Revision as of 22:34, 29 October 2006

Introduction

About the most fun modifiers to load up in are ones that add to your chance to find Magical Items. The main goals of the game for most are to level up, and to find nice items. Better equipment is fun to find, and makes your character more powerful, and adding Magic Find, or "+MF", as it's called, is a great way to get better stuff to drop from monsters and chests.

You can get +MF on most every type of item in the game. Gloves or Boots or jewelry with +10% or 15% or 30% won't make a real noticeable difference on their own, but as you accumulate more and more items with these bonuses, you'll start to notice that you find more Rares, Uniques, Set Items, etc.

The easiest way to add it is by socketing perfect topazes into Armor or Helm. Getting a hold of 4 socket armor and a 3 socket helm shouldn't be too hard, and that's 168% right there.

There is no cap on magic find, but there are diminishing returns as of v1.09, see the table below for the actual stats. You'll start to notice improvements at around 100% Magic Find, and by 200-300% it will start to get very addictive.

Characters who can kill with their skills, especially Sorcs, are the best at going to a very high Magic Find, since they don't need equipment for their offense. Barbarians are very good also, since they get huge hit points and resistance bonuses form their skills and stats, so need less good equipment to survive, and can dual wield Gulls or Ali Babas for a huge MF bonus from the weapon slots.

It can be a lot of fun to load up all your best +MF stuff and do item runs on normal or Nightmare where you don't really need much good gear to survive. Killing the bosses, Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal are the best drops and they can can all be reached pretty quickly, especially Meph. You won't get the best stuff, Elite set or unique items on Nightmare (some of the lowest elite item types can drop from Baal or Diablo, but your odds aren't good) but there are lots of very good Exceptional items that can be found there.

For obvious reasons, Hardcore characters have to be more careful about going all out on +MF stuff. Usually resistances drop very low when switching to the magic find equipment, and one Lightning Enchanted boss that you would normally tear right through can be suddenly deadly if your Lightning Resistance is -22%, rather than your normal 65%. For example.

Magic Find Percentages

Magic Find doesn't boost your odds of finding everything equally. It's all the same up to 100%, but after that your odds of finding Rares, Sets, and Uniques drop steeply. Blizzard added this in since it's possible to get such huge Magic Find numbers in the Expansion, and they didn't want it to be so easy to find the really good/scarce stuff.

You can see exactly how much in the table below.

MF Percentages

The actual % that is applied towards finding each type of item. Magical is full, Rare/Set/Uniques are less.

How much you want to wear should be based largely on these percentages. More always helps for magical items, so if you have 1000% MF you'll get incredible amounts of blue items. The weapons might be useful, but the odds aren't good. Charms and Jewels are not boosted by your +MF%, so this doesn't help with those. Best way to find more of those is to kill more things. Rares increase pretty well up to 600% MF or so, but Set items really slow down past 400 or 500%. Uniques are much the same, but even worse in the diminishing returns. Notice that from 300% to 1500% only increases your Uniques MF% by 101%.

If you can get to 250-350% that's really all you need, in terms of finding Sets and Uniques at an increased rate. More after that generally doesn't make enough of a difference to be worth the equipment sacrifices, especially if you are playing Hardcore.

In addition to this, many monsters have unequal odds to drop the various qualities of items. Act Bosses have better odds to drop Uniques than anything else does.

Magic Find FAQ

What exactly does +MF do?

Basically, Magic Find makes more of the items that drop be magical or better (Rare/Set/Unique). If you have 100% +MF, if an item dropped normally had a 10% chance to be magical, it will now have a 20% chance. You won't get more items dropping, but the ones that do drop will be better items. More players in a game = more item drops, so you want to try and combine the +MF with a big MP game for the best results.

For a hypothetical example, say normally out of 100 item drops, you would get 20 magic, 2 rare, 2 set, and 1 unique. With 100% +MF you'd expect 40 magic, 4 Rare, 4 Set, and 2 Uniques. It's never exactly like this, but that's about how much it should increase.

What are the "Magic Items" that this finds more of?

MF doesn't make more items drop, nor does it make Elite or Exceptional items drop more often. Magic Find merely increases the chances that an item, when dropped, will be "high quality". Unique, Set, Rare, etc. With Magic Find, normal items will more often be magical or better, and items that are always at least magical (jewelry, charms, jewels, etc) more often be higher quality.

What things doesn't MF help with?

Magic Find helps you get more magical, set, rare, and unique items.

Magic Find % does not make:

• More total items drop.

• Higher level items drop.

• More of a particular type of item (such as rings/amulets) drop.

• More Exceptional or Elite Items drop. More of the ones that do drop will be magical or better, though.

• More Charms drop.

