Sunder's & Heralds: Clarifications on Drops

Hey D2IO,

Starting a new thread here as there were some previous ones touching on this, and while a few of us believed that offline (singleplayer) suggested they would only drop on

Herald Tier4's and Tier5's this is INCORRECT.

Who can drop Sunders? ALL TIERS - both online and offline.

Do Tier 4's and Tier5's have a better chance? Yes, due to a specific Sunder TC and a "negative pick" - it will have a chance to roll

That said, the fact remains that Sunders still have a high NoDrop and /playercountx is the most important factor in putting yourself in a good position for Tier4 and Tier5 heralds.

Yes, Tier4's and Tier5's are a premium, also quite dangerous for Hardcore, but the higher the player count, the higher the potential.

So how does it work for Tier1 - Tier3? Surprisingly something interesting.

In short, Tier1 - Tier3 DO NOT have a specific Sunder Table. Instead, they translate from a standard Magic GC going through the games "Quality Checks". Just like how it can roll into a Gheeds, it can roll a Sunder. Your personal Magic Find % plays a large roll here naturally as one would expect. /Playercount and thus NoDrop then does not play much of a roll as it relates to hunting a Sunder in this particular instance.

Many of us who were heavily researching this were working with the information we had at the time based on our own mining, but also real world evidence (signal).

More will be coming out on this soon, be on the lookout, but I wanted to get this in the open.

cc: @ShadowHeart @Schnorki

Noted Research is now in the wild -

Shout out to Pavke: https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/commen ... cs_sunder/

Thx mate, again!
For now I have stopped farming Heralds and only go for collecting statues and shards (and kill some lvl1-2 Heralds on the way). Maybe sometime I buy a latent or renewed Sunder Charm. But for my taste, as a casual gamer, it is currently simply too much effort for too less in return...

Okay, so tl;dr

Tier 1-3:

• Sunder can only drop if the game choose to drop a magic charm from one of the items the
  Herald drops and decides to make it unique quality (i.e., compete with
  Gheed's for drop chance).
  • Magic find DOES have an effect for this.
  • Player count has NO effect for this.

Tier 4-5:

• Sunder can drop if the game choose to drop a magic charm from one of the items the
  Herald drops and decides to make it unique quality (i.e., compete with
  Gheed's for drop chance).
  • Magic find DOES have an effect for this.
  • Player count has NO effect for this.
• Sunder can also drop from a special Sunder Treasure Class, it's a separate drop roll. This has a higher chance of happening than the random magic charm being picked and rolled into unique quality.
  • Magic find has NO effect on this. (this is exactly like old sunders)
  • Player count DOES have an effect this.

Correct, @War The Wise?

A lot of valid questions. I think Pavke is working on a detailed report (which I expect that he'll post on Reddit, as per usual), maybe some of the questions will be answered there. He's sitting on a lot of information from having deep-dived into this (not just him ofc), and he's been letting little nuggets slip here and there on Discord. I think he's planning on posting it later today.

Here's the aforementioned post by Pavke about Heralds and sunder charms:

https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/commen ... cs_sunder/

(haven't had time to read it myself yet but figured some here might be interested)

Schnorki wrote: 11 hours ago

Not trying to be an ass, though it may sound like it, but merely for the sake of judging the reliability of this correctly and whatnot:
So what's changed? How is your methodology different and (presumably) more reliable now?
After all, you did literally call out Epherno (whoever that is) for not understanding the data mining and claimed drop chance does not change in any way with

Herald level. I.e. the exact opposite of what you're saying now. Same for the "no offline t1-3 sunders" bit which is now also a claim of the opposite.

And if sunders then aren't limited to just the specific sunder TC but can also roll from regular unique charms and replace

Gheed's, does that still remain limited to heralds or could other high enough (TZ'd?) mobs pass that same roll?
Similarly, is that "random sunder" limited to T1-3 or also available to T4 and 5, meaning 4 and 5 would get an effective "extra chance", one from the sunder table (where MF wouldn't matter) plus one from the regular drops (where MF would matter)?
And lastly, just for good measure, for all of these, is

Find Item as usual just a "full repeat kill/drop"? Or is that e.g. somehow removing the T4/5 sunder TC in the process, resulting in more limited odds with it for some reason?

The analysis in its entirety is in the wild. I planned on making a video, but he wanted to get it out sooner:

https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo2/commen ... cs_sunder/

If anything, it further validates that yes, drop rates as expected are indeed brutal.

Good luck to my Hardcore brethren hunting Tier 4's and Tier5's and not dying - vaya on dios.

/PlayerX matters MORE for Tier4 and Tier5 whereas, MF matters more for TIer1 - Tier3.

Shard hunting makes sense as he alluded to in his analysis on amassing the greatest denominator of Heralds, but as I previously highlighted the 2% and 1% remain extremely relevant as the front-door "gate"

I gave up on ladder yesterday and found someone willing to trade me transfered old sunder for all my tradeable junk i had.

Altough the're not even that expensive. In fact much cheaper than I expcted. It's only that I didn't have much "Wealth" on ladder.
Feels like a move against developers intensions, but what can you do.

On nonladder I don't care that much. I would like to have Renewed one in my inventory but it doesn't change anything really if I don't.
I have all old sunders I could ever ask for.