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Mainly this rant concerns my inability to get a stormshield to drop (which is driving me effing crazy) but it also concerns weird drop patterns which I have either noticed or am completely imagining while playing Single Player. I'm new to single player, but I've been playing Diablo off and on since it came out. And it irks me that I can't seem to find a stupid Stormshield. I can't seem to find a Mara's either, but that doesn't bug me nearly as much as the Stormshield, because I prefer melee characters, and I've been playing hardcore exclusively.
The drops in Single Players seem rather odd, to say the least. At first I thought it was my imagination, but now I'm nearly certain of it. Here are some examples:
I have found 7 Aldur's Deceptions… Shadow Plate… extremely rare, but I've treated the last two like IK hammers… leaving them on the ground without even bothering to identify them.
I have also found Five Sandstorm Treks.
Four set spired helms.
6 Gladiator Banes, two of which I recently sold to Charsi.
And I can't count the number of Gheeds charms, as I don't hotmule.
But I still can't find the main item I am searching for, which is Stormshield.
Armor and Weapon Stands seem to have a preference for dropping only certain base items, so I began wondering if that preferencemight extend to monster drops, and I had read (somewhere?) that monster drops could be nearly identical if a character followed the same path and actions… i don't know if that is true or not, and from my experience it is not one particular monster dropping Aldur's deception…. the 7 armors I have found dropped from normal monsters and bosses from different acts… No single monster coughed up a shadow plate twice.
When I first began noticing the odd drops, I began changing mapsets by creating a nightmare game, saving and exiting, and then creating a new hell game to spawn a new map. But doing this hasn't fixed anything. Still no stormshield. More Gladiator's Bane. More Aldur's Deception.
I began running Meph almost exclusively, which I hate doing. And still no Stormshield. I've seen a plethora of Monarchs: whites, blues, yellows… never a stormshield.
Obviously the 1.13d patch has changed drops, specifically improving HR drops. But did they change other things? Has Shadow Plate been made extremely common, and Stormshield much more rare since the last time I have played?
I have also noticed that the drop rate for uniques seems better if I'm playing on player settings 3-5 than if I am playing on 8… which is pure speculation on my part, but I am nearly convinced. My hammerdin is my main mf character because of survivability/kill speed, and hekills monsters nearly as fast at p8 as he does a p3-p5. But when I run him for extended periods on p8 I only see blues and an occasional yellow. This doesn't seem to happen at p3-p5. If I weren't so lazy, I would record drops to illustrate, but I've seen this pattern enough to convince me. It's most glaringly apparent when I'm doing full clears in the pits or CS.
Another item of weirdness: For the longest time I could not get a Shako to drop. Seriously. My hammerdin was decked out in elite gear, everything but a stupid tarn helm…. it was laughable and didn't even look right. But then, I suddenly had four Shakos drop over a three day period. That was two weeks ago, and I haven't seen a shako since, despite killing Andy and Meph probably 2k-3k times in that span. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is it possible that item drops could somehow be tied into calendar days? I have contemplated altering the date and time on my computer, to see if that has any effect on drops.
Has anyone else noticed anything like this? Or is it just an incalculably odd coincidence which I've run up against?
Okay I'll end my rant now, and resume my hunt for the StormShield.
The drops in Single Players seem rather odd, to say the least. At first I thought it was my imagination, but now I'm nearly certain of it. Here are some examples:
I have found 7 Aldur's Deceptions… Shadow Plate… extremely rare, but I've treated the last two like IK hammers… leaving them on the ground without even bothering to identify them.
I have also found Five Sandstorm Treks.
Four set spired helms.
6 Gladiator Banes, two of which I recently sold to Charsi.
And I can't count the number of Gheeds charms, as I don't hotmule.
But I still can't find the main item I am searching for, which is Stormshield.
Armor and Weapon Stands seem to have a preference for dropping only certain base items, so I began wondering if that preferencemight extend to monster drops, and I had read (somewhere?) that monster drops could be nearly identical if a character followed the same path and actions… i don't know if that is true or not, and from my experience it is not one particular monster dropping Aldur's deception…. the 7 armors I have found dropped from normal monsters and bosses from different acts… No single monster coughed up a shadow plate twice.
When I first began noticing the odd drops, I began changing mapsets by creating a nightmare game, saving and exiting, and then creating a new hell game to spawn a new map. But doing this hasn't fixed anything. Still no stormshield. More Gladiator's Bane. More Aldur's Deception.
I began running Meph almost exclusively, which I hate doing. And still no Stormshield. I've seen a plethora of Monarchs: whites, blues, yellows… never a stormshield.
Obviously the 1.13d patch has changed drops, specifically improving HR drops. But did they change other things? Has Shadow Plate been made extremely common, and Stormshield much more rare since the last time I have played?
I have also noticed that the drop rate for uniques seems better if I'm playing on player settings 3-5 than if I am playing on 8… which is pure speculation on my part, but I am nearly convinced. My hammerdin is my main mf character because of survivability/kill speed, and hekills monsters nearly as fast at p8 as he does a p3-p5. But when I run him for extended periods on p8 I only see blues and an occasional yellow. This doesn't seem to happen at p3-p5. If I weren't so lazy, I would record drops to illustrate, but I've seen this pattern enough to convince me. It's most glaringly apparent when I'm doing full clears in the pits or CS.
Another item of weirdness: For the longest time I could not get a Shako to drop. Seriously. My hammerdin was decked out in elite gear, everything but a stupid tarn helm…. it was laughable and didn't even look right. But then, I suddenly had four Shakos drop over a three day period. That was two weeks ago, and I haven't seen a shako since, despite killing Andy and Meph probably 2k-3k times in that span. Does anyone have any thoughts on this? Is it possible that item drops could somehow be tied into calendar days? I have contemplated altering the date and time on my computer, to see if that has any effect on drops.
Has anyone else noticed anything like this? Or is it just an incalculably odd coincidence which I've run up against?
Okay I'll end my rant now, and resume my hunt for the StormShield.