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Hey there,
I've been lurking here since the Spring of 2003, but I've only recently been posting on the D2C GameFAQ's boards out of convenience. Besides all my LoD questions are usually answered with a little topic searching, either here or at the AmazonBasin. :) So, "Hello to all, and thanks for all the information you've managed to accumulate over the years."
However, something happened last night that contradicted everything I've ever read to the contrary. While clearing all the false Tombs of Tal Rasha in Normal with my latest character, two seperate random Unraveler bosses each dropped Angelic Sickles in the very same game. Now shouldn't the second have been a high durability magical or rare sickle instead?
I'm not sure how this could have happened, but here's the low-down on what I was doing at the time. I was running a Classic, Single Player game with LoD installed. I killed the one Unraveler boss, grabbed the loot and went back to town for ID and sell/stash. I sold the first Angelic Sickle (because I already had a more fitting weapon) and went back down to continue the clearing. I killed a second Unraveler boss a couple rooms away, and BAM! There's another green sabre lying on the ground. So I picked it up and quickly scrolled it, wondering what the heck was going on. Sure enough, it's another Angelic Sickle!
I was under the assumption that Unique and Set items absolutely could not spawn more than once per game. Does this rule not apply to SP? Or is it because I'm playing Classic; maybe even due to the emulation in LoD? Does it have to do with the fact that I sold the first of the Angelic Sickles? Anyway, it's a bit of a puzzle to me, and I'd appreciate it if anyone who knows better could shed a bit of light on this situation for me.
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03-07-2004, 08:50 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-07-2004, 08:51 PM by Kevin.)
Sets can spawn and drop as much as they want. Uniques can only be generated one time in a game. This includes gambling. If the item is generated on the gamble screen and you don't buy it, then you can't get it again that game.
But since the sickle is a set item, it doesn't matter as the constraint doesn't and never has applied to sets.
edit: Wow, I can't type today, lots of typos.
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Ah. Thanks a bunch! I didn't know that the rule only applied to Uniques. Sorry about all that. :unsure:
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yup, uniques only. As an aside, i've been doing a good bit of meph runs lately and 3 times in the last few days he/she/it has dropped doubles of isenharts case. so not only is it possible to get two in the same game but even off the same mob.
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Over at the Basin, I remembered a screenshot that was posted that showed 2 Demonhide Sashes dropping in the same game.
Clicky
It's still unclear why it happened in that particular case, but 99.9999999% of the time (in other words, almost always ;)), uniques are restricted to dropping only once per game.
I didn't mean to confuse the matter further, but I wanted to point out that there have been cases where the 'unique spawn limit' rule appeared to have been ignored by the game.
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03-08-2004, 06:36 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-08-2004, 06:37 PM by whereagles.)
Well, didn't adeyke say in that thread that the "1 unique per game" rule was disabled in 1.10?
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If one unique is ethereal it's possible to be dropped twice.
... I think.
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Quote:Well, didn't adeyke say in that thread that the "1 unique per game" rule was disabled in 1.10?
What I said:
Quote:I believe that in 1.09, the rule was still supposed to be in effect, in that only one of each unique can spawn per game (the ones that people already had before starting/joining the game are irrelevant).
In 1.10, there's a column for allowing multiple copies of an item to spawn per game, but none of the items actually make use of this.
Quote:Set items are not and never have been restricted. So it's perfectly normal to get two of the same one in a game. The restriction to just 1 per game applies to only to uniques, and apparently it doesn't always apply to them, for reasons unknown.
To rephrase this:
There's no restriction on multiple copies of a set item spawning in the same game.
The restriction on 1 copy of a unique per game is still in full effect. A change was made to uniqueitems.txt to allow uniques to be unrestricted (if a 1 is in a certain column for a unique, that unique is exempted from the restriction), but none of the uniques actually use this. It's just there for modders.
I have no explanation for the two uniques, except that for some reason, under some circumstances, the restriction doesn't work (even though it should).
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adeyke,Mar 8 2004, 04:26 PM Wrote:I have no explanation for the two uniques, except that for some reason, under some circumstances, the restriction doesn't work (even though it should). I have a possible idea, but it is rather complicated and has to do with how the CPUs on a server are actually handling their processing and splitting of duties. A lot of this would depend on what operating system the servers are actually running, if the servers are using a dual processor set up and how the program was compiled to take advantage of this type of set up. IF parts of the drop calculations are split into seperate processing threads and handled by seperate processors, the same unique might be getting picked by both threads before the update from either is posted to the table that restricts only one per game. By the time the posting is done, both items have been generated. This explanation would require that the items would need to be getting generated simultaneously which would typically mean the same drop only. This is pure specualtion.