• More Jewels drop. It does make more of the Jewels that do drop be Rare, instead of magical.

• The rarer Unique rings and amulets drop. It does increase the chances of a ring/amulet being better than magical though.

• More or less Runes drop. MF has no effect either way.

• It has no factor on gambling, that's all just luck.

What are "High Quality" items?

"High Quality" refers to Unique, Set, or Rare items. The sorts of things that Magic Find enables you to find more of. It does not refer to item type, since Magic Find has no effect on if a monster drops a short bow or a hydra bow.

Since Magic Find has diminishing returns, is 110% the best?

No, the more MF you have the better, always, in terms of getting higher quality items. 1000% will find more Uniques, over time, than 900%, and far far more than 300% or 200%. The balance comes in how long it takes you. If you can do an item finding run in 10 minutes with 1000% MF, and the same run in 3 minutes with 500% MF, it's probably better to go faster, since you could do the same run 3x, which would be better odds for good equipment over all.

What order are items checked to drop?

The game first determines what type of item will be dropped; Magic Find has no effect on this. Once the item is determined, your MF is checked in determining if the item is Unique, Rare, etc. The game rolls for Unique first, then Set, Rare, Magical, and normal. This is why more MF is always better, since it boosts your odds of Unique, Set, and Rare. Since SuperUniques, bosses, and Act Bosses always drop at least magical items, (and have much better odds of dropping higher quality items than normal monsters do) MF there will make a big difference.

If the game rolls a Unique, and there is no Unique of that item type (a common occurrence with so few Elite Uniques) you will get a Rare item with 3x normal durability. If the game rolls a set and there is no set of that item type, you will get a magical item with 3x the normal durability.

If you are tracking how many Uniques and Sets you get from item runs, you must note the durability of all Rare and Magical items to have an accurate total.

When is MF calculated?

The MF on the character getting the kill, at the instant the monster dies, is what's checked. This means you can fire an arrow or cast a spell, then switch to bigger MF weapon/shield, and get the MF bonus from it. For example an Assassin or Sorceress can cast traps or spells with +skills weapons, then quickly switch to a Gull/Rhyme and get the bigger MF from that when the monster actually dies. This even works with arrows, you can fire Guided Arrows with your Buriza, and switch weapons to a sword/shield before the arrow hits the target, and get the MF credit as long as you switch in time.

Does more MF help find more Charms and Jewels?

No, this is a common misconception. Charms and Jewels are magical (or sometimes rare with Jewels) but since there aren't non-magical charms and jewels MF does nothing for them. It does help you get more Rare jewels, instead of magical ones, but the total number found shouldn't change.

How much Magic Find do I need?

There is no answer to this, but the more you have the better. Noticeably better results start around 80-100%, you'll really start to like it by 200-300%. By 500% or more virtually everything that drops is magical. Since v1.09 introduced diminishing returns, it's not especially useful to get higher than 350% or so, in terms of finding more Uniques and Sets, but the higher the better for normal play.

The main issue to consider is your killing speed, compared with the diminishing returns (see the table up this page a bit). Going from 500% to 1000% MF only increases your Uniques MF from 253% to 295%, which is just a 42% improvement. If your killing speed drops 50% due to lesser equipment when you go from 500% to 1000%, you'd be better off doing twice as many runs at 500%, since with so many more items found your odds of something good would be much higher.

The main reason you want really high MF is to counter the "what if" factor. If you're playing with 400% MF and could be at 700% but slower, and you find a rare Hydra Bow, or Rare Shako, you'll probably bang your head into the keyboard, thinking "what if". Tell yourself that in the long run your 400% and faster killing will pay off, and that the item would probably have been a Rare anyway. Then bang your head a few more times.

What are the drawbacks of high Magic Find?

The most obvious is the equipment trade off. You'll lose many +skills, but the biggest changes are generally resistances and defense, and killing power if you are doing an MF weapon and aren't a Sorceress. The Hardcore character has to carefully evaluate their equipment changes, since death is a bad thing.

You'll find very few normal items with very high magic find. So if you want items to Imbue, or socketed items, you'll want to go easy on the Magic Find.

Does Magic Find help with Runes?

No, it doesn't get more Runes to drop or higher quality ones to drop. It doesn't hurt your chances either though. Some have speculated that more +MF means more magical drops, and thus fewer Runes and Gems, but that's not the case.

