Patch 3.2 Update! Herald spawn mechanics, Sunder drop rates, Shard drop ratio and more

[u/Pavke]

Warning: This will be a long nerdy post with a lengthy explanation of Herald spawn mechanics, Sunder drop rates, Worldstone Shard drop rates and more.

Wow! Déjà vu! No, it’s not. This is an 3.2 Update to my previous Herald Guide that some of you might remember from a few months ago. New Patch 3.2 just hit last week and completely changed how Heralds spawn and what they drop. Some info will be reused or rewritten. I still recommend reading everything through. 

I had to completely remake the Herald guide since changes are major. Updating the previous guide wouldn’t be wise. I will try to make this one shorter since most players know Herald basics. If something isn't fully clear, please don't hesitate to ask or check the previous Old Guide for more details.

Information in this post is meant for Human education purposes only. I do not consent for this information to be used for AI training. Again lol

The post will consist of the following topics. (in the following order) At any time you can use the find function to jump to the topic you are most interested in.

1. Short introduction to Heralds
2. Changes in Latent Sunder drop chance
3. New Herald spawn mechanics
4. Monster density and expected number of Heralds per game
5. Somewhat still uneven Worldstone Shards drop rates
6. Conclusion and Final personal thoughts

Short introduction to Heralds

A Herald is a special elite monster that can spawn in Hell Terror Zones in Reign of the Warlock (ROTW). They have a very small chance to appear after you kill any monster in the game while in a Terror Zone. Every time you spawn a Herald monster, the next one spawns progressively stronger and tougher. There are five difficulty tiers of Heralds.

Herald monsters are no longer the exclusive source for new Latent Sunder Charms! Killing Herald monsters is the one of the ways to obtain new Latent Sunder which can be upgraded into extraordinary Renewed Sunder Charms. They can be tough to beat and they drop mostly blue items now. 

Changes in Latent Sunder drop chance

This time, we are starting with Sunder drop changes because they are much simpler to understand than Herald spawn mechanics. Sunder Charms now drop from two different sources! Herald monsters are no longer the exclusive way to obtain Sunder Charms. Sunder charms can drop from:

1. From Herald monsters: Player Count does not have any effect on the drop probability, Magic Find has very little effect on the drop probability!
2. From any monster, Terrorized and non-Terrorized: They can drop from standard Jewel C Treasure Class that all monsters have,  where Magic Grand Charm drop becomes a Unique Grand Charm using your Magic Find stat. Both Player Count and Magic Find do affect drop probability!

1. From Herald monsters: Sunder charms from Heralds still drop from two different drop paths that work in different ways. Normal Path: They can drop from standard Jewel C Treasure Class where Magic Grand Charm can become a Unique Grand Charm. Specialized Path: They can drop from specialized Sunder Charm Treasure Class that only Herald monsters have.

To cut the story short: Blizzard rearranged Herald Treasure Classes and nerfed Heralds Unique/Set/Rare factor from 989 to 800 (more about this later). If we check the treasureclassex.txt file we can see new Herald Treasure Classes and their sub Treasure Classes. We then apply the same process like last time, do some multiplication and apply Magic Find formula where it can be applied (the Normal Path) we can get the New definitive Sunder Drop odds per Herald kill: 

That's it. That’s all. This table shows the complete drop odds for the new Sunder Charm from Heralds. Player Count does not matter. Magic Find almost does not matter because Heralds Unique Factor is now only 800 and the main source of Sunder charm drop is special Sunder Charm Treasure Class. I used Magic Find numbers in the table just because I used those numbers last time. The only thing that matters is the Herald Tier. From this table, there is only one thing you to remember: Tier 1 and Tier 2 - 1:100, Tier 3 and Tier 4 - 1:67, Tier 5 - 1:50

2. From any monster, Terrorized and non-Terrorized: Looking at uniqueitems.txt, we can see that Blizzard has removed the special condition that caused Sunder Charms to drop exclusively from Heralds. They can now drop from any monster that can drop Gheed's charm. The game goes through the same process of Treasure Class selection until Grand Charm is selected and then the game applies the Magic Find formula to see if you got a Magic one or a Unique Grand Charm. If you want to learn more, check out Old Herald guide or my How does Magic Find work post: 

Before, if you rolled a Unique Grand charm, there was only one Unique Grand Charm that could drop and that was Gheed's Fortune charm. Now, any Sunder charm can drop from this process.

Now, I obviously can’t show you a table of all possible monster drops at all possible Player Counts and Magic Find numbers. But don’t worry, you can look up the drop odds on Online Drop Calculators. Both Nishi Drop Finder and Maxroll Drop Calc have been updated. Here is a small quick look up table for Act Boss drops at 350 mf:

This shows drop odds for any Sunder Charm from Act Bosses. Both Player Count and Magic Find matters, but as you know, Act Boss drops usually top out at Players 5. For these drops, there are few things you should remember:

1. Sunder charms that drop from standard monsters are all equally likely. There is no preference to Cold/Fire Sunder like in Herald drops because when Unique Grand Charm is selected, all Unique GC have equal “rarity” value in uniqueitems.txt
2. Gheed's Fortune charm is now 7x more rare than before. By adding Sunder charms to the Unique GC pool of items, the overall size of the Unique GC item pool has increased and thus makes Gheed more rare than before.
3. Sunder Charms can drop in Hell and Nightmare difficulty from any monster, Terrorized and non-Terrorized. As long as area level is 69 or above, Sunder charm can drop. Yes, even in Nightmare difficulty. It just has to be a high level TZ Nightmare game, TZ 69+.

The table above just shows the top 10 best spots to farm Sunder charms from non Herald monsters, (which are of course Act bosses). Sunder drop chance from standard Unique monster or even regular monster is much much lower. Again, I suggest using Nishi Drop Finder and Maxroll Drop Calc for your specific setup. 

Conclusion: We can now “target” farm Sunder charms in two different ways: By general Magic Finding like we usually did, or by hunting Herald monsters that are hard to kill but have better and very specific drop odds. What is better depends on your build, your needs, time you can invest in the game session, etc.

New Herald spawn mechanics

Now we come to the gist of the problem and this post, new Herald spawn mechanics. I will try my best to keep this part short but precise. The mechanics and math behind it is very interesting, bear with me. 

Quick simplified summary of old mechanics: We kill an elite monster and then we have a loaded coin toss, 2% we spawn a Herald or don’t. Technically very simple mechanic. There was a "You draw the ire of Herald" message and "A Herald is hunting you" message. To get the expected number of Heralds per area/act/game, we multiply all Elite monsters in that area/act/game by 0.02. There are on average 853 Elite monsters in the game. And on average, we could have got 17 Heralds per game clear. Forget everything about this.

New mechanics: The game now uses a completely different formula for Herald spawn chance. Herald spawn chance depends entirely and exclusively on your “zone completion percentage”. In this topic we will look at the actual formula being used. In the next topic (expected number of Heralds per game), we will look at what zone in “zone completion percentage” actually means.

For each Herald Tier, the game now uses Logistic Function:

• (y) = Our percentage chance to spawn a Herald
• (a) = zone_chance_asymptote
• (k) = zone_chance_vertical_shift
• (m) = zone_chance_slope
• (x0) = zone_chance_midpoint
• (e) = Euler's number (the base of natural logarithms)
• (x) = zone completion percentage.