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That would be bad coding too (which is possible). Handling stuff like that is taught pretty early in comp sci progressions, generally right after the basic data structure courses. I'm not saying that it isn't possible, but if the initial C code was written to handle threading, then it shouldn't happen. Compilers even with heavy optimaztions which can cause more issue like this to crop up, generally don't introduce issue like that. I would think they could put a block on the call or lock that would prevent it even if there were 8 threads running on seperate machines that only have a network link between them, let alone a multiprocessor system.
It just doesn't seem like that would be the cause even though it is possible.
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I would suspect that since this was a game, the compiling optimizations would have been bent more toward speed issues. It would really not be a great concern if something like this happened as the data is not some sort of life critical/financial threating as other types of situations. Throw some extra server load in and minior type of glitch like this would be as bad as some situation that I have experienced with program systems where data security and financial considerations were far more important (logged into my base user account access one time and ended up in the third highest access account for that system in the nation, talk about a big foobar "glitch").
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Quote:I have a possible idea, but it is rather complicated and has to do with how the CPUs on a server are actually handling their processing and splitting of duties. A lot of this would depend on what operating system the servers are actually running, if the servers are using a dual processor set up and how the program was compiled to take advantage of this type of set up. IF parts of the drop calculations are split into seperate processing threads and handled by seperate processors, the same unique might be getting picked by both threads before the update from either is posted to the table that restricts only one per game. By the time the posting is done, both items have been generated. This explanation would require that the items would need to be getting generated simultaneously which would typically mean the same drop only. This is pure specualtion.
I'm sure that's not what's going on in this case. The probable reason for this is that there's either a bug in the unique tracking code one in the item spawning code (my first pick). I'm still not sure about how certain bugged items showed up (namely the ones where unique items would be generated with different base type than they're supposed to have).
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Sporky Smurf,Mar 8 2004, 08:16 PM Wrote:If one unique is ethereal it's possible to be dropped twice.
... I think. No, being ethereal has nothing to do with it. It is a separate property of an item that is done after the item has been created. It would not remove the unique fom the internal list of uniques spawned in the game and hence would not make it possible for more than one to drop.
Haven't looked at the code that handles this since some of the earlier versions, and at that time, it was "present in game" and thus, items leaving the game (being "destroyed" or removed in memory basically) would be taken away and any item introduced into the game (by drop or though a player) was added. Hopwever, items on the ground in inactive areas would also be considered as gone and not existing in the game (and recreated again when the area was activated). Slightly more complicated than now. No idea if the list is a static one now, I think it was a linked list of pointers to the uniques back then.
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Quote:Haven't looked at the code that handles this since some of the earlier versions, and at that time, it was "present in game" and thus, items leaving the game (being "destroyed" or removed in memory basically) would be taken away and any item introduced into the game (by drop or though a player) was added. Hopwever, items on the ground in inactive areas would also be considered as gone and not existing in the game (and recreated again when the area was activated). Slightly more complicated than now. No idea if the list is a static one now, I think it was a linked list of pointers to the uniques back then.
doesn't work like that any more. it only counts uniques actually created in the game and uses a flag list to track them. don't think there's even a mechanism for "removing" a unique from that list.
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Interestingly enough, I have had two unique phase blades drop in the same game. First one dropped in Mausoleum, and I was hoping with all my might that it was Azurewrath, but alas it was Lightsabre. So I finish my Maus. run, I kill Andy, I kill the council in Travincial, and then kill meph. Woohoo! A phase blade, so this one HAS to be Azurewrath!!! It was another lightsabre. This is the one and only instance of this ever happening to me, and I can't explain it.
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03-16-2004, 03:37 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-16-2004, 06:19 PM by adeyke.)
EDIT:
Removed because I hadn't read it right.
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Yeah, but I got two lightsabres - I'd say I hit a glitch in that game or something that made me hideously unlucky.
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Usufruct,Mar 16 2004, 07:02 PM Wrote:Yeah, but I got two lightsabres - I'd say I hit a glitch in that game or something that made me hideously unlucky. Well, "glitch" seems so unappropraite word. To me it sounds as if something unexplicable suddenly changed the game once to produce something completely unpredictable, like some electric field suddenly changed some bits in your computers memory :) I would be more of the "there is a bug" sort. It would be possible to find it, reproduce it and explain it. I believe much more than that. Perhaps my understanding of the english language is not good enough though.
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Just for the record guys, the flag that you're looking for is the "nolimit" flag in UniqueItems.Txt if enabled (enabled = 1) then there will be no limit to the amount of the same Unique item that can be generated in a game. if it's not enabled (not enabled = 0 or blank) then only 1 of said Unique "should" be generated.
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Heh, I just did a Normal Chaos Sanctuary run with my lvl 78 Frosty (perming a mule game) and a random OK (IIRC) dropped Hsarus' Iron Heels. Then the Grand Vizier dropped Hsarus' Iron Heels. And, finally, Diablo dropped a Spirit Shroud and, you guessed it, Hsarus' Iron Heels. One game, one area, three identical set items. It's like matching three symbols on a slot machine and having it pay out a dollar in pennies.
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