Farm Drop Rates ~ Myths + Facts
ichigo_panty
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#3. AoE Slaughter vs Individual Kill.This almost certainly IS a factor... at least when solo-farming. I have reason to believe that when a lot of enemies die in very rapid succession or simultaneously, that the drops are intended to cycle between the people present to keep it more fair.... but if only one person is there then some drops may not happen at all. There is quite likely a timer in effect on this which resets after a few moments... In other words, killing enemies one at the time should yield better results than AoEing them down.
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In order for that to occur one would need to keep track of it - I'm sure the programmers are quite aware of if they do this or not.|
#1. Populace Overfarming. Myth. Total and utter myth, of that I am certain. Yet it is a totally prevalent one. People complain about certain spots being overfarmed because it is the easiest thing in the world to blame other people because you don't get good drops. I've tested this one a lot... farmed in areas where other people are swarming... and farmed in areas where there is nobody else around at all. In both cases, I've had times where I was getting tons of gold and loot abounding, and others where I got nothing much. Who else was there didn't seem to influence the results at all. Not in the slightest. You can even do the same farm as the bots at Granite Citadel and get just fine drops (provided you don't mind being mistaken for a bot yourself). Need more testing though.
rohara
/agreed
Originally Posted by SotiCoto
especially this: Quote: #3. AoE Slaughter vs Individual Kill.
This almost certainly IS a factor... at least when solo-farming. I have reason to believe that when a lot of enemies die in very rapid succession or simultaneously, that the drops are intended to cycle between the people present to keep it more fair.... but if only one person is there then some drops may not happen at all. There is quite likely a timer in effect on this which resets after a few moments... In other words, killing enemies one at the time should yield better results than AoEing them down. i've noticed this whilst spider farming at rilohn and kappa farming outside gyala. nothing like dropping 20+ kappa and only getting 200g *edit* see attached images. both taken on a spider run at rilohn - one using SV, one using SS. :O wow... ArKaiN
kappa seem specially dickish about dropping golds.
My Green Storage
I also agree with #3 and the AoE versus Individual killing.
UW I noticed this. Killing single groups nets me more then killing 2+ groups at a time (E/Me - So AoE is what I do :P) I also tend to agree with the "Take longer to kill" theory. I've always noticed this about bosses. The longer it takes to kill them (either them healing or you dying), the better the chance of good stuff dropping off of them. Mind you, I don't mean every time you slowly kill the boss he'll drop good stuff, but in general of casual "Let's do something else" type farming (When you're just plain tired of farming one area and feel like mixing it up by killing a boss once or twice for the hell of it), even at "overfarmed" areas. And if you notice, I said "Better Chance" so don't come at me acting like I said He/She WILL drop something good. Anyway, I'm sure this also has to do with regular foes out and about. **And yea, the Jade Brotherhood (Especially the Knights) always drop something good and/or often. The Mages .. not so much. Gold armor drops off the Knights pretty good once every other run, 2 in 3 runs.
