One Last - NO: THE Research Thread - I need your Help!

Alright - as the site is about to shut down and I had a "little" project going on that I´d like to share with you all: The Research Thread for drops.
So I was wondering which items would drop from what source. Simply said. After I figured the items unid value to be of importance concerning this question I tracked the uni values for any item I got as drop - for few years (ye farming was far less effective due to this obsession...)
So for now my results very briefly (will add details when I got time - just want you to notice already and help on open questions):

1. mobs of same level always drop items in same unid value range
2. same as previous accounts to the amount of goldcoins dropped
3. normal mobs do drop 1 item or goldcoins [I´d like to call this 1 drop], Bosses can drop more than one drop (observed up to 3 drops, but could definitely be more) - this means if a boss drops 3 drops and all are cash it bulks up and yields those exceptionally high gold drops
4. the unid value of an item determines it´s stats (no Isomorphy here, just a correlation): the damage/armor/energy/HSR on the one hand, the req on the other hand
5. white and blue items are considered same by those mechanics
6. purple and gold drops are considered same by those mechanics - except STAVES! - purples here are different from golds, whereas the golds are treated like other gold/purple items
7. req and dmg of item are calculated independently from oneanother but depending on the unid value
8. identifying an item does the following: if the unid value is x there will be any number between 0 and x added to get a raw ident value of y simultaineously that raw value is multiplied by a rarity factor, which is 1 for blue/white items, 2 for purples and 4 for goldies
9. chests do have a level and are treated exactly as mobs except they will only drop the purple/gold items in their range (and tomes in HM - but who cares?)
10. anything lvl 24 and above is just the same, highest unid value can only be obtained from lvl 22 or 23 (it is 60g and can generate unique white staves at 18%HSR - I got one 60g item drop in 4 years of excessively farming lvl 22-23 Gargoyles plus 2 59g items, one from gargoyle, one from chest near them)
11. Locked chest =/= locked chest: asc/shing/istan are lvl 22 whereas all others are lvl 24

I hope these are the most important results for now. I guess some were known already, some only to those who took the effort themselves, some seem very new.
So one of THE most interesting questions that came up were: What about those max q8 drops: where do I most likely get them? considering this aspect I´d need your help now in order to find out what happened with the nerf - the biggest dropchanging updates. By the above formula we could tell a range for the unid value of an item (e.g. a 228g bow has a raw id value of 57g which yields possible unid values of 29g to 56g) Now assuming we observe a high enough number of identified items we´d assume that the highest identvalue of any max q8 bow was generated by the random summand in the identifying equation was max, which would be x-1, such that the raw ident value of said bow must be x+x-1 which let´s us easily calculate x. So let´s say we see we look at cosyfieps mursaat bow at 532g. It yields raw ident value of 133g which results in x=67g. So we know that q8 could be dropped at up to 67g (at least) Same way we could assume the lowest value max q8 bow was generated with raw ident value of x+1 such that a q8 max gold bow of 136g would yield a lower limit of x=33g to q8 max bows. So now we´d know max q8 bows dropped in the range of 33-67g.
However that´d be too simple In proph there were unlocked chests - which presumably worked different on unid values, just like nf treasures - at least maybe - so we need to exclude ANY Proph items. Furthermore I said that the unid value determines the range of the req. So across all skins there will be the same upper limit for a certain req. The lower limit will be specific to the skin however. So an example to make my point clear again: at the moment I know q8 purple/gold items can drop at up to 35g unid value, and foci with 12e can drop at 32-57g - this yields an intersecting set at 32-35g which means that if we farmed any mobs that drop items in this unid value range we´d have a chance to get a max q8 gold focus as desired. For axes I didn´t find any max dmg gold/purple one at 35g or lower unid which explains why there are no max q8 axes dropping at the moment.

So now we are at the point where I nee your help:
To give you rough ideas on what is expected: anything below 164g (x=40g for bottom limit) ident value at max damage is considered low, anything above 276g (x=35g for top limit) ident value at q7 is considered high, anything above 396g (x=50g for top limit) ident value at q8 is considered high.



