What is a useful strategy to farm runes/gems in Diablo 2?

Question

As a follow up to my can I still dupe the hell out of Diablo 2 runes/gems, which I intended more for the single player fun factor, I am curious to know if there is a well developed strategy for obtaining gems and runes without duping?

This is focused primarily at playing online, on battle.net, but not necessarily exclusively. If it's a good strategy I'll likely try to perfect it in single player first.

Answer 1

Kill the Countess in the tower under the Black Marsh. Over, and over, and over, and over, and over.

She can't drop the very highest runes, but she can drop some pretty awesome ones. For the highest runes, you'll want to kill Baal. His rune drop rate is much lower, but it's still your best bet.

When first killing Countess on Hell, the highest rune that can drop is Lo. Every time after that, the highest rune she can drop is Ist. She'll pretty much drop runes every time you kill her (very low chance of getting no runes). Baal on the other hand can drop all of the highest runes, including Zod (which I believe is a rune that can only be dropped in Act 5 Hell). _{From Kotsu's comment}

Answer 2

The monster with the highest probability of dropping runes is the countess in Act 1 (Forgotten Tower). I think she even drops at least one rune every time. AFAIK Andariel and Nilathak also have a rather high chance of dropping a rune, but not even close to the Countess. Nilathak can drop much higher runes though.

This guide might be helpful.

As for gems: Just go to areas with lots of monsters (cow level might be good) and collect all gems for transmuting.

Another option to farm runes and gems would be to do hellforge rushes. That's only viable online though where you can rush a lot of people at the same time and share the drops.

Answer 3

The Countess is the best rune dropper; she once dropped 4 runes for me! Usually it's 2, sometimes 3, seldom is it only one. The higher your clvl, the better the drops throughout the Tower, which will yield chipped gems or a chipped skull (1-2) ammys (1-2) a charm (0-1)and a ring (0-1). The Forgotten Tower is a farmer's delight!

Answer 4

Countess is great place only for mid range runes. Ist rune is very very low chance.

If you want to farm high runes(Ist and up) running Countess IS NOT a good place to do so.

Kiling lots of monsters on hell with /players 7 is the best way to do it. Speed of killing is the best thing you'd be looking at, so you should lower /players x until you reach fast killing.

Dense zones with monsters and elites should be your first choice, e.g. Cows, council members, even act 1 fallen camps.

Alternative but boring way is opening chests in lower Kurast on players 8. You can google/youtube how to do it.

Answer 5

Some of the answers here aren't very good. The one with the lowest rating is correct.

The Countess is not the best source of higher runes. To be fair, though, the OP didn't specify higher runes.

Some of the best ways to get runes:

1. Play the game. Really, just play the character you like most in the highest level area that you can clear quickly. Look up the level 85 areas (e.g. The Pit in Act 1, The Ancient Tunnels in Act 2, The River of Flame in Act 4, the Worldstone Keep in Act 5) as they can drop any rune (or nearly any, my memory is fuzzy .... edit: champions and elites in those areas can drop any item in the game). The highest rune I've ever found on bnet was Sur in the WSK. The highest rune I've found in SP is Cham in The Glacial Trail (which has area level 83).
2. Lower Kurast. This area has up to 6 "super chests," which have a decent chance to drop high(er) runes. The River of Flame is also a good area. It has a higher area level, so it can drop higher runes than LK, but it only has at most 2 such chests. In SP, /p7 is best for LK.
3. Travincal. The council in Travincal have a decent chance to drop a lot of good items (runes, charms, jewelry, and facets, for example). One of the best features, though, is that the map is static. You always know exactly where the council will be when you join a game. For bnet, this is a big deal. In SP, /p3 is best.
4. The Countess is a good way to get low to mid runes throughout Normal, Nightmare, and Hell. In Hell, though, she's really not that great as she can't drop the highest runes. Always (...after the first "quest" drop) run the Countess solo on bnet or on /players1 in SP. For reasons that I don't recall right now, her rune drop is best in a solo game.

Oh, btw, for gems, see option 1 up there. On SP, you can engage in Gem Shrine Farming. Basically, you run and rerun The Stony Field, The Dark Wood, and The Black Marsh looking for "Gem" Shrines. Carry some flawless gems with you but no other, lower gems, and when you find the gem shrine, hitting it will upgrade one of the gems in your inventory/backpack to a perfect gem. You can do this on bnet, but since the maps change with every new game, it's really not efficient.