As a guy who likes collecting items, I'm kind of disturbed at how rarely some items will drop (in single player). I went to the Diablo Wiki, and it says unique items of the same item type require multiples of that item to drop first, such as unique rings.

I mean, in one game I got two unique rings (Ring of Engagement and Constricting Ring), but do I have to have FIVE drop to see Bramble, Ring of Regha or the Bleeder?

And there's no way to increase drop rates is there? I even went so far as to see if there are MODS to increase drop rate. There aren't any.

Some Uniques can take years to find like Sharp Beak or Deadly Hunter.

You will probably find twenty ring of Engagement for one Ring of Regha and you have to search on specific floors on certain difficulties to find such items.

For example: Helm of Sprits can only be dropped on Church level 2 in Nightmare and Hell Difficulty by killing Bosses.

It's nothing different from Diablo 2. There are loads of items I never found in the sequel, even after playing for years.

Diablo 2 has a LOT more items though. My gawd... too many, in my (probably unpopular) opinion.
I feel it makes it pretty much impossible to get the item drops that you want in your lifetime.

Untill they introduced runes and made all those items useless, main thing i hated about diablo II, it stopped being about gear, just runes, bleh

Goddamn, that specific? That's terrible. I thought if a Boss was a high enough level it could drop any unique item of that level or lower?

How did you learn of these? I couldn't see on Google or the Wiki.

I have been playing for years and I was part of the now defunct Tristr.am community where we had a very good Item Calculator that would tell you the probabilities of any items and on which monsters they could be found. Unfortunately, that Item calculator is gone with the site. The only one that still exists as far as I know is the one on the Freshmeat Blog but he does not allow you to look for Uniques, only magical items. We are able to calculate the probabilities via Jarulf Guide on our Server, feel free to join us if you want hints or partners to play:

https://discord.gg/mDpvukn

If you have not yet, I suggest you download Jarulf's Guide and read the relevant sections. It is widely considered to be the definitive reference for the game, easily surpassing official publications in detail and correctness. The most pertinent to your question seems to be section 3.8.3, page 42, which says in part:

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If several unique items are possible, the one with the highest qlvl will be dropped. If several unique items that are possible have the same qlvl, the one that happens to be first in the list will be dropped. This is the reason that some unique items will never be dropped as there is always another unique item with the same qlvl (and being of the same base item) that will be dropped instead. See chapter 3.5.2 for a list of such unique items.
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The rule about "highest qlvl" is why some items are very hard to get: there are few sources that are high enough level to drop that item, yet low enough level not to drop some other, higher quality, item. For example, Sharp Beak is a qlvl 2 Large Axe (3.5.1, page 30) and Wicked Axe is a qlvl 5 Large Axe. To get Sharp Beak, you need a monster to drop a unique Large Axe and for that monster to be unable to drop a qlvl 5 (or higher) unique item. If it can drop a qlvl 5 unique item, it will drop Wicked Axe instead of Sharp Beak. Per 3.8.2 page 41, the base item is in the range 1 to mlvl(battle). According to section 3.8.3, page 42, unique items dropped by unique monsters have a qlvl in the range 1 to ilvl+4. According to section 3.1, page 17, a Large Axe has a qlvl of 6. Therefore, you need a monster that has a base mlvl too low to drop Wicked Axe (so, mlvl 4 or less) and an mlvl(battle) (mlvl adjusted for difficulty) high enough to drop a Large Axe (so modified mlvl of at least 6). This is why you cannot get Sharp Beak on Normal difficulty, but you can on Nightmare or Hell difficulty. Even then, you can only get it from low end monsters, because higher level monsters will drop Wicked Axe instead.

From this, it's not purely about the number of drops, but also the quality level of those drops.

Wanting can be better than getting.

i want a Sharp Beak!

I mean that's kinda always been the point with these kinds of games. There's always that one item that you still want to get that never seems to drop for you. That keeps you playing; keeps you interested. Call it manipulative or whatever you want..it works.

I suggest playing with a trainer that lets you spawn yourself any item you want. You'll see how easily the game becomes dull once you do.

I had a read of those pages... goddamn. Estimated 2900 times clearing level 1 for a chance to get a Rift Bow... Just. Wow.

Welp, here I go trying to get a legit Ring of Regha, Bleeder and Bramble!

EDIT:

Welp, after two hours of playing floors 1 and 2 on Nightmare, I got The Celestial Axe and Gladiator's Bane, as my two new uniques. I also got Constricting Ring, Torn Flesh of Souls (on the floor of a treasure room!), Bow of the Dead, but I already have those ones.

When they say you need multiple uniques of the same qlvl to get certain rarer ones, they have to drop in that game right? I can't bring a Ring of Regha to a new game to force the game to give me a Bramble?


EDIT 2:

Okay, I think I answered my own question. No, bringing a unique item to a new game does not force the game to choose a different unique I think. I just got another Gladiator's Bane. And a Black Razor (new!).

I believe the uniques-progression rule applies only in Single Player, and then only until you hit New Game, though I have only read that and not played it. Section 3.5.2, page 34 states:

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Due to the way the game generates unique items (see chapter 3.8), some unique items will never be found in multi player. The same items are findable in single player but only if you find another unique item of the same base item and qlvl first in the same game session. This phenomenon occurs when there are multiple items of the same base item and qlvl.
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Section 3.8.3, page 42 states:

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In single player (but not in multi player) the game keeps track of what unique items have been dropped (or recreated at game start in a characters inventory) and if the same item is determined to be dropped again (or regenerated at game start), the next one with the same qlvl or the one with the next lower qlvl will instead be dropped. Thus in single player you can actually find those ”unfindable” unique items but you must find at last one other unique item of the same base item first. The game will forget the list of found unique items when you restart a new game however. The list is saved when you save the game in single player but not restored upon load except for those items you have equipped.
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I interpret this to mean that choosing New Game resets the game's memory and requires you to start over finding earlier uniques.

Gladiator's Bane isn't a good example though, because it is the only unique studded leather armor, so even if the rule were in effect, there is no other unique that could be forced to appear instead. The base type is chosen before the progression rule is considered.

The following paragraph states:

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If for any reason the game fails to select a unique item (for example if there is no unique item with a low enough qlvl), the game will then proceed to create the item as a normal magical item instead.
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If the rule were in effect, the second unique would be changed to a magical item and you would not realize you had lost a unique drop, since the drop could be magical because it failed to be unique or because the random roll chose to make it magical.

Exactly right. Diablo II overcomplicated the gameplay mechanism.

I just recently learned about "rune words." That is, using specific runes in specific orders on specific socketed items, to create "super-powered" items. There's pretty much NO WAY any single-player would ever figure any of this out. The sheer volume of "Horadric cube recipes" out there is remarkable. The sheer number of "unique sets" as well.

The ONLY way any of that works is by "online trading." Which seemed so incredibly tedious and uninteresting to me that I refused to ever take part in it.

I guess SOME people really enjoy the "trading with other players online" aspect of this... if you get a unique, part of a set, which you can't use... you trade it to someone who can for something YOU want... or for a boatload of in-game money (or, apparently for SOME people, even for REAL money???)

That's the ONLY way people end up with complete sets of rare items. And by the time they manage to get to that point, the game itself becomes too easy, and as a result the only "fun" they get from it is the "trading and upgrading game."

Not really my cup of tea. But to each their own.