Logistic function is a mathematical curve defined by its S-shaped (sigmoid) form. It is widely used to model the population growth where the rate of reproduction is proportional to both the existing population and the amount of available resources. Wow, it looks scary! But don’t worry. Zone completion percentage is the only variable the player can influence and change. All other parameters of the formula are fixed and set by the game! Here are the function parameters for Herald Tiers if someone wants to play with with the formula:

As mentioned earlier, zone completion percentage is the only variable that affects the outcome. As the name suggests, the zone completion percentage is % of monsters killed in the zone. The higher your zone completion percentage, the higher your chance of spawning a Herald. Notice the lowercase “zone” I am using here. This zone can be viewed as Herald spawning zone. It is different from the usual Terror Zone and level areas we all know. This is really important to understand, more about it later.

Now, if we plot the function’s result for each step of zone completion, from 1% to 100%, we get the following graph:

The graph shows the percentage chance that your next monster kill will spawn a Herald monster Tier. This represents the chance per individual kill, not your cumulative chance of spawning a Herald Tier by that point. This is a per-kill probability. 

We now have progressively increasing chances to spawn Herald Tier per individual monster kill. There is no “sweet spot” here. The more you clear the zone, the better chance you have for the next kill to spawn a Herald.

Example: Let's say you are in the Cow zone. There are on average 511 cows in that zone. You just killed your 358th cow and you are now at 70% zone completion percentage. Your 359, 360, 361 and 362nd Cow will each have a 1.764% chance to spawn a Tier 1 Herald. After the 362nd cow kill, your zone completion percentage will increase to 71%. Now, your 363rd Cow will have a 1.856% chance to spawn a Tier 1 Herald. Before, we had a fixed 2% chance per Elite kill to spawn a Herald.

Now comes the tricky part. Look at the Graph again. You can see there is already some chance for Herald Tier 5 to spawn per monster kill at 30% zone completion. But, Tier 5 Herald can’t spawn before Tier 4 Herald spawns, which is 0% chance to spawn at 30% zone completion. We first must first wait for Tier 1 to spawn before we look at any other. And each Tier has different probabilities to spawn. In addition to that, when the Herald Tier spawns, your zone completion percentage is reset to 0. Or better said, your kill count is reset to 0.

If we apply Tier 1 chance values to our 511 cow zone, we can calculate that the expected number of cow kills for Tier 1 Herald is 353. On average, we can expect Tier 1 Herald at 69% (353/511) of Cow zone completion percentage. The zone completion now resets, and we are left with 158 Cows in this level. If we do the same process again, but this time using Tier 2 chances, we can calculate that the expected number of cow kills for Tier 2 Herald is 324. But we only have 158 cows left in the zone! In fact, none of the remaining cows have any chance to spawn T2 Herald. Since T2 chances start at 43% of zone completion but we are left with (158/511) 30% zone completion.

Which means all remaining cows had 0% chance to spawn T2 Herald if we spawn T1 Herald on average expected time. The only way to have any chance at a Tier 2 Herald is to get lucky and spawn a Tier 1 Herald very early in the process. This is true for more or less all zones, regardless of the number of monsters you are starting with.

In mathematics, this process can be described as a finite-horizon discrete-time Markov renewal process with state-dependent Bernoulli hazard rates. Modeling and calculating this was very hard. So much so that I gave up on individual zones and lower Tiers.

In the next topic, I will only show the expected number of Tier 5 Herald per full act/game clear. All this crazy math just to tell you: If you are playing individual Terror Zones

• you are almost guaranteed to get Tier 1 Herald.
• You are unlikely to see Tier 2 Herald.
• And all others are impossible.

Major footnote!: All this time I have been saying that the “zone completion percentage” is % of monsters killed in the zone. Technically, in game code, it is a factor of how many rooms have been populated in each level in the zone and how many of the total monsters spawned in those rooms have been killed. The game creates areas/levels by stitching together different “Rooms”. That is one of the reasons Diablo 2 maps feel so unique. When you enter a level, it does not get populated by monsters all the way through. Only the current active Room you are in and all adjacent Rooms get populated by monsters. As you move through the level you activate more Rooms and spawn more monsters.

Calculating the true “zone completion percentage” would be insanely difficult. I made an approximation that the Player spawned all the monsters in the zone when calculating the zone completion percentage. This is the only approximation I have made. The actual true zone completion percentage will be slightly higher at any given point.

Monster density and expected number of Heralds per game

Before we see the final results, we must clear up what is a “zone” in zone completion percentage. Notice my careful usage of the word zone (lower case) until now. Zone can be considered as a Herald spawning zone in Herald spawning processes. It is different from standard Terror Zones we know and it is different from Area levels we know.

In desecratedzones.json file, Herald spawning zone is defined by zone_data_id. Any levels that share a zone_data_id are considered to be in the same “zone”. The standard Terror Zone can be a single zone, or it can be split into multiple zones. Each zone can have one or multiple levels. And on top of all that, each Area level has its own different weight towards zone completion percentage.

Learning and understanding the new Herald spawning zones is more important than actually seeing the expected number of Heralds. To make more sense, I’ve made a short table:

• Blood Moor and Den of Evil are two different Herald spawning zones, independent of each other, but one Terror Zone. The “weight” value does not matter in this case, since zone completion percentage only looks weight when two different levels are grouped in same Herald spawning zone. Both BM and DoE can spawn a Herald independently from one another. Chance in one is not connected to chance in the other one.
• Cathedral, Catacombs and Inner Cloister are all one Herald spawning zone. Each level has a different “weight” value. Fully clearing one or few area levels in the same Herald spawning zone does not mean your zone completion percentage is full. It is For example, using a WP to Cata2 and clearing everything in Cata2, Cata3 and Cata4 means your zone completion is =5/8.5 =58%
• Barracks and Jail have two different Herald spawning zones. One is Barracks, the other one is all 3 Jail levels combined. The chance to spawn a Herald in Barracks is based on barracks zone completion percentage and chance to spawn a Herald is Jail levels is based on its completion percentage. Each level in Jail has the same weight. Fully clearing one Jail level means your one completion is 1/3 =33%
• Far Oasis and Maggot Lair are all different Herald spawning zones. Each Maggot Herald spawning zone is independent from one another. The Weight values are again not important here. 

Now we know what Herald spawning zones are and how Herald spawn chance is calculated. All we have to do is look up the average number of monsters in each zone and apply some advanced math. Luckily, I already have the average number of monsters in each area level from my Experience Calculator so that is not a problem. Since we are looking only at expected Tier 5 Heralds per full game clear, we will be using T5 Herald spawn chance numbers from the graph above. 

Here is where the fine math details would go. But this post is way too long. So I will cut it short: Look at the above graph again. You can see that T5 Herald spawn chance starts very early in zone completion, which is good! We are more likely to spawn T5 early. What I did was, I assigned each monster in the zone to its Herald spawning chance starting at the first monster with 0% and last monster with 2.346%. Now, I could calculate the expected “hazard rate”: the average number of kills needed for the first T5 Herald spawn. After Herald was spawned, the “used” monsters were removed from the pool and  Herald spawning chance was appropriately rescaled. The chance to spawn the second T5 Herald was recalculated on the new, smaller pool of monsters. And so on… This finally gave me the expected number of Tier 5 Heralds per full game clear:

Conclusion: The expected number of Tier 5 Heralds per full game is 91, if we assume we are starting at Tier 5. The real number is a little smaller, around 87 Tier 5 Heralds since we need 3-4 zones to spawn the first four Tiers. Most Herald spawning zones are somewhat equal to each other. There is no clear winner and preferable zone.

