100 cow runs - was it worth it?

So did 100 cow runs over the span of a couple of days with lvl 95 hammerdin with Enigma, ar 250-300 mf, etc. Didn't clock in on how much time per run it took, but the results are the following:

Run 3 -

Pul
Run 7 -

Raven Frost
Run 10 -

Lem
Run 27 -

Gul
Run 82 -

Cham

These are the only things item and rune-wise worthy of mentioning. I know 100 runs is nothing, but I personally feel that CS is far better and faster for farming, for both items and runes. And yeah, *nothing* for 52 runs straight between that

Gul and

Cham haha, is this purely bad luck or not enough data

three things:

- 100 runs is not enough data and you cant get a true clear picture unless you do 1000+ runs or more considering how rare high runes are

- you got a

Cham which isnt worth much but its rarer rune than

Jah or

Ber, you wouldnt be complaining about the result if your

Cham was either of those two runes

- you may have just gotten lucky in Chaos, again its hard to paint a correct picture with a small sample size

Every person has different luck with each zone, ive personally never gotten any rune above

Mal in Chaos so i dont like that place, but your case is vice versa. In short you cant make a summary based on 100 runs.

I will say this though, if you want any useful uniques Cows will get you almost nothing so youre correct on that point, Chaos will give you a chance at things like

Arachnid Mesh or

Griffon's Eye, but as far as high runes go cows is on par or better than Chaos depending on how fast you clear each.

thanks for your input, I definitely agree with your point that 100 runs is not enough (as mentioned in the OP). I've gotten

Jah and

Sur before from the good ol' cows, and not that I am complaining about the

Cham (at all!), it just felt that I was particularly 'unlucky' this time...I mean, I am not after a griffon in the moo moo farm, but at least 1 decent weapon/shield/armor base should've dropped there. I am planning to go further though, with say up to 500 runs there to see how the whole picture will come together. Cheers and GL!

I read somewhere that somewhere that you get a

Sur rune in value on average for every 170 cow runs (P1). Whereas the same number is 370ish runs for Chaos (P1). You got about a quarter of a

Sur in value from 100 runs. You're on the unlucky side of the bell curve but probabably not even one standard deviation from the mean...

I did 267 runs on cows and only got a

Gul, 2 Mals and a couple of Puls...

I then did 1 more run and got a

Ber

you dont pick up socketed bases? its very easy to find items in cows worth much more than ravenfrost. just pick up armors, shields and polearms and trade them here!

First off, thank you OP. Speaking from experience, data collection, even in a game that we all claim to love, is never easy or fun. Just something about it all turns it into work and finishing the last 20 runs for Science is a miserable grind.

Second, interesting results. Seems like a very bad stretch of luck. What was your criteria for "worth mentioning"? Items that have a current value above a

Lem(ish)? Or BiS for any build? The reason I ask is the community puts such high value on so few items, which are terribly rare. When one's definition of a "win" is very specific, the P(win) drops. The way I think of it is considering a "win" from a slot machine as ONLY getting the $69M Mega Jackpot, as opposed to "wins" being the $2 here and there. The game thinks it is giving you a "win" by dropping a

Lidless Wall, and it isn't the Loot Table's fault that the community no longer values it. Back in my day, pre-Spirit and all, when we had to pedal to generate our own electricity and Ice cream was a nickle, Lidless was king of the caster shields. Just as an example

Finally, no matter what, if it was a bad stretch of luck, then you should be about due for some goodness, RNGesus willing, so maybe your next 100 runs will be that $69M jackpot Mega Jackpot. RNGesus is stern; stern, but fair.

if u played alone, this is what you can expect from 100 runs, unfortunately you hit a

Cham rune as your highrune (

Vex rune+). when you play on p7/8 a run nets you 3 times the amount of runes. You got one midrune(

Lem-

Gul) more then the average number you should expect.

midrune (17 runs p7+, 51 p1)
highrune (45 runs p7+ 135 p1)

Leaker416 wrote: 2 years ago

First off, thank you OP. Speaking from experience, data collection, even in a game that we all claim to love, is never easy or fun. Just something about it all turns it into work and finishing the last 20 runs for Science is a miserable grind.

Second, interesting results. Seems like a very bad stretch of luck. What was your criteria for "worth mentioning"? Items that have a current value above a

Lem(ish)? Or BiS for any build? The reason I ask is the community puts such high value on so few items, which are terribly rare. When one's definition of a "win" is very specific, the P(win) drops. The way I think of it is considering a "win" from a slot machine as ONLY getting the $69M Mega Jackpot, as opposed to "wins" being the $2 here and there. The game thinks it is giving you a "win" by dropping a

Lidless Wall, and it isn't the Loot Table's fault that the community no longer values it. Back in my day, pre-Spirit and all, when we had to pedal to generate our own electricity and Ice cream was a nickle, Lidless was king of the caster shields. Just as an example

Finally, no matter what, if it was a bad stretch of luck, then you should be about due for some goodness, RNGesus willing, so maybe your next 100 runs will be that $69M jackpot Mega Jackpot. RNGesus is stern; stern, but fair.

