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MF - *Chance to find magical items


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Well there are many, waaaay too many ideas as to how exactly MF aka % Chance to find magical items works. Every since the creation of the Dwarf with his Greed CA that increases MF there has been a buzz and all sorts of talk as to the best way to get those elusive set items and uniques. So. At long last I would love to pin this one down. I'll start with my most immediate thought on this which is something gogo and I have gone on about for the longest time. Even before the Dwarf I think. We never got around to posting it though. That is:

 

Does the level of danger your character is in affect the drops? By danger I mean how many enemies attacking you and maybe even how low your health got during battle. On top of this I think your ability to kill is involved. Meaning that depending on how fast you kill your opponents affects your drops.

 

I'm wondering if anyone else has felt the same way about these possibilities?

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Yes, for example, ghost cave, I press shift and lure ALL ghosts at once, then flame em all to death with my deahray of fire (FT) on ym dwarf, with greed on it's not thát high yet, I don't know how to upgrade it... :smart: bt I hardly ever find any good jewelry there...

 

Sylph

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your right in you statement Schot, but thier are 2 other factors that's also ar included in yours the sb and mf with high sb+low mf+fast killing you get better drops than high mf +low sb+ high damage. so these fatos are allso need for better drops

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dwarf is my favorite char and im a expert at making a mf dwarf

I wil later go into the game to gather some extra info

and post mf build of dwarf

my SC dwarfs has over the 1000 mf and my HC is about 1500 those numbers include the greed that I use

more about this later

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well expert and expert, that's a high ranking, remember my old SC dwarf he had almost 3k mf OSwald. just an advice don't use word like expert because thier will always be people who knows more.

 

just a pin pointer for ya

 

knocked out

 

Epox

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okay, so, back to topic, how about fast killing+High MF+high SB? and is high damage the same as fast killing? if so, please use only one word for fast killing, to avoid confusion :bow:

 

Sylph

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SB we can safely ignore on this topic I think, since we cannot die. :bow:

 

I definitely think dangerous level has a correlation with the quality of drop, but I can't say what is the factor of this.

 

You love WIDD Schot, you are probably the expert of seriously low health, so does HP has an effect on drops?

 

Next is fast killing, does one hit kill gets you better drops? that I don't think so. Think about it, the drops are produced when you kill your foe, so logically it doesn't make sense that what you did before the production will have an impact.

 

Just level difference?

 

@ Slyph: The best way by far in getting excellent jewelry is trading. But you can't get any unique that way. GC works for those but you have to be really patient about it. :bounce:

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Fast Killing. That's a tough one for me. I've debated whether it is if:

 

How many hits it takes to kill enemy. If you one hit kill then that is best.

Time taken to kill from point at which enemy detects you to the time you kill it.

 

 

There are a couple other variables I've considered like:

 

The amount of damage your best hit does to an enemy affects drop. Extremely high damage giving best drop.

Your proximity to the enemy during battle and kill affects drop. Far away = low risk = bad drops/ Close = high risk = good drops.

 

 

Just some quick food for thought. Gotta run!

 

 

P.s.

On playing with my widd characters in the past I never noticed if I was getting very good drops or not. Then again, I wasn't trying to get great drops in those days. I was just focused on my damage and... Surviving! lol.

One thing I can say though is that when I was widding I was using fireball and keeping far away from enemies.

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myles

SB does affect the drops you enemies the more SB the better the drops and higher the dmg

and your question to schot about low health effecting your drops,because of the increased danger level

thats a good 1 hmmm like to know more about that,schot dit you do some research in that.?

 

and schot about the faraway and close I think it does effect the drops im not sure about it but I had a WE with high mf and she almost never had good drops

when I was playing with my dwarf at almost the same level and mf he had lots more drops

have to test that 1 out

 

and little Epox

yeah there is always some one that know a bit more than you

but thats why we are in comunities and clans to learn from each other

and I consider myself a .....there that word coming again...expert!

and oswald was nothing compared with my dwarf

so if you wanna find out make a thread here clan battle muhahahaha :D

just let me know

Edited by Schot
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Hehe demonjay, I know that. We play HC only, so we cannot die. So a lower SB is impossible.

