A Guide to Gold find / Magic find Barbarian by Hastmannen
Compiled by Fellowship
Introduction
The guide will include several sub guides and lots of discussions regarding what gear to use depending on what lvl you are and what goals you have with your gold finding. You can tweak a gold find build as much as you like, leaning more towards MF or more for it to be a sub-build of your general build. But no more of that, lets get right into it!What this guide contains
IntroductionWhat this guide contains
Pros and cons
Facts about Gold Find
Facts about Magic Find
Facts about Travincal
The Optimized Hell War Cry Build - 300-600K Gold / Minute
The Optimized Hell Whirlwind Build - 400-650K Gold / Minute
The Optimized Nightmare build, both Warcry and Whirlwind 300-550K Gold / Minute
Build your own version - a subbuild - and what to expect
The ladder season start guide (coming soon)
A Mini guide to gambling
F.A.Q and discussion
Appendix
Thanks and Credits
Pros And Cons
Pros
Doesn't necessarily require expensive gear to be effective
Fast runs
Can work as an extra addition to your usual build
Your friends will love you even more when they are out of gold for merc Revive/repair ;D
Almost required if crafting heavily
Cons
If specialized cannot farm fast enough many other places (Where will be updated)
Low surviveability everywhere else
Cannot do ubers or Dclone
You get gold too fast, gambling takes longer than the actual goldfinding ;D
Quite repetative due to farming the same place always
Facts about gold find
Gold find is a bonus which stats linearly and isn't affected by diminishing returns. It means that every % of extra gold find will add as much extra gold as any previous percent. No gems give extra gold find, but both runes and jewels can give gold find. Lem runes give 75% extra gold find in weapons and 50% extra gold find in armor, Helm and shield, and jewels give maximum of 30% gold find. From this moment on I will be calling gold find for GF.In POD (path of diablo) the maximum amount of gold find possible for your char alone is 2910% GF for barb and 2460% GF. Together with your merc, you can reach 4110 GF for barb and 3660 for any other char. The build for maximum gold find looks as following:
Weapon + Offhand - Barb Dual wield 6 socketed The Patriarch Great Sword with 6 Lems in it. This gives 550 gold find each with 1100 gold find total. For any other char use any 1H weapon with 6os and put 6 lems in it (450 gold find) and any shield with 4os (200% gold find).
Body Armor - All chars use Wealth rune word ( Lem + Ko + Tir) or 4 sockets Gold skin with 4 Lem runes for 300% GF.
Gloves - All chars use Chance guard gloves for 200% GF
Helm - All chars use Crown of Thieves 3 sockets with 3 Lems for 250% GF.
Belt - All chars use Gold wrap or magic/rare/crafted Belt for 80% GF
Boots - All chars use Magic/rare/crafted Boots for 80% GF
Amulet - All chars use Magic/rare/crafted Amulet for 80% GF
Rings - All chars use 2 Dwarf Star for 200% GF
Charms - All chars use Gheeds fortune for 160% GF and 9 GC with 40% GF each + 10 SC with 10% GF each.
Act 3 Merc Build for max GF:
Weapon - Any 1 H weapon 6OS with 6 lems for 450 GF
Shield - Any 4os Shield with 4 lems for 200 GF
Body Armor - Wealth rune word or 4os Gold skin with 300 GF
Helm - Crown of Thieves 3os with 3 lems for 250 GF.
This build is in any case not the optimal build for getting most gold / time, which is the only factor of importance. However, it can serve you as reference on which items you can improve your GF and how.
Furthermore, goldfind is as everything subject to RNG. This means you can get some bad runs and some good runs. Hence I list all builds Gold / Minut in an interval, which depends on your gear and your RNG. The top number in the interval means great RNG with almost perfect gear, and the lower end means both bad RNG and the worst item listed in respective builds.
Facts about Magic Find
Magic find is a bonus which suffers from diminshing returns for Rares, Sets And Uniques. For finding magical items though, it scales linearly. What +% magic find does, is that it increases the chance of an item being either Magical, Rare, Set or Unique. It doesnt not increase the amount of items dropped, it does not affect rune drops nor does it affect the quality of the item (normal, exceptional, elite).
