Darksong (Kind of Rantish)

do it tommorow its 3 day extra drop for greens

I just tried killing him. First with my 55hp necro hybrid, then by killing everything around him and using midnight N/Me. Neither worked.

Edit: My 55hp Necro hybrid does work, you just die as soon as the boss dies, probably from the moral boost.

Funny, cause I killed the boss accidently once with a team of 7 henchies and I got it on the first drop. It's all a matter of luck, and that anti farming code that Anet brilliantly wrote which resets itself when you go to international and farm *hint.*

Well said, Batou! You've explained things very well indeed!

I have to admit, I've been making a few *cough* runs into the Resplendant Makuun myself, as I'm intent on getting Darksong for my Paragon. I don't know why I think she needs it, but I do.

To the OP -- I think I've tried even more times than you, and I have to remind myself, "Green drops are very unusual" and that helps me to be a bit more patient. Good luck to you!

Just got there today. First time killing the boss EVER he dropped it. Full party of henches.

Sorry bout the bad luck.

Matter of luck. I went out with 3 heroes, 2 hench, got it third try. A friend was with a group just adventuring around the map, and got it while in a full party of 8.

Thought I might make some plat farming it, but have not seen it drop since then.

Complete BS. Or, to put it politely, that's an urban legend. Nobody ever supplied any proof for that.


It's all chance. During the 3x drop weekend I soloed that giant that drops Deathleather Longbow a while. Took me 13 runs before he dropped the first bow. Solo. 3x drops. I was getting pretty annoyed. Later on, I got FOUR bows in a row.

There's a difference between speculation, urban legend, and BS. The idea that there is a global drop rate is speculative, to be sure, but far from being BS. In the end pretty much everything that's known about drop rates and anti-farming code is speculation. Your belief that drop rate is purely individual is just as speculative as the notion of a global limit. Unfortunately there's no practical way to test and determine which theory is correct and as it's doubtful that the devs will ever enlighten us on the subject we probably never really will know for sure.

I went with a full team and killed him; got my green drop, I then decided to try it again and got another from him (tried it further 5 time and got nothing, so its definately luck).

I Got one Green in my life, and it was when i didnt farmed LOL
i was doing qeust killed Sskai and got green i was like WTF WOOT TOOOT still worth 50k happy as RED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GORED ENGINE GO and when i farmed greens never got one lol

So far I've received 2 green drops, Lunto's Pincers and Eshau's Spear.
Luntos was first time ever killing him.
I farmed Eshau 2 hours one night an nothing a couple nights later, I killed him in passing and he dropped the spear, with a full party of heroes/henchmen.

Who the heck knows =/

i got my death bringer the same way. I wasn't even looking for it. I got a necro wand from someplace else in the game while with Henchies too. So, henchies wont always steal your green, but you wont get one as regularly as if you solo'd it. As to posting a solo build... I will never post a solo build on any fansite that A-net reads. It's like saying "please come and nerf my skills so i can't do this anymore."

OP if you really want darksong I'll give you mine. Its no use to me and I have plenty of plat.

Also hate selling things so probly would just sit in my inventory anyways.

Heh, threadomancy from Gaile!

...

I find it astonishing how few people have wised up to greyed-out-hero farming when it comes to greens. Seriously, what is with people still forming 5-man teams? Two should be the absolute maximum ('cause if you can't kill a boss who's on his own with two human players there's something fundamentally wrong with your farming build).

...For those of you who are looking at me with bemusement, heroes (and henchies) don't take drops when they're so far away from you that their names are 'greyed out' on the bar. Which you can now guarantee, thanks to the handy-dandy flag placement system!

Simply take a full hench-party up to the boss, kill his bodyguard, then put your location flag somewhere well and truly out of the way. Solo (or 'duo') the boss, zone, and repeat until he drops the goods.

Hmmm I have my doubts but its easily tested.....

EDIT: I did your "greyed out" farm and solo'ed the boss (after my heros were standing nearly clear across the map) and guess what the boss dropped? Nothing. Now if this had worked he would of dropped something even if it were only gold.

Perhaps ANet should have a write-up on the facts about drops etc and put it on their GW website, I think it makes things less confusing for starting players. 6 months ago when I started GW, I actually found items in GW quite confusing. Sure fansites have all these info, but not every player actually visited fansites; quite a number of players I've met in-game didn't even know about GuildWiki when I asked them if they've check for info up there.

