What Do Lunar Fortunes do - An analysis.

So what exactly do Lunar Fortunes do, and do they have any effect on your “luck” when farming.

That is the question I set out to try and answer for myself today.

Method:

Farm Termites whilst under the influence of one of the three available “auras”.

I entered Arkjok Ward and used Lunar Fortunes until I received one of the auras.

I then killed the approximately 24 termites and recorded everything that dropped.

Repeated until I ran out of Lunar Fortunes (48 runs in total, with approx. 1152 termites killed)

Results:

181 Lunar Fortunes used.

Prizes received:
Miniature Pigs = 2
Sparklers = 23
Champagne Poppers = 20
Bottle Rockets = 21
Lucky Aura = 21
Unlucky Aura = 16
Attributes +1 = 11
100 gold coins = 67

Summary of Drops: (Average number of drops per run)

Under influence of Lucky Aura (21 runs)
Gold weapons = 0.1
Purple weapons = 0.76
Blue weapons = 2.0
White Weapons = 4.0
Keys = 0.33
Gold Coins = 355.57
Chitin = 15.62
Carapaces = 5.38
Dye = 0.29

Under influence of Unlucky Aura (16 runs)
Gold weapons = 0.13
Purple weapons = 0.19
Blue weapons = 1.63
White Weapons = 4.00
Keys = 0.13
Gold Coins = 365.31
Chitin = 16.44
Carapaces = 6.19
Dye = 0.13

Under influence of Attribute+1 (11 runs)

Gold weapons = 0.18
Purple weapons = 0.64
Blue weapons = 1.55
White Weapons = 4.45
Keys = 0.18
Gold Coins = 421.36
Chitin = 11.64
Carapaces = 5.09
Dye = 0.18

Analysis of results:

Lucky aura seems to give a marginally higher chance of getting a dye, a key, or a purple weapon at the cost of reduced amounts of gold coins.

Unlucky Aura seems to reduce your chances of getting a key, a dye, or a purple weapon and increases you chances of getting crafting materials and collectors items.

A full breakdown of the drops for each of the 48 runs is shown on the attached document.

I don’t think this sample is really enough to prove anything either way, but it was all the Lunar Fortunes I had left. It also takes no account of any anti-farm penalty I must have built up, but that penalty would apply to each of the three auras.

It was fun to mess around with though :-)

I can add that I've seen no noticable benefits from Lucky Aura with my mesmer in PvE. Drops actually seems a little less of quality, actually... but that could be a false perception.

Placebo effect

I'm pretty sure Gaile has already responded to this question: The Lucky/Unlucky auras don't affect your farming drops.

I don't remember if it was a Gaile Chat log, or if it was a thread on Guru.

If you wanted to get a proper conclusion, you should have made a control group. i.e, split each aura into two groups, and see if there is a correlation between those.

looking at the numbers, it is clear to me that if you showed anything, then it is that those auras does not effect drops at any way. the differences are not significant.

Okay, I found the chat log. It's the 2-16-2007 chat logs, ... this particular image
says:

I opened 568, exactly that amount. I didn't get ONE pig.

Any statistics are wrong.

Chi-square says the numbers are not statistically significant, meaning that numbers in each group differ, but not enough to prove auras having any kind of effect.

- No information about how you took the anti-farming code into account.

- No control group that went out without any of the auras

- No raw data on exactly how much you got on each run

The numbers are honestly so close together, and the number of tests so small, that they really can't be trusted.

If you factor in the margin of error, the results could logically be exactly opposite.

Ok, If this has been answered before I have no memory of an answer from Gaile or anyone else for that matter.

Why do things like this need to be so secretive?

People have used many hundreds of the Lunar Fortunes. If there is some sort of benefit to them might it not be a bit fairer to let us know so we may use them when they are intended to be used?

I have always assumed that there has been a desire to keep things secretive during events to keep a surprize level high, but why not give us an answer once the event has gotten started and most people are aware of the existence of things like Lunar Fortunes.

In the above reply Gaile has indicated that she has gone and asked someone if the Lunar Fortunes improve drops, she states that she has been told No they do not improve drops....so, why not then come out and tell us what they DO do? If there is a benefit to having a lucky aura then tell us. If there is no true benefit and its merely a fortune cookie fortune then just tell us that.

If I am missing something here please enlighten me.


I must admit to being baffled by some of these sorts of actions and the amount of information that is NOT given to us, unless they are just intended to feed the insatiable need for puzzle and problem solving of a certain sector of GW players.

Having attended every festival since Wintersday 2005 I have to say that a lot of wasted time could have been saved,a nd a lot of frustration avoided if the most basic answers could be given, if not before the start of events at least once the events have gotten started and most people are well awar of the existence of quests and quest rewards such as the Lunar Fortunes.

Has anyone with low wisdom title tried to ID/salvage an item under the influence of Lucky Aura? Or, because the Aura was introduced during the Beetlebug racing frenzy..did it influence a racer's chances of getting Echo/SB?

As to the drop ratios posted by the OP, the probabilities of each item's occurrence under the various conditions are not above what you would get simply due to chance - which is exactly what Antheus said (Test of Association ftw!).

Result Analysis: Statistically insignificant number of runs done to reach a valid conclusion.

In order to reach a valid conclusion, total runs must be increased by at least a factor of 1000 in order to account for random chance.

I appreciate your analysis on this subject. I still would like to know everything lucky aura influences. Does it make a boss more likely to drop a green weapon? When opening chests do you have a better chance at getting a rare skin or gold weapon?

?

It's both frustrating and yet sort of fun that stuff like this is a mystery. The hope that it actually does something cool adds to the fun.

I never thought I would see the day when Standard Deviation was mentioned on a gaming forum

You are indeed correct though, and none of the results fall more than about 1.5 x the standard deviation from the mean, which does of course mean that they could be covered by a normal distribution.

I was hoping for a more solid set of results one way or the other, either with the results being closer together or further apart. Of course I would also have liked to have taken a bigger sample, but I ran out of tokens.

There is most definitely a placebo effect as well. During the recording process I felt that I was getting significantly better drops whilst under the effects of Lucky, especially with respect to keys and dyes. The results do show marginally better drops in relation to to those items, but at the time it felt considerably more marked.

This was still fun to do though and made farming a little more interesting for a day.