Here is a table to illustrate the diminshing returns:
Magic find% (magical items) Rare Items Set Items Unique Items
50% 46% 45% 41%
100% 85% 83% 71%
150% 120% 115% 93%
200% 150% 142% 111%
250% 176% 166% 125%
300% 200% 187% 136%
350% 221% 205% 145%
400% 240% 222% 153%
500% 272% 250% 166%
600% 300% 272% 176%
750% 333% 300% 187%
900% 360% 321% 195%
1150% 394% 348% 205%
Lets take a practical example from from a regular cow in Hell ( Hell Bovine). Lets investigate an Ogre Maul to get a sense of how it works.
Magic find% for Magical Ogre Maul Rare Ogre Maul Set Ogre Maul ( Immortal King's Stone Crusher) Unique Ogre Maul (Wind Hammer)
0%= 1/29787 0%= 1/92341 0%= 1/150299 0%=1/377701
50%=1/19858 46%=1/63247 45%=1/103654 41%=1/267873
100%=1/14894 85%=1/49914 83%=1/82130 71%=1/220877
The Optimized Hell War Cry Build
As a cryer, your main focus is to gather the council members and the high council. You simply run in and try to place a Grim Ward either at the middle stairs (picture will come) or inside the temple slighly to the right since they never spawn there. The reason you want the Grim Ward a bit away from you is because when you do Find Item, you don't want to do it on the corpses generated by desecrate since those corpses don't generate any items and are merely an obstruction.How to do the runs
So for these you will be using some small tricks to make the runs faster. So this is basically what a run will look like.Start at act 4
Use waypoint to Travincal
Use Battle Command, Battle Orders and Shout (in this order)
Run (or tele) and use desecrate with Radaments sphere either a bit to the right at the middle stairs, or enter temple and place it a bit to the right.
Hopefully you got as many as possible following you so use Battle Cry once and then just pump em full of warcries. Scream the shit out of those evil demons!
When all is dead use Find Item and start picking up gold.
When all gold and items have been picked up, use town portal and leave gold at stash (cause gold will often exceed 450k/run, many times 600-700k). Take waypoint to a4.
Leave and restart the game.
Skill tree at level 90 (98 skills):
1 Howl
20 Taunt
20 Battle Cry
20 War Cry
1 Shout
1 Battle Orders
1 Battle Command
1 Find Potion
9-20 Find Item (depending on your own items)
11-20 Grim Ward (depending on your own items)
1 to Increased Stamina
1 to Increased Speed
0-1 to Iron Skin (depending on your own items)
0-1 to Natural resistances (depending on your own items)
So the reason of the intervals are the following:
You want to hit 1 of 2 Find Item break points, which is either skill lvl 29 (63% chance of finding an item) or you want to hit skill lv 36 (64% chance of finding an item).
Stat distribution
Strength - Enough to wear GearDexterity - Enough to get Maxblock, or go nothing and all into vitality. I prefer maxblock, but since dexreq on items is so low, feel definitely free to chose regular shieldblock and max vita.
Vitality - The rest
Energy - None
Items you will use
So the items you will use doesn't differ that much except for your armor choice and your charms. Charms are the only items that are difficult to find, and the difference between true Dream build and very good runs is fairly small. You will have to fiddle around with the charms a bit to decide what works best for you, but I will explain it in detail:Weapon - Heart of the Oak Rune word ( Ko+ Vex+ Pul+ Thul) in a Flail. Nothing to argue about. If you go maxblock, try going for more resistances if you can in some way, and if you go vitality, try to get one with 8% extra life since it scales better. It really doesn't matter that much though.
Weapon switch - Here you got 3 choices. Either you go for dualwield Blade Of Ali Baba ( Tulwar) with 2 lems in each of them, or you go for dualwield 6os The Patriarch with 6 lems in it, or for 6os Phase Blade with 6 lems. It depends on if you want to go pure goldfind or want some magicfind as well. I prefer the ali babas since you will get enough gold anyway.... Can put ists in the ali babas for more mf as well.
Shield - Radaments Sphere - Absolutely Mandatory. While you might be able to use another weapon, the shield is non-negationable. Desecrate for Grim Ward is necessary, since you don't want to use Grim Ward on one of the council corpses. I've tried without Radament's but its infintitely slower, and you don't even get more gold find. So the ideal is a corrupted upgraded one with a str req of 185. Its high strreq gives you decent blocking even without extra dex, and with 4 sockets you got 4 lems. If you want to you can go for the 3os lower req, but with 150% gold find, but i've tried both and i prefer the upgraded one, especially if you go maxblock. If you decide to go vita 3os is a more viable option since it only has 110strreq.
