When it comes to farming in Diablo 2, the Countess Run is a great way to quickly and efficiently obtain some of the most sought-after items. A Countess Run is a specific type of farming activity that is focused on killing a specific enemy, the Countess, in order to obtain high-level items. Since the Countess spawns in various locations on the map, it is possible to easily farm her and reap the rewards. However, the Countess Run can be quite tricky and requires a well-thought-out approach in order to maximize efficiency and profits. In this blog post, we’ll discuss the best strategies for Countess farming, as well as the best places to find her and the items she drops.
Diablo 2 – Countess farming Guide
How do I find The Countess?
There are multiple steps involved in finding The Countess. Let’s divide them into the Black Marsh, Levels 1-4 of the Tower Cellar, and Level 5 of the Tower Cellar.
You can still see the remains of an abandoned tower inside the Black Marsh. They appear at random on the map, but the tower frequently appears at the edge. The Forgotten Tower’s entrance is located inside the ruins, and it leads to a small room where you have one last chance to back out before going into the Tower Cellar Level 1.
The Tower Cellar Levels 1-4 in Normal difficulty are very small areas. The size of these areas significantly increases as you progress into the challenging Nightmare and Hell areas. Let’s look at some of the Map Reading Guide’s sections to make your exploration of this area as effective as possible. When you enter any of the four areas, you are in a map tile with only one way out. The following Tower Cellar Level is always to your left when you are running in that direction, so adopt that perspective. Knowing the appearance of the exit tile you are looking for will help you find The Countess more quickly. There are 4 “Entrance Tiles” and 4 corresponding “Exit Tiles”:
The final Level of The Tower Cellar has 2 layouts. The Countess’s spawn point is indicated by the red circle:
A “leash” surrounds the boss of Elite-Groups and Super Uniques’ minions in a circle. The Minions can be enticed into the subsequent room, where you can then attack them as they begin to retreat toward The Countess. Due to her refusal to leave the room where she spawned, this is especially simple for her. As long as neither you nor your mercenary is strong enough to engage them in direct combat, abuse it.
When killing The Countess, it’s crucial to consider the number of players in your game. What you are looking for will determine how many players you should have in your game (or simulate through /players in Single Player).
It is best to have as few players in the game as possible when you are looking for runes. You have the best chance for her bonus Rune drop to maximize with 1 or 2 players (/players 1 or 2 in Single Player). She has a higher likelihood of not using up all of her regular item drops, which is why.
A larger player count is advantageous when searching for the Key of Terror. You want her to drop as many items as she can because they are on her regular item drop table. The best drop chances for them are when there are 7-8 other players online (or /players 7-8 in single player).
Super Chests can be found in reasonable numbers on Levels 1-4 of the Tower Cellar. They are worth opening, especially on Hell difficulty, where they spawn in specific map tiles.
The Countess is far away, and her immunity to cold and fire severely restricts the choice of character. Farming her efficiently mandates the use of Teleport.
- Amazons generally suffer from their low mobility. No active mobility Skills .
- The Countess is no match for the “Javazon,” even without Infinity.
- On the way to The Countess, Immune to Lightning monsters can be extremely dangerous. Skip these monsters until you have access to Infinity!.
- Even without Enigma, the Assassin can travel to The Countess quickly with Burst of Speed.
- Even without Infinity, “Trapsin” can serve as a reminder of The Countess’s brief career.
- It can be risky to travel to The Countess while fighting monsters immune to lightning. Use Death Sentry’s Corpse Explosions to combat them.
- The Countess is not immune to the War Cry Barbarian, so he never has to worry about dealing physical damage to her.
- The Barbarian can move around reasonably well early on thanks to Increased Speed and a Staff of Teleportation.
- The Wind Druid can kill every monster in the Tower Cellar because he deals Physical Damage and Cold Damage.
- His Weapon-Swap’s Staff of Teleportation is his only source of mobility.
- When farming The Countess, The Bone Spear Necromancer need not be concerned about any Immunities.
- Early on, the Paladin has a fair amount of mobility thanks to Increased Speed and a Staff of Teleportation.
- Sorceress in general benefits heavily from her built-in Teleport.
- The Countess is immune to cold and fire, so the Blizzard and Meteor Sorceress must use their mercenary to kill her. Give him an Elite Base Insight to easily dispose of her.
- The Lightning Sorceress is always able to kill The Countess and gains from her built-in Teleport.
Written by Teo1904 Reviewed by Raxxanterax
Basically, players rush through The Tower as quickly as they can, kill The Countess, take her High Runes, and then exit the game right away to complete another run. There are two things worth noting about The Countess. The first is that whenever you enter a room, a shell will always spawn on the opposite side.
Every time you kill her, she drops a rune from the standard drop table, which contains more common runes. Her bonus loot table typically contains an additional two or four of the more uncommon runes along with all of the runes from the first loot table. As stated at the beginning of the guide, there is a chance that The Countess will drop a total of up to six runes. The additional ones that drop come from her bonus table, while one always drops from her regular loot table.