A more detailed explanation of how Runes are dropped might help:

All items in the game are listed in "Treasure Classes" for the purposes of determining which monsters can drop them, and what the odds are of them being dropped. There are lots of these Treasure Classes, 29 each for Armor and Weapons, as well as lots of others for other items, such as potions, scrolls, runes, etc. Each Weapon and Armor "TC" has 8 or 10 item types in it, all items with similar item levels. For example, Weapons 84 (the second highest) has these items in it: Champion axe, Cryptic sword, Demon xbow, Fanged knife, Ghost spear, Great poleaxe, Legendary mallet, Shillelagh, and Vortex orb. If you kill a monster that can drop from Weapons 84, the game will check to see if it does (it usually fails, and drops to a lower TC, which is why high level Elite items are so scarce) and if so will pick one item from the TC. Once the item type is picked, the game then checks to see if the item will be normal, socketed, magical, set, etc. This is where your MF comes in.

Runes are in different Treasure Classes than items, and so are Charms, Jewels, Gems, etc. So Magic Find doesn't have any effect on which TC is picked, just on the magical type of item that's dropped once the item to be dropped is selected. If the game picks a Rune to drop, it'll drop it, and your MF doesn't make that more or less likely, or up the chances of a higher or lower level Rune.

Does Magic Find work for the whole party?

No, the +MF is calculated just for the character who gets the final hit in. So if you are playing with a friend and one of you has 300% MF and the other has none, be sure the one with the +MF gets the final hit in, especially on Bosses.

Does Magic Find work with Mercs or Minions?

Not for things you kill, the Merc's gear has no benefit to your +MF. However for things that the Merc kills, the drop is calculated for their MF + your MF. So if you both have on 4 socket armor with perfect topazes, things you kill will have 96% +MF, but things the merc kills will calculate at +192%. Dress your Merc up with 4-topaz armor and 3-topaz helm and try to let them get the final hit, and it might be worth it.

MF does work with minions, they don't have any MF of their own, but they use yours to calculate the drop. This has been fixed from CD2, where Necromancers had it rough, since their MF wasn't checked on kills made by their minions (including monsters killing themselves with IM on).

Does +MF help finding Exceptional and Elite items?

No, but when an Excep or Elite does drop, the odds of it being magical or better are increased by your +MF.

Does 100% +MF mean every item dropped is Magical?

No, it means you'll get twice as many magical and better items dropping as you would normally. If a monster had a 1% chance to drop a magical item, it would now have a 2% chance.

Does Magic Find work on bosse's?

Oh yes. It doesn't increase the number of items they drop, and their drops are already magical or better, so the +MF increases the odds that they'll drop better than magical stuff. Rather than normally getting 5 or 6 magical items from an Act Boss, with good MF you'll expect a couple of Rares, and maybe a Set or Unique as well.

Does Magic Find work with Poison?

Yes, deaths from poison over time calculate with MF now, as do merc kills, spell kills, etc. In D2C it did not, but this was fixed in v1.08.

Do more players in a game help?

Yes, since more players in a game = more items dropping. And each item that drops is modified by your +MF. You want to try and combine the +MF with a big MP game for the best results.

Bosses are the exception, they drop one magical or better item every time, whether there are 8 players or just you in the game. Same with SuperUniques, they always drop 2 items and 4 potions, though one or both of the items can be non-magical items, such as runes or gems. Act Bosses get a small bonus to the total number of items they drop, since their "no drop" selection is lowered by more players in the game.

Does Magic Find work on Chests?

Yes, in the Expansion and v1.08 Diablo II it works on everything, including chests, corpses to click, barrels, Evil Urns, hidden stashes, etc.

Does Magic Find work with the Barb's Find Item Skill?

Yes, it does in v1.08 D2/D2X and later. It did not in Diablo II previous to this version. This is a very good skill to use with your Barb, especially on bosses and super Uniques, which can do a full bonus drop with just one click. Just one point in Find Item is usually enough, since most Barbs have weapon switch items with +warcries on them (Echoing Swords, for example) as well as some +skills stuff, and can get Slvl 7 or 8 Find Item from that.

Some monsters don't leave a corpse that can be worked on, including all of the Act Bosses, some Super Uniques, and monsters that die frozen, but 95% or more of dead monsters can be "Horked", as it's called, for the sound the skill makes. You can Hork Fire Enchanted monsters as well, even though they blow up messily upon death.

Does Magic Find help with Gambling?

No, it has no effect on Gambling or the items you are offered by NPCs. (Well, more +MF you'll have more stuff to sell and thus more gold, so it helps with Gambling that way. ;)

I've heard 149% is better than 150%?

Not any more. After v1.08 the find item values are smoothed out to be much more uniform. Previously to this there was a rounding issue, and up to 149 was mostly a steady increase, but at 150% you suddenly would never find any normal items (just magical) and had a slightly lower chance to find Exceptional Rares. This persisted until 190% or more, when your chance for Exceptional Rares climbed higher than it was at 149%.

This has now been fixed.