Q8 Observations Since My Return

nice summaries there! There are many true points I came across as well and I also found explanations for some. I summed my findings up in Here. Max q8s happen at 32-35g unid value, which can be dropped by the referenced levels 17-21. Elonian and canthan chests are lvl 20 by means of their drops. The reason why the higher levels have better chance is that the unid value drop rate by level has a peak just above the respective minimum value and rapidly decreases towards the higher end. For lvl 20 e.g. the range is 32-54g unid value, where the peak is at 34g, more than 50% of drops are below 40g and just 0.1% is 54g. This way you get best chance for the desired max q8 drops since the highest amount of drops is in the 32-35g range.

The huge advantage of chests over mobs is the reliability for uncommon/rare drops, which is not given when farming. The advantage of farming is usually a faster rate. But as you mentioned in nm there are far too few of said uncommon/rare drops, which is why you need find those rare spots in hm where there are lvl 20mobs. Hm has triple the uncommon/rare rate than nm and also higher rare over uncommon drop rate. But the spots are few (see Here for few examples).

Kilroy chests are only uncommon drops and are only interesting for the rare skins (dwarven/crysta) of which crysta is the only falling into the "still could drop in max q8"-category. But only the first chest can drop q8s since the later chests are higher level. (Read Here)

The higher dualmod rate is something I haven't looked into yet

Great topic, one of my favorites, all awesome points above.

A few things to add from a statistic level based on some personal tracking that others may or may not find interesting.

I have always been an avid Chest Runner, however I have started to track all of my chest drops for the last 17 months.

I do track both HM and NM chest drops. Out of the total of 15k chests I have tracked during this time, I have now logged 10,355 NM chests (woohoo to this milestone hehe), I only run NM chests that have Q8 chances, including Canthan, Elonian, Kournan, and Maguuma chests. I have received a total of 53 Q8 Max items from these 10k chests. This is where my general rules of thumb of "1 Q8 out of 200 NM chests" comes from. What should be no surprise to anyone is that 50 of those were focuses, 3 were shields, 0 Swords.

I will also do some solo farming for foes 17-21, will occasionally get a q8, but very few between. The one advantage of this though is that you are not blowing through lockpicks

Edit: In light of the reference to the Dead Sword Farm as there are Level 20s in HM, the other known farm with this similar feature (level 20s in HM) is the Moddock Crevice Mission which has been known to be farmed for q8 colossal scimitar even though there is only 3 known to exist. But this doesn't stop some people from farming there, lots of armor though. If you sit in the outpost, you will likely see some repetitive farmers going straight for 24 hrs straight (yup, we all know what those are).

There are only three q8 colossal scimitars known to exist? I could swear that I remember those cropping up on Guru a fair bit back in 2009-11 ish. I guess I must be misremembering? I also seem to recall a fair number of q8 Ele Swords (Raptor farm?) kicking around. Those weren't my imagination, right? Jeez, I hope I'm not showing signs of early-onset dementia. :p

Quote from jimbo32

I also seem to recall a fair number of q8 Ele Swords (Raptor farm?) kicking around.

You are correct, there are Q8 Ele Swords, they still drop today, but not from Raptors, their levels are not within the range (Raptors are 24 and Raptor Nestlings are 15). There are a few other ways they can drop, I believe the lvl 20 Questzals are a possibility.

Regarding the Colossals, I should say that as far as I know, when one dropped earlier this year, there was a lot of discussion of which exist and only 3 could be accounted for, doesn't mean that maybe someone has one in a vault, but it in the end, it just shows how rare they are.

q8 ele sword hasn't been reported to drop for several years - even though there are some spots that might drop them... some EotN lvl 20 mobs as well as lvl20 chests near elementals in few nf regions. Even though I ran a lot of chests in barbarous shore I did only get a few promising colossal scimmys, but no ele sword at all (even though there's a hand full of possible chest spawns near said elementals. Those would sure be rather nice!

Also the more known ones like q8 darkwing

Quote from Spun Ducky

I think I will be moving onto some Q8 exploration for inscription items as a break from OS frustration of non perfects. What are some NF based ones that are questionable whether they still drop besides the colossal scimitars? One that peaked my interest was a Q8 sephis sword but i think that may be EOTN.

That is correct, Sephis Sword is from EOTN. They drop from the Undead. The level 20 Undead that I am aware of and is farmable is those in the Cathedral of Flames (also used for farming Rin Relics and Diessa Chalices).

I put the following together that may be helpful to anyone wondering what swords can possibly drop q8 from a NF chest. This is not all inclusive by all means, this is just a list of which sword skins I have gotten from a Kournan chest. In theory, if the skin can drop from a chest that can drop in Q8, that item can drop in Q8, but there are no promises or guarantees on my part

This is out of 2368 Kournan chests, some locations have a lot more runs than others (Barbarous Shore is 690 chests, others may have been only 25-50 chests).

My favorite NF run by far is Barbarous Shore. Considering 17 different Sword skins were found there, it can have great promise, however don't go there looking for q8 shields, the majority will be lotus shields.

The other stat to share is that out of the 15k chests I have tracked, the chance of a sword as a whole is 4.3%, then the chance of a Q8 is so ridiculously low, you may see a unicorn first.

Again, this is just a sample, not all possibilities of skins or locations of each skin.