How to get good drops

I've suspected this is how it works for a while, but now I have firm proof.

About two weeks ago, I took my R/W into Tombs for the first time in 4+ months. The very first run, I get both a Glob of Ectoplasm (my only one ever from Tombs) and Victo's Battle Axe. Next run, I get two greens, one of which is Victo's Sword. Figuring it can't get much better, I promptly resolve never to come back to Tombs again.

Last night, I take my SS on a two-man UW farming run with a 55 monk. He gets a Glob of Ectoplasm from the Aatxes in the starting chamber, and then the very first mob of Smite Crawlers gives him another Ecto and a rare. That's when it turns out he hasn't been in UW for months. Sure enough, when the run is over, he's gotten all three of the Ectos that dropped for us.

Is this ANet's way of feeding addictions? "Look how good your drops are! Don't you wish you came to this part of the game more often?"

or it could be "I scored a lucky drop or two.." The drops are there to intice people to come and play there. The fact they dropped for you and your monk friend is merely luck and does not dictate the drop rate to the rest of us.

He wasn't a friend, and we didn't even call 50/50 before the run.

What I'm saying is that we all know ANet discourages constant returning to the same zone, so much that there's game code that reduces the quality of drops if you do it too often. Isn't it reasonable to assume there is also game code that increases quality of drops the longer you stay away from a particular area?

No, theres reason to assume that the game code that reduces the quality of drops wasn't effecting you because you'd stayed away. Not vice versa.

But if you're taking these "incredible" drops as "normal," what does that say about the "normal" drops? You're effectively saying there are two levels of anti-farm code: one that reduces "normal" drops (as seen in my first post) to the level of a regular run, and one that reduces the drops of a regular run even further should you see the anti-farming "hint" come up on your screen.

What are you talking about?

You haven't farmed there for a while = your drops are normal.
Your partner has farmed there alot = his drops suck.

Put 2 and 2 together and your drops seem 'magnificant' because your comparing it to someone with massive amounts of flags on them.

I haven't been in FoW since shortly after Factions release. Last night I went with just a random PuG. I got: 3 keys, 2 shards and 2 purples.

The anti-farming warning has the solution to getting "good drops"

"If you complete this area NORMALLY your drops will return to normal" or some such thing.

People who ONLY do UW over and over have a worse drop rate per run than those that do it very rarely.

I rarely do UW, a friend of mine has an IV of UW in his neck. Now and then he will convince me to duo UW with him, I rarely do that. When I do, his drops and mine are impressive to him because hes used to going various runs without anything worthwhile. When the smites see him come they all hide their goodies. They know him too well

I find going to PvP with my PvE characters and messing around for a while is worth more than just "switching crops". It works wonders for me. Then again "messing around in PvP" means ~2weeks - 1 month of not stepping into a pve area cept to help people on quests.

I agree with the above; however, I find that I get an ecto almost every UW trip (out of the last 25 trips, I've gotten zero ectos 2x)...have had 2-3 ectos per farm quite often, as have guildies...with 6 ectos for one guildie on one run as our current guild record...we hit it every night and usually get 6-10 ectos as a group (4-5 man trap team) every trip there...

Outside of UW, my good drops decrease the longer I farm...per the norm.

I will go to areas I havn't been in months and never get good drops, or even bad drops. The drop system in this game is pure crap.

I don't know about that, my ele went to FoW last night, for her first time in 3 days (go everynight usually) and I got 2 Shards, my necro and he got 3 shards...my monk nothing. So you could be right.

Well, I have to disagree with this because I have been farming FoW a lot (and that might be an understatement) but some runs I only get one shard and then I do it again and I get 3 shards, 1 key and a rare. I think people look into this too deeply.

Its the same anywhere, you can be the biggest farmer ever and still get 6 ectos in one smite run, or you can go on your first ever UW trip and get nothing but demonic remains.

I have also seen this, a friend of me went online not playing since start of factions,he went on his smite monk, bum 4 ectos for him in the chamber, other runs went ok, the next day we did 4 runs not 1 ecto .

And when I couldnt play for a week i went with my guilde to finders keepers uw run got 3 golds 3 ecto :P, godds were nice.

to OP: Yes its true. The less you play - the better the drops.

