The research Thread - everything about drops

Alright - this is gonna be a big one.

Here I had posted a thread similar to this one - limited to the part that matters for presearing. Iwant to extend it on here as to cover EVERYTHING considering ranges, rarities, values, odds and ends. We won´t discuss skins on here. Since it´s gonna be extensive I´ll try to keep it organized with spoiler, so you have all information if you want to, but can usually just check the relevant bits (for reference).

Compact knowledge for reference:

1. Identification
iv = (uv + rand) * rf
Where
uv = unidvalue
iv = ident value
rf = rarity factor (1 for blue+white, 2 for purples and 4 for gold items)
rand = random value in between 1g and uv averaging at ~30% of unid value
Improved sale value will add up to 75g to that value.

2. Unid values by level

The distributions have a peak for highest chance of unid value slightly higher than the minimum and rapidly decreasing towards the top end.

3. DMG ranges by values
This is just so big - imagine a table for each weapon type covering all possible DMG-ranges with their respective range of unid values. Seperate for all 3 rarities. Seperate for all weapon types. I´ll add those at some point, since this is the base of my research - the closest I could get to the core so far - but don´t expect it to be fun! (Here you´ll have those stats listed, that don´t come in a range and have been proven to be independent from one another)

Side note: in the purple/gold ranges take into account that gold will just start dropping at 12g upwards, but since that is a constant and all other ranges agree between purple and gold I see no reason to seperate them.

4. requirements by unid value:
white/blue range and purple/gold range listed - purple staves are different (and I have too few data as to be able to post ranges, since I noticed their specialty later)

The application to open questions:

1. Highest/lowest values in pre(post):

Gold items: -(52-480)g

Purple items: 12-64(12-240)g
Purple items with req: 14-64(14-240)g
Purple items without req: 12-36(12-36)g
Blue items: 2-32(2-120)g
Blue items with req: 10-32(10-120)g
Blue items without req: 2-22(2-22)g

Only taking into consideration regular drops from mobs, excluding treasure chest drops, no "improved sale value".

2. DMG ranges by req
This is huge data - practically proven results see here. Will add the theoretical results here (lacking much date esp on dagg/spear/scythe in the unid value table, since I usually only chestrun/farm Proph and rarely factions, barely ever nf or EotN.

3. Identification
Since the added value by identifying averages at 30% of unid value and an identification kit costs 4g/use any white item worth 14g+ unid can be id'ed for slight profit (but it's not really worth it in general, since you'd have to check all values first... however any drops from lvl 16+ should be id'ed esp profitable it gets on lvl 24+ averaging at an additional 11g per item - still 20% higher profit from white drops, but yeah... barely anyone care for 20g these days - just saying...) blue, purple and gold items should always be id'ed since it might get valueable mods and the rarity factor increases values much higher. - or you sell as unid ofc!

4. Farming advice (pre relevancy)
Do boss runs for max dmg items while killing all the charr on the way for the possible mods dropping there. At shrine kill everything as well as the two patrols right inrange and follow the path upto the patrol group of 3 at the river. Leave an alternate char in your party right at the gate and zone as soon as this is done. This should get best moneys over time.

5. Farming advice (post relevancy)
If you are just looking to get unids - do whatever you want in HM (increased rare item drop rate there). If you want to get q8 items try lvl19/20 mobs for highest chance - lvl20 if aiming at the q8 sword, level 19 if aiming for q8 foci. But generally - better be 1 level off and use a better farm spot than trying to get that one lvl19 mob killed in one minute just to rezone... Minotaur (lvl19) in Black Curtain can be effectively farmed however. If you want more specific things like 13/5 shields e.g.: check the value by req list, take it´s upper limit (in the 13/5 example 20g if you want a purple/gold or 37g if you want a blue one) take that value to the value by level list and check for the mob level that has it´s unid value peak closest to your selected value (in our example lvl 15 for purple/gold or lvl 21 for blue/white) and search for a proper farming spot to get highest chance for said item. (in the last step when checking the value by level list rather go for that level that has the peak slightly below your selected value than the one having it slightly higher - in case you are doomed to chose between two)

spaceholder - my post is getting much too long - will remove once finished in case I didn´t need!