Body armor - You got 2 choices, and here you got to do some test with your resistances. You either go for upgraded 4os Goldskin armor (35 allres) or you get a Wealth runeword ( Lem+ Ko+ Tir) preferably in 603 defense archonplate (15% superior ed). This doesn't matter that much though, so either Dusk Shroud, Wyrmhide, archonplate 3os works fine. You may even use Wire Fleece since even exceptional Radament got 110str req and Wyrmhide 111. Do not however use an armor that is not light since you want that movementspeed. For WW goldfind barb Wealth is probably to prefer since you will get enough resistances from natural resistances, if you got torch and Anni. If you are going for slightly more MF, you can use either Enigma, or Tal armor, or Skullder's Ire, or mb even Arkaines valor with sockets. Since you are using Gheed, Chance Guards and prob Goldwrap standard, you will minimum have approx 100 MF, and if you dualwield Blade of alibaba you will have almost 300 at weapon swap.
Helmet - 3os Crown of Thieves. Put the lems in there and be happy. Try to go for as much goldfind as possible as lifesteal doesn't matter at all. If you cannot find one of those, Immortal kings will is a good budget choice, or a Circlet with a lot of goldfind to corrupt for sockets. Can even use a Tarnhelm, upgraded and corrupted, or a Shako with lems.
Gloves - Chance Guards. Try go get as high MF as possible, preferably 40 (max).
Boots - Rare Boots with 30% Faster Run walk (FRW) and 80% gold find, preferably even other mods such as stats and or res. These are quite rare, and an option thats easy to find are high goldfind Infernostride (max 70 GF). If you limit your FRW-demands to 20, the rare Boots should be much easier to find. Don't go below 20 though, since you need the frw to move between acts and wps.
Belt - Goldwrap Heavy Belt, with 80% goldfind. Upgrade it so you get 4x4 Belt room, since regular Goldwrap only has 3x4.
Amulet - +3 warcry amu, preferably with goldfind too. The Dream amu has +3 warcry, 80% goldfind, and get corruption mod +1 all skills. Here you can fiddle around a bit if you got a clean +3 warcry amu with +1 all skills, since a skiller can max give +40 goldfind which mean you can remove 1 clean skiller if you got +1 all skill.
Ring - Dual Dwarf Star, preferably with +10 frw corruption mod. You could go for +10 mf mod, but in terms of gold find the frw is much better. You will notice you don't need the damagereduction and you won't need the extra life, but if you cannot get frw any other corr mod except fcr is nice. Fcr means nothing, since next breakpoint is 65, which you in theory could reach with dual wielding 10 fcr Dwarf Star and getting a 10fcr 3 warcry amu. In terms of goldfind though, that increase in speed also mean losing 80 goldfind and movement speed and i'd prefer the former rather than the latter. Haven't been able to find those items to try it out, so maybe it is more effective.
Charms
Depending on the chars you got, we are aiming for either Find Item lvl 29 (63% chance) or for Find Item lvl 36 (64%). I would really only recommend Find Item lvl 36 if you got any of the following:
Charlvl 94 or higher.
8 Warcry skillers with + at least a total average amount of 20 gold find / skiller. For example, if you got 8 skillers you can have 4 with 40 % for example. The last skiller can be clean.
You MUST also have torch and anni if you aim for Find Item lvl 36
So the best possible charms you can get are warcry skillers with + 40 gold find. Now, since those are very rare, you try to aim for the closest possible. Now there are some adjustments to be done. If you got clean skillers and clean GCs with 40 + goldfind, how much can you remove?
So my advice would be this:
Always wear at least 4 warcry skillers. If you dont got either torch or anni, don't remove a single skiller. With both torch and anni, minimum is 5 skillers. For those warcry skillers remove, replace them with as much goldfind as possible.
So, except the skillers and any possible other grand charms with + gold find you must wear Gheeds fortune Unique charm. Try to aim for as much out of everything, but prioritize gold find and vendor. 15% vendor is necessary if the barb is the char you are Gambling with. Then as much goldfind as possible, magicfind comes later. You can adjust the gheeds as you like ofc.
Then we have the small charms. You will quite quick notice that you will be low on mana. Here we can make an exception of goldfind and only get + mana small charms. I mean, if you find a +17 mana and 10 % gold find small charm that is absolutely fantastic, but don't count on it. On small charms, mana is prioritized over gold find. Rather full + 17 small charm inventory, then less. Ofc, if you got +16 mana and 10 goldfind use that, but try to aim for as much mana as possible. You will need it.
