Sunder's & Heralds: Clarifications on Drops

tadkarcz wrote: 1 week ago

By the way, since the launch of RotW I've only played TZ with Lvl 90+ characters, so *every* Elite/Unique monster I killed has dropped shards from the (now I know) infamous "Act 1 Shard Trease Class". This is how my shards look like currently:

Screenshot 2026-03-03 220642.png

Considering how many Act 1 Shards I've used (more than 10) and how few Act 5 shards I've used (only two or three, I'd say), one can clearly see the skewed probabilities lol (granted it's not a big sample).

Mine are far less but nearly the same distribution. Yesterday I found my first

Northern Worldstone Shard in

Chaos Sanctuary (non TZ). I still have to read Pavke´s academic paper (is it already in peer review? ) but from skimming through it, I think I understand the basic mechanics.

Bottom line: With only playing normal / rotating TZs (and not waiting nearly half an hour until the next one) you probably will never see a new Sunder Charm. As I already said: I have no problem with making them rarer than before. But I think there has to be a way to reliably target farm them with an event like the Colossal Ancients (e.g. terrorizing the whole game makes all act bosses "Heralds" from 1-5 - in the order you spawn/kill them - and the last one reliably drops a Sunder) since they are vital to many builds.

I did the 4200% MF easter egg last night after watching MacroBioBoi's new video. Terrorized most of the game (got tired after 4 acts). Got a

Latent Flame Rift on

Herald #4, then no more (probably 11 or 12 heralds total). I died 3 times to lvl 5 heralds one shotting me lol.

Made it to the fifth

Herald today on hardcore ladder. Did it on a budget Fury druid with a

Windhammer. The first

Herald I got in the River of flames. The next one on the first level of

Nihlathak's Temple, another one on the second level. The fourth I got in the

Arachnid Lair. The next two

Terror zones,

Glacial Trail and worldstone keep no

Herald spawned. The fifth I then got in

The Arcane Sanctuary. I basically cleared all areas. Unfortunately none of the heralds dropped a sunder charm...


7.3.2026, 01:00:00

Arcane Sanctuary, Harem, and Palace Cellar Now
7.3.2026, 00:30:00
Worldstone Keep,

Throne of Destruction, and

Worldstone Chamber
7.3.2026, 00:00:00

Glacial Trail and

Drifter Cavern
6.3.2026, 23:30:00

Spider Forest,

Arachnid Lair, and

Spider Cavern
6.3.2026, 23:00:00

Nihlathak's Temple and Temple Halls
6.3.2026, 22:30:00

River of Flame and

City of the Damned

Sharded another 13 gloamed heralds..still nothing. :/

On the plus side, I did finally find one that posed an actual challenge! Was genuinely fun to face a mob you couldn't just faceroll.

Turns out T5 conc + fana on the right mob type can damn near 1-shot 5k health.

a question guys.. is it safe to say that a "rational" way to farm sunders is to do multiple consecutive t5 heralds? i.e. when you occasionally trigger lvl 1, 2 or 3, it's not worth the time to even divert from your farming due to negligible drop chances?

Schnorki wrote: 4 days ago

Turns out T5 conc + fana on the right mob type can damn near 1-shot 5k health.

10000% - T5 heralds are insanely scary. They nuked by friends 95 Hardcore Warlock who was fully kitted out.

1-shot and it was only /players4 game they were hunting them. He didn't even have a reaction chance to Full Juv. It was just completely game over.

Pavke had a similiar experience in his testing. His ES

Nova also built to near perfection got 1-shot by a Tier5. Just deleted him instantly.

ganseng wrote: 4 days ago

a question guys.. is it safe to say that a "rational" way to farm sunders is to do multiple consecutive t5 heralds? i.e. when you occasionally trigger lvl 1, 2 or 3, it's not worth the time to even divert from your farming due to negligible drop chances?

No doubt the research knowing now what we know suggests that Tier4/Tier5's are the most optimal to acquire a Sunder but you also want higher /playerx games which further increases the difficulty of killing them.

I think the answer is very contingent on online/offline, hardcore vs. softcore...

But A2 is quite effective overall especially Tombs. But you still have a 50% chance to not even see a Tier5

Herald clearing the entire Act. So there is no harm/shame in simply sharding, clearing, seeing where you tier towards, and if you don't want to deal with a Tier5, just stop at Tier4 even, go to a new game and rinse/repeat.

Schnorki wrote: 4 days ago

Sharded another 13 gloamed heralds..still nothing. :/

On the plus side, I did finally find one that posed an actual challenge! Was genuinely fun to face a mob you couldn't just faceroll.

Turns out T5 conc + fana on the right mob type can damn near 1-shot 5k health.

The heralds can indeed be dangerous. As a hardcore player, I can only recommend to be prepared to use several rejuvenation potions, and to be aware when to pull out and regroup if necessary...

It seems to me the elite has a lot to do with how difficult a

Herald is to put down. I ran into this one and my Warlock did a relatively swift take down, of course the Goatmen did all the work.

Yesterday I was able to get to another T5

Herald. It took me four

Terror zones. Three heralds I got in the

Dry Hills / Halls of the dead. The fourth in

Arcane Sanctuary, none in the sewers and the fifth one I got in

Chaos Sanctuary. After killing Diablo he gave me another

Herald warning so I used a shard for the remainder of act 4. Right at the beginning of rivers of flames I got the sixth one.
No sunder drop though
But if I understood the drop rates explanations correctly I got close, one of them dropped a blue grand charm (which could have been a sunder charm).

I think probably an efficient way to hunt heralds is to get 2-3 heralds in maybe two normal

Terror zones and then use a shard. This way you will likely get to the fifth one.

The gameplay of hunting heralds is totally different. After two days I feel like a hardcore gamer lol (hardcore not in the sense of the D2R game version). I do not mind clearing whole

Terror zones, I like it. However, it simply takes too long to get to

Herald T5, and then you have the low drop rates. Maybe each

Herald should drop an item that enables you to continue at that level in the next game you play.

Overall the

Herald add something to the endgame. In particlar they can be challenging. In the endgame before, with my Fury druid I basically never needed to use any potions. When fighting against the heralds, against most of them I had to use several rejuvenations potions. Since I play hardcore, it adds some excitement to the game.