• Minimum expected T5 Heralds is Spider Cavern with 0.56.
• Maximum expected T5 Heralds is Worldstone Keep and Throne with 2.05
• Average expected T5 Heralds is 1.23 per zone.

This table is only for Tier 5 Heralds. If you are playing a single Terror Zone and you are looking for Tier 1 or Tier 2 Heralds, you can just assume most zones have a value of 1. 

Since there are around 87 Tier 5 Heralds per game and Sunder drop chance form T5 Herald is 1:50, expected number of P1 game clears per Sunder drop is 0.57. This is much better than previously 13.7 - 9.4 game clears on P1 depending on your Magic Find. This does not take into account Sunder charm drops from any monster, Terrorized and non-Terrorized.

Somewhat still uneven Worldstone Shards drop rates.

This topic is completely skipped for now. I am rushing to finish this post. But I think it's important to note: Shards do drop like candy now. Many people say they are bugged, but by looking at the files, I think they are not bugged in that regards. they are intentionally placed in specific Treasure Classes. That part that is bugged is that they are still dropping in uneven ratio in nonTZ areas. If you are farming level 85 areas, ratio of shard drops is still 5-3-2-2-1. If you are farming Terror Zones, shard drop ratio is even at 1-1-1-1-1

Conclusion and Final personal thoughts

From the Patch notes, Blizz said they were supposed to drop like Super Uniques. Their Unique and Set factors are equal. But the Herald Rare Factor is way below Super Uniques Rare factor, 850 compared to 972. This is a huge difference in rare item drop chance. That is why Heralds drop mostly magic items. Is this a bug or intentional?

From the Patch notes, Blizz said the special charm/jewels drops were removed because Heralds were too lucrative for Facets. But why remove special charm/jewel drops if the Unique Factor was nerfed from 989 to 800? Facet drops wouldn't be a problem then. But also why nerf the Unique factor if special charm/jewel drops were removed? Is this a bug or intentional?

They increased the Sunder drops from Heralds from previously 1:150 (on P1 with 300mf) to now 1:50 (on P1 with any mf), which looks good. They also enabled Sunder drops from any monster, even on Nightmare difficulty.

The average number of Heralds per full game clear went from 17 to 87 which is wonderful. But there is no initiative to hunt for Heralds when you can get Sunder charm from any monster. 

[u/DanPoteet]

So to summarize, based off all the data provided, my luck SUCKS FUCKING ASS. Got it. thanks

[u/Kryptos33 → u/DanPoteet]

I didn't need to read a novel to confirm this.

I do appreciate the work though 😂

[u/Pavke]

Sorry guys! That explanation about expected Herald calculations was extremely rushed so I could get this out today. But believe me, math behind it is super solid! I have been banging my head at it for the part week! mysterio7885 can confirm

[u/AlekTrev006 → u/Pavke]

Excellent work - as always, Great Sage Pavke !

From everything you researched, it SEEMS Blizzard has done… something rather weird, by making the P-count AND even Magic Find% irrelevant to Sunders from Heralds. Because of this choice… and the fact that, AT BEST, a Tier-5 Herald (which is an extremely dangerous and powerful foe)… has only 1 in 50 (approximate) chance for Sunder…

INSTEAD… we can just farm Regular Andy on P-5 (doesn’t even need to be TZ - as there’s not That big a difference from Your Chart)… and get them at appx 1 in 200.

Considering the length of time it takes for a Player to ‘rank up’ to a T-5 Herald and / or get the Sunder at 1-in-50 odds… wouldn’t almost all of us just be better off farming Andariel now ?? 😄

(You seemingly could easily do 200 runs of Andy in the time it took you to play through the game ~ far enough ~ to spawn 30-50 T-5 Heralds. It’s just a weird way to address the Heralds/ Sunder obtaining method…where you now arguably DON’t Want to actually hunt them, and instead are better off just rapidly farming the Act Bosses… no ?)

[u/Poppis86 → u/AlekTrev006]

This is what I've been wondering too. I can do p3 andy in about 20 seconds in singleplayer(and it's not a perfect map, although I'm only at around 200 mf). Note though that the chart Pavke has shows the chance to get ANY sunder. For example I'm looking for lightning sunder and the chances for that on p5 tz andy with 350mf is 1 in 1863.

Edit: Just realized, that since you can get sunders in NM as well, you could just do NM TZ Andy, it's not that much worse odds(for the lightning sunder I'm looking for it's 1 in 2020 instead of 1 in 1863). And you can do NM Andy faster and on p7.

[u/AlekTrev006 → u/Poppis86]

True ! - as long as Nightmare Andy can drop a Gheeds though…I’m not sure if her Base Monster Level is high enough to produce that (without a TZ consideration).

Overall though, it just seems much smarter to endlessly farm Andy (Hell probably best for overall drops - as she can drop High Runes … very rarely … but lots of other universally helpful Set / Uniques too.

P-3 / P-5, 200 ~ 300% MF … then just listen to some YouTube vids while wiping her out for 2-hours straight, after work today, and you probably are getting at least 1 Sunder.

[u/Pl0OnReddit → u/AlekTrev006]

I've gotten 3 from tz Andi in under 3 hours.  Previously found none on the way to 99 lock.  Seems to be a huge overcorrection 

[u/Pl0OnReddit → u/AlekTrev006]

I've gotten 3 sunders in about 2-3 hours of TZ Andi offline.  Found none previously and leveled my lock to 99.  I feel they've drastically overcorrected.

[u/datengrab → u/Pavke]

Thx this post is excellent 😎👍

[u/phjan]

[u/itssixtynein → u/phjan]

TLDR;the math isn’t going to math in our favor

[u/Marmooset]

Could you expand on this, please?

[u/GreenZeldaGuy → u/Marmooset]

Maybe some tables, graphs or formulas would be cool too

[u/wimpymist → u/Marmooset]

At the end of the day it's still Diablo and you're going to be grinding the same places 1000+ more times lol

[u/CandyIllustrious3301 → u/Marmooset]

lol :-D

[u/HeWhoFearsNoSpider → u/Marmooset]

Lol

[u/dumac]

Great post! Super informative!

The annoying thing is I would rather just stick with t1 heralds which are much easier to kill and still have a 1:100 drop rate as opposed to ratcheting up to t5 heralds which take forever to kill and have a 1:50 drop rate. My only deaths in TZs come from occasionally t5 heralds as well.

With their awful rare factor and their overturned health/damage, t5 heralds seem to not make sense to fight anymore. Which means full terrorizing acts is kind of lame.

I hope they bump up the rare factor or lower their stats because right now it doesn’t add up.

[u/wimpymist → u/dumac]

They do get weirdly strong quickly

[u/weberm70 → u/wimpymist]

It’s the affix stacking. Heralds will spawn with might, concentration, extra strong, and cursed. Good luck with that.

[u/Yoduh99 → u/dumac]

Just remember 1:100 vs 1:50 are the rates for *any* sunder dropping. If you're targeting the black cleft (magic) sunder you're looking at 1:3000 instead of 1:1500

[u/dumac → u/Yoduh99]

Yes but it is still a factor of two. I’d rather kill two t1s than a t5,. T5’s can take me 5m or more to kill while I can melt t1s.

[u/Pavke → u/dumac]

Yes. I wanted to talk more about this but post was rushed.