The Optimized Hell Whirlwind Build
This is the best build for maxing gold find in my opinion. Warcry is probably not far behind, but that requires you to have perfect gear (8 warcry skillers with + 40 gold find). With this you can use +40% GC with no adds whatsoever and still kill em fast and have enough surviveability.
How to do the runs
Start at act 4Use waypoint to Travincal
Use Battle Command, Battle Orders and Shout (in this order)
Run (or tele) and use desecrate with Radaments sphere either a bit to the right at the middle stairs, or enter temple and place it a bit to the right.
Hopefully you got as many as possible following so just start spinnning em to Death ;D
When all is dead use Find Item and start picking up gold.
When all gold and items have been picked up, use town portal and leave gold at stash (cause gold will often exceed 450k/run, many times 600-700k). Take waypoint to a4.
Leave and restart the game.
Skill tree at level 90 (98 skills):
1 Howl
1 Shout
1-x Battle Orders
1 Battle Command
1 Find Potion
20 Find Item (depending on your own items)
20 Grim Ward (depending on your own items)
0-20 One-Handed Mastery
1 to Increased Stamina
1-x to Increased Speed
1 to Iron Skin
1 to Natural resistances
1 to Frenzy
1 to Bash
1 to Stun
20 to Whirlwind
So the reason of the intervals are the following:
You still want to hit either 29 Find Item, or 36. But with ww barb, it is much harder to hit 36, since you aren't using Hoto, but if you got those warcry skillers with +40 goldfind its the aim. However, it doesn't justify using clean skillers only to get to 36 Find Item with an extra % gold find. So in an optimal world, you got those warcry skillers, but the more realistic way is Find Item lvl 29.
For whatever stats that is left, put them in either Increased Speed or in Battle Orders. I prefer Increased Speed until you hit skill lvl 13 (With items), because after that it demands more than 1 skill lvl each time to get extra %. Feel free to do as you like though, it doesn't matter that much. Want more surviveability, go bo, want even faster runs, go Increased Speed. The risk of dying with the items listed is in my opinion very low.
Stat distribution
Strength - Enough to wear GearDexterity - Enough to get Maxblock. No reason going vitality here, since you will be using Grief in a Phase Blade, and The different between maxblock and the requirements aren't that big, 60 stats. Definitely worth it.
Vitality - The rest
Energy - None
Items you will use
So the items you will use doesn't differ that much except for your armor choice and your charms. Charms are the only items that are difficult to find, and the difference between true Dream build and very good runs is fairly small. You will have to fiddle around with the charms a bit to decide what works best for you, but I will explain it in detail.Weapon - Grief Runeword ( Eth+ Tir+ Lo+ Mal+ Ral)in Phase Blade. Most dmg, simply.
Weapon switch - Here you got 3 choices. Either you go for dualwield Blade Of Ali Baba ( Tulwar) with 2 lems in each of them, or you go for dualwield 6os The Patriarch with 6 lems in it or you got for 6os Phase Blade with 6 lems in it. It depends on if you want to go pure goldfind or want some magicfind as well. I prefer the ali babas since you will get enough gold anyway.... You can even socket em with ists if you prefer that, for more MF.
Shield - Radaments Sphere - Absolutely Mandatory. While you might be able to use another weapon, the shield is non-negationable. Desecrate for Grim Ward is necessary, since you don't want to use Grim Ward on one of the council corpses. For WW barb, there is no reason not going 4os Radament's Sphere and maxblock. Put 4 lems in there and you got one sexy gold find shield.
Body armor - You got a 2 choices for goldfind, and quite many choices for MF, and here you got to do some test with your resistances. You either go for upgraded 4os Goldskin armor (35 allres) or you get a Wealth runeword ( Lem+ Ko+ Tir) preferably in 603 defense archonplate (15% superior ed). This doesn't matter that much though, so either Dusk Shroud, Wyrmhide, archonplate 3os works fine. You may even use Wire Fleece since even exceptional Radament got 110str req and Wyrmhide 111. Do not however use an armor that is not light since you want that movementspeed. For WW goldfind barb Wealth is probably to prefer since you will get enough resistances from natural resistances, if you got torch and Anni. If you are going for slightly more MF, you can use either Enigma, or Tal armor, or Skullder's Ire, or mb even Arkaines valor with sockets. Since you are using Gheed, Chance Guards and prob Goldwrap standard, you will minimum have approx 100 MF, and if you dualwield Blade of alibaba you will have almost 300 at weapon swap.