 

That y I said that is not significant in this topic.

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The amount of damage your best hit does to an enemy affects drop. Extremely high damage giving best drop.

Your proximity to the enemy during battle and kill affects drop. Far away = low risk = bad drops/ Close = high risk = good drops.

 

thsi kinda makes sense since long ranged characters get more SB...

 

Sylph

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I would not have thought your health nor kill speed affected drops until I read this, but am now convinced this is so, for one simple reason. All my old toons used to really start picking up better items around mid silver/gold, but my fortress still is only getting mostly junk, and her sb is in the mid 80's. She almost never gets hit unless in a mob of real bad guys, and she has pretty poor damage levels on her hits, too. Basically, it takes a long time to pound the baddies, but my life ring stays well over 95% full the whole time. At level 40, I think I have consumed 5 or 6 reds total, and 4 of those were in 2 single encounters.

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I, a long time ago, came to understand a very simple axiom.

Everytime I got scared...drops were really good.

What does this mean?

When do we get "scared" in the game?

For a long time I had run a lot of tests on...

Having low health, running OC's with crappy armor, getting tons of monsters all at once so my heartbeat races...

and discovered that most times that I DO get scared, the drops are good.

Me and schot have discussed this for many a long while, and I kinda think that there is a Risk/Time thingy involved.

 

Higher Risk, less times, tons of deaths...more drops.

 

For example, I truly believe now that if I one shot kill a mob in Niobium, I will always get a great drop. Guaranteed. I run this test over and over with my ebolts daemon because she's the only that can take out an entire orc mob with chief in one shot.

If I get the entire mob with one Ebolt, I will usually get a Unique and/or set.

If even one is left, I usually get nothing.

What does this mean?

Hmmm, the jury's still out

 

"unsure"

 

gogo

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Fantastic. So we've got several ideas to try out. I'm looking forward to examining the various theories found here in our discussion. We have these ideas but now I think it's time to try and prove them. How? I encourage us all to apply the theories out. Using one extreme vs another. What we can do is first choose your most reliable char. Try the to get the best drops you can so the higher the damage you can put out the better. Here's a combination of the ideas that I'd suggest for most likely good drops. You might want to try this on LAN.

 

 

Reduction of health(Must be quick or start battle with low health. You could try taking off all defence to do this. The Pain mod might actually have some significance here as well as widd) + Close quaters fighting + High high damage + quick as possible(once the enemy sees you the good drop clock is ticking)

 

 

Then try the opposite using the exact same char:

 

Full Health all the time(High defence) + Stand far away(bow) + Low low damage + Take your time, do it slow(Say about 10 hits to kill boss types. Take away damage to do this or use a weak CA if you have one)

 

 

Undoubtabley you will see a major difference. I think we all know this but whats important here is to observe what is happening while you're trying this out. You may discover something you never noticed before. Its all about research. Keep in mind that having MF is not a requirement. It might even be better that you have no MF for both tests. Try and see if you can duplicate results several times as this is what will prove our ideas to be true.

 

 

One thing I noted recently about the Orc Chieftains. I did a bit of testing on the whole idea that being close to enemy gives better drops. What I would "try" to do is get super close to the Orc Chieftain, almost on top of him and it was desert Orc mobs I was trying this with. I would go directly to the Chieftain first believing that if I had try to kill the weaker Orcs first I would not get good drops from the Chieftain because I took too long to kill him. Well after trying this many times I discovered something that the Chieftain always does. He tries to move away from me. In fact. He won't engage in battle right away. He lets the weaker Orcs come in after me first. Pretty much everytime. It leads me to believe their might be a reason for this but I can't be certain of what exactly... If you notice this please let me know!