I'd disagree with this. I alternate farming areas all over the place, over different characters, and no matter what, I usually end up getting screwed in groups and getting no good drops during solo. And I don't farm 24/7 either. Basically, it looks like the best bet is to just farm merch food from trolls or vermin or something.

i have not been to ascalon in a year. i go there to train my pet. not any drops above a white. so umm...?

to Above post, READ EVERYTHING

Dont play the game for a good month then go to UW and tell me what you get. .

Been there, done that. I was away from the game entirely for over a month. Came back, went to uw. I got a bunch of whites, a couple of blues, a bunch of demonic remains and a purple from a chest. I didn't get a single ecto for almost an entire week after being back (this is a week of many runs) while ecto were dropping regularly for the 2 people that I duo'd with.

i haven't played my warrior for like 3-4 months, i did some uw solo last week, well on the first run i got 6-7 purple items. wow

it should be pretty obvious now that all drops are random occuring if u havent seen that by what ppl are saying here. but to help u a little ill give u an idea of how things seem to work ( how i seem to see things work).

A. u load an instance, computer takes the leaders times hes been in and out of the instances. does a random multiplication of that to a random table of figures. then sets on doing that to each member in your party.based of the leaders finally tally marks. then finally adds that number up and that is what decides what types of drops u get.
B. so if u want just do some things there then reenter the same instance again with a different party leader if u like.

again its just what ive seen happen. when i do dou teams we switch leaders every time we go.

Actually i'd have to agree with the OP.
First time i went to The Deep I got 2 edges in consecutive runs. Then i got 2 axes and since then i never got a green again and I did about 20 runs.

First run on Urgoz: 1 U. Longbow, consevutive runs: nothing

First time i went solo to the UW: I get 1 Ecto from the very first aatxe i kill and i die after that group. Then i went duo and got 2 ectos in the first 2 duo runs all from the first aatxes. Never got to the smites
Since then, no more.

First time i went to TotPK long time ago i got 2 shields, and 2 other greens in 5 runs. Nothing on the next runs.

When SF was released I got 2 or 3 greens in my first runs to complete the quests. Then i started farming it everyday with a team of 5 hench, killing 6 bosses along the way; did it for about 1 month i nothing droped again.

That's looks quite unusual to me

i'm absolutely sure that theres a 2nd anti-farming code, the hidden 1 - even if u're not getting the standart warning from the tutorial tips u're still affected by this 2nd anti-farming code, it works in almost all zones i think. it wouldnt be that hard to implement few diff anti-farming codes, drop rates arent random from the start, so why not

Been out of UW since before Factions.
Went there last week in a 2 man, and got crap.
(He hadn't gone there in a while also).

The OP is very funny, or very egotistical. You're basing an incredibly broad assumption on anecdotal evidence, and not even that many anecdotes, while there have been countless attempts before you by different people to quantify the drop system. It's not a simple thing, and it can't be summed up by, "Stay away for a while and your drops will improve," because as you can see from this thread, that isn't always the case.

First time I did The Deep got Kanaxai's Axe , first time in Urgoz Warren got the longbow. I play both a lot and certainly players whose first time it is always seem to get a green.

Certainly not a coincidence imo.

mm i don't think this is true as i solo fow almost every day and get an average of 5 shards a run :/

I have to disagree with this. I do the deep daily 3-4 times minimum. I go with a group of friends in a 9 man team rather then 12. Yet it took me over 20 runs before I got a green from Kanaxai and have had many since. Yet there are times I can go a week or two if not longer not getting anything. Then it will turn around and I have had 4 in as many runs in the last 24 hours.

Lately I have taken to doing Urgoz runs have completed 5 total and gotten 3 Flatbows.

My take especially with Kana and Urgoz they are totally random and there is no rhyme or reason to them.

Drops are "luck" based.

I Second.

As a side note:
I don't believe in this anti-farming code.

You don't have to. But there are plenty of "coincidences" to warrant a conspiracy theory

You're farming. I'm describing a phenomenon inversely proportional to farming. When farming, you want to minimize downtime instead of waiting months before reentering a zone. Drops will always approach the "fair and random" more closely with more runs, especially when doing as many runs as you say you are. Since you're farming with a consistent team to repeatedly manage 9-man runs, none of you are coming off a long hiatus that could skew drops in the way I've experienced.

