Gold per Hour

I analyse the factors of influence to maximise gold per hour with gold find runs.

In the first part I derive the formula for gold per hour with all factors. Then I try to analysis the impact of all different factors, which are important for gold find builds.


Gold per Hour = Gold / Time


Gold = gold from monsters + gold from objects - repair costs

Gold from monsters = base gold drop * (1+gf / 100) * monsters who drop gold
Monsters who drop gold = killed monsters * A
A ... If every monster drop gold => A=1, if only 50% monsters drop gold A = 0,5

Gold from objects = base gold drop * (1+gf / 100) * objects who drop gold
Objects who drop gold = destroyed objects * B
B ... number of gold drops per object

Repair Costs = normal repair costs + exceptional repair costs for death



Time = monster time + object time + travel time + gold time + wasted time

monster time - time to kill a group of monsters

object time - time to destroy (open) objects

travel time - time to travel to a group of monsters or to objects
travel time = travel length / travel speed

gold time - time to pick up gold

wasted time = time for standing still (breaks) + death time + time to visit town



base gold drop
The base gold drop is dependant on monster level (mlvl), but we don't know the ratio between base gold drop and monster level, but this is very important.

killspeed for monsters
The killspeed for monsters is dependant of the mlvl, damage output of your charakter (offensive item stats), used skills and size of the monster group.

gf = gold find %
gf is a stat on your items and also some skills provide additional gf like the ferret companion for the demon hunter.

destroy (open) objects
How fast you can destroy objects is dependant of your skills. If you must aim every object manually you are slower else if you can destroy them with aoe skills (area of effects), like strafe for the demon hunter or ground stomp for the barbarian. This have a small impact on your time, but could be bothersome to destroy all objects manually.

death
It's very important to avoid every death, because you loose time to kill more monsters and money for repair costs. You can increase your survivability by wearing items with defensive stats and using defensive skills.

travel length
The travel lenght is determined by your farming route. It's essential to avoid dead end streets and run the same way twice. A straight forward area like first area in diablo2 act 5 or an area where you can farm in a circle are to prefer.

travel speed
Travel speed is influenced by your items (boots), which increase movement speed and skills which increase movement speed (like sprint for barbarian, tactical advantage for demon hunter) or which let you travel faster (like teleport for wizard, vault for demon hunter, leap attack for barbarian, tempest rush for monk).

time to pick up gold
The time to pick up gold can be reduced by items with gold pick up radius or as a demon hunter with  ferrets companion, which pick up the gold for you.


conclusion
As you see all these factors are dependant to each other.
You must find a perfect farm location with less travel lenght and enough monsters.
Then you must decide on which difficult it's best to farm. Is it inferno, hell or nightmare?
If you farm inferno you need more defensive and offensive stats to kill the monsters fast enough and you can wear less gf and there is a risk to die, but if the base gold drop is high enough it could be the best solution. Or farming an area in nightmare with very high gf and only offensive stats and skills is maybe the better solution to get the most gold per hour.

Furthermore there must be calculated that the monsters also can drop valuable items on higher difficult, also if you have 0% mf.

If you farm solo, you have a reliable follower, if you want farm in a group, it must be organised to have advantages.

What do you think?

Demon Hunter - Resource System

The Demon Hunter is a ranged character, which fight normally with a bow, crossbow or 2 hand crossbow.  He also uses traps. The demon hunter has 2 different resources, Hatred and Discipline.

Hatred red / Discipline blue

Hatred is gained by different basic attacks and used for powerful attacks. Hatred generator skills are Hungering Arrow, Bola Shot, Entangling Shot, Evasive Fire and Grenades. These generate hatred also without a target.

maximum Hatred 125
regeneration 4 per second



Discipline regenerates slow and is used for defensive maneuvers like caltrops, vault, marked of death, smoke screen, companion, shadow power and sentry.

maximum Discipline 30
regeneration 1 per second

Beta Patch 1.14

The original beta patch notes you can find here.
Further undocumented changes you can find here.

Now a short summary and analysis about some changes.


Magic Find and Gold Find are now shared amongst party members. The average combined value of the entire party's Magic and Gold Find applies to all players regardless of location in the game world. The averaged values will not display in the UI

I already blogged about this (MF, GF and +XP bonuses are shared across the group and Opportunities for easy multiboxing), because it was announced some days ago. Now it's confirmed that the shared mf and gf applies to all players regardless of location in the game world, which is the precondition for my multiboxing ideas. Blizzard won't show us the averaged values in the UI. I think they want avoid players to search for public games with high mf / gf without much effort. If you want to know the average values you must ask the other players and / or inspect them. I don't like this additional effort, although I prefer to playing with friends and not much in public games.


Barbarian and Monks now have innate 30% passive damage reduction versus all sources.

This change seems to be necessary in higher difficulties for melee charakters to be balanced against ranged charakters.


Several aspects of the game economy have been adjusted, including but not limited to:

• Gold drops
• Item sales values
• Vendor costs
• Repair costs

This is a very good change, because a constant gold dump is necessary to achieve that gold don't lose on value. This allow us to make money with selling gold in the RMAH. The increase in gold drops at lower levels are adjusted by the lower gf on items.

Crafting

• Gold cost to craft items reduced
• Cost to train blacksmith doubled
• More crafting materials are now required to craft items
• Chance to salvage rare crafting materials from magical items reduced from 10% to 5%

The doubled cost to train the blacksmith is only a one time expenditure for every account. This won't have a big effect on the gold value in the long run, but in the first weeks of the game maybe this higher costs for leveling the blacksmith will lead to more buyed gold in the RMAH and / or less player are leveling there blacksmith this early. Both leads to an advantage for us. If there is more demand for gold at the beginning, the prices for gold stay longer high. If lesser player level their blacksmith there is much less competition in selling crafted items and the demand for crafted items also increase, because the players can't supply their self with better items.

