I have grown tiresome of seeing all the threads about the drop rates of areas, with little to no actual numbers being given. Or with the potentially staged still shot of a player standing around a mountain of white items.
So.
Here is a nice excel chart everyone can use to help them record each of their runs. I did NOT make separate parts for HM vs NM - honestly, we should all understand that HM's drops will be better than NM drops. This is to show the differences between Solo, Heroes+Henchmen and Partied (real players) play. Not the difference between NM and HM.
I used some very basic formulas to help everyone add up each runs and stuff like that. Along with a top section that is dedicated to showing the difference between each run. If you have never used an excel doc before its rather simple, and I did most of the "hard" work already. Just do your run, and as things drop record it in the appropriate "cell". It will auto calculate the totals and the differences for you.
I feel that a single run is not a good showing, so I listed out for 10 runs each for "Solo" , "Hero's and Henchs" and "With people" With people of course for when you go through an area with a full party of real players.
I have setup 2 charts within the workbook. The first chart shows the totals for each of the 3 run types. The second shows the difference between the run types. (I could not decide on a best chart, so in the interest of all I included both types, personally I think the run totals will speak for themselves however, some people may want to see the differences between run types)
If you do not have MS excel installed (It comes with MicroSoft Office) you can get a free Office suit here;
http://www.openoffice.org/
If you just want to view the worksheet (you CANNOT modify the worksheet with this program, but you can view and print it, NOTE: The auto adding/subtracting wont happen on plain paper )
http://office.microsoft.com/download.../xlviewer.aspx
As for my worksheet you can download it here;
www.clis.com/kemenicker/drops.xls
So for anyone who is interested in doing some REAL testing, getting REAL numbers and seeing for themselves just what the new drop rate is like. I encourage you to download this and give it a whirl.