Magic Find Techniques

You can get +MF on most every type of item in the game. Gloves or Boots or jewelry with +10% or 15% or 30% won't make a real noticeable difference on their own, but as you accumulate more and more items with these bonuses, you'll start to notice that you find more Rares, Uniques, Set Items, etc.

The easiest way to add it is by socketing perfect topazes into Armor or Helm. Getting a hold of 4 socket armor and a 3 socket helm shouldn't be too hard, and that's 168% right there.

There is no cap on magic find, but there are diminishing returns as of v1.09, see the table below for the actual stats. You'll start to notice improvements at around 100% Magic Find, and by 200-300% it will start to get very addictive.

Characters who can kill with their skills, especially Sorcs, are the best at going to a very high Magic Find, since they don't need equipment for their offense. Barbarians are very good also, since they get huge hit points and resistance bonuses form their skills and stats, so need less good equipment to survive, and can dual wield Gulls or Ali Babas for a huge MF bonus from the weapon slots.

It can be a lot of fun to load up all your best +MF stuff and do item runs on normal or Nightmare where you don't really need much good gear to survive. Killing the bosses, Mephisto, Diablo, and Baal are the best drops and they can can all be reached pretty quickly, especially Meph. You won't get the best stuff, Elite set or unique items on Nightmare (some of the lowest elite item types can drop from Baal or Diablo, but your odds aren't good) but there are lots of very good Exceptional items that can be found there.

For obvious reasons, Hardcore characters have to be more careful about going all out on +MF stuff. Usually resistances drop very low when switching to the magic find equipment, and one Lightning Enchanted boss that you would normally tear right through can be suddenly deadly if your Lightning Resistance is -22%, rather than your normal 65%. For example.

Magic Find Percentages

Magic Find doesn't boost your odds of finding everything equally. It's all the same up to 100%, but after that your odds of finding Rares, Sets, and Uniques drop steeply. Blizzard added this in since it's possible to get such huge Magic Find numbers in the Expansion, and they didn't want it to be so easy to find the really good/scarce stuff.

You can see exactly how much in the table below.

* The actual % that is applied towards finding each type of item. Magical is full, Rare/Set/Uniques are less.

How much you want to wear should be based largely on these percentages. More always helps for magical items, so if you have 1000% MF you'll get incredible amounts of blue items. The weapons might be useful, but the odds aren't good. Charms and Jewels are not boosted by your +MF%, so this doesn't help with those. Best way to find more of those is to kill more things. Rares increase pretty well up to 600% MF or so, but Set items really slow down past 400 or 500%. Uniques are much the same, but even worse in the diminishing returns. Notice that from 300% to 1500% only increases your Uniques MF% by 101%.

If you can get to 250-350% that's really all you need, in terms of finding Sets and Uniques at an increased rate. More after that generally doesn't make enough of a difference to be worth the equipment sacrifices, especially if you are playing Hardcore.

In addition to this, many monsters have unequal odds to drop the various qualities of items. Act Bosses have better odds to drop Uniques than anything else does.

Magic Find FAQ

Recently-updated questions have the date they were modified listed.

What are the "Magic Items" that this finds more of?
MF doesn't make more items drop. It makes the ones that do drop be higher quality. This means normal items will more often be magical or better, and items that are always at least magical (jewelry, charms, jewels, etc) more often be "higher quality", meaning Rare, Set, or Unique.

What things doesn't MF help with?
Magic Find helps you get more magical, set, rare, and unique items.
Magic Find % does not make:

More total items drop.
Higher level items drop.
More of a particular type of item (such as rings/amulets) drop.
More Exceptional or Elite Items drop. More of the ones that do drop will be magical or better, though.
More Charms drop.
More Jewels drop. It does make more of the Jewels that do drop be Rare, instead of magical.
The rarer Unique rings and amulets drop. It does increase the chances of a ring/amulet being better than magical though.
More or less Runes drop. MF has no effect either way.
It has no factor on gambling, that's all just luck.
When is MF calculated? Feb 14, 2002
The MF on the character getting the kill, at the instant the monster dies, is what's checked. This means you can fire an arrow or cast a spell, then switch to bigger MF weapon/shield, and get the MF bonus from it. For example an Assassin or Sorceress can cast traps or spells with +skills weapons, then quickly switch to a Gull/Rhyme and get the bigger MF from that when the monster actually dies. This even works with arrows, you can fire Guided Arrows with your Buriza, and switch weapons to a sword/shield before the arrow hits the target, and get the MF credit as long as you switch in time.