I like how Gaile ressurected an old thread XD
And I personally am hoping for crappy green drops from the charr bosses in pre XP
And yes I recall farming greens and never getting anything and then suddenly getting Brohns Staff... I think thats the only green that has ever dropped for me -_- Most of mine have either been given to me by guildies or I have gone out and bought them.
Oh no... I did get Villnars Staff right before NF came out while I was out capping... basically worthless and I already have one >_<

@birdfoot - ANet will probably never explain drop rates or anti-farming codes any better than they have to date. Explanations would help the bot writers a lot more than regular players.

What proof do you have of this?

From my experience I found that the greater the area is farmed - the less chance for rare or green items to drop.

This is based off of the following experiences:

1. The drops by monsters in off hours is much better than drops by monsters in peak hours - of which I probably farm more in off hours. (That would make your math backwards, because you are saying that drop rates are reduced by more farming, not less)

2. If a monster, on average, drops a green x times in y hours, then the greater number of people farming that area means they are reducing the probability of actually receiving that green.

3. Just because the explorable areas are instances does not mean, a priori, that the drop rates are instanced as well. Drop rates could be global, and without proof from someone that wrote the code for the game, I cannot believe what you are saying to be true.

My biggest problem with this post, is that you claim that you are without a doubt, correct. You have no idea - and basing your claim around some criteria which don't necessarily affect anything about drop rates is quite absurd.

Cheers!

Sorry, duplicate post...

Wo, a lot of input, thanks! I haven't farmed him anymore per-say but I'll go to Honur Hill and kill him every once and awhile, still haven't gotten it. But now I have completed the game so I'm pretty content with my Forgotten Spear.

Bastian, Gaile posted confirmation.

Ya, I noticed that as I kept reading throught the forum. Although, I'm still not sold just because she said so. I know she has direct contact with the devs, but experience tells me otherwise. Oh well, I farm solo usually anyways, so I just gotta cross my fingers.

Yeah, right....

By reading your first post, I wonder if you even bother to READ this whole thread.

If you did, how could you miss my post? As in, this:

Feel free to argue with Gaile, if you have to. But I don't think you should though. Because when compare to Gaile, you know basically a lot less about GW.

I think it would be kinda stupid if it was true. That way the farmers would have a monopoly on the items and rune the game for others.

But since the boss is near the zone, if you keep going out and killing that grp and rezoning repeately , you'll prob. get flagged for farming.

Also, before, enemies near the beginning of a zone doesn't drop much. Not sure if that has been changed.

Not necessarily the case - monsters can drop nothing, particularly if you've got farming-code on you. As plendy of dead minotaurs can attest.

/goes off to test, since it's been a couple of weeks and something might have changed.

I killed mister Jishol Darksong six times with Dunkoro in range and six henches greyed out. Two blanks, two gold drops, and two items - so pretty much exactly what you'd expect from a 2-man farm run.

...Yeah, I know, my sample size sucks, but my connection was acting up towards the end there. I'll go solo-kill (+7 grey) an Istani boss later and see how the figures go.

Update: Nope, 'net really doesn't want to co-operate. For what it's worth, the very first kill got me a Jinzuu's Sanctuary!

I don't want to be rude or something, but everyone wandering through the world of GW with open eyes must see that there is a strong correlation between (especially gold) drop rates and the amount of people in an area (not an instance) AND more importantly does not see an contradiction in Gaile's post: and Bastian's post.
Gaile is definitely right when she says that amount of good drops scales with the amount of players in an area BUT if the area has a strong imballance between a few people who are farming a lot and those that are achieving virually nothing, you can feel that drop rates depends on other instances.

Example: When Realm of Anguish opened I started chest runs in the first hour and I got 27 gold drops out of 30 chests O_o
The only reason for this is that there were MANY people achieving nothing and me getting alot of drops. The game engine tried to maintain a constant gold rate for all players (as Gaile said) and this was only achievable by providing gold chests as there were not too many kills (and chest farmers) compared to the sheer amount of players trying their best and failing.
If you couldn't see the correlation now, I can give you plenty of additional examples.

Maybe my skill in English (being my second language and all) is not good enough, but I can't seem to find Gaile saying the stuff I indicated in bold.

For the first sentence, I thought Gaile said specifically the opposite, didn't she? By "it's not that there are 10 items to drop stretched across 100 rather than 25 groups." doesn't she mean that the amount of drops has nothing to do with how many people playing in an area?

And about the engine tried to maintain gold rate and whatnot, where did she say that?

Er, pardon the intrusion, but what happens if you get flagged for farming?

