Countess Observation Here is something I have observed while running the Nightmare Countess and I was wondering if anyone has experienced anything like this. I set D2 to players 1 and run her hoping to get a Sol rune to upgrade my Bonesnap (I play HCL) The first time I kill her I notice that there are three runes on the ground and three rares and one unique. I thought I had killed her away from the pack but I must not have and the extra items must have come from her minions. I do a few more runs and the drops are nothing to write home about. My fifth or sixth run I kill her and I get a similar drop 3 rares 1 gem and 3 runes. This time I am almost positive she was by herself when I killed her. I took a screenie of it but don't have a place to put it up-I'll try to do it soon. Does anyone know if she can drop like this?--seems almost like an act boss drop when you first kill them. On a sidenote I was running Andariel before or after each run.
If I'm not mistaken, I believe it's better to run the countess on a lower player setting to increase your chances of her dropping a rune instead of an item. I'm quite certain that she is capable of dropping 3 runes at a time, but I have no idea about her item drops.
You are not mistaken. The Countess can drop up to 3 runes, but she does so after she drops up to 5 other things. However, she can never drop more than 6 items at once. If you run her at p1, she has a larger chance of not dropping all 5 equipment items, so she is able to drop all 3 runes. At even p3, she will drop all 5 equip items every time, so you never get more than 1 rune*. The rune drop has a no-drop chance as well, so it is possible to be unlucky and get no runes at all, even at p1. *Actually, the equip items can be runes too, but only about as often as any other monster drops them.
Ah, so that was the issue with Countess. Ruvanal made a comment in my post on the LurkerLounge about some discussion in the d2.net Beta Forums that best describes the probability of countess dropping runes but since the forum got taken down, the info was lost. I'm not even sure how to apply the cap of 6 items to her drop chances in the DropCalc. --T
In this case I recommend withdrawing from math class and drinking vast quantities of European beer. But that's just me. ON topic, yeah, I have great luck getting lots of runes when I run the tower on /players 1 . . . well, great luck as in "I got three Elds instead of one" but great luck nonetheless. (Actually the NM Countess has been giving me Amn, Sol, and Dol with some regularity lately.)
Heh, I took my last math class a while back but about the beer .... hmmmm. As for the Countess, she and I have not been on speaking terms lately .. come to think about, I've been getting crappy drops all around with my Pindle sorc so maybe it's time to fire up my trusy Hammerdin aka Holy_Spliff. It weird how he has less MF than my other chars but finds more in the Pit. --T p.s: How much longer do you see yourself in good ol' Nippon? I was thinking of a trip out there sometime and would be great to meet up.
The Countess drop is not so hard that I can't do it on paper, but writing robust code to do it generally could be very unpleasant. Imagine if her item TC got 6+ drops but had a very high no-drop rate... you need to evaluate the odds of each combination dropping... ick. Actually, I have an idea, I will contemplate it and get back to you. May need you to keep track of an extra number ("max drops from this TC", which is 6 for almost all TCs, but 6-x for a subTC of a -ve pick TC, with x drops already fallen). It would slow down the program if it was heavily required, but since it only applies to the Countess in the current TCex file, that isn't an issue. Sorry to interrupt the reunion, carry on
ok - i've looked around and i can't remember where the abbreviation post is but what does TC mean? i see it so often in guides and posts like there - but i have no clue what it means
Baal, TC= Treasure Class each item type has a TC that it drops on. The countess has 8 drops total 5 item drops and 3 rune drops. It is only possible to drop 6 items by any one character. Thus the Countess can drop up to 6 runes 3 from item drops and 3 from rune drops. However, the chance of that is near impossible. The no drop is altered based on the /players x the more players the lower the no drop chance. At players 3 the nodrop is really small and the countess tends to drop all 5 item drops. So playing any higher then /players 3 is unadvisable if you are running the countess for runes.
