Treasure Hunter in Salvage

[Valyana]

The discussion in viewtopic.php?f=2&t=25807 made me pretty confident that TH is a debuff, that the party the THF is in doesn't matter. But in an Arrapago run the other day, I noticed the following:

TH3 in other party: 3 cells from 5 lamiae
TH3 in killing party: 10 cells from 6 lamiae

We moved the THF into tank party part way through 1st floor not for TH, but so they'd get songs instead of the (so far) weaponless SAM. But the difference in drop rate was quite dramatic and immediate...

[Zilong]

maybe it's a daze effect?

But for what it's worth, it's only 2 instances, and arrapago is fucking notorious for being retardedly bullshit with cells

[fishstix]

Your sample size is incredibly small to make any sort of judgment on TH.

@ shamaya: sorry ^^

[Thefrost]

If i had a penny for every time arrap gave drastically diff cell drops with the same pt set ups and mobs killed then i'd be rich...or at least have a few more big macs!

[Shamaya]

The game can be unpredictable as hell in a number of instances. Even if we do learn the potency of all the traits, abilities, etc, in the game, and take into account that, over time, these potencies (ie. drop rates, evasion rates, pdif fluctuations) will show to be solid due to 'some kind' of randomization, there's still something that seems strikingly odd about how chance is calculated in this game.

Take for example this screen shot -
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v7...a/img_0857.jpg

Or look at the brigandine+1 synths in my sig. This kind of thing isn't surprising to most. Many of us have encountered a long string of one type of result, followed by a string of a quite different type of result. If the game were "completely randomized," the probability of that string of lucky hits in that SC, or those 3 hq's in a row, would be staggeringly low. Yet these kinds of events are not strange to us in this game.

I think that the OP's change in fortune is simply an instance of what I've just described above--the odd way in which the game is coded to deal with chance, rather than an actual increase in the potency of TH due to it having some sort of cumulative effect.
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About the LJ that was linked - I'm not prepared to stand by the results listed in my LJ. I don't know who fishstix is, and I'm flattered by the reference, but my confidence in the aforementioned TH test is not yet incredibly strong. That test is a little over a month old now, but I'm still not ready to make it public.

Please, to anyone who reads that, don't go about referencing it as if it's solid evidence. I wish to do more samples and update it, and more samples are coming very soon. When that time comes, I'll actually make the LJ public and make threads about the tests. I'd prefer to keep the tests as little-known as possible until then.

Large samples are necessary, and I'm still not sure my sample sizes are large enough even yet. Even if the game was completely randomized, I'd feel the same way, but due to the strange nature of chance within the game that I described earlier, I think large sample sizes, over a decent span of time, are even more critical than they otherwise would be.

[Gergall]

I agree with the above poster. Skillup streaks come to mind.

[Baelwulf]

I'm a firm believer in the idea (half-cocked as it is) that SE gives every account a hidden luck attribute on character creation that influences their entire game experience for the rest of their life and is impossible to change. I also believe that SE's handicapped coders mistook Math.Random to be the same as i++, and thought "gogo shorthand!".

[Valyana]

Yeah, I've certainly noticed the clustering effect in FFXI's random number generator before. Perhaps the improvement in drops from swapping the THF and SAM was just enough tweak to make the random number generator start giving us better rolls.

[DrObvious]

I've gone 7/10 on hp cells from skeletons with 6 people in one run, and 1-2/10 with 6 on another run. Random as hell.

[tymora]

Treasure Hunter in Arrapagos seems to work differently from the rest of the game in general.

For my group I noticed the following:

No TH = 0-1 drops off 1F mobs (mostly 0s, occasional 1 item)
TH1 = 0-2 drops off 1F mobs (again, mostly 0s)
------Needless to say, w/o a regular THF, no point to even do this zone--------
Now heres my new hypothesis...and a food for thought.

TH2=TH3=TH4 where it comes to Salvage upgrade part drops.
Why do I say this? I have this TH3 member who just made 3 Ares and 1 Marduk drop consecutively. A TH4 member hasn't been so lucky with the drops, in fact no 35s for the past 10 runs or so. Its all fluke yes, but also indicates TH4 doesn't appear to magically make the drops better.

So what would be the benefit of bringing a TH4 thf or a TH3 one in Arrapagos? I noticed the following for my group.

And there is this generally unspoken rule to give 1 chest weapon to a THF for TH3. Cell drops kind of doubled on average if we do this. Of course there are still crap runs but our runs tend to be less frustrating when we do this.

Some mobs appears to have tiers for cell drops. Our TH4 thf makes Draugars drop a whole range of stats relatively consistently in all the runs he took part in. I have never seen any bones drop stats when its our TH3 thf doing the run. In fact, I never knew they dropped stats until my team got a TH4 thf.

So it appears that...

TH3 > TH2 > TH1 > TH0 in that it just improves the chance that there will be a drop in the loot pool and this added chance is significantly boosted in Arrapagos. Going from no TH to TH2 also increases the number of possible items that can drop from monsters.

TH4 > TH3 in that there is a chance to unlock additional tiers of drops (note, not chance) that may drop from certain mobs.

