New Content NEP monster drop spading

Aenimus

Member
Hi,

I've been doing some spading in NEP, and while I'm not quite finished, most of it is conclusive. Biker seems odd, but I will spade that tomorrow.

The monsters each have four drops. I'm going to call two of them "commons" and two of them "uncommons".
An example of common drops are the burnout's van key and jam band bootleg.
An example of uncommon drops are the biker's pentagram bandana and neverending wallet chain.

When you successively receive a drop, its discrete drop rate is diminished for the rest of the day (all items are discrete; the commons just share the same drop rate, as do the uncommons).

I spaded this with a perfectly fair coin, so I only know the commons have an initial base drop rate of over 50%. It then drops to 40%, 20%, 10% and stops diminishing at 5% base.
I have a suspicion that they start at 80, as that would support the "halve after each successive drop" motif.
An exception I've found is the biker, whose common drops seemed to drop 5% easier. I will spade this tomorrow.

The uncommon drops (of note is ratty knitted hat) begin at 15% base drop rate, then 5%, and finally stops diminishing at 1%

Here's the paste bin: https://pastebin.com/jCJJDVa7

Hopefully this can be added to mafia once I have completed the spading.

Anus

EDIT: Based on my most recent data, what I said before seems to be the "guarantee" for receiving a drop, but apparently you can get a drop before: https://pastebin.com/ABCeTB5P

I propose that the drops have a base rate that diminishes, to which the coin responds, but there is also some sort of chance to just get a drop anyway(?) that is not affected by coin. Thoughts?
 
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Saklad5

Member
Very impressive work. Hopefully we can incorporate this as the actual numbers rather than labeling it as “conditional”. Is there any precedent for mechanics like this?
 

Darzil

Developer
Very impressive work. Hopefully we can incorporate this as the actual numbers rather than labeling it as “conditional”. Is there any precedent for mechanics like this?

Not really. We'd be having to create and check 20 new daily preferences, and either add custom code for each to give the current drop rate, or extend Expressions to the drop value, and probably rebuild the monster.txt file formats to handle that.

It isn't impossible, but it is going to be a few hours work and depending on solution used will obsolete some existing scripts that scrape that file.
 
Also, based on: http://forums.kingdomofloathing.com/vb/showthread.php?p=5033314#post5033314 the saber considers them all conditional drops, based on it greying out the force all drops choice against the party girl (which only forces non-conditional drops, and is made unavailable against monsters without any of those).
So labeling them as conditional is probably accurate as far as abilities (like pickpockets and YRs) go that actually care about that.

Edit: yep, just tested against a burnout, all his drops are also considered conditional by the saber. So we do want them labeled conditional, that way, mafia can be used to tell us that you shouldn't use a saber against them.
 
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Saklad5

Member
If it is given special treatment by KoL, I agree it should be given special treatment here. I really like Darzil’s idea about adding expression support to drops, though. If drop rates are ever overhauled, that should definitely be incorporated.

Maybe splitting conditional expressions into another file would work? Familiars are implemented that way.
 
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Aenimus

Member
I think the anomaly for the biker might have been meteor +15%.

EDIT: I confirm it was!

EDIT2: Maybe. I have some more weird data.
 
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Aenimus

Member
So I have a bunch more data today.

Something very weird is going. I made notes in the beginning of the file.

The uncommon drops seem to work as previously stated.

https://pastebin.com/ABCeTB5P

EDIT: Based on my most recent data, what I said before seems to be the "guarantee" for receiving a drop, but apparently you can get a drop before.

I propose that the drops have a base rate that diminishes, to which the coin responds, but there is also some sort of chance to just get a drop anyway(?) that is not affected by coin. Thoughts?
 
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heeheehee

Developer
Staff member
I'd be surprised to hear that the drop rate is actually on a per-item basis, rather than per-monster or per-zone.
 

Aenimus

Member
This was the last Jock to drop items, to show that Lovebugs and meteor did not fire. https://gyazo.com/145a5c97e967e40f84789b975c965345

@heeheehee I'm not sure what you mean. I fought a bunch of monsters at the same +item drop and got nothing. Certain thresholds being met and then lowering also fits the data, with a few exceptions, which I do not understand (see screenshot). I used talking spade between each fight to be sure, but I don't deny a possibility that I made a mistake--however, the biker after the jock posted above did NOT drop anything, after which the burnout did.

Maybe rounding works weirdly with the coin?

EDIT: 233% item for a 15% drop is 49.95. This could be a 95% chance the drop will fail and a 5% chance it does indeed drop. However, I got two drops in a row this way, so it could be more likely to be a flat 50/50 or something.

This is probably easily spaded by going to A-Boo Peak with 233% item and coin and checking whether you ever get drops (obviously ignoring meteor/love bugs).

The 140% jock common #3 might be a stray love bug, but I am almost certain it was not.
 
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Ryo_Sangnoir

Developer
Staff member
I also got per-item drop rate reduction when I was doing the uncommon spading around the time it came out. This is fairly straightforward to check: do non-PFC adventure until you get one uncommon but not the other, then do PFC adventures. You can use the saber to force the monster you want. Don't use macrometeorite because that breaks things (I think it breaks the PFC?). The surprisingly capacious handbag didn't work while I was spading but may be fixed now.

I agree with the uncommons at 15% -> 5%. I didn't check the commons because I'm lazy.
 

Aenimus

Member
So I banished everything but Jocks, and I ran 134% item drop with love bugs disabled for around 10 turns. I didn't get any common Jock drops (two sets had dropped already).

I even got a shot of meteor item for +15% item (putting me at 149%), and I received nothing. I then tested 149% items for ten turns. Nothing: https://gyazo.com/ee6b18a2879bfb4a0318f46360f9f55f

As soon as I went to 150% +item%, the commons dropped immediately.

I am going to call this conclusive, and that any anomalies were my user error/rounding issues. I.e., 3rd common drop is 20%.

I am now going to spend my remaining turns at 149% item drops and wait for a clue to drop (assuming it rounds).

EDIT: Spent 25 turns at 149% item drops in A-Boo Peak, and nothing dropped. I'll keep trying this during aftercore for a bit.
 
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