The Countess is one of the most frequently early farmed bosses at the beginning of each Ladder or for any Single Player looking to equip themselves with some Runewords for Nightmare or Hell because of this. When performing these runs, the majority of people avoid as much trash as possible in The Tower dungeon as well as the area around The Countess.
Because she drops a Rune almost every time you kill her, the Countess is one of the most well-known early game farms. In fact, farming her for a long enough period of time will enable you to create any of the Runewords that you require for your character on Nightmare, where she can drop up to 6 Runes (though you’ll rarely ever see 3, let alone anything more).
Check out my lists below if you’re curious about the High Runes you can find in The Countess based on the difficulty setting you’re using. Remember that The Countess’s loot table behaves differently from that of regular enemies in terms of rune drops. She essentially has a bonus Rune drop in addition to a guaranteed Rune drop.
How to Run The Countess
The first thing to understand about counting runes is that you should only ever do it on players1. Because of the structure of her treasure class, which determines what she can drop, dropping items from her normal drop frequently eliminates the possibility of rune drops. So running on p1 will give many more runes.
She is a common target for rerunning with nearly all characters in normal and nightmare difficulty. For common Runewords like Leaf, Stealth, or even Ancient’s Pledge (from cubing Rals to an Ort) in normal difficulty, as well as ones like Lore or Rhyme in nightmare difficulty, farming runes doesn’t take too long. To learn more, refer to the Runeword reference at the end of the manual. However, none of these require much planning or optimization. She can be handled by almost any build, and she releases all of her special rune drops frequently enough for even slow runners to grind out their desired Runewords without too much difficulty before moving forward. She has 75 fire resistance in nightmare difficulty, but players seem to have no trouble handling her despite that.
In Hell Difficulty, a bit more preparation may be needed. In hell, the Countess is immune to both cold and fire, and her minions are too. The monsters that may spawn en route to the countess also possess a number of defenses. The Ghosts are physically immune, the Devilkin and Blood Clan are immune to fire, and the Archers are lightning immune. Due to this, many characters without teleportation devices may find it dangerous to even approach The Countess. However, the majority of reasonably powerful builds have the attacks, spells, or crowd control to consistently drop to level 5, and a lot of the time, one can just run past most of the monsters (though doing so can occasionally be dangerous). So before moving on to the rest of hell, farming a Pul for a weapon upgrade or an Um or Mal for a Runeword is frequently very doable.
Now, it becomes more crucial to take into account run speed and builds if you intend to farm Hell Countess for runes over a longer period of time, probably in search of a few Pul – Ist runes or several.
The Sorceress is automatically the best class to play The Countess due to her native and quickly cast teleports. Given that her players can be killed with little damage, travel speed becomes the most important factor. Therefore, 200fcr is recommended for countess runs, but 105 also works well. Lightning attacks are ideal for the countess because she is immune to both fire and cold; in fact, both Lightning and Nova sorceresses are probably the two best options for running her However hybrid sorceresses do just fine as well. And finally, she can be run fairly quickly by fire Sorceresses and fire/cold hybrids. The path is then opened for the mercenary to kill the countess (especially if you use static field), as her minions are not fire immune and can be destroyed with fire spells.
However, if one has the Engima runeword, other classes can run The Countess very skillfully. A sorceress will be much faster if there is no competition. But almost every class can run Engima quickly if she is available. The Necromancer, Paladin, and Barbarian all complete tasks quickly, with their fcr frames matching those of the sorceress. The Barbarian is especially quick. The most popular builds for each class are effective as long as there are no cold or fire-based attacks (although those can occasionally succeed as mentioned above).
Trying for a good map will pay off in the long run if you have your Countess running build up and running with reasonably good gear and want to put in a good amount of runs (perhaps farming several Ists for a 6ist weapon, for example). I reroll maps until the countess’s tower is fairly close to the Black Marsh waypoint, and then I check to see if there are any long paths between levels leading to the countess.
It is possible to find short paths on every level, but it is incredibly difficult to locate a map like this. So if the paths have a reasonable average length, I would run around 20 times to determine the average runtime. Finding a map where you can complete runs in about 35 seconds with a 200fcr lightning Sorceress doesn’t take too much work in my experience. So this is what I recommend shooting for. Runs under 30 seconds are very feasible but frequently call for maps that take a while to roll.
FAQ
Can you farm the Countess Diablo 2?
One of the first bosses that is worthwhile farming is the Countess. You can start in Normal and use her bonus rune drops to farm the highly sought-after Stealth Runeword. Her regular boss monster drop is increased by 0–3 random Runes in this bonus drop. You can access many different Runewords by farming her on any level of difficulty.
What is the fastest way to find the Countess?
She is a Super Unique Dark Stalker that can be found on the fifth level of the Forgotten Tower in the Black Marsh, and killing her is required to finish the quest that goes along with it.
Where can I find Countess Diablo 2?
Yes, save and exit then remake/join a new game. All mobs will be respawned. Your map will remain the same when you play offline, but it will change when you play online.
