Countess Nightmare Runs

Stormeye War Scepter

In Runes, runes, runes I talked about the idea of running the Countess in nightmare mode. Instead of /players 8 I used the switch /players 3 and ran the Countess ten times. The results were surprising, several Hel runes, but nothing higher. Cubed up those Hel runes are level 35 Io rune.

With the right map running the Countess takes less than 5 minutes, so we're looking at around 50 minutes for an Io rune. I'm thinking this is a waste of time, but I recall spending a lot of time in Lower Kurast for less than Io. Also factor in a few interesting drops like this Stormeye War Scepter which might come in handy as an alternate weapon (both my weapons have +1 to all skills though).

For the sake of completeness here are all the runes from the 10 runs:

1. Sol
2. Tir
3. Sol, Hel
4. Ith, Tir
5. Tal, (Sol)
6. Tal
7. Tir
8. Eth
9. Eth
10. Sol, Hel

The bracketed (Sol) rune was dropped by a monster other than the Countess. In most cases I rushed the Countess without trying to beat up on monsters along the way.