This is my quest for now before gwguru shuts down - thanks a lot at this point for a great community throughout all the years!

Especially I´d like to thank certain ppl at this point who already helped me a lot at my researches: first I guess LicensedLuny even tho inactive: it´s where I got inspiration data and discussions and that other research thread I´m moderating atm, trademeimfamous for data on unlocked chests in SF, dreaming in digital for data on some low req drops, ofcourse our Guild Lord Pleikki for countless data on the strange purple staves and the desired q8 drops and I guess Yawgmoth for the idea to actually care for unid values, which was key here. Also thanks to all others, who I forgot to mention (I´m sure I did... - my brain compares to that of a gold fish on those tasks).
Also I´m very interested in GhostKairi to post some of his findings as he tackled the problem of q8 drops in a different way: we´ve been talking ingame quite some already and could relate our results in means that my data proves his findings and vice versa.

So for you sneaky guys who just want the q8 drops: quick and dirty thread edition:


What have I done?
I have been farming many levels and gathered ideas for other spots to farm other areas, but the most extensely farmed were the ones marked with * If you have ideas on where to fill the gaps (esp. lvl 9, 13, 14) or better alternatives to the locations I proposed: we need spots where large groups of just one level of mobs is present and can be balled - different level mobs in between make goldcoin drops research impossible - as happened to me at Gargoyles in Diessa Lowlands, which are lvl 22 and 23 mixed (drops are possible to track back due to the names written in chat)
1 ???
2 ???
3 (many in Old Ascalon)
4 (many in Eastern Frontier)
5 ???
6 (Charr in Fort Ranik)
7 (Gargoyles in Diessa Lowlands)
8 (Maguuma in Deldrimor Bowl)
9 ???
10 (Minotaur in Anvil Rock)
11* (Ettins in Griffons Mouth)
12 (Tengu in Jaya Bluffs)
13 ???
14 (Mergoyle in Scoundrel`s Rise)
15* (Raptor Nestlings in Riven Earth, Snowmen in Secret Lair of Snowmen)
16 (Maguuma in Silverwood, Moss Scarab in Reed Bog)
17 (Thorn Stalker in Blood Stone Swamp Mission, Bog Scale Blighter in Black Curtain and others)
18* (Vermin in Xaquang Skyway)
19 (Minotaur in Black Curtain - but their drops happened rarely...)
20* (Canthan Chest, Minotaur in Elona Reach - but their drops happened rarely...)
21 (Sand Drake in Crystal Desert)
22* (Hydra in Crystal Desert, Resurrect Gargoyle in Diessa Lowlands HM, locked chests in starter areas)
23* (Flash and Shatter Gargoyles in Diessa Lowlands HM)
24* (locked chest in later regions)

So I will post my data on here as soon as possible: which level mob drops which range of unid values, which unid values yield which stats, which reqs are possible at which values, which chests are which level, how do nf treasures work, how do SF unlocked chests work... we´ll see if I find the time in time

Observations Table1: req versus value
listed in brackets are guesses about which might drop by trying to kind of extrapolate to a function with always positive or always negative second derivate (means the differences between values follow by oneanother will always get bigger or stay the same)

req		0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13
white/blue	low	1	9	9	9	9	9	10	13	18	23	30	40	53	-
	high	11	11	16	21	26	37	52	50(55)	56(60)	58(60)	59(60)	58(60)	60	-
purple/gold	low	5	6	6	6	6	6	7	10(9)	12	15	21	27	35	46
	high	6	8	12	16	20	24	28	35	59(60)	57(60)	58(60)	58(60)	58(60)
purple staves	low	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba
	high	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba

