This page will provide information about The Countess, a Super Unique foe that can be encountered in Diablo 2 Resurrected season 2, with a particular focus on details regarding the farming of runes from her.
The Countess can be found on the fifth floor of the Forgotten Tower, which is a side dungeon located in the Black Marsh region of Act 1. Farming her can be a pain due to the amount of traveling that is required to get to her, but it is possible that it is worth it, particularly for newer players on the Normal and Nightmare difficulties, given that she almost always drops between one and three runes whenever she is killed. On the Hell difficulty, she is immune to both ice and fire damage, making it difficult for the Sorceress to reach her unless they are lightning-focused. In spite of this, a skilled mercenary can always stab her to death if the situation calls for it.
The Countess's attacks are distinct from one another because, as a Super Unique monster, they are determined by the random modifiers she possesses. When you approach her, she will cast Fire Wall at the doors. Although these characteristics change from game to game, she is always Fire Enchanted, which, in conjunction with her natural creature type (Dark Stalker), is responsible for her immunity.
Her Monster Level (mLv) makes it possible for her to drop a variety of interesting sets and one-of-a-kind items (at least in Hell difficulty), but the primary reason she is farmed is for her propensity to drop runes, usually anywhere from one to three per run. On the Normal difficulty setting, she has a chance to drop a Ral rune; on the Nightmare setting, a Ko rune; and on the Hell setting, a Lo rune. If you are playing on Normal or Nightmare difficulty, the runes that she drops are sufficient to provide you with the runes you need to create many excellent beginner runewords, such as Stealth, Lore, Insight, and Spirit, amongst others (for more examples of what is possible, check out the page that lists the best beginner runewords).
You'll find the Countess on the fifth level of the Forgotten Tower, which is located below the Black Marsh. The Countess, with her one-of-a-kind mechanism for dropping runes, makes for an intriguing enemy to hunt. In addition to runes, on the Hell difficulty she occasionally drops the Key of Terror, which is required for the Pandemonium Event. In Diablo 2 Resurrected, the Countess is a quest boss that needs to be defeated in order to complete Act 1's "The Forgotten Tower" quest.
Beginning your search for the Forgotten Tower at the Black March waypoint and working your way out to the map's edge is the method that will yield the quickest and most reliable results. Follow the edge of the map clockwise all the way around until you come across the tower. If the tower is not located near the boundary of the map, it has the possibility of spawning next to a map feature such as the entrance to The Hole, the waypoint, a bridge, etc...
Because the game will initially look for a location close to the edge of the board, you should begin your search in this general area. In the event that it is unable to spawn the tower anywhere close to the edge of the map, it will look for a spawn location close to one of the map's features.
If you can ignore the walls, the quickest route to the Countess inside the tower is to head all the way to the left of the way your character enters the tower level. This assumes that you have the ability to teleport. Once you have reached the very end of the map, you will need to turn left once more and then continue.
If you begin a level and see that there is nothing to the left, you should travel all the way to the bottom left corner of the map, then repeat the steps from the previous sentence as necessary.
1. The Countess possesses two drop tables, one for normal monsters and one for unique runes
2. Both of these tables are unique
3. Depending on the level of difficulty the player is playing at, she may drop up to six different items
4. Because her normal monster drop table is rolled before her rune drop table, increasing the player difficulty will result in a greater number of items being rolled from her normal monster drop table while simultaneously reducing the number of rune rolls
5. For this reason, it is recommended that you farm the Countess on the player 1 difficulty setting in order to maximize your chances of receiving rune drops
6. On the other hand, rune drops are unaffected by magic find because the latter only modifies the frequency with which she obtains rare items rather than the total number of items she obtains
7. This indicates that there will be the same number of rune drop rolls in the future
The following is an explanation of how the rune drops are calculated:Her item drop table is used to make the first five rolls of the dice. There is a one in every twenty-nine chance that the die will come up empty. Following that, three rolls are made using her rune drop table, each of which has a one-quarter chance of rolling nothing. If it does roll a rune, it will first roll the highest rune TC, which in the case of hell is TC runes 12 (ist/mal), in the case of nightmare it is TC runes 8 (io/hel), and in the case of normal it is TC runes 4 (ral/tal). In the event that the TC does not roll a rune, the subsequent TC is rolled all the way down to TC runes 1, which ensures the roll of an El or Eld rune.