around with

Teleport and casting hydras. it dropped

Death's Touch,

Cathan's Visage and an

Amethyst. so judge for yourself if it was worth it

Blubbalutsch wrote: 4 days ago

Q: Are there restrictions?
A: I have never seen Flayer- and

Fallen Shamans, so maybe yes

I had a Shaman as

Herald today, so no restriction there.

tadkarcz wrote: 1 day ago

Blubbalutsch wrote: 4 days ago

Q: Are there restrictions?
A: I have never seen Flayer- and

Fallen Shamans, so maybe yes

I had a Shaman as

Herald today, so no restriction there.

Would be a horker's Dream. Edited out, ty

I don't know why, but I had this crazy idea: my guts tell me that the "draw the ire of a

Herald" mechanic after killing a elite/champion monster in a TZ has "replaced" the older Sunder Charm drop. I mean: I think they have the same (?) probability of happening, and whenever you receive a "draw the ire" notification in RotW, a Unique Sunder Charm would've dropped in a pre-RotW game.

I had this idea after killing two packs of elite monster and receiving two "draw the ire" message one almost immediately after another, but especially while doing some TZ

Travincal runs earlier today, when I'd receive the notification just after entering a game and killing Council Members, with no previous killing of monsters whatsoever. Before the release of RotW I had been farming

Travincal a lot, and my perception is that both the "draw the ire" message and the (older) Sunder Charm drop rates are almost equivalent... but I don't know, I could be completely wrong of course.

BUT, if this is true, it would explain why the game can "stack" the "draw the ire" messages: I've had three of them 'stacked' at one time, and eventually all three Heralds spawned... the mechanics behind the actual SPAWNING of a

Herald remain a mystery to me, though.

tadkarcz wrote: 1 day ago

I don't know why, but I had this crazy idea: my guts tell me that the "draw the ire of a

Herald" mechanic after killing a elite/champion monster in a TZ has "replaced" the older Sunder Charm drop. I mean: I think they have the same (?) probability of happening, and whenever you receive a "draw the ire" notification in RotW, a Unique Sunder Charm would've dropped in a pre-RotW game.

Don't think so, it's way more frequent than old Sunders dropping: While i had about 0-2 Sunders when farming an hour of tz in the old game, i spawn about 5-7 heralds on average now.

tadkarcz wrote: 1 day ago

BUT, if this is true, it would explain why the game can "stack" the "draw the ire" messages: I've had three of them 'stacked' at one time, and eventually all three Heralds spawned... the mechanics behind the actual SPAWNING of a

Herald remain a mystery to me, though.

Yes, they stack and it's highly recommend to terrorize an act after some messages came and no

Herald appears. Not the nicest game mechanic, imo, as it puts pressure on you to continue playing.

Blubbalutsch wrote: 1 day ago

Don't think so, it's way more frequent than old Sunders dropping: While i had about 0-2 Sunders when farming an hour of tz in the old game, i spawn about 5-7 heralds on average now.

Yeah, you're probably right. I must've been high on copium while writing my previous message, trying to find some method to this

Herald-spawning madness...

So the tier does not tie to a character, but to a game. So the

Herald tier resets on a new game?

Sawamura wrote: 22 hours ago

So the tier does not tie to a character, but to a game. So the

Herald tier resets on a new game?

Yes, it does

Pavke* & Warren* have made some extensive testing and come up with the following:

Pavke wrote:

me an warren tested it all night (warren did most of the testing)
yes, Basically, you get Tokens (You draw the Ire of

Herald! message) that can stack (up to 5 stacks). You than use the Tokens to Convert monsters to Heralds (A

Herald is hunting you in! message). I say get and use but process is random, no way to control it.

• 2% chance to get a Token when killing an elite (champ/unique/superunique/boss (not unique minion) )
• 1% chance to use a Token to upgrade any White monster to
  Herald. Upgrade/Convert process happens when new monsters spawn. when exploring new areas and populating those areas with monster spawn mechanic.
• since the upgrade Token checks for each new White monster that spawns in the map Room individually... "using" the token is easier and faster than "getting" the token (example: you
  Teleport to unexplored area. it gets populated by 50 monsters. each monster is checked for 1%
  Herald upgrade. that is basically 50% to get convert to
  Herald when exploring a new part of the map. On other hand, you only have 2% chance to get a token when killing a few elite monsters)
• tokens are shared among players/party. One player can go in one part of Terrorized zone and get a token by killing an elite monster and seconds later another player can spawn some new monster and use that Token.
• getting two messages A
  Herald is hunting you in! at once is not good. Both Heralds will be of lower Tier because you used both tokens at once. You are better off by going "1 by 1"
  Herald spawns, in order to properly upgrade Heralds form Tier 1 to Tier 5. But there is little here that you can control.
• IMPORTANT. there is a condition in game files that makes Sunder charm drop only from Tier4 and Tier5. That is confirmed for Offline single player games. But reports suggest Sunders can drop from Tier1. Possibly a difference between Live online patch and Offline patch

As for the %:s listed in the quote, they are datamined;

Pavke wrote:

in desecratedjson file

"chance_to_gain_herald_token": 2.0,
"chance_for_token_to_convert_to_herald": 1.0

* I don't think either of these two require a presentation, but for those who don't know - Pavke is the source of many extremely detailed & informative posts about D2R on Reddit (including the discovery about monster regen & poison tick in online vs offline games), and Warren is the guy who made the only IAS calculator that is actually up-to-date and correct for D2R (the one here at diablo2.io is a fork of Warren's)

So

Travincal is really bad TZ for

Herald hunting because it's easy to spawn all monsters too early.
The more square-shape the area the worse. that is at least shape-size because surely number of elites is more important.

On the other hand long and narrow "corridors" like first part of A3 are probably better than before.

Obv Canyon and Tombs are best again. But paradoxiacally I want to skip everything there, quick tele through Sanctuary, read signs and hunt

Korlic's Pain.
Same goes for other act boss t-zones and I already miss one hour long these. It would be great if we could have some longer ones, on the weekends perhaps.

Really bad thing is double same TZ in short time span for anybody staying long in one

Terror-game. I had this yesterday: sewers -> something -> sewers again.

Sunder charms are impossible to get. But fighting Heralds is good fun.
Changing sunder drop rates is one thing, but it would be cool if we could "

Charge Ire" in some way outside TZ in preparation for Shard activation. Maybe fight some specific bosses for a chance to do that.
Or be able to take Ire from one game to another - even if that would mean

Herald level reset. Because nothing is more anticlimatic like activating Ire at the end of run and now you either activate shard and act clearing is very long or you stop doing anything. I mean it is weird if the best play is to stop playing.

Nevertheless I enjoy all of it and can't wait to get my first sunder. If excitement is the measure for 20 year old game then good job. Just needs little tweaking.