Solo. Meaning it doesn't matter who gets assigned drops, since you're the only one there. I'm talking as much about the quality of drops as about their assignment.

I highly doubt regular anti-farming code (which triggers the well-known Hint pop-up) can reduce the drops for long farming runs like solo FoW. It's possible that it triggers on fast smite runs, which is why I usually try to go as far as I can on each quarter... err, 1k fee

Do you see numbers here? Do you see firm, undeniable, scientific proof of the way the anti-farming code works? The only way I could actually provide the accurate formula for the anti-farming code would be if I (a) worked for ANet and (b) broke the NDA by releasing game code or information on how game code works. As you point out yourself, lots of people have tried to figure out what influences the drop rate; it's human nature to seek order in chaos, especially mechanized chaos which is never purely random by design (as anyone who's programmed a random number generator will tell you ) Since none of us fit both (a) and (b) above, all we can do is look for correlations in game play and create theories that elevate correllations to the level of causations. Of course, further testing is always required to validate any theory, and as some people have posted experiences contrary to mine the corellation I've drawn isn't an infallible causation. Still, the number of similar experiences warrants a closer look at the phenomenon.

Hmm. In both of my experiences of "beginner's luck," the "beginner" had at least one "farmer" partner (my teammates in Tombs runs, myself in UW runs). Perhaps the "farming status" of teammates influences drop quality and assignment? explodemyheart's experiences contradict this, though

I can personally attest that prolonged solo farming outside Realms of the Gods nets little if anything of value, as I regularly farm minotaurs with my E/Mo (a few runs at a time, until I get bored ). What I'd suggest are longer runs, like doing a "grand tour" Hydra farming run in a big circle in Skyward Reach. Even if statistically your drops stay the same, you might have a smaller chance to trigger anti-farming code since each run will take longer. Even if that's not the case, you can feel better about the run since the more items you pick up the more likely one of them is to be good

You've got to be talking more than a simple smite run here. I've personally never seen more than 3 ecto drop out of smites + aatxes in a single run, but then again, it's been a long while since I've taken my ranger into UW for a trap run. Hmm... perhaps I should go test my theory

What I mean is this: if you say that staying away from an area doesn't affect drops, then you must mean there is additional, "hidden" anti-farming code in place because "beginner's luck" is just that - it does not repeat itself consistently. Coming back for a second or third run shouldn't trigger the anti-farming "hint" (and presumably the confirmed anti-farming code), yet drop quality will decrease compared to the initial run. If you're calling drop quality during the initial run normal, subsequent drop quality has to be inferior and therefore "nerfed" rather than authentic (the way it was during the first run). What follows is a "three-step" drop system:

1) "Normal" drops (initial run)
2) "Reduced" drops (subsequent runs)
3) "Horrible" drops (post-hint runs)

You're saying (1) and (2) are the same when they're clearly not. My view of the drop system is less of a "nerf it down" than a "reward and punishment" scheme:

1) "Good" drops (initial run)
2) "Normal" drops (subsequent runs)
3) "Reduced" drops (post-hint runs)

My theory is that just as there is anti-farming code that moves drops from (2) to (3), there is "incentive" code that moves drops from (2) to (1) that is responsible for "beginner's luck."

I can't believe that after nearly 2 years that the game has been released, some people still try to find this so-called "hidden" mechanic to the drop system.

You know what? Get over it. There's no such thing as drop mechanic other than that the drops are random. The anti-farming code triggers when you farm heavily, and that's it.

If you think about it, the mechanic you've tried to make us believe it exists is a bit.....too complicate, don't you think? Why would Anet create such sophisticated mechanic in the first place? So that we have to farm more? And what would they get from that?

I can't believe you're asking! Tons of people get discouraged by initial bad experiences with parts of Guild Wars. This applies equally to PvP, where a few RA jerks can ruin someone's desire to PvP altogether, and to PvE, where a single mission can prevent people from enjoying the game as Vizunah Square with its myriad bugs did for many in Factions. A case of "beginner's luck" is perfect positive reinforcement to encourage a return voyage, which provides the player with incentive to choose a particular activity or even keep playing the game rather than turn away from it until a new chapter is released.