manitoba1073
[QUOTE=SotiCoto]
#1. Populace Overfarming. Myth. Total and utter myth, of that I am certain. Yet it is a totally prevalent one. People complain about certain spots being overfarmed because it is the easiest thing in the world to blame other people because you don't get good drops. I've tested this one a lot... farmed in areas where other people are swarming... and farmed in areas where there is nobody else around at all. In both cases, I've had times where I was getting tons of gold and loot abounding, and others where I got nothing much. Who else was there didn't seem to influence the results at all. Not in the slightest. You can even do the same farm as the bots at Granite Citadel and get just fine drops (provided you don't mind being mistaken for a bot yourself).[QUOTE] I aggree. The only way for it to affect you is if you are in a group farming. otherwise seperate instances dont effect others. [QUOTE=SotiCoto] #2. The Anti-Farm Code. ~~ 2a. Zoning Repeatedly. A-Net removed this. You can zone in and out as often as you bloody well please and it won't influence the drop rates. It doesn't matter if you're killing the first one or ten enemies, or going in there three times per minute. This won't change drop-rate. ~~ 2b. Killing Same Enemies Repeatedly. Possible, but it seems unlikely at present. While my Necro's efforts always seem to wane over time, I've had other farming runs that show no diminishing returns over time, even when I'm killing just the one group. ~~ 2c. Getting Rares Repeatedly. If any sort of anti-farm code is in effect, this seems the most likely.... though probably weak at best. With many characters I have had quite a lot of golds initially from farming, and then had them wane to a low level and stay there... and stay there until I haven't had any golds for a while despite killing a lot (for whatever reason). O'course that doesn't stop there being an occasional gold-spike... [QUOTE] Correction here, Anet always said before HM came out there was no anti-farm code and it was an anti-bot code. However I personally havent seen anything remotely close to an anti-farm code myself. [QUOTE=SotiCoto] #3. AoE Slaughter vs Individual Kill. This almost certainly IS a factor... at least when solo-farming. I have reason to believe that when a lot of enemies die in very rapid succession or simultaneously, that the drops are intended to cycle between the people present to keep it more fair.... but if only one person is there then some drops may not happen at all. There is quite likely a timer in effect on this which resets after a few moments... In other words, killing enemies one at the time should yield better results than AoEing them down.[QUOTE] Nope cant say that there is one of these, as ive had several golds drop whether i drop the fast or slow. [QUOTE=SotiCoto] #4. Loot-Scaling + Hench-Flagging. As far as I can tell, how much chalk / blue / grape stuff you get is going to be the same irrespective of whether you're solo-farming, 8-group farming, 8-grouping with the herohench parked out of compass range... Hard-mode OR Normal-mode. You will get one person's worth, and that seems to be it. As for non-scaled stuff... you will get 8 peoples worth if you are the only person in compass range, irrespective of what is flagged outside. Normal-mode and Hard-mode much the same. Alive or dead doesn't matter; only whether they're in range or not. Just remember though... herohench will take their share of any raw cash you find, no matter where they are on the map and whether they're alive or dead.... so only bring them if you absolutely have to. #5. Hero/Hench versus Real Players. The same. Totally the same. If you're in a party of 8, you will get 1/8th the rare drops and the same number of normal drops irrespective of whether the other 7 are meatbags or AI. Any suggestion to the contrary is a myth... Totally. [QUOTE] I'll have to take your word for this. As im not really looking for loot while with henchies/heros or even people. [QUOTE=SotiCoto] #6. Enemy Variety. Can't really be sure on this one, but I don't think it makes any difference at all. I seem to get exactly the same number of golds, other rares, etc from farming runs with only one type of enemy as I do with every species under the sun.... Only thing enemy variety influences is WHICH items you get (and they will tend to have the same probability of a rare from one to the next). [QUOTE] Nope enemy variety has nothing to do with it either. Now the only real way for anyone to test there drops is simple. Farm one spot not for 1-3 hours, but do it for 7 hours or more. Then you will see what i've seen. That the drops come in streaks.
KartMan
ok I must be wrong about the "prediction" part, I don't know that stuff much since graduation :x
however I still do believe that for a given server, the loot is kind of "spread out" amongst the different instances, Gaile may have said otherwise but it would be only considering the code, like there is truly no "if there is X instances of zone Y then droprate for Y = N/X" or something like this, but the behaviour of their RNG may be unwillingly alterring the drop rate. That's at least what I'm convinced of ... cheers
SotiCoto
I've still been getting nothing but chalk drops from the 7 Naga Archers that compose Sstou Swiftscale's group... and I've farmed them quite a lot now.... very slowly.
On the contrary, the hopping vampires and whatnot at the start of Urgoz's Warren are still dropping golds for me on a fairly regular basis... despite most of them being spike-killed (though not all). As it stands.... I'm not sure quite what to think of the whole kill-timer thing. I'm inclined to believe that it may get you MORE drops, but not better ones... And I'm still trying to test an old theory of my own that how close you stand to the enemy when it dies (besides inside / outside compass range) might influence drop-rates.... I believe by default that it is false.... but rather superstitiously I still insist on having the enemy fully within aggro range when it dies. So... aside from people agreeing or occasionally disagreeing.... are there any other new observations?