Helmet - 3os Crown of Thieves. Put the lems in there and be happy. Try to go for as much goldfind as possible and as high lifesteal as possible. My COT has 9 % lifesteal and I never died, but if you can get 12/100 try to do it. But if the choice is between 9/100 and 12/80 go for 9/100. If you cannot find one of those, Immortal kings will is a good budget choice, or a Circlet with a lot of goldfind to corrupt for sockets. Can even use a Tarnhelm, upgraded and corrupted, or a Shako with lems.
Gloves - Chance Guards. Try go get as high MF as possible, preferably 40 (max).
Boots - Rare Boots with 30% Faster Run walk (FRW) and 80% gold find, preferably even other mods such as stats and or res. These are quite rare, and an option thats easy to find are high goldfind Infernostride (max 70 GF). If you limit your FRW-demands to 20, the rare Boots should be much easier to find. Don't go below 20 though, since you need the frw to move between acts and wps.
Belt - Goldwrap Heavy Belt , with 80% goldfind, or a rare Belt with 80% gold find+ other mods. If using gold wrap, Upgrade it so you get 4x4 Belt room, since regular Goldwrap only has 3x4.
Amulet - +3 warcry amu, preferably with goldfind too. The Dream amu has +3 warcry, 80% goldfind, and get corruption mod +1 all skills. Here you can fiddle around a bit if you got a clean +3 warcry amu with +1 all skills, since a skiller can max give +40 goldfind which mean you can remove 1 clean skiller if you got +1 all skill. For WW barb a clean 3+ wacry ammu has to have at least 40 % gold find, otherwise try to find one with +3 +1 corr mod (+4 in total). You will need this to reach lvl 29 Find Item with Battle Command (torch + anni + amu = 8). Go a clean skiller otherwise to support your +3 warcry amu.
Ring - Dual Dwarf Star, preferably with +10 frw corruption mod. You could go for +10 mf mod, but in terms of gold find the frw is much better. You will notice you don't need the damagereduction and you won't need the extra life, but if you cannot get frw any other corr mod clean works just fine. Don't forget to look for as high magic dmg reduced as possible. It can vary between 12-15. For ww barb, damagereduction mod or life is ok too as well, but FRW is preferred.
Charms
So WW barb has this huge advantage that he simply cannot reach the 36 Find Item breakpoint unless he got 7 warcry skillers. Now, those skillers doesn't improve damage that much (although more than you think, since Grim Ward increases quite a lot), but instead of skillers you can go for GC 40% goldfind, either clean or with any mods. It doesn't matter really, just try to get as good skillers as possible with as much goldfind as possible. + Mana is fantastic, cause your mana might be a bit low as well, but not as bad as cryer. + resistances is awesome as well, but i've tried full clean and it works fine. If you get a +40 goldfind warcry skiller, fantastic! If not, it doesn't matter that much, but perfection is those skillers.
For smallcharms, aim for 10GF and + mana or just plain + mana or plain + GF. Here you can again fiddle around to see what works best for you. My own build at uses mixed charms with mana / Gf, FRW / GF and some other mods / GF. Any mods is good mods, but try to get at least a couple with + mana.
The Optimized Nightmare Merc Kill Build, both Warcry and Whirlwind
Since your merc will do the most of the killing, Your skills doesn't matter that much except for Find Item. You don't need Grim Ward for nightmare, as there are no physical immunes to break. All you gotta do is max Find Item and the you may skill howevery you like. Stats is the same. Feel free to skill however you like, but put enough points in Find Item to reach either breakpoint lvl 24, 29 or 36 Find Item. I you want to go extreme, put a lot of stats in Increased Speed as well. I prefer lvl 13 (with anni and torch)
How to do the runs
So for these you will be using some small tricks to make the runs faster. So this is basically what a run will look like.Start at act 4
Switch to Harmony bow
Use waypoint to Travincal
No need for any battle cries, unless you are going for Find Item break point lvl 29, then use Battle Command.
Run down to Durance of hate lvl 1 since the merc very often bugs, and if he doesn't bug, he will be a lot slower than you. Quickly step up and start killing. While the merc is killing units use Find Item and pick up the gold at the same time. If you use Enigma, tele to the mobs and let merc do the killing. Don't fight with the merc, if he got a good weapon he will kill the monsters fast enough for you to do Find Item while he is killing the rest. This makes the runs very fast.