Observations Table2: value versus level
listed in brackets are guesses about which might drop by trying to kind of extrapolate to a function with always positive or always negative second derivate (means the differences between values follow by oneanother will always get bigger or stay the same)

lvl		0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24+
unid	low	1	1	2	2	3	4	4	5	6	8(7)	8	10(9)	12(11)	13	16(15)	17	20(19)	22	25	28	32	36	40	45	50
	high	3	4	5	5	6	8	9	11	12	12(14)	16	18	21	24	26(27)	30	32(33)	37	42	47	52	58	60	58	57
goldcoins	low	2	2	3	4	6	7	9	11	13	15	17	20	23	27	30	35	40	44	50	56	63	71	80	90	100
	high	6	7	9	11	13	15	18	19	25	27	32	37	42	47	51	59	61	76	87	96	106	111	112	117	114

Observations Table3: req versus level
listed in brackets are the predictions that can be done by the previous two tables. listed in brackets inside brackets are values predicted by extrapolating the values in above tables roughly to a curve indicating the dependency from one parameter to the other as a function with one curvature (means the function is just one giant turn assuming you´d sit in a car driving along the function)

lvl		0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20	21	22	23	24+
white/blue	low	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	0	2	3(2)	3(2)	3	5(3)	4	4	5	5	6(5)	6	6	8
	high	0	0	0	0	0	0	0(5)	0(6)	6((7))	-(6(7))	7	7(8)	8	8(9)	8(9)	9(10)	9(10)	10	10(11)	11	11((12))	11(12)	12	12	12
purple/gold	low	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	6(0)	2(0)	-(0)	4(0)	5(3)	3	4	-(4)	5	10(5)	5(6)	7	7	8	9	9	9	9
	high	-	-	-	-	-	-	-	6(7)	7(8)	-(8)	7(9)	8(9)	9(10)	8(10)	-(10(11))	11	10(11)	11(12)	12	12(13)	13	12(13)	13	13	13
purple staves	low	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba
	high	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba	tba

Observation Table4: value for chests (and assumed droplevel)
in brackets listed are limits that yet have to be confirmed for all chests in said category or are just assumed as taken from the value versus level table. The chests seem to work exactly as monsters considering drops, except that the rarity range is limited (blue white for hidden stash e.g. and purple gold for most others). I did several runs of SF nm and HM logging all drops with some friend so we can be sure there is no difference considering drops from keyless chests in there depending on NM or HM. The higher limits are extraordinarily rare - in order to get them I did up to 500 runs on some chests - still on lvl 20 and 22 chests the limits are insanely rare - just as on mobs. I guess there is statistically less than 1 54g item from lvl 20 source amongst 500 drops from said source (at least I did thousands of canthan chest runs and only got one 54g item - it is so rare that I doubted at some points the 54g really dropped)

Chest unid values ->	min	max	lvl
Wreckage, Wrecked Catapult	-	-	-
hidden Stash	1	6	?
Ascalonian, Shing Jea, Istani, unlocked in "The Deserters"	5	11	7
Steel	10	18	11
Kryta	15	26	14
Maguuma	22	36	17
Elona, Cantha, Kournan, Sorrows Furnace first keyless (NM and HM alike)	32	53(54)	20
locked Chest Ascalon/Shing Jea/Istan HM, Sorrows Furnace second keyless (NM and HM alike)	40	58(60)	22
all others	50	57	24

all others = Shiverpeak, Darkstone, Miner`s, Phantom, Kurzick, Luxon, Forbidden, Deep Jade, Stoneroot, Vaabi, Ancient Elonian, Margonite, Demonic, Phantom, Obsidian, Sorrows Furnace third keyless (NM and HM alike), all unlocked chests NOT in Ascalon/Shing Jea/Istan, ALL Dungeon End Chests, FoW and UW Endchests
No clue on following: HoH chest (but seeing what drops there I tell you it´s lvl 24), keyless chests in Dreadnought´s Drift and Ice Floe (were nerfed Oct 2006)


If anything said here can´t be understood by anyone: feel free to ask! And now let´s show gwguru community is the best! Also if you have any important information or flaws in my argumentations: post them - IMMEDIATELY! I´m just human and do mistakes... and forget things - maybe there was a strange source of drop in factions as well as there was unlocked chest in Proph...? Let me know! Let us know!