Koning
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Originally Posted by SotiCoto
I'm inclined to believe that it may get you MORE drops, but not better ones...
I believe every1 was referring to more drops rather than better drops, at least I was. More white/blue/purple drops and more gold coins dorps. As Anet said, rare drops are excluded in loot scaling.
And I still really believe there is some kind of timer involved in the new loot system...
King's Spectre
I agree with OP on #3 even though he didn't agree with me right after HM was released. Ok, you *were* drunk.
 http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10146588 Drop *quality* on the other hand, is strange. I suspect that if you made a new account, got the character up to lvl20 in PvP, and got all your skills with factions unlocks that you would have absolutely phenomenal drops for awhile. Maybe that's why we saw crazy gold drops for the first bit after HM came out. Maybe all our "noob" codes got reset.
deluxe
Alright, my tests prove enough for me.
In the first screenshot, I lowered all foes till they only needed 1 more hit from SF. Then I (fiery)axed all of em to death one by one, resulting in decent drops. In the second screenshot I just smash em all to death at once, resulting in crap drops. This is not just a "one-time" experience i have, i tested this thoroughly. (by the way, the reason the killcount on 1st screenshot is higher is because i killed another mob on the other side to test, they also dropped higher than normal when you kill at once) ArKaiN
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Originally Posted by deluxe
Alright, my tests prove enough for me.
In the first screenshot, I lowered all foes till they only needed 1 more hit from SF. Then I (fiery)axed all of em to death one by one, resulting in decent drops. In the second screenshot I just smash em all to death at once, resulting in crap drops. This is not just a "one-time" experience i have, i tested this thoroughly. (by the way, the reason the killcount on 1st screenshot is higher is because i killed another mob on the other side to test, they also dropped higher than normal when you kill at once) hey, nice build =D
strcpy
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Originally Posted by KartMan
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You may have some form of a pattern if they made such a terrible choice even an undergrad in CS would not do it, but then you only get somewhat regular lows and highs, not some form of drop quality lowering based on how many instances of an area you have going. Even lets assume that it uses that as a seed - it *still* will not dictate that even if they just use a plain "rand" from the languages standard library (and game programmers have quite a few good standard RNG's at their disposal). They would have to have tailor made a RNG that did so, and once more the programmers would be quite aware of this.
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Now try going about your life with that premise.
You'll find that "knowledge" is essentially just consistancy of pattern. It certainly isn't infallible... but it can be reliable, and that is what counts. Guild Wars drop rate variables are difficult to predict additionally... but effectively disproving many of these supposed variables as actually being completely unconnected is considerably easier.
I'm not trying to say that any of these things (except where strictly stated by A-Net) are definitely valid.... but there are some that I can say with substancially high certainty are invalid.
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That's at least what I'm convinced of ...
You may want to go re-read how RNG's work and look at the math a bit. Scaling the quality of loot down from the number of instances, how many critters you killed, how fast you killed them, and any thing consistently non-random is not the RNG's fault - it would have to be specifically coded to do so. A bad RNG would make it such that you would know when your "bad luck" and "good luck" streaks were coming and adjust accordingly - not consistently shift luck up or down. There are three cases - one they are lieing, two they are mistaken, three they are correct and we are seeing patterns that do not exist. Of that, option three is the most likely. Though in the case of how fast one kills things I do not think that Anet has said anything about it specifically so it is still in the "who knows" category and I would that one would be much easier to put into the "bug" category - it isn't necessarily something that would have to be kept track of and *could* very well be caused by something like a seed for the RNG.
lord_shar
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Originally Posted by deluxe
Alright, my tests prove enough for me.
In the first screenshot, I lowered all foes till they only needed 1 more hit from SF. Then I (fiery)axed all of em to death one by one, resulting in decent drops. In the second screenshot I just smash em all to death at once, resulting in crap drops. This is not just a "one-time" experience i have, i tested this thoroughly. (by the way, the reason the killcount on 1st screenshot is higher is because i killed another mob on the other side to test, they also dropped higher than normal when you kill at once) I've also personally confirmed this using mass-AE kills vs. individual kills. In each case, mobs which were mass-slaughtered dropped considerably less, while the opposite held true when they were killed using triggered non-AE effects like VWK, Sliver Armor, etc... Conclusion: ANET rewards serial killing, but not mass-genocide 
taurus999s
Excellent thread. What are some of the better class or builds to kill swiftly one at a time?