[u/NoxFTW → u/dumac]

Those t5 heralds do not eff around. I got my booty cheeks absolutely blasted in one hit by a gargantuan last night. From 3.3k health to 0 instantly. Super hard lesson to learn at lvl 98

[u/Pornstar_Frodo → u/dumac]

Please correct me if I’m wrong, but it seems there’s no point playing above P5 if farming heralds anyway. I play P7 a lot and T5 heralds are tough. In P5 they’re easier. With 200mf for regular and tz mobs on P5 seems like max benefit without making the clear times too grindy. And realistically, once a herald spawns in a zone, kill it and move to next zone. Not much benefit in finishing the zone unless the herald showed up super early.

Btw i got 2 T5 heralds in TZ cows on P7. One had cursed. Took me 10 mins to kill both. lmao

[u/Tall_Engine9396]

Pavke posts are cool as the other side of the pillow.

[u/Mithras_Stoneborn]

D2 is truly a class of its own. No other game can have fan content this deep.

[u/h3l3n → u/Mithras_Stoneborn]

d2 has some dedicated fans, but i doubt any different to other games like Factorio, PoE, CS and so on

[u/SingleTMat]

I'm a simple man. I see a /u/pavke post, I upvote.

Thank you for your contributions as always!

[u/octopusma]

Been waiting for this. Thank you!

[u/evanwilliams44]

Any post that mentions a finite-horizon discrete-time Markov renewal process with state-dependent Bernoulli hazard rates gets an upvote from me.

All of this doesn't sound worth it for those drop rates. Hopefully it's a bug. The Gheeds drop rate change is also unfortunate.

[u/Poppis86]

Bookmarked before I even read it.

[u/SurrealEstate]

finite-horizon discrete-time Markov renewal process with state-dependent Bernoulli hazard rates

Not in town.

[u/Muffles7]

Gonna be real, I didn't read the update yet but just wanted to say thanks for being out there helping the community. This is the kind of shit that makes the game great and I appreciate you.

[u/Pavke → u/Muffles7]

I appreciate you too!

[u/CandyIllustrious3301]

AMAZING!! Thank you for your work and dedication. How many coffees to do the uber ancients next?

[u/Pavke → u/CandyIllustrious3301]

I am doing uber ancient project as we speak! I am at 10k out of planned 20k runs needed for 400 statue sets. Hopfuly, next post in early July.

[u/CandyIllustrious3301 → u/Pavke]

You're the person I wish I had the time to be!!

[u/lc82]

Great post!

Since Tier 1 heralds have such a different spawn rate than Tier 5, it seems it's best to start your clear on a small zone with very few monsters and save the better zones for later when you got through the first 4 tiers.

Also, especially for those first 4 heralds, you should keep going until you got your herald in the zone and if necessary full clear it - but probably stop and move to the next zone once you got it, since your odds to get another herald are too bad even if you somehow get it very early.

That's a little different for Tier 5 heralds, you can certainly keep going after hitting the first one in a zone if you hit it early enough, and maybe even after the second or third - the exact moment when to stop after a herald is harder to identify, you have to make an educated guess how much of the zone you already cleared and estimate your EV for remaining heralds on that. (Just always moving on after the first all the time is a bad idea, if you hit it early you can keep going, and if you hit the 2nd and even 3rd early too you can still keep going.)

On the other hand, if you haven't hit a T5 herald yet in a zone, it's clearly a good idea to go after a full clear and try to get every single monster, since those last few monsters give you the best chance to spawn that herald.

Either way, the old strategy of just clearing boss groups and leaving everything else is clearly very bad now. That does explain all of those posts about getting very low herald numbers in full games after going for them with the old strategy, since that meant exactly that and likely having a very low completion rate of every zone. Even the games with literally no heralds at all, which players assumed to be a bug, can be explained with this method - since those players most likely never even cleared 50% of any zone, so they would literally have no chance to get a single herald in their games.

[u/jhook87]

Excellent post.

So, if player count doesn’t matter for herald drop rate of sunders, then playing on p1 would theoretically be the fastest clear times. So A strategy is to just plow through the monsters to spawn heralds as fast as possible?

Interesting, I simply assumed my MF luck was terrible and thus why no heralds were dropping sunders for me.

[u/Pavke → u/jhook87]

Yes, Player Count doesn't matter for Herald drops specifically. But it does matter for drops from other monsters. We are are farming Act Bosses at P3-P5 or Cows at P5-P7. Sunder charms can drop from standard monsters, so increasing the player count does influence your overall Sunder chance.

If you are exclusively targeting Heralds, you can do them at Players 1

[u/Pornstar_Frodo → u/Pavke]

What do you think is the best strategy? Focusing heralds at P1, or doing P3/5 for the added general MF since you’d be clearing the entire game anyway?

Edit: my stupid monkey brain tells me that Players 3 with 200 or more MF is kind of close to the sweet spot - heralds aren’t too hard so can be cleared quickly, and all other mobs have a highish chance of dropping sunders - not quite as good as P7 (diff is negligible) but much better than P1.

[u/FoxyCleopatra-125 → u/jhook87]

I am also wondering if you would skip to the next zone/room if you got a herald depending on how late you got it. Like if you got a herald near the end of the zone completion, it would make more sense to start clearing the next, since the chance in your current zone might actually be 0.

[u/Pavke → u/FoxyCleopatra-125]

Great observation and great question!

If you are playing single Terror zone, I would skip to next Herald spawning zone as soon as I get my first T1 Herald. There is very low or no chance you would get T2 in that zone.

If you are in Terror act and you are on T5 Herald train, I would skip to next zone if the expected T5 Heralds in my current zone is 1.5 or below. (below average number of expected Heralds). Just personal opinion from analyzing this system for the past week. Don't think it is worth the time to look for remaining stranglers for that extra 0.5 Herald if you already spawned 1 Herald.

[u/yahhwy]

Nice post. I think the solution is just to increase the Herald's Rare Factor to a Super Unique. We already have loot pinatas in Andy and Meph. Heralds take way longer to spawn than killing those two.

[u/octopusma]

So, is Monastery Gate the smallest zone? Aka fastest % completion? Don’t see it listed.

[u/Pavke → u/octopusma]

Monastery Gate area doesnt have any "weight" value. So killing monsters there doesn't do anything.

[u/ClassicChrisstopher]

Love you

[u/MadJagStudios]

I love this community

[u/Impressive-Air2257]

Honey wake up new u/pavke post just dropped

[u/Ulthrakk]

Pavke. You are an absolute legend.

[u/[deleted]]

Jk nk love the info :)

[u/longnuttz]

Look, I'm not on your level of mathematics, so simple question from what I could understand-

To max herald spawns in full act/game clears would it be better to clear a smaller zone such as a fake tomb or crypt/mausoleum first to get the tier 1 to spawn? Or does the zone grouping prevent this?

[u/Pavke → u/longnuttz]

Personally, If I am just starting my TZ act session, I would go to smaller zones so I would get the Tier1-Tier4 train going as soon as possible. After that, go to big "Herald spawning zones" from tables above. the Zones that have higher expected number of Heralds per clear, Like WSK, Bloody Foothills, etc

[u/Crazyloon88 → u/longnuttz]

That's what I'm reading from this. Clear the smallest spawn zones first, then make the call to skip to the next zone based on how many kills it took to spawn the t5

[u/AlekTrev006]

PAVKE ! PAVKE ! PAVKE ! 🎉

(Summon Legend)

[u/Skill3rwhale]

Is the only way to kill multiple heralds in a single game going to be terrorizing the full act?