When all is dead and Find Item has been used on all corpses visible use town portal. Every 2 runs you put the money into the stash, which will make 2 runs max 900k. Very rarely will the piles of 2 runs together be larger than 900k (if you lvl 90), but if you are lower level you can put the gold in stash every run. I feel it slows it down a bit though. Should the total amount of 2 runs exceed 900k gold , leave the rest unless its more than 100k (which it very rarely will be).
Go to a4 through waypoint.
Leave the game and restart.
Items you will use
Weapon - Dual wield 6os The Patriarch with 6 lems x2, and if you cannot find that 6os Crystal Sword with 6 lems, or mb even dual wield 2 Blade of ali babas with Lem. However, gold find is not as valuable on NM as it is on Hell, and since NM drops of gold is so much lower, I would advice for an all out goldfind here.Weapon switch - You should use Harmony rune word in a bow ( Tir + Ith + Sol + Ko) and switch to it between runs and right before you start joining the killings.
Body armor - Wealth, for simplicity and MF. No need for Goldskin here. Could use Enigma as discussed above, but for goldfind i prefer Wealth. Enigma is a lot of quality of life though, so feel free to see what fits you best. It is a bit of a learning curve to understand the mercs moves.
Helmet - 3os Crown of Thieves. Put the lems in there and be happy. Try to go for as much goldfind as possible and as high lifesteal as possible. My COT has 9 % lifesteal and I never died, but if you can get 12/100 try to do it. But if the choice is between 9/100 and 12/80 go for 9/100.
Gloves - Chance Guards. Try go get as high MF as possible, preferably 40 (max).
Boots - Rare Boots with 30% Faster Run walk (FRW) and 80% gold find, preferably even other mods such as stats and or res. These are quite rare, and an option thats easy to find are high goldfind Infernostride (max 70 GF). If you limit your FRW-demands to 20, the rare Boots should be much easier to find. Don't go below 20 though, since you need the frw to move between acts and wps.
Belt - Goldwrap Heavy Belt , with 80% goldfind, or a rare Belt with 80% gold find+ other mods. If using gold wrap, Upgrade it so you get 4x4 Belt room, since regular Goldwrap only has 3x4.
Amulet - Depending on if you aiming for mf or not, could go for a clean 80% gf and 40% MF. Optimal as well here is 3+ warcry 80% gold find, but incredibly rare. Since you don't need the extra Grim Ward stats, it works just find going for 80% gold find and + mf mod. Magic Amulets can have max 80% goldfind and 15% MF, whereas rares can have max 80% gf and 35% MF. If you going for a pure GF amulet, aim for 75% +, these can easily be gambled at lower lvls (instructions in F.A.Q). For this build I would advice for a 80% goldfind amu cause we are aiming for a lower Find Item breakpoint (24
Ring - Dual Dwarf Star, preferably with +10 frw corruption mod. You could go for +10 mf mod, but in terms of gold find the frw is much better. You will notice you don't need the damagereduction and you won't need the extra life, but if you cannot get frw any other corr mod clean works just fine. Don't forget to look for as high magic dmg reduced as possible. It can vary between 12-15. For ww barb, damagereduction mod or life is ok too as well, but FRW is preferred.
Charms
Smack on as high goldfind as possible on 8 gc (40%) and sc (10%) and a gheeds with 160% goldfind. nothing to think about here. If its possible, get charms with as high gf as possible and frw, but always prioritize GF. You may use 9 GC, but remember that then you won't even hit Find Item breakpoint lvl 24 if you aren't using a warcry amu 3+ and Battle Command. I definitely prefer torch + anni and 80% amu, cause it is a lot easier to find than +3 warcry amu with 40%+ goldfind. However, if you manage to get one of those, ofc use it and then +40% gc together with Battle Command for lvl 24 Find Item breakpoint.
Merc equipment, and what merc to use
So for merc-choice and what weapon to use, you got quite a variety to chose from which doesn't seem to make that much of a difference. I'm still trying out some stuff, so this part of the guide isn't completely finished, but here is what I have come up with so far:
Act 2 offensive merc ( Blessed Aim aura)
*Weapon - Eth Bonehew, Breath of the Dying runeword in almost any Eth Spear/polearm but preferably Giant Thresher or War Pike, Insight in almost any Eth elite base (slower ofc). If you want to be really effective get some of the more expensive stuff, but Eth Insight takes you far enough. Could use regular Bonehew as well if you haven't found anything else. If you want to go insane use desctruction or Last Wish ;D
*Note - Do not use any rune words and or items that have cold dmg or freeze as an add-on since there is a risk of blowing up the monsters. This will not result in a corpse, and corpses are integral for Find Item. This also mean that any modifications to corpses cannot be used, so neither Phoenix nor Tomb Reaver may be used either. Therefore Obedience and Death cannot be used.