Does more MF help find more Charms and Jewels?
No, this is a common misconception. Charms and Jewels are magical (or sometimes rare with Jewels) but since there aren't non-magical charms and jewels MF does nothing for them. It does help you get more Rare jewels, instead of magical ones, but the total number found shouldn't change.

What exactly does +MF do?
Basically, Magic Find makes more of the items that drop be magical or better (Rare/Set/Unique). If you have 100% +MF, if an item dropped normally had a 10% chance to be magical, it will now have a 20% chance. You won't get more items dropping, but the ones that do drop will be better items. More players in a game = more item drops, so you want to try and combine the +MF with a big MP game for the best results.

For a hypothetical example, say normally out of 100 item drops, you would get 20 magic, 2 rare, 2 set, and 1 unique. With 100% +MF you'd expect 40 magic, 4 Rare, 4 Set, and 2 Uniques. It's never exactly like this, but that's about how much it should increase.

How much Magic Find do I need?
There is no answer to this, but the more you have the better. Noticeably better results start around 80-100%, you'll really start to like it by 200-300%. By 500% or more virtually everything that drops is magical. Since v1.09 introduced diminishing returns, it's not especially useful to get higher than 350% or so, in terms of finding more Uniques and Sets, but the higher the better for normal play.

What are the drawbacks of high Magic Find?
The most obvious is the equipment trade off. You'll lose many +skills, but the biggest changes are generally resistances and defense, and killing power if you are doing an MF weapon and aren't a Sorceress. The Hardcore character has to carefully evaluate their equipment changes, since death is a bad thing.

You'll find very few normal items with very high magic find. So if you want items to Imbue, or socketed items, you'll want to go easy on the Magic Find.

Does Magic Find help with Runes?
No, it doesn't get more Runes to drop or higher quality ones to drop. It doesn't hurt your chances either though. Some have speculated that more +MF means more magical drops, and thus fewer Runes and Gems, but that's not the case.

A more detailed explanation of how Runes are dropped might help:

All items in the game are listed in "Treasure Classes" for the purposes of determining which monsters can drop them, and what the odds are of them being dropped. There are lots of these Treasure Classes, 29 each for Armor and Weapons, as well as lots of others for other items, such as potions, scrolls, runes, etc. Each Weapon and Armor "TC" has 8 or 10 item types in it, all items with similar item levels. For example, Weapons 84 (the second highest) has these items in it: Champion axe, Cryptic sword, Demon xbow, Fanged knife, Ghost spear, Great poleaxe, Legendary mallet, Shillelagh, and Vortex orb. If you kill a monster that can drop from Weapons 84, the game will check to see if it does (it usually fails, and drops to a lower TC, which is why high level Elite items are so scarce) and if so will pick one item from the TC. Once the item type is picked, the game then checks to see if the item will be normal, socketed, magical, set, etc. This is where your MF comes in.

Runes are in different Treasure Classes than items, and so are Charms, Jewels, Gems, etc. So Magic Find doesn't have any effect on which TC is picked, just on the magical type of item that's dropped once the item to be dropped is selected. If the game picks a Rune to drop, it'll drop it, and your MF doesn't make that more or less likely, or up the chances of a higher or lower level Rune.

Does Magic Find work for the whole party?
No, the +MF is calculated just for the character who gets the final hit in. So if you are playing with a friend and one of you has 300% MF and the other has none, be sure the one with the +MF gets the final hit in, especially on Bosses.

Does Magic Find work with Mercs or Minions?
Not for things you kill, the Merc's gear has no benefit to your +MF. However for things that the Merc kills, the drop is calculated for their MF + your MF. So if you both have on 4 socket armor with perfect topazes, things you kill will have 96% +MF, but things the merc kills will calculate at +192%. Dress your Merc up with 4-topaz armor and 3-topaz helm and try to let them get the final hit, and it might be worth it.

MF does work with minions, they don't have any MF of their own, but they use yours to calculate the drop. This has been fixed from CD2, where Necromancers had it rough, since their MF wasn't checked on kills made by their minions (including monsters killing themselves with IM on).

Does +MF help finding Exceptional and Elite items?
No, but when an Excep or Elite does drop, the odds of it being magical or better are increased by your +MF.

Does 100% +MF mean every item dropped is Magical?
No, it means you'll get twice as many magical and better items dropping as you would normally. If a monster had a 1% chance to drop a magical item, it would now have a 2% chance.

Does Magic Find work on bosses?
Oh yes. It doesn't increase the number of items they drop, and their drops are already magical or better, so the +MF increases the odds that they'll drop better than magical stuff. Rather than normally getting 5 or 6 magical items, with some MF you'll expect a couple of Rares, and maybe a Set or Unique as well.