No worries yeah, i mean i've been playing on and off ever since release of D2 and LOD, now D2R, so I am not the one expecting miracles in mere 100 runs these were particularly jinxed ones it seems, I was looking for an Infinity base for example (

Eth GP,

Thresher, GT, etc.), all while knowing that these fall rarely by themselves, but nothing, not even CA or CV ...even the Partizans that fell were 1 sock or something similarly useless.

Unfortunately, I haven't kept track of previous runs in similar fashion, guess the 'data' would've been a tad better; it's like the AI is reading my mind and telling me: 'nah, you're not getting it this time' x 100 haha Not losing Faith, the grinding goes on!!

Lemme throw my 2 cents in as I have a PhD in bovine sciences...

To achieve maximum value, you have to pickup every rune that is

Hel or above. Every

Ral. Every

Tal. Every

Amethyst. Every good base.
EVERY charm, even the large ones.
Jewels- dealers choice, I've only every found one that sold for more than

Ist.

That's how you achieve maximum value for your time.

Just the charms alone can probably net more than your

Cham.

dilbert383 wrote: 2 years ago

Lemme throw my 2 cents in as I have a PhD in bovine sciences...

To achieve maximum value, you have to pickup every rune that is

Hel or above. Every

Ral. Every

Tal. Every

Amethyst. Every good base.
EVERY charm, even the large ones.
Jewels- dealers choice, I've only every found one that sold for more than

Ist.

That's how you achieve maximum value for your time.

Just the charms alone can probably net more than your

Cham.

I agree mate, and i picked my rals and tals and amns and orts and tirs and sols, and amethysts (flawless)... this was kinda what made me write this post, felt really underwhelming, mind you, I need an

El rune for a Fortitude, didnt get one, thats what I mean; guess in this case, an

El would've been worth it more than that

Cham indeed

While I never really kept track of # runs, by the feel, I always thought cows and Chaos were more or less the same. Or that if the difference wasn't apparent enough, it probably wasn't important enough to give up on one of them, to only run the other.

So I just run Chaos with chars that are better at it (or are bad at killing massively large packs of mobs), and I run cows with characters who take the same time to kill 20 mobs and 100, because these ones clearly benefit from running cows.

I'm not sure the difference is all that big, and as I run both, well the worst case scenario is that half my runs are non-optimal.

And yeah, as other comments pointed out, 100 runs is quite a small sample; That

Cham was more likely to be a

Jah/

Ber than a

Cham, and if you had been "less lucky" (statistically) and found a

Jah instead, you probably would have a very different view about how great these 100 runs were!

When you run just 100, often it's gonna be a matter of your 1 best run making/breaking the whole thing. If you find a super high rune it was good, if you don't find it, it was bad.

Once in a blue moon you find stuff other than runes that make the whole thing worth it, say I found a 15/37 in cows, and an 4os

Eth

Great Poleaxe, a few skillers with life, things like that, but - from my experience - probably 50-75% of the value you find comes from runes, and over 100 runs, almost all of this will come from just 1 high rune. So the variance is massive!

I noticed that the OP mentioned his MF.
MF is pretty much useless in cows. You're better off equipping things that make your average run faster.

I also notice people trying to kill every single cow. That's ridiculous. Kill the largest amounts of cows in the shortest amount of time and move on to the next game.

I kill all the cows and open every loose rock/chest/body/

Skeleton.

Mf in cows is relevant when you don't want that White or regular/

Eth socket turning into a magic "blue" one. As mentioned, I wasn't specifically after runes, even less unique items with the cows.

Also, it's not my first and only cow runs I've ever done, the point was that these 100 in a row (kinda) were particularly jinxed. I will update for runs 101-200, etc, lets see what we make of this then.comitted!!

Thanks everyone for your input, much appreciated and what was/ is actually the whole point to gather some impressions here! Good luck!

To be honest, I have stopped cowing for now.

No, it isn't due to some newfound reluctance for animal cruelty, it is sheer economics, of a different sort.

Those economics are that I can clear CS and even WSK (with favorable, as in NOT Black Souls and/or Hell Temptresses) a lot faster. I run LoH and CoH, so I get fantastic bonuses to demon-slaying and undead-slaying. Not so with the cows. So, faster killing, more pulls of the slot machine handle, more chances for loot.

I will say, anecdotally, it seems like last week was a string of bad luck for me too. Hardly any uniques, even the

Charsi food. I think I found a

Mal and that was it for runes of note. 2 keys too.

Then this morning in one CS run I got a 2/2/2 Lidless (for sale now!) and 53% ED Steelrends. So, I never lost Faith in you RNGesus, I swear, despite your latest test of my Faith (a

Jah would be really nice to complete my Faith and enhance my Faith, RNGesus. Just saying).

I've done waaay more than that and got got waaay less than that, OP