My conclusion chain:

For further reading in order to understand what I did and readily arguing about.
Obviously the DMG-ranges of drops depend on the level of the mobs - so I started researching, which foes drop what DMG-ranges, what requirements and what rarities.
I noticed that the higher levels have higher gold value items drop (okay nothing mindblowing...) and started checking on how those were generated.
I took the values of the unid items and checked for the value after identification. What I found is the following
iv = (uv + rand) * rf
Where
uv = unidvalue
iv = ident value
rf = rarity factor (will be explained)
rand = random value in between 1g and uv
random seems to be indeed random and be applied when identifying. I noticed that there will be a rarity factor since ALL gold ident items come in multiples of 4 (i.e. 204, 208, 212...g) and purples in even numbers (those that do not have "improved sale value" inherent or insc). The rarity factors are
rf(gold) = 4
rf(purple) = 2
rf(blue) = rf(white) = 1
The variance of the random part was tested with about 1000 unidentified items and seemed reasonable. I always try to think "What kind of solution would a developer find?" So they will barely put a range manually totally indestinct of anything and all by hand - the range of 1g-uv seemed very plausible - if you don´t trust it, just do testings. The random part however is not evenly distributed - it´s more like decreasing exponential probability over the added value - meaning 1g is the most often one happening (why we have so many gold items at 204g since those come from HM/lvl24+ mobs which drop 50g+ unid items also peaking at 50g wich yields the 204g with rf=4 and rand = 1) and having an average of 0.3 * uv saying 30% of the unid value (I do have this number in more digits, yet too few data as to have a measurement error that´d justify to post them (sorry my physics education shines here))
So far so good. Next I looked into what the unid value tell us. I noticed first that every level of foes drop a specific range of unid values, as well as there was a minimum and maximum dmg from each fixed level. I looked into correlation of those values and damages - and not all values could drop on all dmg ranges from that foe, which brought me to collect data as unid-value for certain DMG. I noted that white/blue items have lower dmg ranges than purple/gold and thus differetiated between all of them - I did do the following on all rarity seperately. I checked for different level mobs, that had an overlap of their unid-value-ranges and checked if the items differed in DMG. But I foud that e.g. a purple/gold shield at 40g value is always 16arm no matter what mob dropped it - same on all other DMG ranges: the unid value ranges matched up no matter the level of the drop source. So I logged all the unid values by all the DMG-ranges by all the weapons I got no matter the source level. ...and same for the requirements. This is the big data I have. I made sure not just to say "oh, 5-24 axe drops at 31g and at 36g so it will drop at 31-36g but rather just made a list of all the values I got for said range. Now I can just look at any mob, see its level and by this I know the unid value ranges, and from those I know all the possible DMG-ranges for any type of weapon and all the possible requirements of those ranges. This will tell me what is possible max/min damage and max/min req in pre e.g. since I know highest level = highest unid value = highest damage ranges.
I compared data for different rarities and got: blue and white are absolutely identical as well as purple and gold items are - EXCEPT for purple staves: those work different - I bet this has to do with the inherent HSR mod that was added later then the original drop algorithm - I´ll talk about this later.
I have to note though, that my data is far from complete - on the 32g+ items I´m quite complete since I enjoy chestrunning the lvl 20 and farming all sorts of mobs for q8s, but for lower it´s just a pain: you farm 10min and spend 1h typing values in Excel - not too much fun... But on the unid value ranges and the req by value I´m confident I´m close to complete. So let me give you the important insight to this for pre ranges (see entire table above)
lvl 7 5-11g
lvl 8 6-12g
lvl 10 8-16g
so next I´ll look into the results of reqs: some regularities, some oddities
I logged all possible unid values for all reqs. One point is: lvl 0-6 will ONLY drop q0 items. From there on reqs are possible and it starts right at lvl 7. I´ll now list my findings as for req by value: always first listing the white/blue range, then the purple/gold range, and last there should be the staff range whereas this is not at all close to complete for staves, since there are so few data... thus I leave it out for now
q0: 1-12g 5-9g
q1: 9-11g 6g
q2: 9-16g 6-9g
q3: 9-21g 6-12g
q4: 9-26g 6-16g
q5: 9-37g 6-20g
q6: 10-52g 7-24g
q7: 13-50g 9-28g
q8: 18-56g 12-35g
q9: 23-58g 15-59g
q10: 30-59g 21-57g
q11: 40-58g 27-58g
q12: 53-60g 35-58g
q13: - 46-58g
What seems odd at first glance is the fact, that 9g purple items can drop in q0 and q2-7 but not q1. And that there is a high increase in the unid value range for purples on the high end in between q8 and q9. And all the reqs start happening at the same unid values. BUT this is explainable: lvl0-6 mobs will just drop q0 items by an additional limitation and since having at lvl 6 a range of unid items in 4-9g. whilst for higher mobs the regular version is applied, which has at highest a 6g unid value for q1 items and a lvl 7 can drop at lowest a 5g item, thus it´d only leave the 5g and 6g values available. I do have yet to find explanation to why none item of 5g value with req will happen - I suspect the technics of the cutoff to be somewhat responsible... We´ll see. lvl21+ are limited to drop at highest max DMG weps which happen at q9-13 as commonly known on those mobs. Those mobs have ranges of up to 60g unid value and thus explain the step from q8 to q9.
From here you can see how to see what is min req for a max DMG pre item: max DMG happens at max unid value, which is 16g. 16g is the upper end of q4 to happen - thus it´s q4. It works the same for DMG-ranges yet I´ll save you that full table here - and just list you my findings for the relevant parts.