Do more players in a game help?
Yes, since more players in a game = more items dropping. And each item that drops is modified by your +MF. You want to try and combine the +MF with a big MP game for the best results.

Bosses are the one exception, they drop one magical or better item every time, whether there are 8 players or just you in the game. Same with SuperUniques, though they often drop more than 1 item. So in terms of just killing the bosses, the number of players in a game doesn't matter for your +MF bonus, though all of the other monsters you have to kill on the way to the bosses will be much less item-rich in a solo game.

Does Magic Find work with the Barb's Find Item Skill?
Yes, it does in v1.08 D2/D2X and later. It did not in Diablo II previous to this version. This is a very good skill to use with your Barb, especially on bosses and super uniques, which can do a full bonus drop with just one click. Just one point in Find Item is usually enough, since most Barbs have weapon switch items with +warcries on them (Echoing Swords, for example) as well as some +skills stuff, and can get Slvl 7 or 8 Find Item from that.

Some monsters don't leave a corpse that can be worked on, including all of the Act Bosses, some Super Uniques, and monsters that die frozen, but 95% or more of dead monsters can be "Horked", as it's called, for the sound the skill makes. You can Hork Fire Enchanted monsters as well, even though they blow up messily upon death.

Does Magic Find help with Gambling?
No, it has no effect on Gambling or the items you are offered by NPCs. (Well, more +MF you'll have more stuff to sell and thus more gold, so it helps with Gambling that way. ;)

I've heard 149% is better than 150%?
Not any more. After v1.08 the find item values are smoothed out to be much more uniform. Previously to this there was a rounding issue, and up to 149 was mostly a steady increase, but at 150% you suddenly would never find any normal items (just magical) and had a slightly lower chance to find Exceptional Rares. This persisted until 190% or more, when your chance for Exceptional Rares climbed higher than it was at 149%.

This has now been fixed.

Does Magic Find work in v1.00 to 1.07 D2X?
No, it's quite screwed up there, and was during most of the beta also. V1.08 fixes the problems. You'll need to patch to at least v1.07 when you first get the Expansion to have Magic Find work at all.

Can I find only Sets and Uniques and Rares if I get my MF high enough?
No. Some time ago in Diablo II it was possible to get only Sets and Uniques with high enough Magic Find, but this has been fixed now. In addition the whole item dropping system is totally redone for the Expansion, and Hell monsters can drop normal items, socketed items, low quality items, etc. Not just superior or magic as in Diablo II pre v1.07.

Does MF work in single player?
Yes, in v1.08 and v1.09 D2X it works just the same on and off the Realms.

Best Places to Item Hunt

While playing just anywhere will get you more nice drops, you want to concentrate on bosses and SuperUniques to really up your chances of Uniques/Sets/Rares. Levels with lots of random bosses are good, and places where they aren't are bad. The very popular (since they are so easy) Act Five areas the Bloody Foothills and Halls of Valor are easy even in your +MF gear (beware the one Evil Urn in the Halls of Valor), but are terrible for item finding, since there aren't any bosses there, other than Dac and Shenk in the Bloody Foothills.

However the best thing to do to find items is to kill Act Bosses. Mephisto is the quickest to reach and relatively easy to kill one on one, so he's the most popular item run spot. Andariel can be good but her drops are very inconsistent. Duriel is slow to reach and usually drops very poorly. Diablo is hard to reach and hard to kill, but can drop better than Meph. Baal is the second most popular boss to run, but he takes much longer than Meph and can only drop a few things Meph can't.

Many players do the easy areas over and over again to level up, never doing any of the more difficulty areas of Act Five other than one time to finish the Quests. Then they take their higher level character and do Meph runs to find their items. This way of playing tends to get pretty boring over time, but it's very easy and is effective.

Highest Possible Magic Find

Mercs MF counts for things they kill, and adds to your own. So if you have 300% and your merc has 200%, for merc kills you'll have 500% effective MF. Your kills will just be your MF though, so there's no point in putting MF on your merc unless you let them kill things.

A Merc's maximum MF is: The Act Three Mercs can have the highest MF. Six socketed sword (180%), shield (75%), helm (80%), and armor (147%) on an Act Three Merc for another 482% at most, and for things the Merc killed that would add to your total. Act Three mercs can't get enough strength to equip 4-socket shields (156 Str Monarch is the lightest) without adding Str from other equipment. So while 100% from 4 Ists in a shield is possible, they can't equip that with the other max MF stuff.