The increased requirement of crafting materials to craft an item is necessary, because there is a bigger supply of magical items. This bigger supply of magical items come from 2 changes. Champions now drop 2 magical items. Overall there are more monsters and more magical items drop then before. Lesser rare crafting materials are also an effect of the bigger supply of magical items.

Overall it seems that we will play Diablo 3 soon.

Opportunities for easy multiboxing

With todays point of view multiboxing in d3 is not as simple as in wow, but with the change of mf, gf and +xp bonuses are shared across the group multiboxing for farming advantages can be possible.

With every new player in the game, the game gets more difficult.
But what if you are overpowered, and you can kill fast enough without any help, also if there is a 2nd player in the game, who stays all time in town?

The 2nd player in town is your 2nd charakter on the same computer or on a laptop beside you.

If you are doing gf or mf runs, then your 2nd charakter wears full gf or mf gear. No other stats are important this time.

You get 50% of the mf and gf from this charakter and 50% from your own gear. So you can focus more on damage. If you play solo you would get 25% from your follower and 100% of your own gear. The 2nd charakter has more slots then a follower. In comparison you can get more mf and gf with a 2nd charakter staying in town, but your killspeed alone against stronger mobs must be in range of the killspeed with a follower against weaker mobs.

gold find runs
If you are doing this at nightmare or at beginning of hell it could be possible to achive a killspeed to get a better gold / hour ratio.

magic find runs
Every time you meet a unique / boss monster you can teleport the 2nd charakter by klicking on the banner, so you can double the loot from the mob. From this follows that we must not be as fast as alone with a follower, because of the 2nd drop.
In inferno I think it would be impossible, but in hell maybe it's possible.

+xp runs / leveling a new charakter
With a good prepared item set for the leveling charakter, I think it should easily possible to rush trough normal and nightmare easily, while a 2nd charakter with max +xp items staying in town.
If selling charakters will be a profitable business, maybe this is the way to go to level your charakter as fast as possible.

I don't know if this can work or my idea has any error.

MF, GF and +XP bonuses are shared across the group

Source

How does this funciton?
All mf, gf, and + xp bonuses from every player are added  together and divided by the number of players.

for example:
Player A has 100 mf, 60 gf, 0 +xp.
Player B has 0 mf, 0 gf, 300 +xp.
Player C has 800 mf, 0 gf, 0 +xp.

The group sum mf, gf, xp is 900 mf, 60 gf, 300 +xp, divided by 3.
300 mf, 20 gf, 100 +xp for player A, B and C.

If we play solo with a follower you get 20% of the followers mf, gf and +xp. More basic about followers, you can find here.


What does this mean for us?
 I see positiv opportunities in this change.

• Leeching isn't anymore possible. All player in the group have the same amount of mf, gf and xp. So everyone won't neglect their own killing power. If you don't have the best or any mf or gf gear, public games are a good chance to do farm runs.
• If you have very good mf / gf gear (gear with a high amount of mf / gf and also offensive and defensive affixes), solo farm runs are more profitable then public games or you find other players with equal gear and group together for better farm runs.
• New opportunities for easy multiboxing in d3. See this post.

Followers overview

In Diablo 2 there were mercenaries and now in Diablo 3 we have followers.

Followers are only in solo play available.

They should be an assistance for solo play. They have a great impact for solo farming runs, because:

•  you can rely on your follower and so you can configure your tactic on the follower's skills.
•  you get 20% of your follower's mf, gf and +xp. (source)

There are 3 different followers:

Templar
The templar are holy warriors. His key features are defensive fighting (tanking), healing and recovery and holy justice.

Scoundrel
The scoundrel fight with ranged weapons. His key features are ranged killing, disabling shots and attack boosts.

Enchantress

The enchnatress use magic to protect there allies and to do damage. Her key features are debilitating magic, arcane blasts and supportive spells.

 

During the play through you get quests to acces the followers. You can have all 3 of them, but you must decide which of them should fight with you, the others stay in town.  

You must equip your follower with items. There look doesn't change with the equiped items only with the level of the follower.

Skills

Every follower have 8 differnt skills, but can only have 4 of them. For every stage you must decide for one of two available skills.

 

Demon Hunter guide preview

I want to release a demon hunter guide, which will be announced after I have enough release experience. At the moment I'm working at basic information, which are already known in the beta. My demon hunter guide should contain one or more following topics.

Solo gold find

Solo farming (Magic Find) in Hell / Inferno

Effective group play in Inferno (Magic find runs)

What's my motive for writing this blog / guide?

First of all I want to be prepared as good as possible for the release of diablo 3. This is important to have a small head start for playing the gold and real money auction house.
My first class will be a demon hunter. I always liked farming in diablo 2 and wow, so I will also have fun with farming in diablo 3 in addition to playing the auction house.

At the moment I have the idea to build a concept for of a solo gold find demon hunter. I like the idea of solo farming, because you are independent and can rush as fast as possible and make breaks when you need it. Also solo play have a big advantage because you must abandon only on yourself and your follower which plays a big role in solo play. Furthermore I like the idea of the ferret companion which collects all the gold for me.

Some thoughts from me about a solo gold find demon hunter you can find in this comment.

But maybe I'm wrong and solo magic find runs will be much more better, all the knowledge which I'm getting now for this first concept will help me for any further ideas and nobody can steal this knowledge.

Because I try to get as much information as possible, I want to write down my ideas and information for others and myself. From time to time I'll post some ideas and content for this guide.

My blog starts now

This is my first post in this blog.
Short and uninformative, but this will change in future.

Be prepared...