Ess Age, I wish this were so but I think it all has to do with the luck of your character (and no I dont mean the title). I have two accounts... I can take my warrior or any character on my secondary account out and get excellent drops... I take any character on my primary account out and get crap or next to nothing. My friend can farm trolls for several hours and make a fortune, I can farm the same place, time, and so forth over and over and still never get what he is.
Some say that your account or characters are semi flagged from the moment they are made. They call it a good seed. *shrugs*
I have friends who can farm for weeks and never get a sup vigor. I go out and usually within the first couple of days I can get two. However I can not duplicate these results with my other account as hard as I have tried.

We can play tit of tat all we want, but I still think that what Gaile says is at least mostly if not entirely accurate.


Darktyco, if you get a farming flag your drops get crappy - go do a few missions or something and it supposedly comes off.

@Cacheelma: She says that the drop rate is not affected by the amount of players in an area, this is only possible if the total amount of drops scales. She's speaking of the drop rate and not of the amount of drops. Drop rate per player (globally seen) is constant.
Concerning the engine: I do not know if Gaile commented that. It's the only reasonable explanation that I can think of for extremely high gold item drop rates in highly frequented areas without pleople achieving much.
Another, more proir example is the drop rate after UW-farm updates. I had my best runs with 4-5 golds when everyone else stood in ToA crying that farming was nerfed. This might have been luck, but I have seen such coincidence several times.

@Eviance: I've never heard of this rumor and if I'm honest would says that there is not a bit of truth in it
The developers of Guild Wars were always trying to create an equal gaming experiece for every player (ballancing, nerfs, greens, new insignias etc.). Such a preselection would strongly violate their usual behaviour.

How can you be so sure of that? I don't think there's such thing as "drop rate per player is constant", other than "lucky person gets more, while unlucky people get less".

Thus, there's no need for scaling the amount of drops. If they're random and based on luck, it would be normal to see a guy gets more drops than other people.

I'm inclined to believe that theory as well, as all the chars on my 2nd account seem to do much better drop wise than any of those on my 1st one.

Tombs is a prime example when it comes to Victos Axe or Bulwark as I've had more of those than I care to remember, my Ranger seems to be pretty much guaranteed 2 Greens or an Ecto during a run, where my Necro 9 times out of 10 comes out with stuff that goes straight to the Merchant.

Same applies with shards in FoW, they rain down when I take my Ranger, yet pretty poor drops with the Necro.

Same with Greens on any of the weekends.

well it sounds like it's better to solo or farm with henchies/heroes then if the other players' overfarming can affect your drops...

@Cacheelma: I am relatively sure of my claim as I e.g. farmed Droknar long before there were bots. I had a decent gold drop rate but with the upcoming bot the gold drop rate decreased drastically. I experieced exactly this in several other regions. So, now tell me another reason for that, other than a global item distribution!

maybe ANet needs a code review by a different set of devs that don't already have their eyes fixated on the drop algorithms. it wouldn't be the first time somerone had blinders on just because they wrote that particular snippet of code... just my opinion though.

I respect that you have what you feel are solid reasons to believe what you have come to believe. However, anecdotal evidence aside, drops truly are random. What does this mean?

• This means a Mesmer is as likely to get an item as a Necromancer, Warrior, or Ritualist. No more and nor fewer items go to any profession, or to your second character, or to the one you created in one month as compared to another. No "orphan" characters here!
• This means there is no increased likelihood that a sword will drop for a Warrior, or that a sword won't drop for an Assassin. Drops are random, in that your Ranger could, although mathematically unlikely, receive 117 hammers before she gets a bow. (Trust me, it happened to me! Ok, ok, only kidding. )
• This means that if 1,000,000 players all decided, in the same hour, to try for a certain boss monster's Unique drop, the same percentage would be as successful across 400,000 instances of that map as if only 10 people were working on that item across 2 or 3 instances of that map. What other people are trying for, their luck, their acquisitions, do not affect you, unless they are in your party.

Now, the exception to the randomness, and the exception to even distribution of drops for each party, is well known to you: If you're going into an area repeatedly, the drops will be reduced. In that case you'll receive what I call our "Move along, nothing to farm here," message.

Now, I confess I've gone into RM many times in my thus far unsuccessful attempt to acquire Darksong. However, I've never gotten the "farming" message because I set self-limits on area entries. My time is valuable and I want the maximum chance of getting that Green. If I can, I'll learn to take on that mob solo so I don't have to try to wrest the item from Goren's steely grip. Plus, I'm a patient person. If I have to try 3 times each over 10 days rather than 30 times in a day, I can do that. I'm too pragmatic to accept a reduction in goodies.