Fresko21
Populace overfarming used to be a fact, but it's been changed for some time now. The best example was the Shiroken farming outside of Harvest Temple. I was doing it when it was new, and it was by far the most productive run I had ever done. Averaged at least a gold per run, and 2-3k in gold and merchable items. Once it became the "Flavor of the Month" farm, I never hit 1k in gold or items, and gold drops were rare. That wasnt even due to the old farming code, that would be after a few days of not even going to Harvest Temple when I should have been getting drops, but the Temple was full of solo farmers.
I dont believe there's any overpopulace farming code anymore, but it was real, and very noticeable if you checked the flavor of the month builds. Ive noticed the AoE vs single kill drop rates, but it never really hit until I read this thread. Ill be taking that into much consideration from now on when farming, as you can usually do your runs in the same amount of time, and if you cant, it takes just an extra minute or so. ArKaiN
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Originally Posted by taurus999s
Excellent thread. What are some of the better class or builds to kill swiftly one at a time?
sure, 55 with spoil victor.
SotiCoto
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Originally Posted by King's Spectre
http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/s...php?t=10146588 |
Yeah... I don't remember much about that. I think I totally misread what you were talking about... That might have been after I came back from work having drunk a bottle of wine that time.... ^_^;;
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Drop *quality* on the other hand, is strange. I suspect that if you made a new account, got the character up to lvl20 in PvP, and got all your skills with factions unlocks that you would have absolutely phenomenal drops for awhile. Maybe that's why we saw crazy gold drops for the first bit after HM came out. Maybe all our "noob" codes got reset.
There is SOMETHING going on with drop quality... of that I'm sure.... but precisely what it is I can't tell. It seems far too complex for me to readily tell on the spot.... I mean I would have thought it something simpler, but having done a lot of Urgoz's Warren hopping vampire farming lately I was surprised to find that my first character... an Assassin who has been everywhere and done everything for the most part.... is still rolling in golds.
Eli Rela
Ok, tested #3 yesterday, and I can completely confirm that it is true.
Test setup: Rhilon Refuge Zelnehlun farm SV - each(!) spider dropped something (whites, purples, gold item,webs, gold) SS - got one drop of gold (100g) and one web Tested - 5 times in a row, result is always same, with small variations in drop quality, but not much in quantity (+/- 1-2 items) Very nice summary, Ringsgold
SotiCoto
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Originally Posted by Eli Rela
Ok, tested #3 yesterday, and I can completely confirm that it is true.
Test setup: Rhilon Refuge Zelnehlun farm SV - each(!) spider dropped something (whites, purples, gold item,webs, gold) SS - got one drop of gold (100g) and one web Tested - 5 times in a row, result is always same, with small variations in drop quality, but not much in quantity (+/- 1-2 items) Very nice summary, Ringsgold Thanks.... but can anyone now test this theory in places other than that spider farm?! =P If anyone has any way of rapidly killing off Sstou Swiftscale and his Naga Archer hoarde in one fell swoop (from behind the rock-face), I'd like to hear it. I'm considering whether I could take them out with more AoE effects, since SS alone takes too long to kill them all. So far, I haven't had a single gold from any of them. Two blue scrolls from Sstou himself is the best I've had.... and aside from that, I've been getting TONS of chalks.... mostly because it takes so long to kill them off.
A Leprechaun
i never twigged it at the time and have no screenshots on the subject but when i was mucking about killing HM minos at ice tooth, I noticed that if i killed them with Me/Mo IW the drops were many many times better then if i SS'ed them.
So when yoiu emntioned it, it reminded me of that, so yeah i wont be mass killing for a while. ~A Leprechaun~
Eli Rela
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Originally Posted by SotiCoto
Thanks.... but can anyone now test this theory in places other than that spider farm?! =P ...
