The Question
With so much unique boss gear, as well as simply no auction gear with great benefits in combat, there have been countless Pirates farming various bosses around the Spiral. However, the price Second Chance Chests can quickly add up, and farming is clearly very time consuming. So, the question arises: is there a faster way at getting the boss drops you want?
The Idea
Ratbeard, a developer of Pirate101 on the Official Message Boards, described an interesting theory at how to acquire better drops. He mentioned that it may be possible to affect the loot roll through head-patting and stomach-rubbing before opening the boss’ chest. This seemed like a great idea to test out, so test it out we did!
First, a boss needed to be chosen with unique items in their loot table, along with several other pieces of no auction gear as well as less rare class-specific gear. There are plenty of bosses that fit this requirement - The Gorgon in Aquila was specifically chosen, as well as The Underdog in Marleybone.
The Procedure
In order to get a picture of how head-patting and stomach-rubbing affects drop rates, we’d first need to know the standard rate at which bosses drop their unique items! So, we farmed normally for our “control” data - this would help us later on when we would compare these results to our experimental ones.
We recorded data from roughly 30 runs, making note of how often we received gold, class-specific gear, no auction gear, and unique gear. After doing so, we moved on to the actual experiment, and recorded data from the same number of runs, this time head-patting and stomach-rubbing before opening the boss’ chest. Of course, we tried to keep as many factors constant as we could, with the intentions of only testing this one variable. Our results were quite surprising!
The Results
Below is a graph depicting our results. The blue bar represents the quantity of the specified item we received while farming normally, while the red bar represents experimental farming. We “cleverly limited the domain of the results” so that only 17 runs are displayed here, randomly* chosen.
*The definition of “randomly” may be slightly** stretched.
**The definition of “slightly” may also be stretched.
We also included a table below to compare regular farming to experimental farming. Our results clearly show that this new type of farming that Ratbeard suggested is worth trying out!
Regular Farming
|
Experimental Farming
| |
Gold
|
10
|
3
|
Class-Specific Gear
|
3
|
6
|
No Auction Gear
|
4
|
6
|
Unique Gear
|
0
|
2
|
Taking a closer look at this data, we can see that much less gold was received using this new strategy. We received twice as much class-specific gear and two-thirds as much no auction gear, much of which was actually very useful. Finally, while there is no unique gear listed in regular runs, the head-patting and stomach-rubbing strategy got us 2 pieces of unique boss gear in just 17 runs! That’s a 12% drop rate!
Of course, there’s still room for further experimentation on this. As said by Ratbeard,
“Because I don’t want to give away too much when it comes to loot rolls, you will have to experiment with both the rate and direction (clockwise, counterclockwise, and/or contrariwise) of the head patting and tummy rubbing.”
Conclusion
Have you been tirelessly farming for Gortez’ Axe, Buck Bronco’s Hat, or the Ophidian Spine Crest? The endless farming is now over! Just put this strategy in action, and you’ll find yourself getting these extremely rare items in no time!
As our results confirmed, boss loot may not be “purely random”. What farming methods have you tried out that increased your drop rates? We want to hear!
If you haven’t already seen them yet, we’ve teamed up with several other fansites to all create similar posts. Be sure to check them out - they all have great insight that can help you on your farming ventures.
Thanks for revealing the methodology of your "study". I'm sure people will be convinced.
ReplyDeleteThe new Group Plunder Chests (GPC) actually will raise your drop rates if you farm the boss fights in groups of 4, you'll gather doubloons and get extra loot table rolls.