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[. . .] I discovered something that the Chieftain always does. He tries to move away from me. In fact. He won't engage in battle right away. He lets the weaker Orcs come in after me first. Pretty much everytime. It leads me to believe their might be a reason for this but I can't be certain of what exactly... If you notice this please let me know!

 

I see this too, like he's testing his lieutenants ability to control the fight. He seems to only engage once at least one of the mob is either dead or runs away. I've usually tried to ignore him first and get any rangers before the melee types. They run away too. Skelly mage with a mob has a similar behavior, too. He walks over close, and may flame, but does not actually hit with a weapon right away either. Just watches . . .

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yeah thats right noticed that to, it's right that if ya kill the whole bunch Dwarf with FT in one flame drops are far better or hit with motar and kill the entire pack. so with low MF you could find as much good stuff as with high all that matters is fast killing im fidding lots of stuff with my level 34 glad with 50% sb 0 mf because of te 1 hit killing

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Hi :hugs:

 

 

I am playing Sacred really really long but cant find an exact mechanism how MF truly works and I seriously doubt anyone could. Even officials from Ascaron are in darkness (like us) in this and some other things. Sacred has an interesting way of working: some things (like MF) are simply existing without real rules or with constantly changing rules.

 

But I have some theories and a few facts about MF:

 

Facts:

 

SB is a real major factor in MF. Try to monitor your SB and try guess when will it increase. At the moment when the number changes you will get a special event: SUPERDROP. This is a confirmed and documented fact that you could easily check. When SB grows for a few seconds you will have very nice drop both in quantity and quality. (now the specualtion part) I think it increases your MF with a drastical amount. SO at lower level with lesser SB and MF its less visible but still existent.

 

 

 

Another of my theorys are based on the amount of MF. Generally we should think the higher the MF is the better the result. If we stay in general thats true even. But we are humans and we are really good at decieving ourselves, right?

 

So if I am after a very elusive set piece than I will think of it as a really worthy find. In short I will rate that piece highly over its real value.

 

Take a breath - I swear I will try to be more coherent :P

 

There are a lot of items in sacred. So we cant research MF if we base our theories on our expections. Every stuff or every kind of stuff (like potion, set, uniqe ...etc) as a group has a chance when its better dropped.

That means with 100 MF (for example) has better chance to get a rune or a mentor potion than a set piece or a uniqe item. If you increase you MF to 500 then the chance to find a potion decreases slightly but the chance to get a set increases much more while the chance to find an uniqe stays almost the same. Now increase your mf much more: to 1500. Your chance to find a set is decrasing while finding something uniqe is increased visibly. And I am speaking about real "increase" and "decrease". My Dark elf with his disgusting amount of MF finds almost the same amount of sets and uniqes - BUT in a much lesser quantity like my demon with 1200 MF.

 

Heh now even I am unsure what I wanted to write :drinks:

 

To understand what I am trying to say we need to separate the quantity and the quality of the drops. Quality is like a tower with different floors. First floor is worthless junk. Second floor is blue worthless junk. 3rd floor is yellow worthless junk. 4th floor is green worthless junk. 5th floor is golden worthless junk. 6 th floor is blue worthless junk with some better than useless stats. 7th floor is yellow worthless junk with some better than useless stats. 8th floor is green worthless junk with some better than useless stats. And the tower continues.

 

For example with 500 Mf you will have really good chance to get blue, yellow and green worthless stuff AND you will have a chance to get blue, yellow or green worthless junk with some better than useless stats AND you will have a small chance to get OK blue, yellow or green items AND you will have a very little chance to get useful blue, yellow or green items.

Now increase your MF to 1500. Now you will have low chance to get get blue, yellow and green worthless stuff AND you will have a chance to get blue, yellow or green worthless junk with some better than useless stats AND compared to the 500 MF you will have good chance to get OK blue, yellow or green items AND you will get a chance to get useful blue, yellow or green items.

