Step by Step guide to maxing farming stats

Hello all,

This is a step-by-step guide to maxing farming stats on your main and hireling for farming purposes. I’ve been playing this game for a few weeks now and am getting ready to create my first farming set. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and so have aimed to maximize my farming gear. I’ve been reading through a lot of farming posts and did some tests in-game. I thought I’d share my numbers. Most of this information can be found in other threads but I figure I might as well give validation to some numbers as well verify accuracy for patch 2.5. I created an excel sheet based on the formulas found on a post by kajfik000 (in his Wizard+Rogue PVE Flash Fortune post. I added affixes one step at a time and captured the info on the excel sheet and checked the numbers in game via the stat sheet. Please let me know if you find any inaccurate info and I can test and update if needed.

Note - All numbers assume patch 2.5, using a hireling, main toon ascended with fortunate perk, playing on mythic 3 difficulties (make sure the last game that your hireling started as a main toon was mythic 3 also) and both characters have Epiphany (5). Epiphany is a set that increases your stat cap by 5% per rank. At 5 ranks (one set affix and 2x +2 all set affixes on gear) Epiphany will give you a 25% stat cap increase. This brings the stat caps to:
• Luck – 1012%
• Gold find – 1012%
• Item Drop % - 350%

While I believe you can get up to Epiphany (8) this will only increase your luck and gold find caps by 98, this will cost you at 3 additional set affixes on your hireling and a lot of affix rolls on both characters which is not worth the extra 98% luck and gold find. Therefore, this guide is written to hit the max cap for Epiphany (5).

There are a couple of things to do before you start adding affixes. The first thing is get to level 99 and then pick the fortunate perk when ascending. This adds 200% luck and gold find. The second thing is to play on mythic 3 difficulty level. This adds 350% luck and gold find. The last thing is to always play with a hireling. Since farming stats take up so many affix slots, it is usually most efficient gear up your main character in farming stats and put the bare minimum farming stats on your hireling leaving as many affix slots as possible for DPS.

This guide will only talk about maxing your character’s slots for luck, gold find, and item drop %. There are other factors that affect these stats such as shrines and map affixes/stats. Basically check the stat page of maps to check the map’s farming rolls. I don’t bother with maps that are under 500% (I just hit the shrines for epics then move on to the next map). Also keep in mind that these stats are the same for both your characters. The total value is based on a formula adding numbers from both characters and then dividing them. There are some secret bonuses for using a hireling (50% luck, 100% item find). There are also soft caps for luck and item drop % per character so you can’t just stack everything on one character. Gold find only seems to have a hard cap for both characters.

On your character, you can add luck, gold find, and item drop% via affixes on your gear. This includes the 6 pieces of gear you actually wear plus your pet (for epic affixes only). Here are the following affix types:
• Natures – this is actually the suffix for the item. Only available on gear that you wear and not your pet. Use Beryl crystals to change the nature of your gear. “Of Luck” adds 25% luck points to your gear and “Of Greed” adds 25% gold find points. Cannot roll item find% via natures.
• Crystal affix – these are the cyan colored affixes that can be added to your gear. Cannot be added to your pet. Use Obsidian crystals to add crystal affixes. Max roll is 225% for both luck and gold find. Cannot roll item find % via crystal affixes.
• Legend affix – these are the red colored affixes that can be added to your gear. Cannot be added to your pet. Use Ruby crystals to add legend affixes. Luck and gold find cannot be added via epic affixes. Max roll for item find % is 50%.
• Epic affix – these are the orange colored affixes that can be added to your gear and pet. Use topaz crystals to add epic affixes. Max roll is 75% luck and gold find on legendary gear (same for crystal gear which is basically legendary gear with a crystal affix added) and pet. Eternal legendary gear and pets can get up to 150% luck or gold find. Cannot roll item drop % via epic affixes. Side note on pets – pet affix stats will continue to go up until it hits max by leveling the pet and finishing the kill 3 enslaver feat. So basically when a pet drops, just look at the affixes that it has, don’t worry about the actually roll numbers as they will eventually max out.

Luck %
From what I can tell, the luck formula adds: affix bonus from both toons, nature bonus from both toons, heroic points from both toons, and difficulty bonus from both toons. This is then added together and divided by 2. Finally, the fortunate ascension perk from the main character is added and a 50 luck bonus for using a hireling.

Base max is 600%

  1. 350% difficulty bonus from main character
  2. 350% difficulty bonus from hireling (total 700%)
  3. Divide by 2 = 350%
  4. Add Fortunate Ascension perk = 550%
  5. Add 50 bonus for using a hireling = 600% (I think I read this via a developer post)

Getting to max

  1. Using Epiphany (5) the cap for luck is 1012%. This takes the 650% luck cap per toon, multiplied by 25% cap increase of Epiphany (5), making the total 812.5%. Add 200% luck from difficulty bonus to make it 1012.5% cap (shown as 1012%)
  2. To cap luck at 1012%, a total of 824% luck needs to be added to both toons. There seems to be a cap of luck stacking on just the main of 831.2% meaning no matter how much luck you add to your main toon, luck will not go higher than 831.2% if no luck is added on your hireling. This means that you can only add 462.5% max on your main before you get zero returns. If you add 462.5% on your main, you will need 361.5% on your hireling to reach the luck cap of 1012%.

