Shard drop affected by ToT

Does the addition to ToT drops affect Shard drops? I did a spider run today and didnt get a single Shard. That has never happened before so i was wondering ToT is affecting in or its just a really bad run.

You were just unlucky. It happens. ToT bags shouldn't affect shard drops, no.

Event drops never decrease the drop rate of other items, they drop extra.

Yes, the only drop in the entire game that is affected by the ToT bags are the shards that drop from the spiders in FoW.

In the many hundreds(if not in the thousands) of FoW and UW runs I've done the drop rate for shards and ecto always fell away when special events were on. Same went for green drops elsewhere.

To the point where I wouldn't bother going when an event was on.

Unless an item in the loot table is replaced by a ToT bag or the such like then the chances of getting a shard or ecto have to be reduced as quite simply there is more loot items to choose from.

Thank you. LMFAO. Reading this made my day.

To the OP, event drops are EXTRA. You will always get the same amount of drops (normal items, gold, etc) PLUS event drops.

This is because many retired players come back to game, farm, SC, play.
And the active players start farming massively.

Well this is blatantly false. Event drops are in addition to the normal drop tables, i.e. you can get an event item such as a ToT bag in addition to the standard drops of shards, ectos are whatever. Event item loot tables do not replace or "get injected" into the standard drop tables.

I've done entire FoW and UW runs in which clearing the entire area netted me personally zero shards and ectos respectively, and sometimes I've gotten several or more per run.

Unless you're doing THOUSANDS of runs through an area, you cannot say with certainty that drops are affected, as anyone with even a basic knowledge of statistics would be able to tell you. Your personal experience is an outlier in the face of a huge player base that can confirm the statistical drop rates.

tl;dr version: low/no drop runs happen. Deal with it and stop coming up with conspiracy theories to explain away your bad luck and whining.

[edit] as for other players coming back somehow affecting drop rates, this is also false. There is not some "loot pool" that all players pull from that when it gets low, drops dry up. All drops occur in instanced zones which are unique to each player, so one player's drops do not affect another's unless they're in the same instance together.

Do you have proof for that? I'm happy to hear arguments.

Can you get two drops from a mob when an event is on? No. So..
Normal event loot
White cesta
White shadow staff
Shard
Some cash.
Etc
Etc
Etc

The game has to choose one of those items to drop correct?


Normal event loot
White cesta
White shadow staff
Shard
Some cash
Etc
Etc
Etc
ToT bag

The game still has to pick one of those to drop and since you cannot get TWO drops the chances have to be reduced. It doesn't go down the drop list and think oh let's add an extra drop so they get two drops, so the chances *have* to be reduced.

As I said I me and my guildies did enough trips to the UW/Fow over these last six years for our observations on the drop rate to stand up to scrutiny over a single persons view. Yes it's observation based, but there was enough science behind it to make it more than just a random speculation.

Also, the drop system is not random(nothing in a computer system truly is). It has defined rules and algorithms

It rewards certain behaviour and 'punishes' others with loot scaling and anti farm code.

So long as you know the principles of how the system works ,There has always been certain things you as a player can do to increase your chances according to mine and my guilds many thousands of runs trying to farm ecto/shards during events is one not of them.

Ofc it's peoples choice what to believe is correct, we'll never get to see the source code so if it's fun for you keep farming there durings events

YES, you can. When an special items drop, they do not displace the normal drops. They drop in addition to normal drops. And it happens very often that an enemy (non-bosses, too) will drop a special item along with normal drop. During events that have multiple special drops (such as Easter), there's the possibility that you can get more than one special drop (i.e. 1 chocolate bunny + 1 golden egg) from a kill. I've experienced this myself many times over the years.

My mistake then, I've never got a double drop unless it was later shown to be a bug (e.g when killing henchies made them drop gold)

Thanks for the info guys, and it seems that both side of the fence make a good argument.. so good in fact that I still dont know if it was just really bad luck or ToT LOl. Either way I appreciate the feedback.

Please dont bite my head off for the following question but those that said ToT does not affect the drop rate, have you been doing Shard or Ecto farming while the event is on? Solo farming that is and not SC.

I always went down with people to avoid loot scaling and farming flags. I dont do speec clears as the current meta is very mesmer unfriendly


You're looking in the wrong places, SC meta is mesmer heavy in fact.

Calista? Why edit my post to give your personal comment?

I'm aware DoA is a mesmer needed area, but not once have I seen anyone wanting a team for SC for FoW or UW. Which is the subject of this post.

Sure lots of builds use /me, but I spend a fair amount of time in ToA and not once have I seen lfg mesmer or something similar. Now granted I may not speak speed clear but I do look at the wiki(like anyone else does these days) so I do see what people are running.

Besides, I have no desire to join in the complete idiocy of 'show stones' or crap like that so i'll admit maybe my heart is'nt really in it.

Mesway for FoW is the meta for speed clears. Same with DoA. I'm not sure on UW. They aren't nearly as pug friendly, however, as the standard groups (which is why glaiveway is still ran in the DoA). I understand the rest, though.

That said, ToT bags are just not part of the normal loot tables. Since they aren't part of it, they won't affect it. Simple as that. As far as anti-farming code goes, however, there's a ton of information we don't know about it.

Been solo'ing UW using my mobstoppers from last years event b4 the quests arrive tomorrow...any ways, no change in normal drops from UW for me. Ectos are still plentiful ^^

Although logic indicates that regular drops aren't affected by event drops, and because I've seen ToT Bags drop along with another items/gold from numerous foes, there's still a part of me that wonders.... This past week, I did some UW runs with one character to fill up my remaining 75 mobstoppers. I did half before Thursday, the other half over the weekend. I'm usually pretty consistent seeing 3 ectos per Labyrinth/Forgotten Vale run. After Thursday, that dropped to 2 or less. I never saw 3 per run. But I can't point at it with certainty because the number of runs to statistically average just weren't there.

Again, logic dictates that this is true. And from a programming perspective I can't figure how they could even code otherwise, but I have a superstition that somehow the more people farming something, the worse the drops. It's why I've given up farming Nick items on Mondays.

Very interesting, thanks for the input.

Because there was no need for an actual post to point that out. You're basing class popularity on what you first see,which is bad - reasonable pugs running manlyway FoW and maybe sub conset UW if they're extremely lucky.

Peel back the pug skin and what you find is mesmers are core spikers in FoW SC, Can be as effective as the SS variant in the UW vale team,and comprise pretty much all of the damage spikes in DoA outside of glaive/frostway lolpugs. They are also commonly used in Urgoz SC.

Very few of these teams will be advertising in ToA...

Yes you can, and you do. Killed some Vaettirs the other day for example. 1 little guy decided not to die with the rest but when he died he dropped 1 glacial stone AND 1 ToT-bag.

Event drops are extra and does not share drop mechanism with normal loot.