There's nothing complicated about the mechanic I suggest. All I'm saying is that the initial run after a prolonged absence seems to yield more loot than an average farming run. It doesn't help farmers though, since farmers can't afford to spend so much time not farming

Completed the deep twice (out of 2 tries) - never had Kana drop anything for me. Second run we had someone who goes once a day, he got two of three greens.

Figure that one...

hmmm id disagree. I hadnt farmed much of FOW at all for a while. I went to farm skais sword for the first time and got it. Where as the team i was with had been farming it for 20 times without it popping up.

I think the less u farm the more u get.

I'm thinking it's more random than that. I started doing Tombs runs again after a few months off. The first few runs got me nothing special - a junk green or 2. Then one day, I got 2 ectos & the green recurve bow on one run, and 2 more ectos later on that same day.

The other night, doing a run, I got 3 silver dyes & a gold from a chest, and not a thing from the darknesses. (jerks!)

Don't know anything bout UW. I always go 50/50 there. I farm UW a lot, AND ! almost every run i got gold drop (bad moded but still gold ) ) even if we got 0 ectos (it happens sometimes, let's say: no ectos in 2/10 runs). Don't know why, but i'm rly unlucky with chests, green drops and so on. I'v spen bout 300 keys in Deep and got only 1 zodiac sword 15(-5), sure i read bout antifarm code, flags and so on, but with my account that doesn't work.
Bout my few friends: 2 of em mostly spend their time in Deep. They make bout 3-4-5 non stop runs a day. 100k is their minimum profit a day: it's good golds, greens. R they overfarmed there ? Yes thy r. I'v tryed deep with one of em, and what do y think ? That person get 2 greens from kanaxi and it was edge and axe.
So the only thing that bring's profit to me and most of the ppl is UW 50/50.

I DO belive that tnere is NO any flag system, just normal LUCKY and UNLUCKY ppl and may be anet randomly decides who will be lucky and who will be not. That's facken sad.

I have to agree with the fact that giving bonus to people who've taken a break from the game and then come back is a good idea.

The idea is so good, in fact, that I wonder if such mechanic exists, why would Anet want to keep it a secret?

Imagine you're a developer making your living by selling your games, would you keep some information that would encourage your customers to buy "your next games" or "coming back to playing your games" a dark, deep and hidden secret? why?

And of course the mechanic, if exists, would be complicated.

For the starters, how long do you have to have stopped farming/playing in an area before the game considers you've "taken a break"?

Would it be "a break" if you move to farming some other places instead?
How would the game determine you have used your "beginner's luck" for that area?
Does opening gold chest count? How far/long does the player have to play in an area before his/her "beginner's luck" comes into effect?

Does he have to kill a boss with green/gold items?
What if he goes with other people? What if there're 4 people in this team with "beginner's luck" but the boss they're killing can drop only 1 green? Does it mean that I shouldn't team-up with someone who has "beginner's luck" because he would get good drops instead of me?

etc.

As incredulous as this sounds, I believe the OP is right. As I'm trying to do my Tyrian Protector title I've been going back to the early missions and doing the bonuses. I haven't been to these missions for a loooong time, however, for example doing Divinty Coast the other night, 4 golds dropped, 3 of them for me (incl. sup healing rune). Then went on to do the Riverside bonus, another 2 golds for me. Went to FOW a couple of weeks ago for first time in ages (was helping friend get his armour) 3 shards for me in the short distance to the armourer.

Fact: Drops are completely random.

I have to agree with the above poster. I've been playing GW since the beginning and the quality of drops I've received is terrible. Everyone seems to say it's simply luck. At first I tended to believe that but as time passed and the quality of drops remained crummy and actually seems to have gotten worse if that's possible, I don't believe that anymore. The drop systems sucks. Just my opinion on the matter.

Well, to cast some doubt on your theory, I had not set foot into Underworld for months. I went there a few weeks ago with my rit, and after clearing the smites twice (ran into a little trouble the first 2 runs) not one single gold item or ectoplasm dropped for me. Drops are just random now.

I farm outside of Altrumm Ruins almost everyday, and for almost a week I didn't get one single Kurzick Key as a drop. Yesterday, I got a key drop in 3 consecutive runs. Random ftw.