In Diablo 3 ‘farming’ is going to be a huge element in the economy. It’s going to be one of the main sources of items like Tomes of Training, salvaged materials, legendary, rare and magic items, gold and one of the only sources of experience for your character. Players will quickly dominate the content that Blizzard throws at us. As we’ve seen in other Blizzard games like World of Warcraft, developers want everyone to have the opportunity to experience content.

One potential way to optimize the amount of value you take from a single ‘boss run’ will be to deck your character out in Magic Find items. Due to the massive auction house it will be possible to find the appropriate items even if they are rare, but will they be worth buying? Let’s take a look at the possible Magic Find improving gear and see what type of benefits we can get and how we go about getting them.

Gear

Gear is tough to predict. Three is no ‘of the magic find’ like you might expect from World of Warcraft. Crafted gear from Blacksmiths usually has 1-3 fixed stats and then 1-3 random properties. I’ve never seen an item on the auction house with two of one property so I think it’s safe to say that you won’t get a duplicate property on an item. If an item as a magic find bonus, it tends to scale with the item’s level requirement. It seems like every piece of gear has a chance of having + magic find, so you could potentially get 20-30% bonus per item!

It’s extremely easy to find exactly the gear that you want on the auction house. You just select the character you want to put it on, the armor slot and then add criteria for each property you’re looking for. The more specific you are the less competition in that market so the more people are going to charge. I imagine in the live version of the game there will be a lot of items for sale in each criteria combination so you will be able to gett exactly the magic find gear that you want.

Gems

Of the four gems that will be available in Diablo III the Emerald will be the only flavor that offers a magic find bonus and it will do this only when socketed into your helmet. Of the 14 levels of gems (chipped -> radiant star) they offer a 5% – 31% magic find bonus. If you’re building a magic find set, find a good helmet with magic find and throw an emerald in gem in it. You can gem the rest of your gear for your primary stat to improve your kill rate.

Enhancements

Just like in World of Warcraft you can enchant your gear (it’s called enhancing in D3). In D3 the only currently available enhancement for Magic Find is ‘Seeking.’ There are currently 5 tiers, minor, lesser, no prefix, greater and major seeking. The lowest tier yields 10-24% magic find while the top tier offs 39-42% chance. When you enhance gear you get a random result so you will find yourself enhancing gear all day long. This enhancement only works on your leg piece, which is peculiar. I expect to see more options in the live version of the game but maybe the leg piece is the only one we can add magic find too.

With 13 equip’able slots (12 with a 2 handed weapon) you may see 350-400% magic find bonus without any enhancements or gems. With gems and enhancements that number will almost reach 500%. Is it worth it to find 5 times more magic gear when running ‘boss runs’? I bet it will be. That’s a huge payoff. I expect Magic Find to be one of the most important properties for every end-game character.

Important: Many of the strategies and tips I share here were originally inspired by the people at the Diablo 3 Gold Secrets Forum. If you're serious about making the big bucks in Diablo 3, or just being the best players, you need to signup ASAP.