Ok, here is another test:
Test setup: Bergen Hot Springs HM, 2 groups of undead rangers right outside. One is on the small hill in front, another that was tested is behind the house to the left. I was 55 SS/SV Necro, standing under the cliff/hiding behind the wall out of 10 runs: SV: each(!) ranger dropped something (90% Decayed Orr Emblem, 5% Bones,5% gold coins) SS: got a 1(one) drop of coins on each group, one Decayed Orr Armor (thats it!) also got no gold/purple items at all in any test cases. I think we could stop testing point#3, it has been proven positive.
netniwk
with this info in mind,where would be an effective place to farm? Old farming builds foccused on lots of mobs in one spot,now we can basicly farm anywhere without enchantment removal.
My Green Storage
You know, I think I had dumb luck today.
It's 11:35am, I just did a colossal farm for the hell of it. Req 11 Colossal drops, first and only run (so far :P) Earlier, about 6 hours ago I did runs and I had 1 run of 3 golds and I forget, either the run before or the run after, I got 1 gold. Including a Req 11 Tattooed. I Dead Sword farmed 4 times. I had 2 of em drop for me in those 4 runs .. unfortunately one of them wasn't maxed. That always makes me laugh. Today was one of my most gold (item) producing days in about a week (In such a few farms). Mind you I only did dead swords 3-5 times. Colossal/Tattooed runs around 8 times and ele sword runs (i.e. Monoliths) 2-3 times and Urgoz about 15 times, so I didn't truly overfarm today. I did notice when I went back into astralarium after the run when the colossal dropped, I saw no other Mo/D's there .. maybe all will drop for me :P ... Oh yea, over populated/farmed areas don't matter ... :PPP kumarshah
So, ANet is punishing me for killing more enemies at the same time?
shadows of hob
The drops are still bad/nothing if you kill a group of enemies with a delay of 1 second between each enemie. Tried this with the spiders and the kappa a few times. But if I lower their health to 1 or something and you wait 5-10 seconds, then they seem to drop nearly everytime.
 So, this means? ArKaiN
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Originally Posted by kumarshah
So, ANet is punishing me for killing more enemies at the same time?
No. Yes. Well, sorta.
Here's the thing: If all areas you farmed dropped golds at the same rate, what would stop people from aggroing in areas where stuff was lvl 2 or 3 and just killing them all for inscriptions/mods/wisdom title? Makes sense that killing mobs wields less golds. I'm really not sure it should apply for lvl20+ stuff, but hey, they hate farming.
manitoba1073
Ive said it before its only coincidence that your drops are different from mass killing or single killing. And you cant just do 20-100 runs and say thats a good theory. I know some wont believe me, but do the same run for 7 hours straight by fast kills then 7 hours of slow killing, and you will what im talking about.
Now if you want more fun on theories try doing the runs and waiting for 1-2 mins before starting them.
More Outrage
I don`t think they hate farmers. I think the key word is "casual".
Seems to me they they wanted to help the casual famer and slow down the bots. Let`s face it bots don`t play the game they just repeatedly follow the same actions, whereas a player who likes to farm will, when drops get bad, go and do something else untill bored. So there is the key! When your drops look bad go play the game, help someone out, try that frustrating mission out again, try master a mission or PUG for a laugh then go back and farm till it looks bad again. Not too sure I agree with the kill slowly and not at the same time thing but I`ll keep watching as I can see where this is coming from. fog_of_redoubt
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Originally Posted by KartMan
as I said, the "instances" are just data, whatever its form, to put it bluntly an array, containing various informations (coded or not, example int value 13 for dead bow). Each array corresponds to an instance, which are unrelated amongst themselves, but the functions that "uses"/"works" those arrays are the same for all those data. so to speak if you have a function that spawns the monsters on a map, it may call another function that determines (probably using a random number generator) the drop and quality the given monster has. It is exactly here where I think the skew is. if you now consider the Guild War server you're as a whole (and not only in your own instance), the server may host 1000, 10000 instances or even more, so possibly hundreds or thousands of call to the same function in a very short time window. I don't think we will ever see this server part code but that's at least how I guess it could be like. |
I am a few days late in this post, but wanted to add my .02
).Now in accordance to the "overfarmed" theory,when the majority of players is atm in NF ,then i should be getting tons of golds + i'm killing one at a time.I have yet to see a gold drop for me in there,whilst when i do the DS farm ,and use splinter barrage build(with it the run takes about 5-7 mins) and kill 1 mob simultaniously, i get between 6-8 gold drops.