I've done some casual "testing" on our special weekends. During the Green Weekend I didn't receive a single green. But during the Dye Weekend, I did feel that I was getting increased dyes. *shrug* Luck of the draw; randomness of the drops. I was just luckier one weekend over the other. I know there is no Super-Secret Evil Code of Doom (SSECOD) that is going to give you less than you're entitled to or certain items over certain other items. There is no such code for any character, or any account, or any profession, or any... anything. If you play normally, and even if you focus on an area, as long as you are reasonable, your chances are as good as anyone else's that you will get the items you seek.

I hope this information helps.

that, of course, is still based on the assumption that the random number generator in the drop algorithm is working properly/based on a proper seed with respect to each character being used.

srand()
srand(1)
srand(time)
srand(time(NULL))
srand(time(10))

nmap supposedly at one point used: srand((tv.tv_sec ^ tv.tv_usec) ^ getpid())

none of them are the same as rand() which isn't wise to use either. all of them produce variable results (within a small subset of programming languages in the C family), several of them being very repeatable. so basically, nothing you say means anything if the underlying algorithm isn't generating pseudo-random (and I say pseudo because I doubt very seriously you have a nuclear decay-based RNG on-hand). as a software engineer (at an enterprise level that would put even GW's scale into perspective), I've seen quite impressive devices that are flawed merely because the numbers they generate are flawed and hence predictable/skewed.

surely you've got a mathemetician under your employ somewhere that could spend a few minutes just skimming over the algorithms to at least determine if there are any common mistakes made. people should not be able to predict some some degree of success which characters will end up with higher end drops more often than others. and this, just as much as you promise one thing, I promise has happened.

if, for example, your generator alrogithm is based off of time, then it will be the case that, depending upon the degree of precision in your algorithm, if 100,000 people entered that instance within the same second (regardless of the particular mn or ns), they they could most certainly end up with the same result based on a simple srand() or rand() derivative. I don't expect a community relations person to understand that, but the case can indeed and quite frequently does exist in other applications.

EDIT: btw, this isn't meant to contradict anything said about multiple instances affecting the overall drop-rate, but rather the fact that drop rates from one character to the next may not be random at all. as far as trying to make the game fair across the board, that is assuming everyone has an equal skill level. most of the people that can solo certain areas have quite more skill than the casual player. many of the pro farmers have so much more skill at finding ways to solo and get good loot that they aren't even comparable to most regular players. ANet, by doing what it does, is actually helping professionals (and bots programmed by professionals). If you wanted your gamer to be the socialist mecca that dream of (for whatever reason) you would make the drops for individual characters be the same across the board, regardless of the party size. Only then would the casual player have even the remotest chance of being just as able as the most elite pro farmer at getting the particular items that he/she wants. I'm sure the pros are out there cheering for you guys at ANet.

and please don't take this as someone wanting to bash the game or the devs. I entirely love this game and have pulled so many other people into it that it's not funny. whether it's an addiction, OCD (more likely), or what, I have plenty of interest in the game to bash certain componnents of it in the hope that it will make a better game and last longer than, well other games. there just seems to be a certain level of arrogance coming from the direction of ANet. this, I think was shown in its entirety by the people warning during the beta (which is supposed to be about warning) that the paragon, combined with watch yourself in a certain way was leading to trouble being completely and utterly ignored. that is, until recently when it was indeed deemed a problem either because it was too powerful, or unlike PvE'er, the PvP'ers were not bright enough to find a way around the problem, and it was nerfed. game developers are a dime a dozen, as countless companies have proven over the years. take heed from the people that actually play the game.

Thanks Gaile for trying to smooth ruffled feathers (although we're completely calm of course ).
Your point 1 and 2 are common sense, I think. Those things are totally clear. But I still see some need for explanation for point 3.
"This means that if 1,000,000 players all decided, in the same hour, to try for a certain boss monster's Unique drop, the same percentage would be as successful across 400,000 instances of that map as [...]" the expression same percentage is what I'm confused of!

Let's consider two situations...
Situation 1: 1,000,000 player are trying to farm the boss and are successful. They gain 50,000 greens for that. (let's assume this)
Situation 2: 1,000,000 player are trying to farm the boss but only 100,000 are sucessful.
Now my question: Would they gain 50,000 or 5,000 greens for that.
Both cases use the percentage term but with other relations.

I 55'd Bramble Everthorn (which was hell to farm btw) 39 times before he dropped everthorn chakrams. Be persistant, if you can, make a farming build that is quick so you make some money doing it.