1. In all patches, most objects in the game that drop items have their object seed truncated to 16-bits (for seemingly no reason, as the packets/code still stores it as a 32-bit integer). This means they only have 65,535 possible drop combinations for a given player setting/party count. High runes were *so* rare pre 1.13 that most settings have no runes at all in that limited seed space, as most are 1 in every few hundred thousand seeds. This means on players3 there might only be a single Lo, but on players5 there might be no Lo and only a Vex.
2. Zod only drops in act 5 chests in all patches. Unlike monsters, runes are tied to act. Fruit from the old forums helped to discover this and wrote a program which simulates all combinations for all patches/settings and tells you which patterns contain high runes, and it's pretty damning how bad it is. There are no Zod drops pre 1.13 from regular chests, except in 1.07 when you have 6 people (not players command, partied members) in the same area. 1.09 has *one* single pattern only when one person is in the game, and that's on players3, sparkly chest in act 5, which has a 1/5 item rarity roll, so that's 65,535x5 = 1 in ~325,000 chest runs. I can post the program here sometime if desired, it's super handy.
3. Yes, countess' special drop in 1.09 goes up to Gul/Vex, but mind you, you're still looking at several thousand runs to get one, because the chance as I said was 1:3840 for a Gul, and I think 1:5500? for a Vex. A vex run in 1.09 is slightly more rare than a Zod in 1.13, so that should give you an idea of how rare a 1.09 Zod is.
. I have all sigon's pieces now so that + hellforge hammer, cathan's rings, etc, will help my future twinked chars a lot. Everything is all good.
