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'''Strategy guide info:'''

Sparkly Chests are among the most complicated and wonderful items in Diablo 2 V.10/V1.11. They are fixed objects in the game –they do not randomly appear. They have very complicated algorithms for dropping –so complicated that they are not in the ATMA calculator. They usually drop a large number of items. They are unaffected by your character’s MF rating but are capable of dropping unique and set items – and are quite capable of multiple unique or multiple set drops

4. SCs are the only objects in the game that have a chance of dropping 7 uniques or 7 set items – and the four with the best chance to drop 7 uniques are in Act 5 Nightmare: Abaddon, Glacial Trail, the Pit of Acheron and Drifter Cavern.

Sparkly Chests have six basic cases for how they drop items (this was discovered by TheJarulf). Only the first two are of interest for Set and Unique drop odds:

There are four other kinds of drops, where the intended quality of items dropped are rare or magical, or where there is no intended quality. These comprise the other 93 out of 100 cases when you open an SC, and except for a very rare circumstance, these drop cases will not generate unique or set items. This guide will ignore these other cases, and concentrate on Case A and Case B drops, which occur 7% of the time.

Whenever Case A (intended quality = Uniques) or Case B (intended quality = Sets) occurs, the Chest will pick four times using a set of tables. It will attempt to upgrade every item it picks to either unique (Case A) or SET (Case B.) Often the item picked cannot be upgraded because

If the first item dropped (not a no-drop, but an actual item) is the intended quality (Unique or Set) then the code finishes picking four items to drop, upgrades them all to Unique/Set as possible, and stops. In this instance, the yield is 1 to 4 Unique or Set items.

However, if the first item dropped is not the intended quality (which happens about 85% of the time) then the code finishes the sequence of four picks, upgrading them as possible, and picks a second batch of another four items to drop. The same rules apply to this second batch of picks –they will be upgraded to Uniques or Sets, as possible. If the first item dropped from the second batch is of the intended quality then the second batch terminates the sequence. If the first item of the 2nd batch is not the intended quality, the chest then goes into a consolation prize mode and starts dropping items 4 at a time with quality magic or lower. Anywhere from 4 to 44 more items can then drop. Except for one very rare case, no item after the first 8 will be upgraded to the intended quality, and MF does not affect the subsequent drops.

At the top level of logic in Cases A and B, are these very important pick odds:

The no drop frequency Table is seen to the right.

If the random number generator picks “Good”, the routine then picks further:

Gems (e.g., topazes, diamonds, skulls, etc) and Runes have no Unique or Set versions so the selection of Gems or Runes is a dead end. Jewelry, however, is subdivided as follows:

Note that Rings and Amulets can be upgraded to Sets and Uniques, and that Jewels can be upgraded to unique Rainbow Facets (for Sparkly Chest in areas where alvl =85.) Grand Charms can be upgraded to the unique Gheed’s Fortune, wherever the Chest is in an area with alvl =70 or higher – basically anywhere in Hell difficulty.

At frequency level of 3/19:

At frequency level of 2/19:

At frequency level of 1/19:

If the intended quality is Set(Case B) then we are out of luck because none of the items in weap60 can be upgraded to Set. If the intended quality is Unique (Case A) then 9 times out of 19 a Bone Knife, Hyperion Spear or Ogre Axe will be picked and they are all upgradeable to Unique. Assuming the virtuous player has opened the Sparkly Chest using a character with a clvl=85 or higher, and the chest is, say, the Ancient Tunnels Sparkly Chest (alvl=85), then those three base items are eligible to be upgraded to Wizardspike, Arioc’s Needle or Bonehew. But if the player has opened the Cave L2 (H) chest, where the alvl is only 79, then the Hyperion Spear cannot be upgraded to the qlvl 85 Arioc’s Needle (it will comvert instead to a rare hyperion spear with 3x durability). The Cave L2 (H) SC can only yield a Wizardspike or Bonehew (at a frequency of 6/19) when weap60 is picked. Thus, the TC weap60 category can have different outcomes, depending upon the alvl of the chest from which it was summoned.

So that’s the methodology, as simply as I can explain it. I’ve put together a large spreadsheet and have calculated the probability of every Sparkly Chest in the game calling every TC, and then I’ve figured out which Uniques and Set items are upgradeable from base items by which Chests. So, lets get to some results.

First, let me remind everyone that not all chests that sparkle are “Sparkly Chests.” Some sparkling chests are “Quest Chests.” These are chests that yield Quest items and they have different rules for dropping items. Quest Chests include, among others, the Maggot Lair chest, The Spider Cavern Chest, the Kurast Lvl 2 chest, the Ruined Temple chest (Lam Esen’s Tome), etc. True “Sparkly Chests” do not yield a quest item.