A more realistic and easily-obtained total for a Merc is a168%. This is just a 4topaz armor and 3topaz helm, with their normal weapon.

These items are basically impossible to get a hold of, especially the quantity of Ist Runes (#24) needed, but it's a dream list. Don't even consider putting an Ist into Helm or Armor. Perfect Topazes are far far more common, and only 1% less than an Ist. If you get an Ist, save it for a Shield or weapon, or RuneWords, where there is no other way to add MF other than jewels, which add 15% at most.

Thanks to Blizzard for putting together the initial list that our list here elaborates on. This list is current for v1.09. Many of the maximum figures changed (increased), due to changing Unique stats in that patch.

Helm (80%) - All figures with a socketed item use Ist for 25%. Substitute a perfect topaz at 24% in all cases for actual use, you'll never have so many Ist that you use one for just 1% more MF, when Ist are so valuable to trade and are the only way to add MF to shields or weapons. MF Jewels are much harder to find than perfect topaz, and add less, so they aren't options for headgear.

80%: Griswold's Valor (20-30%) + two sockets. (Item has sockets inherently.)

75%: Harlequin Crest (50%), or Tarnhelm (25-50%), or Stealskull (30-50%) + 1 socket.

75%: Magical Fortuitous Circlet of Luck (50%) + 1 socket.

75%: 3 Socketed Helm with 3 Perfect Topaz or Ist Runes. You can use a plain helm with 3 sockets and possibly bonus skills for a Druid or Barbarian. Another option is to find a magical one, "Artisan's" is a prefix that gives 3 sockets, but it can't occur on Circlets, and no +MF suffixes are found on normal helms, or this would be the highest possible. However if you can find an Artisan's with a nice suffix (of the whale?) it would be 3 sockets with a big suffix bonus.

Armor (149%) - All figures with socketed armor use an Ist Rune for 25% for the maximum possible value. Substitute a perfect topaz at 24% in all cases for actual use, you'll never have so many Ist that you use one for just 1% more MF, when Ist are so valuable to trade and are the only way to add MF to shields or weapons. MF Jewels are much harder to find than perfect topaz, and add less, so they aren't options for armor.

149%: Skullder's Ire (52.5-124%, 1.25% per Clvl, 42 minimum) +1 socket, at Clvl 99. 147% for Mercs, since they max at lvl 98.

113%: Tal Rasha's Guardianship (88%) +1 socket. The best bonuses of any MF armor, but extremely hard to find.

100%: Wealth Rune Word Armor (Beats 4[s] armor due to other bonuses, mainly 300% gold.)

100%-96%: Four-socketed Armor with 4 Ist Runes or perfect Topazes. The best possible would be a Jeweler's Armor of the ________. Four sockets, and pick a suffix, such as whale.

Weapon (180% x 2) - Barbarians can dual wield, so count this twice in that case. Ist and jewels are the only ways to add MF to a weapon with sockets.

Ist is 30% in weapons, the best possible jewel is 17%, both are very hard to find. In most cases you'll be able to find 10% or so MF jewels, and it's generally better to just use one of these rather than wait forever hoping to find an Ist, unless you are going to trade for it, or play a lot in hell.

The Blade of Ali Baba and the Gull aren't useful to kill with, unless you are using skills (like a Sorceress or Necromancer) since they don't do enough damage, other than saving them for just the last hit or two. A Barbarian can dual wield with a big damage sword or blunt, using just their normal weapon until the boss is almost dead, then running away to quickly switch to dual wield. Big MF weapons are nice to have for a Barb on the weapon switch also, for better luck when using Find Item.

180%: Six-Socketed Weapon with 6 Ist Runes. Crystal swords can have 6 sockets, and low reqs to equip.

159%: Blade of Ali Baba (99%, 1% MF per Clvl) item comes with two sockets.

130%: Gull (100%) + 1 Socket.

102%: Six-Socketed Weapon with 6 Emerald of Prosperity Jewels (17%) is the best possible without any Ist Runes.

90%: Langer Briser (30-60%) + 1 socket. The best MF with a bow/xbow that doesn't require 6 Ist or MF jewels. (Best used as a weapon switch, to get the killing shot after doing most of the damage with your main bow.)

80%: The Oculus (50%) + 1 socket. This is probably the best Sorceress Orb in the game, so kill the fastest and MF as well.

Shield (100%) - As with other items, Ist Runes are the best, and give 25% MF in shields, but you'll have better luck finding MF jewels. Rhyme is the easiest way to add MF on a shield, and the runes in it are much easier to find than an Ist. The socketed shields are reasonable mix and match, you could put 2 perfect diamonds and 2 Ist into a 4 socket shield, for example, and get good resistance (especially with a Paladin shield that had resistance inherently), while still having 50% MF.