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I don't have any raw data to back this idea. But it seems to fit my groups' results as far as I remember.

[Shassira]

It is very easy to see the influence of TH in Salvage cell drops in general. Trying Arrapago with or without a THF isn't the only clear evidence. Zhayolm for example, shows TH having a lot of effect on HP/MP cells droping on the 3F. Bhaflau is less clear, although we see many double magic drops on flans vs 1 magic without THFs, but this could clearly just be chance. Silver Sea i really can't say, we always have more cells than we know what to do with them here.

Now, as for if TH2 and both of its enhancements affect drops better, who knows. They should, but the difference might not be that strong. As for NM drops, the drop rates are still horrible for us with or without TH2+2, so whatever.

I think all you can say is that TH does have a specialy strong influence on cell drops and it's most of the time key to the best runs.

[Dalmbraast]

Part of the reason that there's not as noticeable a change in drop rates between higher tiers of TH is the % on drops from TH0 > TH1 and TH1 > TH2 is CONSIDERABLY higher than to "TH3" and "TH4". TH1 and TH2 are both passive job abilities, whereas TH3 and 4 are only +1 on a piece of gear. Especially considering that many theories point to TH3 and TH4 being an increase on drops rates of only 1% each. Toss that on top of the random drop rate of cells from run to run (did one Arra run with TH3, got solid cell drops, next was with TH4, felt like we had TH0), and you're just as likely to get stiffed one run and have the cells and equipment pieces rain the next.

Also, the pt that the thf is in shouldn't matter (in theory). If TH is just an effect put on the mob, as stated by SE, then once the thf hits the mob, all you can do is pray to the drop gods that you get what you need.

[tymora]

Don't forget the risk of no completely unlocked people because of missing rings/ranged/body in Zhayolm 2F.

[Churchill]

Hard to not get body..

Ranged or Rings yes.

[Francisco II]

Salvage isn't really a good test for TH... especially Arrapago.

It might just be coincidence, but I have noticed several times that certain mobs are "on" and certain mobs seem "off" in Arrapago.

We'll kill every single Qutrub and not get a single Incus cell on Floor 1, and get maybe two cells off of the Lamiae... then we'll hit Skeletons and nearly every mob will drop HP cells, waist cells and about half will drop stats... (and then sometimes it works the other way around)...

[ullquiorra]

We'll kill every single Qutrub and not get a single Incus cell on Floor 1, and get maybe two cells off of the Lamiae... then we'll hit Skeletons and nearly every mob will drop HP cells, waist cells and about half will drop stats... (and then sometimes it works the other way around)...

there's a reason for this... kill 15 Quturbs and your skeleton drops will increase dramatically (can drop up to hp+back+2 stats, usually str and int). kill 14 and you don't see this. test this for yourself

[Wizerd]

We'll kill every single Qutrub and not get a single Incus cell on Floor 1, and get maybe two cells off of the Lamiae... then we'll hit Skeletons and nearly every mob will drop HP cells, waist cells and about half will drop stats... (and then sometimes it works the other way around)...

there's a reason for this... kill 15 Quturbs and your skeleton drops will increase dramatically (can drop up to hp+back+2 stats, usually str and int). kill 14 and you don't see this. test this for yourself

If that were true, would the reverse work? Killing 15 Skeletons to increase Qutrub drop rate dramatically?

[Croaker]

TH3 in other party: 3 cells from 5 lamiae
TH3 in killing party: 10 cells from 6 lamiae

I once did a /random and got a 999.
Then my friend did a /random 50 times and didn't get a single 999.

It was on Windsday and I wasn't wearing any pants. Now I never wear pants on Windsday anymore.

[ullquiorra]

If that were true, would the reverse work? Killing 15 Skeletons to increase Qutrub drop rate dramatically?

it is 100% true about killing 15 qutrubs increasing drops on skeles... like i said go test it yourself if you don't believe

for the reverse, never tested since skeles are further to get to first, and you would usually have enough after killing off 15 Qs

[Nyuneko]

If that were true, would the reverse work? Killing 15 Skeletons to increase Qutrub drop rate dramatically?

it is 100% true about killing 15 qutrubs increasing drops on skeles... like i said go test it yourself if you don't believe

for the reverse, never tested since skeles are further to get to first, and you would usually have enough after killing off 15 Qs

I am not sure how you can say 100%, did you even tested it? Log and all, and not just "personal experience from memory of a few runs" and such.

On the other hand...

We regularly (maybe 50%?) get at least 1 skeleton to drop stats.
Skeletons drop a ton more than Qutrub do. Usually enough to get all 6-8~ people belts and HP on the first floor.

Source: viewtopic.php?f=24&t=19058&p=663601&hilit=qutrub+a nd+skeleton#p663601

And I don't see anywhere that it has been test and proven. Please do point me to where I missed the testing, I wouldn't mind having an easier run in Arrapago, you see.

EDIT: I don't mean Aurik is the master of the univ... Vanadiel, but that post is the closest I can find that has mentioned qutrub and skeleton. And it is Arrapago Remnant related thread as well.