VL Adv Search – Alarming Change In Drop Rates?

[Schnurrburt]

Dang, nice work.

[KingHomer]

Perwyn, out of your last 100 (from 108 to 208), you've pulled 9 WC and 6 SE. Not sure the results continue to be anything but normal.

Other than a run of 50-75 results that featured an abnormal amount of SE, I am not finding anything unusual in these results - they continue to move towards the norm over time. However, as the SE run is going to always be included in your results and each search is an independent event, you will probably never see SE under-represented as there is no statistical reason to think you'll have a no-SE run to offset the SE run.

I love stats, so of course I will continue to track how you're doing here, but each result seems to disprove the thread name a little more.

[Perwyn]

Thanks for your perspective. I hope you're right and this normals out eventually. The drop rate of WC's still seems way too low so far tho. 6.25%?? Shouldn't it be more like 9%? I'll feel better when the needle on the magic tracking machine starts riding that mark.

I started tracking my tav explorers and the Intrepid separately about halfway thru all this, so the initial burst of SE's you pointed out isn't included in that sample. It'll be interesting to see how that looks in another month or two.

Guess it doesn't help my attitude that I don't think SE should even be a part of this search and I cuss every time I get one. Getting 5 out of 127 I could handle. Getting a pretty steady run of them right after getting the Intrepid just completely freaked me out.

Oh well, time will tell. Thanks again for your input.

[Eriond]

Well, it might just be me, but I have a fleet of explorers, and I send them all out on very long searches (except my lucky's).

I generally averaged around 1 Woodcutter/day doing this. In the last week (maybe since the Crisis event started?), I haven't gotten any.

So, I've gotten a couple of WCs in the week+ since I posted this, but (at least for me), the drop rate has drastically changed, roughly since the Crisis Event went live. Still sending out 14 explorers on very long adventure searches continually.

[Perwyn]

Well King Homer's gotten me thinking about this. I've combined the separate data I started tracking for the Intrepid and my Tavern Explorers and compare it to my pre-Intrepid data. Since the total search results are just 9 apart, it's a suitable comparison. I started the separate tracking part way into these posts so this is only a partial of the previous spreadsheets, but with more detail.



It's interesting to note that for the most part, all items returned are within 1 or 2 of each other by comparison, with only a few notable exceptions.

1> Map scraps are up by 8.
2> SE is up by 5 (doubled).
3> VLT is an exact match
4> Riches of the Mountain is up by 5, more than doubled

Looking at the Intrepid results, WC, SE & VLT are all equal. The majority of SE's so far in this sample are coming from the Intrepid, as well as an overabundance of map scraps. Looking at the Primary results WC is very low, good thing there's a bonus.

Looking at the tavern results, map scraps are low, WC's are the 3rd most dominant adventure returned, SE's are lower than the Intrepid, but still too high if you ask me.

While it appears that things are “normaling out” at first glance, I'm still troubled by the amount of SE's returned and so far the amount of WC's are slightly lower than they should be. It will be interesting to see how this set of numbers play out in the next few months.

[Perwyn]

OK, here we go... 100 days of data in pre-intrepid column. 100 days of data in post-intrepid column.

I'm still of the opinion that far too many SE's are being dropped by this search and that something has been changed in the drop rates to cause this to happen. Numbers don't lie, the second 100 days worth of searches stinks to high heaven when compared to the 1st 100 days or even when viewed on its own. Too many map frags, too many SE's, too few WC's.



Partway into this I began a more detailed tracking which is shown below. Since the 1st 85 search results from above aren't included, these numbers look a bit more "normal" as WC and VLT are the top 2 adventures returned. What's number 3?? You guessed it.... everybody's favorite, Secluded Experiments. The numbers are still close enough that another run of SE's like I had in the beginning could push it to the front again. Whether that happens or not remains to be seen. I'll keep tracking and posting this new format every few weeks and we'll see what happens. Currently WC looks great, but there are far too many map frags and SE's coming in. See you again in a few weeks.

[Perwyn]

From the desk of BB_Alex, Dev Blog - Summer Edition.......

"Have there been drop rate changes for adventure and treasure searches?

As mentioned above, re-balancing is a very sensitive topic. That is why there have been no changes on the drop rates of adventure and treasure searches for quite a long time."

Finally a response from an official source. Apparently more than 1 person, and probably on multiple servers have brought this up for it to be included in a dev blog.

I'll never quite understand how the occurrence of SE jumped so high all of a sudden like. If the results I'm getting are from the official drop rates which we've been assured haven't been changed, then my position is back where it was a few years ago....... adventure searches really aren't worth doing. I'll track for a while longer just cause I'm stubborn as on old goat, but in the long run I probably won't be doing adventure searches. Maybe I'll send out the intrepid still, since that's her specialty, or maybe I'll just keep her hanging around in star for when I need to find an expedition island to plunder.

[Perwyn]

In the "This is too funny to keep to myself" department.......

Decided I'd give my 2 new Lucky's a shot at VL Adventure search. Didn't add any books except for a couple of manuscripts each so they'd be done in less than 24 hours and can send them out every morning when I login. So this morning was the 1st time they came back from a search and they brought me....... drum roll puhleez......

Secluded Experiments & map frags!!! I just gotta laugh.

[Gwalben]

Now that you mention it, I'm tempted to do a hybrid lucky explorer build with 1 adventure and 1 artifact search a day. Seems about as good a use as what I've got going on with my others and also adds a little variety.

[Perwyn]

Yeah, I really like that the Lucky takes 24 hours (or less with a couple of manus) for VL searches. Wasn't about to use gems to rework my old Lucky's, but starting the new ones from scratch... hey, why not? Still not sure I want to keep doing these adventure searches, but then again, if I can manage to ignore all the included irritants, it's cheaper than buying Woodcutters on TO.