Drops in Explorabe and Missions

I was referred to the forums by Guild Wars Support, they suggested I post my question here to see if others are experiencing the same thing.

I have found since the last few updates that when you are in either explorable or missions with just Henchman, the number of item drops has decreased a lot as well as the gold drops and amount. I have also found that when chests or wreckage is encountered often nothing at all drops. I would like to know if anyone else has experienced this.

I myself have gone thru entire areas clearing out creatures and in all that is cleared out I get maybe 3-4 common item drops no uncommon or rare and only about 6-8 gold drops. I have found this to be the same in most of the missions that I have been able to complete with just henchman as well. Thanks for any replies.

Malcus

Keep in ming henchies do get a share of gold and drops...this includes chests and wreckages...when you open a chest and have henchies in grp and you dont see anything drop from chest...its because the henchies got it. If you really want to test this get a group of friends to help you go through a zone and keep track of everything that drops...then redo the zone with nothing but henchies and you will see the difference. But yes they have used the nerf bat on several mobs drop potentials too

Yes, when using henchies only I too have cleared maps with no drops, only gold, and I also have hit wreckage to find nothing. This when I use any henchies, I went out last night with a hench healer and myself only and found nothing, tried again by myself and had a blue and a purple drop right ouside fort Ranik, at level 10.

Same here, but as Sira says, the henchies take equal part of the booty. 5 henchies mean you only get 20% of the loot you'd have got had you been soloing.

As of last night drops have not seemed to change at all. I solo some missions for loot (farming). And I can say EVERY mob I kill drops something. Either items or coin. My ratio on Purple/Gold has not changed either.

I've been wondering about this myself. I solo with Henchmen a lot and it seems like the drop rate fell off. I figured it may have just been the areas I was in.

Coincidentally I actually did a little test last night in Frost Gate.

First I did it to help out a single friend and we grabbed a couple henchmen. Mainly common items, but a few blue items as well. This was what I was used to.

Second I did it with just three guild mates. I was amazed. Four in the party as in the first case, but all were PCs. From the chatter over Teamspeak everyone was getting quite a few nice drops. I personally got a lot of blues, at least three purples, and a gold (Failed to salvage that one though...was a Major Mesmer Rune.)

Most of us were used to using Henchmen, but in this case people were commenting how great a run it was while we were trading runes back and forth based on who could use what.

Finally out of curiosity I went back and did Frost Gate one more time with three henchmen. Pretty much the same as my first run through with one player and two henchmen. Mainly common, with a couple blues.


I've been assuming that there was a possibility I missed a patch message somewhere that something had been changed to encourage grouping with players and avoiding the use of soloing with henchmen.


Anyone else?

If you have time try going in with a henchman or two and see if it seems that your quality of loot drops off, not the quantity.


While henchmen take an equal share of loot, that means that an item flat out doesn't drop. Take a look at the quality of the items you do get and see if something seems out of whack.


I'm not saying something is wrong, but I really am curious what other's results are if they test similar to what I did above.

for the record, i have not received any purple or gold items when going with henchmen. even with just the healer. i mostly get a few blue items which are useless, common crafting materials, common regular weapons and gold. sometimes nothing at all. while going with human players, my ratio of getting purple/gold items are greater but still very hard to get. im gonna try soloing at different areas to see if they drop better loot.

I've also noticed the reduced drop rate, and it's not a matter of the share belonging to henchmen. I've quested with henchmen before with a much higher rate of good drops than I've experienced in the last day or so with the same number of henchmen.

I typically solo with 3 henchmen (the two warriors and my friend Alesia the monk). Drops have been crap the past week or so. The only time I find runes is when I do a mission with a full party of human players. If I take even one henchmen (sometimes we cannot find a monk for a mission so we take Alesia), the drops seem to, well, drop off. This is purely subjective and I have not done any hard testing. But I used to find blue or sometimes purple items and minor runes and even dyes much more often than I do now. I hope the henchmen are not stealing more than their fair share!

I typically solo and when i open a chest, I'll see 3 items. They could be white only, but there are always 3.

I think I'm going to have to run a different mission a few times under those three conditions I posted previously and see what happens.

1) PCs only.
2) Mixed.
3) Henchmen only.