With 3000 MF you will get a really low chance get blue, yellow and green worthless stuff AND a low chance to get blue, yellow or green worthless junk with some better than useless stats AND you will get a very good chance to find OK blue, yellow or green items AND a chance to get useful yellow or green items.

 

Quantity works almost the same. With low mf you find small amount of junk. With moderate MF you find a lot more junk and rarely something better. With good mf you find lesser amount of junk and the same amount of OK stuff and rarely something useful. Whit high amount of MF you will find only a small amount of junk much more OK stuff and some GOOD stuff.

 

Now in other words:

 

with 100 mf you find bad quality stuff and less in quantity. 300 MF means still bad quality but more quantity AND better quality in less quantity. 500 Mf means better quality in better quantity AND real good quality with very small quantity. 1000 MF means OK quality with good quantity AND small chance to get useless stuff in small quantity AND real good quality in not too many quantity...

 

OK dont get me wrong the numbers WERENT exact numbers just examples.

 

Heh its hard and time consuming. Or I am simply tired? :o ANYWAY why am I still at my workplace:) Set sail to home! Cya online tonight :hugs:

CS.

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Ok, now that's very interesting what you say Csaszar. I very much like this theory and it does stand to reason. Now if what you say is fact then it could be possible to choose to use a certain amount of MF depending on our needs. For example:

 

If I want to find many set items of the same kind then I would use the best amount of MF that is most likely to give me set items.

 

I believe what you are saying Csaszar is that higher MF does not exactly give you "better" drops. What higher MF does is give you "different" drops. That MF has tiers/floors and each tier gives a defined group type of drops.

 

So if I just wanted set items then I would change the MF I have to Floor 12, or something. But say I wanted to rune farm or power level my char. I would go to 1st floor which would give me lots of runes an/or mentor pots.

 

Have I understood you correctly? What are the chances of actually discovering how much MF each floor requires? That would be nice if we could document it. :4rofl:

 

 

 

For the longest time MF has been understood only at the most basic level. Pretty much all that most have done with MF is get it up as high as possible. Here in this discussion I really believe that we can learn to take full control of MF in order to better provide the needed items to our build ideas and I'm very much looking to do so. :)

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How do drops work?

 

Well....

 

Sacred generates a random number between (for example) 0 & 10,000. Sacred then has various "buckets" for each "type" of drop (nothing, gold, potions, crap item, normal item, magic item, set item, unique item, etc), the "better" the item type, the smaller the "bucket" (D2 did it kinda similarly).

 

So, say the bucket for a unique item is 10 (for 1 in 1,000 chance), so if you "roll" between 10,000 & 9,991, you'll get a unique.

The bucket for a set might be 20 (for a 1 in 500 chance), so if you roll between 9,990 & 9,971, you get a set.

The bucket for a magic item might be 100, so if you roll between 9,970 & 9,871, you get a magic item. And so on...

 

Where MF comes in.

 

Sacred takes your total MF & converts it into a %, it then uses that % to increase the size of each bucket (at the expense of the "nothing" bucket). So if you've got +50% MF, your bucket for Uniques is now 15 (10 + (10*0.5)), so you "only" need to roll between 10,000 & 9,986 to get a unique.

Your bucket for Set's is now 30 (20 + (20*0.5)), so you "only" need to roll between 9,985 & 9,956 to get a set.

Your bucket for Magic items is not 150, so you only need to roll between 9,955 & 9,806.

And so on.

 

SB further increases the size of said buckets, but I'm not sure how. It could be by simply taking your SB% & adding that on to your MF % (+50% MF + 50% SB = +100% chance of getting stuff, so your Unique bucket would be 20, your Set bucket would be 40, etc), or it could add in some other way...

 

But that's how one of the dev's described it to me (though I don't remember how he described the SB aspect fo it).