Here are the numbers from my step by step test. The luck numbers at the end are from the adventure stat sheet

  1. Base stats from difficulty, fortunate ascension perk and hireling bonus = 600 luck
  2. Added 1 x 225% luck crystal affix on main = 712.5% luck
  3. Added 15 fortune hero points = 731.25% luck (15 was used instead of 20 points just to find the cap points)
  4. Added 5 x 25% natures for 125% total = 793.75% luck
  5. Added 1 x 75% luck epic affix = 831.25% (when you add in additional hero points this number stays the same showing that this is the cap for stacking on main toon)
  6. Added 1 x 225% luck crystal affix on hireling = 943.75% luck
  7. Added 1 x 75% luck epic affix on hireling = 981.25% luck
  8. Added 1 x 25% luck nature = 993.75% luck
  9. Added 15 fortune hero points = 1012% luck (actually 1013.5 but the cap is 1012.5% shown as 1012%. Again 15 hero points was used instead of 20 to find the cap points).

Recommendations: Personally I would recommend the following to max luck while minimalizing the number of slots used:
On Main toon:
• 1 x 225% crystal affix (225% luck)
• 1 x 75% epic affix (75% luck)
• 20 fortune heroic points (50% luck)
• 5 x luck natures on gear (125% luck)

This add 475% luck, 462.5% of which will actually be counted. This brings your luck to 831.25% (shown as 831.2%) luck if you don’t add any luck to your hireling.

On hireling:
• 1 x 225% crystal affix (225% luck)
• 1 x 75% epic affix (75% luck)
• 25 fortune heroic points (62.5% luck)

This adds 362.5% luck (361.5& of which will be counted if you cap luck on main). This brings your total luck to 1012%

Note - The reason why I prefer to over-cap luck on main even if it wastes a few points is because you want to save as many slots on your hireling as possible for DPS. This is because certain variables of the DPS calculation in this game is multiplicative rather than additive and you will get way more combined DPS between your two toons by stacking as many dps affixes on one toon as possible rather than spreading out the same number of affixes over two toons. Therefore, splitting your farming stats evenly between both toons is much less effective than stacking DPS on one toon as much as possible.

Gold find %
Gold find is easier to max. It seems like gold find is only calculated from your main. Cap is the same as luck at 650% before epiphany, 812.5% after epiphany (5), and 1012.5% (shown as 1012%) after fortunate ascendant perk.

Base gold find is 350% from difficulty bonus and 200% from fortunate ascension perk for a total of 550%. So to max gold find, just add 462% to your main toon. 2x 225% crystal affixes and 12 fortunate heroic points will get you there. Personally I don’t find myself using a lot of gold so I may prefer to just leave it at base plus hero points and save the 2x crystal affix slots for survival affixes if farming at 700m3 or above.

Item Drop %
Item drop % is averaged from both your toons. Base is 100% from main + 100% from hireling divided by 2 = 100%. There is a soft cap of stacking 250% item drop per toon before you stop getting returns. So the most efficient way to hit cap is 20 heroic points on each toon for 50% item drop on each toon plus 4 x 50% item drop epic affixes for a total of 250% each. This will get you to the cap of 350% item find (100% base, 50% from hero points, 200% from epic affixes per toon then divided by 2).

Here is the step by step math:

  1. Base item drop % from main character (100%) plus hireling (100%) added and divided by 2 = 100%
  2. Added 4 x 50% item drop legendary affixes to main character – 200% item find
  3. Added 20 Hero points to main character for 50% item find – 225% item find
  4. Added 4x 50% item drop legendary affixes to hireling – 325% item find
  5. Added 20 Hero points to hireling for 50% item find – 350% item find

Note – I did add an additional item find legendary affix to both my main and hireling to test the soft cap and make sure it was 250% per character.

Max item find % if you only add stats to your main toon is 225%. Going from 225% to the 350% max will require 4 x 50% item find epic affixes on your hireling (plus the 20 hero points). While will reduce your dps quite a bit, this is basically increase the number of items you find by a third so instead of finding say 10 legendary items per map you will start finding 15 (up from 5 if you have base item find of 100%). So as long as you can still farm without dying too often, you will trade off slower clears with more item drops. I’ve only gone as high as 500m3/600e1 so I can’t comment on when the trade-off is no longer worth it. I’m hoping that I can farm at 1000m3 with max luck and item find since I believe that is the highest floor and difficulty to have a chance at all item drops.

Hope this helps newer players.

Update - here is a farming build for patch 3.0

Here is a similar post by cuzegspiked that shows all the math and better explanations

11 Likes

This should be stickied? :smiley:

Great post! As a newbie, it maybe a bit overwhelming (with all the numbers and stuff), but as you go along with the game, this post is heaven sent! Thanks!

Wow I cant believe I didn’t notice this post.

It’s so similar to my comprehensive guide to farm builds as well.

Looks like they were posted around the same time too. I mostly wrote mine because it helps me catch my own mistakes as I work a build, as well as get some useful feedback from people.

1 Like

Wow. Same here.

Great guide!

The only bad thing is, that it isn’t possible to have all farming stats on main and only dps on hireling

2 Likes

Yup. That’s basically the fortune bringer idea in a nutshell but it doesn’t work. It did once work kind of in patch 2.0 before patch 2.1 , though it must have been a “placebo effect” but @cronos4321 had a great time with it in farming that he had great gains in loot but you farm a long time and save up anyways so it might have once worked.

You’re right at pure DPS hirling and pure farm main doesn’t work at all and it’s much better to have the farm affixes split between the character as well as DPS (crushing blow+ Crushing flames is OP) .

Great topic. +1

I added a link to your post at the bottom of my post since I think you do a much better job showing the math

1 Like

Thanks :joy: .

come back @MeRk

2 Likes

prolly will… for dq2 lol

1 Like

Where did he go?

good question