*Armor - Wealth rune word, no need for resistance
* Helm - 3os Crown of Thieves with 2 lems and a 15 ias / meele splash jewel. Meele splash is very important for kill speed, so if you only got 1 socks in the Crown of Thieves put meele splash jewel in there.
The Different subbuilds and what to expect
So with all the information given above and in the appendix You can now freely create a sub-build of your own, customized after your own needs. If you don't want to put any extra points into Find Item and/or Grim Ward and don't want to put more than 1 points into Increased Speed, I would severely recommend you to go for Hellruns unless you building a nightmare merc build. Hell runs generate a lot more gold, and if you only get a pair of the items, let's say Dwarf stars and Chance Guards, maybe a gheeds and a Crown of Thieves, you would end up att say 700-1000 goldfind, that isn't very difficult to do. At those numbers nightmare isn't very valuable, not to disregard the fact that the chance of finding good items and / or any nicer runes is so much lower / non-existent.
Your regular build doesn't matter as much if you won't specialize in gold find. If you just put 1 in Find Item, you only need lvl 5 to still have 50% chance of findning an item. With 1000% goldfind my conservative estimate is that you will go for 150-250k gold / minute. I would still recommend a Radament's Sphere because Grim Ward simply adds a lot of dmg. I would also recommend a different weapon in weapon swap for extra gold find / MF.
See all the other guides above as inspiration for your own version of gold/magic find barb.
Good luck creating your own version!
A Mini guide to gambling
So you have done some runs and farmed a lot of gold. And now what? Well, let's gamble!
Where should I gamble?
Simply anywhere you feel like, but I prefer hell for the simple reason to be able sell all the stuff I won't save for maximum amount of prize. However, If you need to mule quickly and aren't intending to sell anything might as well use normal.
Facts about gamble
What you gamble is only affected by your characterlevel, or Clvl. The acts don't matter, and the difficulties don't matter. You can gamble either in a1 normal or a5 hell, it doesn't change anything in terms of what you can gamble. Only characterlevel does.
The item you gamble will have an ilvl of -5 to +4 of your Clvl. This means that if you got a character of lvl 90, and gamble amulets, you will get amulets with ilvl 85-94.
Your chance of Getting a unique from gambling is 1/2000, or 0.05%.
Your chance of getting a set item from gambling is 2/2000, or 0.1 %.
Your chance of getting a rare item is 200/2000, or 10%.
Your chance of getting a magic item is 1797/2000, or 89,85%.
Prices on items increase as you lvl, except for Ring and Amulets which always have a base price of 50000 for rings and 63000 for amulets.
The items you can gamble are randomly selected and cannot be affected in any way. However, different characterlvls contain different pools of items. After characterlvl 55 every item type can be gambled.
Buying everything on the screen does not improve your chance of getting uniques/sets or rares in anyway, the chances remain the same.
What you need
Lots of Gold!!
Gheeds fortune with as high Reduce vendor prices, preferably 15%.
Rune word Edge in an as cheap 3 soc bow, Crossbow, amazong bow. Bases can easily be found in norm cows. Reduces Vendor price by another 15%.
What should I gamble?
The short and practical story
These are my subjective lvls of when it is valuable to start gambling items.
The items of Value to be gambled are Amulets, Rings, Coronets, Circlets, Belts, Boots and Gloves.
Amulets can be started Gambling at charlvl 65.
Boots can be started gambling at charlvl 73
Circlets can be started gambling at charlvl 75
Coronets can be started gambling at charlvl 70
Caster rings can be started gambling at 79, and dual leech rings at 91.
Belts can be started gambling at charlvl 90.
Gloves is a bit different, since you are only hunting for a particular pair of gloves (3 Javelin spears kills / 3 Crossbow / bow skills + 20 ias), so best for this is according to my calculations to be exactly lvl 85. Higher lvl includes more unwanted affixes, and lower lvls doesn't guarantee you have the chance of rolling those affixes on all items.
The introduction to the long and theoretical story
If you truly want to optimize your gambling you have to learn how affixes are generated in diablo 2 so you can freely choose at what characterlvl you wan't to gamble to make unwanted affixes disappear and increasing the chance of getting the affixes you want. There are some maximumClvl recommendations though which i will list here, to get the chance of having the highest possible rolls available always.