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Hi :4rofl:

 

Schot:

 

As I stated its only a theory but its based on my gaming experirnce.

 

And yes you did understand wha I meant to say :)

 

 

Llama:

 

Well you said it: "that's how one of the dev's described it to me".

 

Ascaron gave us the best game in the known universe but I doubt they know too much of its real, inner working. First there is the fact that the devs programmed it. Second there is the way sacred works. And IMHO in some aspect the 2 ways are very far away from each other.

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Oh boy. Ok. So now we have a bucket theory to factor in, lol. Well I should have known this was not going to be an easy one to tackle. I suppose now is a good time to review the change log of the Sacred Plus patch. You can read the change log here. In that change log and under General you can see that the equation for MF was changed and it states the new equation. I checked the following patches for changes to MF and did not see any so I assume that the equation is still the same. That said it might be interesting to pick this equation apart especially given the information that Llama has provided. The equation as stated in the change log:

 

Unique = BoniCreature/Boss + UB%/2 + Root(MagicFind*100)

 

 

So we have some variables to define here:

 

BoniCreature/Boss - What number do we put here?

 

+

 

UB%/2 - I understand this as your characters SB divided by 2?

 

+

 

Root - This tells us to find the root of what is inside the brackets?

 

(MagicFind*100) - Your total % of MF multiplied by 100?

 

 

Ummmm. Help? :4rofl:

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I think art of what Csaszar is also saying is that the games intrinsic value of items is not the same as ours. Perhaps I am 1 piece from having a complete set, for example - say Lloranath. This set, by its level, is not as good as Octanion. By increasing mf initially, I improve the odds of getting a set item, and hence improve my odds for the piece I want. But if I go further, then I start shifting the likelihood from Lloranath over to Octanion, and mf may actually be reducing the odds for finding what I want.

 

Trade must work similarly. Some item stats, the yellow and gold ones especially, are valued highly by the game, but perhaps not by a player. Plus to find potions - I find this essentially worthless as I almost never drink red/yellow/green/purple and always have blues on hand anyway. Extra sockets I value extremely highly. My current experiment is wearing mostly "junk" with a lot of sockets that make it valuable to me.

There have been times when I take off some trade gear to find what I want.

 

As to your last comment about the devs programming it - let's not forget that Ascaron bought an "almost finished" game and then finished it. They may not know all the details very well either.

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Even officials from Ascaron are in darkness (like us) in this and some other things.
Ascaron gave us the best game in the known universe but I doubt they know too much of its real, inner working.

I think you might be surprised Csaszar. I could tell you, but then they'd have to kill me :D

 

IMO (and I've heard echoed from others including gogo) a large part of the enjoyment of Sacred comes from it's complexity and the ability of the community to figure things like this out. The thrill of discovery, speculation, and the hunt for the elusive answers to mysteries just like this. How else could we as a community still be discovering new things about it after all this time?

 

Imagine how much less interesting the ride over the last few years would have been if we'd packaged up all the explanations and formulas for you. Speaking from my personal experience as a community member before I started working for Ascaron, I wouldn't have enjoyed it nearly as much if it had all been spelled out.

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Hi :bye:

 

 

You have your point there Carolyn! :P

But the info isnt worth that much to sacrafice you (hehe maybe we could start a poll about it - just in case :evil: )

 

True that Sacred has benefitted much from the mistery around that but we confronted too much the fact that A wasnt able to discover or even understand how things work in Sacred.

 

Any1 who are old enough (Sacred chronology) would remember for example the "more than 4 socket" problem and the pitiful excuse and explanation. Not to mention stats like +74 two handed or the Lloraneth full set bonus.

 

Anyway A managed to send a virus trough Sacred that infected us all.

Hehe sometimes I find myself dreaming about this game :thumbsup:

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@CH indeed if we knew all from the begining the game play and terio's and such would have made the game very borring to fast but secrest are good makes one play more and find new things :thumbsup:

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