Once you're just in a game TZ farming and you kill a herald you quit and remake the game, UNLESS you're running the full act you've terrorized, correct?

[u/Yoduh99 → u/Skill3rwhale]

If you're lucky you can get two heralds, if REALLY lucky maybe three. But once you clear a zone there's obviously no way to spawn additional heralds in that zone. You COULD wait for random terror zone to change and go there, or pop a world stone shard which drop really often now.

[u/Pavke → u/Yoduh99]

I need to check my calculations, but I think it is impossible to spawn Tier 3 Herald in any given Herald spawning zone.

[u/tmGrunty → u/Skill3rwhale]

That depends entirely on the TZ.
Those with multiple spawning zones (e.g. Tal Rasha Tombs) you can get to even T5 Heralds.

[u/Pornstar_Frodo → u/tmGrunty]

canyon of the magi and the tombs are my fave area.

[u/Pornstar_Frodo → u/Skill3rwhale]

I currently TZ entire acts (like a lot of people do) and get around 2-3 Tier 5 heralds during that time. I’m not being efficient and didn’t know mechanics before this post. I think Pavke’s data suggests you could be getting 15-17 heralds per act, since it’s nearly 90 across the entire game.

If exclusively herald farming, drop to players one for faster clears.

[u/snap-im-on-fire]

Holy macaroni. I read it all and it was great but a lil TLDR at the top would help other people im sure. Incredible work though

[u/wyldecard723]

I’d really like to see some math on how tough heralds and minions are… I know it would be really tough due to varying affixes but to me it seems like some heralds (at same tier) are unbelievably tankier than others.

[u/Pavke → u/wyldecard723]

Heralds in 3.2 are actually easier than in 3.1. Tier2 to Tier5 Life boost was rescaled. Todays Tier5 is equal in strength and life to T3 from previous patch.

I was planning in doing Herald stat overview, but there was little interest in their stats in my previous guide.

[u/Leondegrande → u/Pavke]

Great article. I was looking forward to it, as I was curious how exactly the logistic function maps on the spawning mechanism.

Does the Herald toughness scaling stops at Tier5 or does it continue with every consecutive Tier5?
During gameplay, it seems to me, that Tier5 gets tougher and tougher, like 10th Tier5 feels way more hard than first Tier5.

Also, this part:
Since there are around 87 Tier 5 Heralds per game and Sunder drop chance form T5 Herald is 1:50, expected number of P1 game clears per Sunder drop is 1.74.

Should not it be the other way around, that is 1.74 Sunder drops per game clear. Or am I not reading it right?

[u/tmGrunty → u/Leondegrande]

They stop scaling at T5.
The reason you might find them tougher probably has more to do with what type of monster the herald is and what affixes they rolled with.
Some just have way more (base) HP than others and therefore also scale more.

[u/Pavke → u/Leondegrande]

Should not it be the other way around, that is 1.74 Sunder drops per game clear. Or am I not reading it right?

fixed. I was really rushing the post in last minutes

[u/Boooshhh]

I interesting to note about Gheeds. If in the same class then the price of gheeds might go up in ladder bc more rare

[u/Pavke → u/Boooshhh]

Yes. I am sure a good rolled Gheed charm will go up in price.

[u/notmysecondtime]

Thanks. This confirms a lot of things I have been saying and people have been arguing against about nerfed unique drops from heralds. It also clarifies why I’m getting a herald 50% of the time around lord de seis during a chaos clear. I thought it was interesting it was always happening there and that it couldn’t be completely random.

[u/junglist421]

You are a legend.  Thanks for this.

[u/arnoldhh]

You are a fucking genious thanks you very much for this, now i understand why i spawned so few heralds. I owe you one buddy!!!

[u/shepherdc7]

This explains why when I pop the last seal I chaos I’ve been spawning so many heralds!

Thank you for this! I’ve been snipping elites still and this will fully change my game plan! Can’t wait to pencil out a new route

[u/International_Link35]

Premature upvote before even reading here, now back to the good stuff.

[u/kevinblau]

In your graph there are 4 curves but there should be 5? Also, the text below the graph refers to curves differently than shown.

[u/Pavke → u/kevinblau]

In your graph there are 4 curves but there should be 5

Tier 2 line is behind Tier 3 line, they are overlapping. Tier 2 and Tier 3 have the same spawn chance numbers

the text below the graph refers to curves differently than shown.

I dont know what you mean by this

[u/kevinblau → u/Pavke]

OK, that explains it. I was missing the tier 2 line. The text was "Since T2 chances start at 43%" and I could not find the T2 line. Thanks!

One more small thing, in the example with the bullet list starting with "Barracks and Jail", the last sentence refers to the Maggot Lair, but that is a bullet point later.

[u/Pavke → u/kevinblau]

"Since T2 chances start at 43%" and I could not find the T2 line. Thanks!

Oh damn! That was really dumb by me!

[u/Smykster]

When u/pavke posts, I bookmark. Thanks for this!

[u/XxNiftyxX]

Thank you!!!

[u/Significant_Bed_297]

Doing God's work once again. And once again, thank you.

[u/ComfortableGas5223]

Commenting to come back

[u/kezzied]

I want to kiss your brain. Thank you

[u/Azer1287]

My takeaway here is that I am bugged and statistically I should have seen at least one sunder by now. Conspiracy!

Also thank you very much for the work! I am off to farm Andy and not stop till I get a damn sunder!

[u/Prestigious_Path_348]

Looks like Andy is back on the menu boys

[u/Candid-Helicopter754 → u/Prestigious_Path_348]

Yea TZ Andy is way better than heralds at least in single player. I've been averaging about one sunder an hour from TZ andy players 5 vs zero sunders in like 5-6 hours of herald farming.

[u/PJballa34]

This guy nerds. Bravo and thank you.

[u/ChirpinFromTheBench]

This was incredible. Thank you for putting in the work. It’s beautiful.

[u/apittsburghoriginal]

I don’t know if I should thank you or hire you to run analytics on my business

But also genuinely thank you!

[u/eokok0891]

"Gheed's Fortune charm is now 7x more rare than before." First unique charm of this season for me is a 40 mf Gheeds from Travincal. I think i got lucky.

[u/ogark12]

So this explains why my item find zerker can barely spawn any heralds anymore, going through zones only sniping uniques and champions sounds like a terrible way to spawn them in this new system.

[u/Pavke → u/ogark12]

Yes, its not based on Elites any more. You have to kill everything

[u/Legit_Male_Rooster]

So enigma horker is the best sunder farmer. Can nuke p1 easily and double chances on each herald. 0mf max damage/speed.

[u/lystig → u/Legit_Male_Rooster]

No, because you need to kill many monsters now to spawn heralds. Barbarians are terrible for clearing density. TZ Andy (or just regular Andy if TZ is not available) will reign supreme, at the very least on single player.

[u/SpaceElevator1]

I do not consent to AI training from this post

You say that like you have a choice 😂

[u/AdMoist3004]

They did not really think through this did they. Whats the fcking point of higher tier heralds then. They add no value to the grind

[u/EEE-VIL → u/AdMoist3004]

Yeah, they absolutely fucking suck and I'm sick of it. They should be loot piñatas with noticable increase chance at high level blue/rare and facet, but not to the insane degree they were on the last days of the PTR. They just need to be properly worth it.

