luck with rune drops?

[:1]are rune drops based purely on luck?

as in are there any ways that you can change the drop rates of higher runes?

this ladder myself and a friend have been doing the same kind of runs but him with a fishymancer with little mf (less than 100) and myself with a sorceress meteorb with around 320mf, his highest rune drop is a mal off of the countess (hellforge was um but im sure this is irrelevant), yet i have had a vex from a random crypt in catacombs level 3, another vex from a random chest in tower cellar level 2, an ist from a council member in durance of hate level 3 and a ber off of baal!!

to me this shows that either i have all the luck or that mf infact helps with rune drop rates, any help or experience in the matter would be much appreciated

Twibz|||Magic find has no effect on rune drops. Only things that matter are killing speed, players count and luck of course. |||killing speed? do you mean the more monsters i in a given amount of time will give a higher chance of dropping runes? like a multiplier?|||It means that if you can kill twice as many monsters as before, you will obviously find twice as much in total. The amount per monster stays the same, of course.

The kind of monster has a great influence on the amount of rune drops. I suggest high-level ghosts. High level = greater chance for high runes, ghosts cannot drop armor and weapons, so they drop more of the other stuff... like runes. For some reason, cows are pretty good as well at dropping HRs.

Visiting only act bosses or super-uniques doesn't pay off with respect to runes, in spite of their greater drop chances. It takes too much time and 20 monsters on the way to a certain target are just as good as the target itself. Of course, if you happen to run into a boss, you kill him |||well i currently kill all of the tower cellar boss packs and obviously countess, full pits, catacombs level 4 for andy, (and pop the odd chest or crypt going down there, got me a vex...), all durance level 3 council members and ghoulies and meph ofc, all chaos sanctuary, pindle, shenk and eldritch, and the odd bot baal hijack

my friend also does this by teleing around with his fishy with enigma, does all the same areas but includes tunnels and baal solo, minus countess, albeit a tad slower than my sorc but still quick...

so i guess it must be luck then lol|||You can chack rune drop chances with the drop calculator of ATMA. For 1.13, you have to exchange a few config files because the latest ones which come with ATMA are for 1.11 and rune drops have changed significantly since 1.13. AFAIK there's information about that in the single player forum.|||You can of course maximize your chances by doing certain things, but ye, the odds are so low it's got more to do with luck than anything else...|||Your sample size is pretty small here. Over time rune drops will even out given all factors that affect them equal, but since HR drops are fairly rare anyway it could take a lot of time.

Some people run LK chests for a weekend and get 3 Bers. Others pop four times as many chests and get nothing worth talking about. This is why calculations of how many hours it should take to get, say, Ist equivalent runes running, say, Travincal, with a given run speed, etc, should be taken with a grain of salt. The high runes are worth so much, in rune equivalents, that they bias the results heavily.

If there is a 10% chance of a Lo dropping in x hours that will raise the expected value in Ists of running for those x hours by quite a lot. But you are unlikely to actually get a Lo in x hours, and if you don't your return will be much less than the expected return. Multiply that effect by all the runes above Ist that can drop there, and you have a recipe for dissapointment when people run for far longer than the time expected for Ist equivalent and get nothing.

The good news (if you have a lot of time to play, at least) is that the more you play the closer your return will come to the expected return.

EDIT: And it's worth mentioning that while MF doesn't affect rune drops lots of other factors do, as other people have pointed out above. It's possible that what you are doing is better for rune finding than what your friend is doing. But the sample is too small to be sure of that (though it's large enough that that seems likely-) you might just have been lucky, compared to your friend.|||Does it matter what number of players in the game you have if you farm council mostly for HR's? since the drop amount doesnt really change, i dont know if it is more likely to find high runes if i run with a higher /players number?|||It does. I'd say P3 is worth it, P5 probably not.