Then I wanted to further investigate the purple staves - this is still ongoing but from what it looks like they cover the entire range of white/blue/purple/gold ranges respecting req, respecting HSR by value etc. this is plausible phenomenon whereas I have yet to develop a proper idea to how adding the HSR inherent to the game could have changed them to this. Ideas? e.g. for the Energy of staves so far we have at q8: 22-32, 15-31, 26-21 so it seems likely to be 15-21 for gold, and 15-32 for purples and therefore purple covering the entire range as blue and gold combined. especially the ends of the ranges are hard to determine, since they happen rarely (more options for the possible outcome of stat by the respective value)

What seems very interesting: Some of the stats, that do not vary in 2 aspects have a 1:1 correlation between value of stat and unid value: meaning that you can exactly tell the stat value by the unid value itself (except for the ends of the range, where they sometimes overlap at one value). This is seen in HSR and Energy of white, blue and gold staves, Energy of purple/gold Foci, Armor of purple/gold shields and white, purple and gold Armor pieces. (On a side note: blue armor pieces seem to work weird again - too few data to post conclusions, but: fixed value armor level covers the same range as its white equivalent, but goes higher in addition. e.g. at 33arm we have white 29-31g, blue 29-39g, purple/gold 19-21g)
Open questions:

Why do I not get q1 items at 5g? Why not any req at purples on 5g? (lvl7 dropping q0s only is not the case, I´ve seen all up to q7 drop - maybe I just had bad luck getting reqs at 5g? I doubt this as well, but will test this way more)

How exactly does the lower cutoff work precisely? I mean Why do blue/white items get reqs just from 9g and up? and purples 6g and up?
I have Ideas on those already yet have to think them entirely through I´m a busy mind!
I´m sure I did miss a lot still - I´ll try to cover that as soon as I realize it. If you find gaps in either my arguing or my information - leave a post and we´ll see what can be explained!

cheers,

Red

thanks for the data, unfortunately none that I didn´t have recorded - 15-21 is not too rare - I have at least had 32 of them (since I have recorded 32 different values for them ;D) - so you´re a scrub XD (not my words, just that one if condition in your statement is fullfilled :O ... as a programmer I just conclude...)

EDIT: seems I´m a scrub as well - missed the
Tattooed Scimitar - Req11 13 - 19 - 32g

so far

Thanks^^

Quote from Hairy Knight

Hey, Red. I don't know if this is still relevant because I know there was some discussion about Lvl 16 mobs dropping max r8 items. But I thought I would post it anyways. I had a lvl 16 Kournan Scribe drop a max +12 EN focus but it's r9.

ey! thanks man

indeed lvl 16 seem to be able to drop max items on very rare occasion - do you have the unid value? I'd suggest 32g and yes - max q8 would have been possible on this item then, and it is nice to see. thanks for sharing!

I'llhave to come around to update all the numbers that I found... but ain't nobody got time for that