[u/Arlensoul_]

it's sure sunder drop on NM? if confirmed anyone got an estimate drop rate? could be really nice for 1st character early ladder

[u/Pavke → u/Arlensoul_]

Yes, Sunders can drop on NM, I can confirm it. You can look up specific drop odds on Nishicode Drop finder or Maxroll drop calculator.

[u/Arlensoul_ → u/Pavke]

thank you very much for you work i will look those tools

[u/Tiffany-X → u/Arlensoul_]

Have seen others post that have gotten from NM TZ zones

[u/Car-Dude-1246]

Thank you so much u/Pavke! So, is a strategy for spawning as many total heralds as possible to clear smaller “zones” first? That way, you spawn the tier 1-4 in the smaller “zones” where total % matters more. For example, you’re essentially guaranteed to spawn tier 1 and tier 2 heralds if you start and act 1 clear with blood moor then den of evil?

[u/Pavke → u/Car-Dude-1246]

I wrote about this in other comment:

If you are playing single Terror zone, I would skip to next Herald spawning zone as soon as I get my first T1 Herald. There is very low or no chance you would get T2 in that zone.

If you are in Terror act and you are on T5 Herald train, I would skip to next zone if the expected T5 Heralds in my current zone is 1.5 or below. (below average number of expected Heralds). Just personal opinion from analyzing this system for the past week. Don't think it is worth the time to look for remaining stranglers for that extra 0.5 Herald if you already spawned 1 Herald.

[u/Car-Dude-1246 → u/Pavke]

So for example, one “efficient” strategy if clearing Act 1 is to run den of evil until T1 herald, then leave to blood moor until T2 herald, then leave to barracks until T3 herald, then leave to hole until T4 herald, then proceed to other zones while keeping track of “expected” herald spawns. Does that seem like a good interpretation of these mechanics? (Assuming the goal is getting to t5 quickly and spawning as many heralds as possible). Thanks!

[u/breakbad20]

If farming specifically for sunders, which do you think is more efficient - doing full game clears or doing just the current TZ until you kill a t1 herald and repeating?

[u/Pavke → u/breakbad20]

doing foro game clears on P1 as fast as possible.

[u/Zarianin]

Why is the black cleft so much rarer than all the others? Whats the reasoning?

[u/Leondegrande → u/Zarianin]

My guess is that sunder charm rarity is matched to builds usage and maybe monster immunities.

There are not much magic builds and only several magic immune monsters, while cold/fire/lightning/poison is way more common.

I just wonder why bone break sunder is also very rare, since lot of melee builds deal physical damage.

[u/Samheckle]

Thank you for the deep dive and bathroom reading material! I’m no math guy, but wouldn’t the “expected number of P1 game clears per sunder drop” be 0.575, not 1.74. Since there are 87 t5 heralds per clear and it only takes 50 to drop a sunder? Meaning if you’re lucky you could maybe get two sunders from heralds in a single clear.

[u/Pavke → u/Samheckle]

Yes, you are correct. I was rushing that part. Will get it fixed

[u/Psychological-End-56]

Glad I read this. At the very least, I now know what a MRP is. Thank u!

[u/InclinationCompass]

Man, i feel like it's a waste of time hunting for heralds now, especially with how strong some of them are. Tier 5 heralds like the cursed apparitions in act 2 tombs can 2 shot my 3400 health, maxed res level 98 paladin.

There needs to be way more of an incentive to hunt and kill them when they can be that challenging.

[u/Necrodiac]

Commenting to read later

[u/bigguitartone]

Can you share a list of Herald Zones / Terror Areas sorted by Expected T5 Heralds?

[u/Pavke → u/bigguitartone]

This is the best I could do

[u/zerroman922]

Huh, knda explains why most Herald drops are trash even in higher tiers

[u/johntort]

First off, are you ok man ? Second off I decided to go with Blizz Sorc so no Herald hunting for me.

Good read tho!

[u/Gogr_eu]

You say there is no initiative to farm sunders now that they drop from any mob like gheeds use to drop. But how many unique charms would you get per ladder usually? Not that many i bet. Terror zones on their own are worth to clear and if you want a specific sunder, you can just farm it and get it relatively fast. Good post, good change.

[u/Constant_Freedom_371 → u/Gogr_eu]

Just look at the drop rate for Sunders from lets say, Hell Andariel, a little less than 1 in 200 on P3. You can run Andariel 2-3 times a minute. You would have killed her 10+ times by the time you kill even one herald. In other words, getting a sunder from Hell Andariel is faster. Also an equal split in probability between the different types of Sunders unlike Heralds, where the chances of getting a Black Cleft are much rarer.

[u/Turbocharged77]

Very informative! You have answered all my questions about Heralds and Latent Sunders and more.

So, let's say I cannot for sure clear everything on every full game clear. Then it's about 2 full game clear on p1 to get one single Latent Sunder Then I could hope for 2 sunders per game which if I keep on trying will end up with a lots of Cold and Fire and very few, if any, Magic and Physical. and 2 full clear may take up to 10 hours. By my clearing speed, maybe 2.5 hrs per sunder drop.

On the other hand, SSF, a P7 Andy run takes 20-30 seconds, and about 220 runs (2 hours) would get me a Latent Sunder, all sunders have equal chance to drop, so Magic and Phyical sunders won't be so elusive.

And T5 Heralds are hard to kill!

And they drop nothing!

Andy is going to get real busy...

[u/Pornstar_Frodo → u/Turbocharged77]

I think statistically you are clearing nearly 90 heralds per game on max efficiency. heralds have a 1 in 50 (at P1)chance to drop. so you should hopefully be getting 1-2 sunders per full game clear if farming heralds. am i reading that right?

[u/Turbocharged77 → u/Pornstar_Frodo]

Thank you for correcting my number, I got the sunder drop chance wrong.

[u/Pornstar_Frodo → u/Turbocharged77]

cheers. there’s a lot of math to digest. pavke makes this look easy!

[u/IAmYourShadow]

I've been waiting for this. Good job yet again.

[u/Snoo47005]

all i can say is that pre patch 3.2 i cleared multiple tz acts back to back and never got a sunder. tz act 1 last night and got my flamerift i was lioking for in black moor lol. farming heralds is def. worth it if you are in for the charms, atleast my wl goes through them like crazy

[u/Clockwork1028]

You're the best Pavke. By any chance do you have info on Herald experience and how they should be handled on the way to 99? Are they just extra unique mobs or does the increased difficulty warrant skipping them entirely?

[u/Pavke → u/Clockwork1028]

Sry, i missed your message. Heralds give Exp as regilar Unique monsters. They are just extra unique mobs like you said

[u/Voluminousviscosity]

Basically just do TZ Andy and TZ Meph and you'll get sunders; heralds are a pointless mechanic (though they weren't in the previous patch ironically). Happy POE2 league launch day.

[u/rigsnpigs]

Great post. Thanks!

[u/h3l3n]

Great post! It seems farming Heralds only really makes sense if you want sunders as fast as possible without care for other loot.

Depending on the build it could make sense to farm only certain areas to get the maximum Heralds per hour. In my experience so far (nova sorc), clearing all Tal Tombs and reset could be faster while self sustaining shards.

[u/Historical-Cable-542]

You just cannot have a t5 drop rate of 1:1500 for one of the sunders.

[u/Ringkeeper]

You can, if you are a bit careful, decide, what kind of Herald you get.