Re. al my q7s are rather low ones so dont see point posting Highest values for those

here my lowest q7s, ill search highests and highest/lowest for q8s as soon as i can

Here Highest/lowest q8 axe sword hammer of mine



Here also lowest staff and highest staff of mine



Highest/lowest dags



Lowest bow of mine:

I think this is my lowest r8 and lowest max



also here is raw data from non-max canthan golds if you ever want it for anything

hope this helps....
(will check on other toons if I find stuff with lower/higher gold value)

Here still wands: i dont have many q8 wands so didnt wanna post em before cus felt theyre meaninless but since noneone else added anysofar heres mine for atleas tsome data

Highest:


Lowest:


Also here my highest value q7



edit@ aight so there items arent mine so sorry to everyone for taking your images! But i search these Highests and lowests from guru posts

Here High staff:


Here Low staff:


Lowest q7 axe:


Lowest q8 bow


Highest q8 wand


Lowest q8 wand


High axe:


High sword:


LOw daggers:


High shield:


Low q7 hammer:

I believe cosy posted her q8 gold Murrsaat bow in collectors recently. If I remember the gold value it was like 532g...

Alright thanks so much for all help so far!

here the assembly of the current records: (in red frame highest for q7 and q8, others are lowest for each skin)

So I did some data digging and found some interesting results regarding chests.

Unlocked Chests in Sorrows Furnace Location 1 (First chest) are level 150.
Miners Chests in Sorrows Furnace Location 1 are level 161.

Unlocked Chests in Sorrows Furnace Location 3 (Final Chest) are level 141.
Miners Chests in Sorrows Furnace Location 3 are Level 97.

I actually pulled a Req8 Storm Artifact (Max dmg) straight from the first chest.

After opening an Unlocked Chest its level changes to 0. This is not true with normal chests that require a key.

Canthan Chest in Pongmei Valley is level 247 around Rot Wallow. They are level 24.

Canthan Chest in Pongmei Valley is level 2 around Plagueborn. They are level 20 with I believe a level 26 boss.

From this data that I gathered, I am under the impression that Chests have no direct affect on drops they provide. There level (And other data) seems very erratic and has no obvious correlation to one another. This leads me to believe that it is solely based on the mobs around them (And possibly map information) that leads to what gets generated at drop.

Interestingly the first chest in Sorrows Furnace dropped weapons which had very low unid values compared to the other chests.

First chest:

Req8 Storm Artifact +12 - 33g
Req10 FDS 15-22 - 38g

Third and Second Chest both had an armor and a Focus drop, and where all way above a 50(!!)g unid value.

For some reason the first chest produced much lower unid values then the other 2, even though it was spawned with similar enemies. Note that purple unid values are natively lower then golds, hence why it would make sense that a req8 Crystalline is still a possible drop, and probably more likely then a normal req8 gold given the proper amount of time is invested into farming one.

TL;DR - My investigation into the Sorrows Furnace chests has led me to believe that Chests have no direct effect on what they can drop, and it is how they are generated (On a per mob basis - 1 chest is tied to 1 mob) which leads to different reqs/unid values.

For example:

A chest attributed to lvl24 Rot Wallows (Even though it is a low level chest) has no chance of producing a req8 GOLD (Because of purples items naturally lower unid values they can still happen, which we all see frequently) where as a chest attributed to level 20 (Or 22, I dont remember) Stone Scale Kirin would be possible to drop req8's in Gold form because of the lower levels producing specific unid values.

Just something I was interested in writing up as I worked on it. Of course I did a very very very small amount of trials, however I will continue to monitor and investigate what I have said in this post.

Let me know what you think about my idea surrounding chests.

One final point. All of this backs up the idea of Mob level/unid amount being attributed to what can and will drop. Which is why it would be possible to get a req8 from HM mobs as long as the level is low enough.

As such here is my fabled Tattooed Scimitar that I had drop from level 20 mobs in Moddok Crevice in HM.