Amulets require a character lvl of 95 to be guaranteed to always get the chance of having the highest possible affixroll you want, which is the +2 charskills affix. However, below that, the next affix that is truly wanted is the charlvl 60 for +3 specificskills. Hence my recommendaion. So for amulets, charlvl 95 is needed if you always want to have the chance of rolling all affixes.
For rings, lvl 91 is enough.
For circlets lvl 92 is enough
For coronets lvl 89 is enough.
Belts is only valuable to gamble at lvl 90 anyways.
Boots lvl 81 is enough.
Gloves is exactly 85.
So since this is a short guide, I will not explain further how it works but provide usefull links in the appendix.
So for items
F.A.Q and discussion
Why aren't you using the merc to kill on hell like in the vanilla builds?
Pod haven't resolved the old school classic Hydra damage to merc bug, so hydras do an insane amount of damage to the merc. HE can definitely function as an addition, but killing alone with him is just too slow. Furthermore, the testing i've done shows he survives decently with 90 maxfire res (+3 Vex in either armor/ Helm), but the only way to guarantee he survives all the time is with 95% fire res. With 90% fire res you have to have fire absorb as well, inte the form of steelshade. With 95% you can even use Crown of Thieves. Now, this is all interesting merely out of a theoretical standpoint, cause i've tried runs where merc does all the damage with 395% Eth botd and 430% Eth Bonehew. Since you have to have highdmg weapon AND an armor with 95% maxfireres, it means you only get max 250% extra goldfind, probably less since you want meele splash jewel as well. If you'd use 4os Guardian Angel you could go a meele splash in it and use compltet GF Crown of Thieves. However, in terms of clearspeed, merc alone is too slow and goldfind not that much more.
How did you come up with those numbers of gold / minute?
Since you cannot time more runs after the stash + inventory is full, i simply did 10 runs of full inventory + stash and did an average calculation as well as the highest possible of each run. For example, the fastest Whirlwind hell run to get full stash + inventory took 5 minutes and 5 seconds. So I simply divided the 3.4 million gold on the amounts of minutes and did this 10 times to get those intervals, sometimes even more times with different items.Appendix
Find Item break pointsThere are 20 breakpoints of importance, but I assume there is 1 more above lvl 45.
Find Item
LvL 1 = 37%
LvL 2 = 41%
LvL 3 = 44%
LvL 4 = 47%
LvL 5 = 49%
LvL 6 = 51%
LvL 7 = 52%
LvL 8 = 53%
LvL 9 = 54%
LvL 10 = 55%
LvL 11 = 56%
LvL 12 = 57%
LvL 14 = 58%
LvL 16 = 59%
LvL 18 = 60%
LvL 21 = 61%
LvL 24 = 62%
LvL 29 = 63%
LvL 36 = 64%
LvL 45 = 65%
Grim Ward Skill progression
Grim Ward skills 100% linearly, so its very easy to know how the skille will progress. With each new lvl you get more duration, larger radius, and more -phys resistance. This is how it looks.Level Duration Radius -Phys resistance
1 10 S 3,3 Yards -10%
2 11 S 4 Yards -12%
3 12 S 4,6 Yards -14%
4 13 S 5,3 Yards -16%
5 14 S 6 Yards -18%
6 15 S 6,6 Yards -20%
7 16 S 7,3 Yards -22%
8 17 S 8 Yards -24%
9 18 S 8,6 Yards -26%
10 19S 9,3 Yards -28
38 47S 28 Yards -88% Phys
This Pattern will repeat itself, even after hard points have been placed. This means that Grim Ward lvl 38 will have 47Sec duration, 28 -84% phys resistance.
The equation to count out how you will have of each is the follow ing:
Duration = N+9 (where N is lvl)
Radius = ? ( need help )
-phys resistance= 8+2N (where is the lvl you want to count)
Links to useful web pages
The affix calculator I use - https://diablo3.ingame.de/diablodb/affi ... &patch=111D2JSP crafting handbook -- http://forums.d2jsp.org/topic.php?t=30598890
Diablowiki on Gambling - https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Gambling
Item generation tutorial https://diablo2.diablowiki.net/Item_Gen ... _selection
Thanks and credit
Thanks to anyone who have supplyed me with The Patriarchs and Goldskin, and thanks to anyone who competed with me for gold find to spur extra motivation in order to run as fast as possible. Thanks to Dynastyqin for invaluable input regarding nightmare build.
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