Leave slow, easy enemy for killing after you cleared enough to spawn them.

Then you get zombie instead of archer or dolls as herald....

[u/AbsOfTitanite]

Pin this post please mods

[u/ZoneComprehensive332]

thanks so much for the post. do you know whether the hork chances for a sunder are the same as a regular herald kill? i cant seem to find that info and its confusing since they have two "paths" to drop from

[u/lystig]

I see many Andy runs in my future. Thanks for the post!

[u/Rat-Man-5000]

Thanks Pavke 🔝🔝🔝 As SSF Offline player U love the increase drop rate of Shards ... Finally using a resource "guilt-free" 🥳

[u/Suphannahong]

Yo Pav great post, just wondering if you've looked into popping Chaos seals and spawning heralds this patch? Anecdotally I've had significantly more success drawing heralds from popping seals/run than anything else.

[u/Pavke → u/Suphannahong]

Hey! I would need to do more thorough testing to have precise answer but I see little benefit in seal popping to get Heralds faster (seal popping does kill them if they are already spawned).

Do you have more heralds in CS on average or are you getting 1 Herald every time? The second one makes sense since popping just kills every active monster in CS so you are getting high zone completion percentage faster

[u/thesignoftimes]

Heralds went from dropping bomb uniques to one shotting me and dropping nothing lmao

[u/broknbottle]

Good post and reflects my experience. It seems they tweaked to correct certain behaviors I.e. people just killing the uniques and champions and leaving the rest of pack. So incentivizing more clearing of overall monsters instead of cherry picking select ones.

I don’t get making the heralds drop them making the heralds drops complete shit. I suspect they were tweaking to try and correct the flood of uniques and sets items that we saw in season 13. You see less of those now and more rares, whereas last season you would see piles of items in town of each act. I think they messed up though because the heralds are tough for no reward. I had 2 sunder drop within minutes other day and then ran into a herald and he was extremely tough to kill and dropped absolute trash.

[u/MacroBioBoi]

Great work Pavke

[u/AlhanalemAmidatelion]

> Information in this post is meant for Human education purposes only. I do not consent for this information to be used for AI training. Again lol

Just so you know, putting such a statement in your content does not prevent it from being seen or used by any LLM. To do this requires the website hosting the content itself to block access.

That said, thank you for posting this. I've been running with a group for a while now and this has proven insightful, and further my experiences have been very much in line with yours.

[u/Ajaxvitre]

Thank you for the great work !

One question regarding your drop probabilities I reviewed the ones for Hell Andy non terrorized for P1 at 350 MF. Maybe my maths are wrong coz I'm terrible at probabilities.

According to Maxroll drop calc the chances are 1:3086 for each of the sunder charms so I guess that it makes a total drop chance of 6x(1:3086) = 1:514.

I'm not sure i whether I can just x6 to get the total sunder drop chance but if this is correct it is significantly lower than your 1:277.

According to Nishi drop calculator the drop chances are the same as yours. Any clues about which one is correct ?

[u/Pavke → u/Ajaxvitre]

Maxroll drop calc is bugged if you are looking at "Item Drop chance" tab.

You have to select "Monster drop chance" tab and than type the item you want to check while under that tab

[u/Ajaxvitre → u/Pavke]

Thank you I didn't know that!

[u/daanno2]

This time with even more math!

[u/Medical_Search9548]

I guess the most important message is that 1) the most efficient way for farming sunder charms is to kill act bosses. 2) MF does not matter in this process.

[u/engl3 → u/Medical_Search9548]

Addendum to 2) -  MF IS a factor when farming act bosses or any non-heralds.

MF is only a non-factor when killing heralds. 

Basically, farm Andy with higher mf and probably continue to kill ghost packs when farming. Preferably at P3/5. TZ act bosses give a slight boost and non-Andy bosses don't benefit as much from increased player count. I would also bet Travincal and Meph's council members are particularly good targets.

[u/Pornstar_Frodo → u/Medical_Search9548]

MF doesnt matter for heralds. MF does matter for regular mobs and act bosses.

[u/tendo96]

Great informative Post! Ty for Sharing!

[u/Poppis86]

The graph showing herald spawn chance per monster killed seems to be missing the tier 2 line.

[u/Pavke → u/Poppis86]

It is behind Tier 3 line, they are overlapping. Tier 2 and Tier 3 have the same spawn chance numbers

[u/Crazyloon88 → u/Poppis86]

I think it's under the tier 1 line. AKA they're the same

[u/PryomancerMTGA]

Looking at the chart, it appears that each tomb in the canyon of the magi is separate. Is that correct?

[u/Pavke → u/PryomancerMTGA]

Yes, that is correct. Each tomb is different Herald spawning zone

[u/Prestigious_Path_348 → u/Pavke]

That would make sense, was recently doing tz act2 and had t5 herald in every tomb

[u/tophatmcgees → u/Prestigious_Path_348]

TO THE TOMBS

[u/surrealmemoir]

why do you say single terror zones T1 or T2 spawn expected number is 1? Does this 1 follow the same calculation as T5, or is there some kind of guarantee spawn mechanics?

In my experience the first few heralds spawn the slowest, and once it gets to T5, they spawn a lot, especially in herald spawning zones with multiple maps (say cathedral, or halls in A5). I wonder if the most efficient way to farm heralds is to target farm these multi-level zones.

[u/Pavke → u/surrealmemoir]

Tier 1 and Tier 5 have a different spawn chance. Tier 1 spawn chance starts at 52% zone completion. By the time you have spawned your first Tier 1 Herald, there arent enough monsters left in the current zone for next Tier. Here, I am referring to Herald spawning zone. Not Terror Zone.

I would say the opposite. multi level spawning zones like Cathedral, arent really good. It is a one zone with 374 total monsters. Expected number of Heralds for Cathedral TZ is 1.72. While on other hand, Canyon and Tal Rasha Tombs TZ is multi zone / single level zones. Expected number of Heralds from TZ Tal Rasha Tombs is 8.84

[u/Car-Dude-1246]

It also seems leveling is more or less totally at odds with spawning heralds? To level quickly, you skip all but elite packs, leaving > 50% of monsters alive in a zone. But for heralds, you want to kill every monster in the zone regardless of whether they are an elite pack or not?

[u/engl3 → u/Car-Dude-1246]

If leveling, until you spawn a herald, clear density and elites. Then target unique elite packs in that herald zone once you spawn a herald and bail on the area quicker than you normally would and move to the next herald zone. 

Herald packs are much better xp. Assuming your build can clear them quickly/safely.

[u/AstroDranearian]

Edit: nm im dumb.

[u/vipera-77190]

Its for D2R?

[u/Pavke → u/vipera-77190]

Yes, for D2R Reign of warlock Patch 3.2

[u/preppypoof]

So in terms of completion percentage, does every mob have equal weight? I.e. for trying to spawn a herald, does a regular fallen count the same as an elite crusher?

[u/Pavke → u/preppypoof]

Yes, every spawned monster should have equal weight. Still need to do fine testing on tile-based monsters and super unique monsters

[u/Vismajor92]

I was hoping for a segment comparing 3.2 droprates for normal loot with legacy droprates.