I'm also curious if the results would be different comparing a given mission to a given non-mission area.

Well I am glad I am not the only one who has noticed some sort of change. I have taken some of your suggestions and done the following. I took my level 10 Mo/Me from Piken Square where I had done all the quests in that area already and cleared the entire Breach. This is how it broke down with my character, Stefan, Alesia and Orion.

132 Kills
4 Bosses 2 Dropped nothing 1 dropped 2 Charr Carvings and the other dropped 11 gold
7 Wreakages found 5 had nothing 1 had a water wand and the other had a buckler
Of the 132 kills there were 46 drops

1 Blue Axe Fiend Armor with a Minor Mesmer Rune
1 Blue Short Bow Precious
8 Charr Hides
1 Ash Fiend Trappings
6 Charr Carvings
1 Shaman Garb
1 Idol
1 Tall Shield
1 Axe Fiend Armor
3 Stalker Armors
1 Buckler
1 War Hammer
1 Tribal Blade
19 Gold drops totaling 206 divided among the four characters

Total drops were not bad I suppose but the fact that everything is common other than two items out of all those drops is significant. I next need to try this with a party of actual Character.

Personally I just find that the gods hate me when it comes to drops... Last night during the Dragons lair mission everyone but me got a rare and a dye... I got one crappy purple and no blues

I have noticed the same thing I went and did a run with just alesia and got junk. went and did same run all alone(died a few times) but got 4 purples and 2 gold items.

Due to how the patches work in GW, you can't exactly miss them, it's not like you have a choice, yes/no on whether or not to download it

Okay, did my favorite farming spot solo. Killed the first 15 mobs. Out of 15 kills I recieved 10 items 1 gold 3 purple. Last 5 kills were money.

Then, I did it with 1 healer henchman. Out of 15 kills I received 6 items. 1 purple rest regular.

Then I did it with 2 healer henchman. Out of 15 kills I received 7 items. 2 gold rest regular. (I got lucky that run)

I then did it solo again and out of 15 kills I received 5 items all regular and the rest of the drops gold.

So, it looks pretty random to me. Which is how it has always been. BUT. To test random out I went to my other farming spot. That has 2 chests in the first 30 seconds of the map (sprint rocks)

I took 3 trips in, first trip in I received 3 items from each chest. Second trip same, Third trip I recieved 1 item from the first chest and gold from the second (man what a rip).

Did the same thing with 4 hencman. First trip 1 items and gold, second trip same, thrird trip 4 items and 1 gold item.

So, to sum it up, it's the same as it has always been in "THE AREA I FARM".

The thing about "random" is just that. It's random. But people always try to find a pattern. I know they increase and decrease the drop % in certain areas so the "chance for quality" may have changed in your area.

I have soloed most of the game with henchies,and there is no doubt been a major change in the loot table.I suspect that AN is doing this to force ppl to group as they seem to hate the pve player.

I just had to chime in on this one. A little off topic I know, but anyone who's done a decent amount of programming knows there is no such thing as "true" random. There actually is a pattern to everything some patterns are just too complex to accurately determine. Any Mathematicians aout there would probably agree as well. It's kind of like the term impossible; there is no true impossiblity only varying degrees of probability. Many things just have a probability of being so low that it can 'appear' to never happen. I could talk about this stuff for hours, but I'll stop now!

Auuuggghhh, I hate this argument. I have done a "decent" amount of programming...as a full time career for 10 years and a hobby for 20. What you are saying may be technically correct, but it's completely irrelevant. Nobody's talking about underlying patterns (which you don't have any where near enough samples here to come close to seeing), they're talking about devs intentionally modifying odds (which isn't happening, people just don't understand "random" well enough). And the random number generation capabilities we have are more than "random enough" for a video game. This argument has no place here, and honestly just makes people who throw it out there sound pretentious.

EDIT: OK, perhaps a bit harsh. I'm just really tired of seeing people argue about random number generation theory in a video game.

C-Tzar.. not to harsh. Engineer programer here myself. I was just about to say the same thing. It's random enough in a sense that the amount of data you would need to collect to find the pattern would take so long, the formula that generates the drop % would have changed many times by then.