Questeion: Chest Running - overfarming mechanics and counter measures

It's same thing for me. Last few years I got like one q8 sword drop and few semi usable shields. It's confirmed that there is some kind of anti farm code that lowers amount and quality of items droped. But no one really knows (or wants to say) how to counter these things.

there is no mechanic that would sanction popular items over time. that is just your mind interpreting. how would the gw developer know which items you were after? the problem is that in the beginning it is all new, the routes still take your attention, you are excited for the drops, but after 10s or hundreds of hours the routes run on autopilot, you know all the possible chest spawns and the only thing you pay attention to is the drops - specifically the ones you are after. and since those usually are a small fraction of all the possible drops, the mind is getting more and more confirmation for the "those things really do not drop" than for the opposite. I did track the tower shield drops on nolani - since those are the ones I am after - as well as the q8 foci and shields, as well as chest spawn locations and other things alike. certainly my sample is very limited, but there is no correlation whatsoever to be found. so I would rather advise not to do anything else in between just for the hopes of better chances at a specific place, since that will just delay you getting them further. if you have various things you like to pursue indeed alternating might be the best way - not for the resulting drops, but rather in order to keep things interesting for the mind

since it might have come out a wrong way: a mechanic sanctioning gold drops, dualmod drops or q8s might be imaginable, but also there - I didn't find any data pointing that way. you get lucky sometimes, you get unlucky sometimes. and you might have a couple good lucks or bad ones in a row.

but I doubt there is much to such correlations being imemented due to the data I have seen. which doesn't mean there are none.

As far as I'm concerned, just like the influence of favor (2012 maj) or NF treasures or Zehtuka items, the more you go to the same places, or in the same campaign, without going anywhere else, without killing any enemies, the more your chances of getting rare items decrease. BUT, with the luck factor behind it, that doesn't change much... (like the favor, you get more gold items, but not necessarily good weapon stats, etc.) It's all luck, impossible to calculate mathematically or manipulate to your advantage. You can play 1 or 10 lotto grids, which increases your chances, but doesn't mean you'll necessarily win.

I've observed this after more than 40,000 open chests.

Edit: Don't forget that for the favor, this increases the number of rare items dropped, but not their stats. I drop more platinum wand during the favor with Halcyon's farm, but that doesn't mean they're more likely to be 20/20. A weapon's statistics have nothing to do with the chance of obtaining a rare skin. You definitely have to make a difference in this kind of discussion. At the time of development, I don't think they said that 20/20 on a wand was the best of the best and therefore had to be rarer than the rest, but the gold skin was. Inscriptions and Upgrade components have no hierarchy of rarity.

Nope, it's all in your head.

You will find a lot of people agreeing with you. One thing they have in common is that they don't have the data to prove it.

Quote from Taichi_The_Real

the qualitiy of my drops

[...]

a semi usable OS shield

Both subjective and vague, thinking in those terms allows the psychological effect to happen, seeing patterns in randomness. The only prerequisite is a low probability for your preferred event. For the average hard mode chest, the probability of any gold dual mod shield (regardless of which mods) is around 0.6%, meaning you get one in every 158 chests on average. Then you further reduce your chances by only preferring certain mods (I wrote a little about that subject here). You can imagine, with your own weekly chest running rate, the difference between completely normal rng variation results in a "lucky" week with 10 good drops, or an "unlucky" stretch of 5 weeks or more. From my own chest running data, I can confirm Red's statement that there is no correlation between good drops and time spent on the run. I can also confirm that it really does feel as if my drops are better when starting a new type of run or farm

If anyone has further insights, I kindly ask them to also explain to me why I always end up in the slow line at the supermarket checkout, why it only rains during my weekends when I planned to be outside, and why the restaurant has always just run out of the menu item I really wanted...

Quote from Praise

If anyone has further insights, I kindly ask them to also explain to me why I always end up in the slow line at the supermarket checkout, why it only rains during my weekends when I planned to be outside, and why the restaurant has always just run out of the menu item I really wanted...

I'm pretty sure Alanis wrote a song about all of that in the late 90's

I'm 100% sure anti farm code reduces quality of items droped. For instance i soloed Grenths footprint (HM) first time (with 2 bonders one of them is a monk with acc that only had propercies and isn't being used for 13 years) and first time I got 43 (couldn't believe it) gold items. Second run I got 21, third 13, fourth 9. And from almost all bosses I got greens equally in each run. So I think quality and quantity of items droped, drops each consequtive runs. Or maybe a factor was a charracter that wasn't used for 13 yrs. So definitely there is a factor that reduces quality. So maybe studining the anti farm code from gw 2 could drive us in a right way.

Quote from Taichi_The_Real

And furthermore, why is it so goddamn hard to find a semi usable OS shield drop? Out of all drops I've had there was one shield that I'd use on my war, even though its Q12. Seems rare enough to even get a shield with two mods, but getting one that's actually usable has to be the equivalent of winning the lottery I'd appreciate any advice!

That's perhaps the main reason why in 2005 the green shields Grognar's Defender, Thorgall's Shield, Tanzit's Defender, Victo's Bulwark, Malinon's Shield were so expensive, since they were weapons that drop with perfect stats, and the Carapace Shields from the collectors Hagnon Warblade/Yorik Warblade in the Snake Dance were the another alternative.

I don't remember playing with OS shields back in 2005 at all, I think I always wielded random shitty shields until I was able to pick the Emboldened Carapace Shield in Snake Dance, and time later I bought the Victo's Bulwark. And I only used the Grognar's Defender or Malinon's Shield while farming minotaurs.