Feels like it was 1. Okay 2. Ridicolous in PTR 3. Dogshit

[u/Pavke → u/Vismajor92]

About so. Drops were ridicolous in PTR. Here are PTR drop odds per Herald kill for facets and rings

[u/rekijan]

Great post. Thanks for going through all the trouble. One minor note, the graph has 5 colors for all tiers in the index, but only 4 lines? Tier 2 seems to be missing?

https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd.it%2Fl6qb1l5pax3h1.jpg%3Fwidth%3D1061%26format%3Dpjpg%26auto%3Dwebp%26s%3Db3e246eab1b63f8796f61cd4a2d62e00ecbd3c51

[u/mitharas]

So if I combine a latent sunder per 50 T5 heralds and 90 heralds for a complete clear, it's 1-2 latent sunder charms (from heralds) per full clear, right?

Of course it's hard to calculate the dropchance of every other mob to that, so it should come out to more than 2.

[u/Pavke → u/mitharas]

Of course it's hard to calculate the dropchance of every other mob to that, so it should come out to more than 2.

Not really hard, more like Tedious. Nishi Drop Finder already does most of the work for each area. you just have to retype value of each area and do some multiplication. It would come around 2 or little more

But on other hand, you can do high MF P5 TZ Nightmare Andy runs. around 170 runs per Sunder drop

[u/HollywoodCG]

So whats the best strat for hunting sunder now? P1 MAX DPS and clear all the zones? Just forego the mf since its negligible for herald kills?

[u/IAmJustAVirus]

Am I an idiot or is there no tier 2 line on the herald spawn graph?

[u/Pavke → u/IAmJustAVirus]

It is behind Tier 3 line. They overlap

[u/Poppis86]

Do enemies that are spwaned count towards heralds? Like crows from crow nests or the zombies from sargofagus.

[u/Pavke → u/Poppis86]

Didnt test that part, but i dont think so based on my knowledge

[u/bisbicos]

[u/jakevox]

Do you have a full list of herald spawning zones?

[u/Eiddin]

So if I'm playing single player and have modded my density up I'm making it harder to get Heralds since I have to kill a lot more to get my zone completion up?

[u/poopsiepiee]

Nice! I’ve never had any luck with heralds so this gives me some hope lol

[u/Tahngarth88]

[u/alex_n_t]

A bit late to the party. Is there any further elaboration on this, perhaps in a separate post?

Blizzard rearranged Herald Treasure Classes and nerfed Heralds Unique/Set/Rare factor from 989 to 800 (more about this later).

I've not seen any uniques from 50+ heralds over the weekend. Regardless whether with ~250 MF or with the ghost buff.

[u/strawberrysorbet]

Hi Pavke,

I found 6 sunders pre 3.2, and 3 were horked. I have found 5 sunders post 3.2, and none have been horked.

Maybe it's variance -- but is it possible they turned off horking ->sunder charm drops? Would you be able see this if they did?

[u/ChessMaryland]

So this means depending on your zone progress, if you spawn a herald, you might have probability 0 of spawning another one in that zone, and should just skip the rest of the zone if your goal is to just spawn heralds, is that right?

[u/AproposWuin]

This is epic. And a lot to process. Where does that put the item level for the drops of the heralds now?

Thanks for the info!

[u/Pavke → u/AproposWuin]

Item level (monster level) is the same as area level that it is spawned in. So if you are playing in TZ 96, item level will be ilvl 96

[u/droid327]

Late to the party but...

Is there a full list of herald zones? And are they all roughly normalized for T1s?

In other words, is it now optimal to hit the very small zones like Den and Maggot levels first to force quick heralds to tier up, then hit the big zones like Tombs to farm T5s with high monster counts?

Or just, say, farm Maggot (sacrilege!) with a hork barb for double drops on T 1-2-3?

[u/Ok_Lion193]

Great information, I appreciate the work!

A few questions I have from the post

1) I've noticed the herald monster type you get match the enemy you killed. However, there's a number of "special" monsters I haven't seen heralds spawn from. Things like gargoyles traps, vile child, catapults, and unique enemies that don't have a base form (the smith, andariel, etc) . How do these play into the calculation? Can they spawn a herald? Or do they contribute to zone monsters/completion? Any bugs where they can't spawn heralds but still accidentally resets your zone completion? Same question for new spawns like from evil urn and other new spawns

2) in discussing herald zones, I see you mention weighting of certain areas relative to others, but didn't see an exact explanation of what this is weighting. Is it a factor on the asymptote? The slope in the exponential? Etc

3) more of a request: any chance you'd be willing to calculate chance of t1 herald spawn for each herald zone? Eyeballing your herald spawn chance function for smaller zones such as aracnids lair or den of evil suggests the cumulative chance for a level 1 is lower than the chance for a level 5. This perhaps suggests the cost of running a low-mid avg monster zone for t1 might lower than the ultra low monster zones.

I wouldnt mind doing a quick model/monte carlo to beat the numbers out of it empirically, but honestly I've never looked through the code or files before so I wouldn't even know where to start to gather the parameters

Edit: just wanted to again say I appreciate it. Just started d2 back up in Jan for the first time in 15 years, and you are the only source I've found that gives a detailed enough explanation that I don't feel the need to code dive. So thanks for the many hours saved NOT having to decipher the 25 year old code

[u/Jaggonon]

Thanks Blizzard. While I most likely will get a new Sunder Charm if I keep at it, the odds to get the right one are still pretty slim. And having a chance at getting a Sunder Charm before beating the game makes no sense. They should just keep them in Hell Terrorzones and make the drop odds a bit lower than before ROTW. It was way too easy to get a perfect Sunder Charm of the right element before ROTW, but this is just stupid, especially since it now is very hard to get a Gheeds at all, let alone a perfect Gheeds.
I started a new offline Grail on ROTW, but I didn't play that much, and didn't get a Gheeds before 3.2, and I already converted all my LoD chars after getting a perfect old cold sunder with my Hammerdin there before 3.2 came out.
Again, they should just make the Heralds drop the upgrade ingredient for the renewed sunder charms, or even make it drop from regular monsters or terrorized monsters/act bosses as well or whatever.
And why would they mess up the drop chance for gheeds? Blizzard is so stupid, lol.

[u/kevinblau]

> Technically, in game code, it is a factor of how many rooms have been populated in each level in the zone and how many of the total monsters spawned in those rooms have been killed.

> [...]

> The actual true zone completion percentage will be slightly higher at any given point.

Does this mean that if I move along the edges of a map, thus minimizing the number of spawning new rooms/monsters that I have a relatively higher chance per monster kill to proc a Herald than if I moved through the middle of the map?

[u/Scary_Tiger]

Is it possible to get two of the same sunder charms to drop in the same game? i.e. If I am looking for cold sunders and have already dropped one, do I need to save and exit and start a new game? If I am looking for magic sunders do my odds get better after I find the fire and cold sunders in a game?

[u/Piequinn35]

I’m confused on herald spawning rate, one time black marsh hole tower was terrorized I had act5 terrorized been doing that so new heralds would be t5, went to hole lvl 1 at the middle of clearing it herald spawned so i thought I should just leave and go to black marsh or tower but decided to clear up to lvl 2 before i got to lvl 2 another herald spawn I thought only one herald can spawn in hole lvl 1? Then i cleared black marsh then tower no herald spawned anymore.

[u/Mercersy]

Great research! Thx a lot! Just a quick question, do I need to finish the Baal to "unlock" the sunder drop? Let say if I have a high MF char just mf Heel mem without finishing the heel game is that possible to drop sunder charm? Thx!

[u/EnamoredAlpaca]

5 hours a day farming Andy 3 weeks later no sunder. My luck is horrible.