100%: Four-Socket Shield with 4 Ist Runes. (Paladin shields all have up to four sockets, other characters will need a lot of Strength to use the Elite Kite, Tower, or Gothic shields, which can have four sockets also.)

75%: 3 Socket Shield with 3 Ist Runes.

45%: Milabrega's Orb (20%) + 1 socket.

25%: Rhyme Rune Word Shield.

Belts (30%)

30%: Goldwrap, Unique Heavy Belt.

10-15%: Tal Rasha's Fine-Spun Cloth. Other items from the set are useful here, since when wearing any three items from the set you get a 65% MF bonus. That on top of the 88% on the armor with one other item can beat out some other item combos, with nice bonuses too. Since only the belt and armor have MF on them, you are wasting either helm, orb, or amulet with 0% MF to do this (though you can socket the helm).

Boots (50%)

50%: War Traveler (30-50%) Unique Battle Boots.

35%: Magic Boots of Luck

34%: Magic Find Rare Boots (No longer possible, only on boots created pre v1.08.)

Gloves (40%)

40%: Chance Guards, Unique Chain Gloves. These are very nice for getting rich, with the MF and also 200% more gold.

34%: Rare Magic Find Gloves (No longer possible, only from pre-v1.08 gloves.)

25%: Magic/Rare Gloves

Amulets (50%)

50%: Magic Fortuitous Amulet of Luck

48%: Rare Amulet (No longer possible, only from pre v1.08.)

40%: Rare Amulet, with good other bonuses this would be the best all around.

78%: Tancred's Weird, with any other 1 item from the set (weapon, armor, helm, boots) the amulet gets a 78% MF bonus. This isn't better than the best possible amulet with the best possible other item of those types, but two items from Tancred's Set is an option. Consider your other equipment options carefully, but keep an eye out for this item and set. The Amulet and boots would give 78%, compared to 75% maximum possible with a v1.09 Rare amulet and Rare boots. You can beat that with older items or unique boots, but those are hard to come by.

Ring (40%) - Feel free to wear two of these.

100%: Constricting Ring (Still not enabled in v1.09.)

40%: Fortuitous Ring of Luck.

32%: Rare Rings (No longer possible, only from v1.08 rings.)

30%: Naglering (15-30%).

25%: Rare Rings.

Charms (280%)

7%: Small Charms. Equip up to 40 of them, but you'd be unable to pick anything up. 36 (252%) you would have room for a Cube to put things into. 35 (245%) for a cube and keys for locked chests. 30 (210%) for a Cube and space for one 3x2 item. If you are going this into +MF, probably easier to have a friend play and pick stuff up for both of you while you kill. It's better to have a 5% mf charm with hps or resistance, etc than a 7% with no other bonus, in most cases.

Maximum possible Magic Find as of v1.09.

180% Weapon
+ 180% Weapon
+ 149% Armor
+ 80% Helm
+ 30% Belt
+ 50% Boots
+ 40% Gloves
+ 40% Ring
+ 40% Ring
+ 50% Amulet
+ 280% Charms = 1124%.

This is Barbarian only, due to the dual wielding weapons. The best for any other character must substitute a 100% shield for the 180% weapon, so 80% less and a total of 1044%. When/if Constricting Rings are ever enabled by Blizzard, you could add 60% per ring for 120% more possible MF or 1244% at most.

Realistic Magic Find Gear

A realistic set up. This doesn't assume any maximum possible values, these are amounts on Rares you can expect to gamble with other good mods, and doesn't require any Ist Runes, and no very hard to find Uniques or Set Items.

100% Armor (Wealth) or 96% 4T Armor
+ 72% Helm (3T or good Tarnhelm + Topaz)
+ 30% Belt (Goldwrap)
+ 15% Ring (Rare with good mods, just one ring counted)
+ 15% Amulet (Rare)
+ 20% Boots (Rare)
+ 30% Gloves (Chance Guards)
+ 19% Charms = 300%

This can be done with just 3 or 4 small Charms, or a couple and 10% Grand, etc. Note that nothing is counted from weapon or shield, since most characters have those all for damage and resistance. Rhyme (25% MF) is a nice shield if you are using a one-handed weapon, and with this set up you can be still nearly full killing power, with good resistances and hit points, etc. You can easily add 10% or more per item with slightly better Rares, so do your own math. Around 300% is a nice number, due to the steep diminishing returns you get as you move up past 200%, though the increase is still good up to 500% or so.

Information Extracted from diabloii.net