Also the storm artifact is really cute xD



EDIT:

Ikki showed me a picture of a q8 gold dropping from Rot Wallow chest. I literally have no idea on how this is all working, because chests DO NOT HAVE A LEVEL. There must be some other factor into how this is all worked out, maybe to do with the cost of the key/chest and unid values.

agreed.

I also have the feeling they use a very similar anti farm coding. If I binge run(12+ hours at about 45-70 chests per hour) one specific path with a really high rate of chest spawns my gold/purple rate usually drops to ~20/80... and that's with HM locked chests. Tomes seem to be the same.

that's just my experience though

EDIT: didn't see the level part, that's "map information" ie you can get r8 from any map with specific valued keys(I forget the value range) but the skins are dependant on mobs.

here low max dmg canthan wand, fresh from pongmei

you guys been a lot of help already! So for the summary:
It seems as if q8 back in the day dropped like q9 these days, same accounts to old q7 for todays q8s - this may sound crazy as there have never been any q8 axes, hammers, wands and staves seen, but my research leads me to this very conclusion - the chances tho are extraordinary: I only did 1000 runs on lvl 20 chests so far and had no q8 item at 35g unid, seeing one wand max dmg at 11-22DMG at 35g unid was major wakeup call for me, but it also just happened once in more than 20000 logged drops - more than 1000 of them being wands. so for a wand to be max and q8 I see a chance which can be considered zero, same accounts for staves where there has been no max dmg one in all those drops, same as for axes. Still on all the other weps nothing changed for the minimum unid value for max dmg, so the conclusion that nothing changed on the lower limits for the max dmg is very plausible (to me).
More results: in 1000 Kournan chests I had ~70 items at 35g value which is the unid value happening most often there. So if you want to hunt for the maybe slimmest chance drop of max q8 axe,staff,sword,wand,hammer the lvl 20 chests is THE option. Seeing how many q8 gold/purple insc swords are around atm and how many q7 swords were around gives you an impression of how underfarmed the appropriate level mobs are these days - now think that there was 1 max dmg q7 wand and 2-3 max dmg q7 staves back in the day and you have an impression of how rare one of these would be to drop as q8 then.
So what do I conclude? Either my theory is wrong or just nobody has been lucky enough.

I still need your help on the lower limits for daggers, wands and hammers - as the values we got so far would mean there couldn´t have been any q7s of those (which is true for daggers, but not for the other two)
For the statistics part - I will soon post my data for the 1000 chests, yet this is by far not what it´d take to prove anything, just to give a hint - at university we get told for good statistics you´d need 100k samples - so seeing it took me more than a month for those 1000 - I´ll get back to you after 10 years

I highly doubt that q8 inscr max axe/staff/wand/hammer ever existed or will drop... but:

I'll pay 1500e to anyone who can show me a q8 max inscr staff/wand/axe/hammer (staff needs to be 10nrg hsr20% besides max dmg too).

this is 100% impossible - both Ene and HSR also relate to unid value going pretty straight down, so best option that´d be possible there is I think 18/9
And I also doubt any of the mentioned will drop q8 insc - but I think it is a technical possibility at least^^

*EDIT: alright - so far 18%: 29-37g, 19%: 38-48g, 20% 49-58g
9e: 21-31, 10e: 32-58g
so the best you´ll get as q8 if at all - 11-22 18/10 q8 - but gl on that

mhhh if pleikki, system, yoji and some other chestrunning obsessed people collected all their data, you'd have 100k samples in no time

I´m doing this manually and it takes ages - can´t force anyone to do similar efforts - it takes more time logging all the drops into tables than it takes chesting - maybe I should program some text-recognition for gw and log them all that way - but meh kinda too lazy to think into it that deeply^^
and ikki already supplying a lot of data as well as other guildies and friends - those only can be used for the possibility section tho, as for the statistics part they´d have to tell me none or everything or it would be meaningless - and I really don´t want to drag them into that slow chesting of mine^^