) there will be a major crash of the ingame economy,not that there currently isn't but i consider it to be just a period of the game's "evolution" so to speak...
In any case... do it another 20 times and see if the pattern is the same.
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Now try going about your life with that premise.
You'll find that "knowledge" is essentially just consistancy of pattern. It certainly isn't infallible... but it can be reliable, and that is what counts. Guild Wars drop rate variables are difficult to predict additionally... but effectively disproving many of these supposed variables as actually being completely unconnected is considerably easier.
I'm not trying to say that any of these things (except where strictly stated by A-Net) are definitely valid.... but there are some that I can say with substancially high certainty are invalid.
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Originally Posted by WildmouseX
with the myth of your kill rate, i haven't seen any data that shows killing one by one is better then killing the whole group at a time... the best effort was the graph up at the first page, but that only compares a total of 8 runs, which isn't enough data to make any decissions off of.
most of the myths about farming come from people not understanding the concept of the law of averages.... the more times you do something, the more times each posible outcome will play out. everytime you flip a coin, you have a 50/50 chance of it landing on heads... but if you flip it only 8 times and it comes up tails 6 times - you have no reason to then think you have 80% chance of tails... and likewise, if you then walk into another room and flip it 8 times again and get all heads, you can't all of a sudden think that fliping it in that room will always net heads. even if it is true that killing them 1 at a time is netting you more drops - you then have to test the time it takes to drop the mob, vs droping them 1 at a time.. i'm well versed in that spider farm, killing the mob with SS is about a three min. job when they don't co-operate with you --i can only imagine that killing them one at a time is much more costly in time. - if you're doing 5 times as many runs killing the mob, then you do killing them one at a time then the drops will defenetly add up to being more when killing en-mass. the number one rule of statistics "corolation does not denote causeality". I've been spirit farming the suicide vamps in urgoz's warren over the last week, and paying particular attention to my drops... i leave with all but one row open in inv of just my backpack. usualy it takes an hour to fill it up twice, and it typicly nets between 3 to 5 gold drops... there have been times when i went in and got gold drops right away, and then they'd dry up untill it was time to merch... and stay dry untill i only had 3 or 4 slots left, and then they'd all drop in 1 run. and other times where one drops every 5 runs. and there have been times when i went over an hour without gold drops, then gotten 12 three runs apart. since this spot has been very hot recently, it has been packed with people doing the run, and drops have remained unaffected. this means i average 8 golds an hour. i've done 10 hours of farming there over the week, and have id'd 84 golds since i started. just like anything else in the universe that is governed by the law of averages, there are always going to be peeks and valleys to the drops your getting - it is not a conspiricey by the devs to ruin your fun! Correlation might not denote causality... but if the null hypothesis is always assumed true then effectively we know nothing... and are left in pure chaos. Sometimes one needs to make an arbitrary guess.... select a supposed causality and run with it in order to stand a chance of functioning. And let us not forget that generally.... in practice.... the more times a particular task is repeated.... the more the results will tend toward the average. This is never perfect... but it can be reliable enough to work with. Oh.... AND.... didn't we already mention that the whole AoE vs Individual Kill only seems to influence scaled loot? That does seem to be what the trends point to. Gold drops aren't influenced by it... so essentially if you're farming golds you might as well nuke the groups if it will get the whole job done faster.
manitoba1073
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Originally Posted by deluxe
@anyone denying that mass killing results in lesser drops:
It's proven, if you dont believe it, go ahead and dont believe it. I'm not gonna post huge statistics about my drops just to prove to some people who just wont believe it. I farm a lot (around 2mil since hm), and i'm 100% sure of it. apprently you havent farmed enough then. its all random |