Sources of chance to find valuables(CtFV). Some questions.

[idbeholdME 388]

As far as I know, there are 4 sources available:

1) Gear bonuses. Simply a bonus that can roll on items. Nothing to debate here. You see the exact % of CtFV you get for equipping the item.

2) Map revealed %. Simply divide the current % by 4 and that is the amount you get to your CtFV.

3) Enhanced Perception. Again, nothing complicated. You get the stated % on the skill, but keep in mind that this bonus is not shown in the bonus overview. One question though. How does it stack with the other bonuses? I'd assume additively, since the gear and map % stack that way, but one never knows in this game.

4) Survival bonus. The unclear one. Everyone agrees that a higher survival bonus makes better items drop. But does anyone know the exact math beyond it? How much, or what formula determines the amount of CtFV you get? Is it the same as the attributes, meaning 33% of your current survival bonus? Example:

You have 75% survival bonus, which means you get a 25% bonus to all your attributes. Is the CtFV from Survival bonus the same as the attribute bonus? No idea where I would look for the exact formula.

And also, the same question about stacking. I'd assume it just get added with all the others, but have no way of knowing that for certain. There could be some multiplication going on in one or more of the categories, which could make one source of CtFV more valuable than others once you surpass 100% CtFV and so on.

 

If anybody can provide some hard facts about this, it would be appreciated.

Edited July 10, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Lindor 438]

15 hours ago, idbeholdME said:

4) Survival bonus. The unclear one. Everyone agrees that a higher survival bonus makes better items drop. But does anyone know the exact math beyond it? How much, or what formula determines the amount of CtFV you get? Is it the same as the attributes, meaning 33% of your current survival bonus? Example:

You have 75% survival bonus, which means you get a 25% bonus to all your attributes. Is the CtFV from Survival bonus the same as the attribute bonus? No idea where I would look for the exact formula.

And also, the same question about stacking. I'd assume it just get added with all the others, but have no way of knowing that for certain. There could be some multiplication going on in one or more of the categories, which could make one source of CtFV more valuable than others once you surpass 100% CtFV and so on.

 

If anybody can provide some hard facts about this, it would be appreciated.

Okay first of all I want to clear with the myth that "Faster increase of survival bonus"(pre CM) / "Survival Bonus" (post CM) would directly increase your survival bonus. It's not true. It directly multiplies your ingame combat time by (1+B) where B is your item modifier bonus. Since the Survival bonus formula is S=T/(T+6) where T is ou combat time in hours, we can calculate that the formula for how this modifier works is:

S_2=(BS+S)/(BS+1)  where S is your Survival bonus without the modifier, S_2 is your Survival Bonus with the modifier and B is the modifier bonus.

So that's the second time this obscure bonus has been demytified now.

 

Why is this important?

 

You can directly see the impact your Survival bonus has on CtfV by equipping an item which has this as a modifier. All instances of CtfV are added together, so if you're clicking on the Sigma sign in the character's inventory, get your total CtfV from there and then subtract all instances of CtfV from your gear from that, you have the exact amount of CtfV your Survival bonus gives you.

Now when equipping an item with the "Suvival Bonus" modifier one would think that this would also increase your CtfV by the formula above? Haha no. The "Survival bonus" modifier has absolutely zero impact on your CtfV, only the hard Survival bonus counts. To me it seems like the "Survival bonus" modifier only has an impact on your character Attributes. Honestly I think that the displayed survival bonus in your inventory is a scam, the "Survival Bonus" modifier has zero impact on your Survival Bonus and just multiplies your attributes by above formula. I will edit the wiki page of this bonus to give that information. (EDIT: Done)

 

Okay now for real, why is this important?

If you want to make a test series on your CtfV you get from characters with different survival boni, you can send me your data and I will see wether I can derive a formula. BUT: It is important that you have no "Survival bonus" modifying item equipped and only notify the clean survival bonus.

 

EDIT: Forget what I said, accidentally divided %map revealed by 8 instead of 4, resulting in me believing the difference would come from the Survival Bonus.. The Survival Bonus chance to find valuables is not visible in the inventory as far as I can tell. The part for the Survival Bonus item modifier formula however is correct, though that doesn't answer your question.
 

Edited July 11, 2022 by Lindor

[idbeholdME 388]

5 hours ago, Lindor said:

EDIT: Forget what I said, accidentally divided %map revealed by 8 instead of 4, resulting in me believing the difference would come from the Survival Bonus.. The Survival Bonus chance to find valuables is not visible in the inventory as far as I can tell. The part for the Survival Bonus item modifier formula however is correct, though that doesn't answer your question.
 

Yeah, I was aware that the item bonus only increases your current SB by a portion of your missing SB. Example. You have 90% SB base and equip an item with 10% bonus to SB, you end up with 91%.

But that was indeed not the question. In the bonus overview, you see the CtFV bonus you get from map revealed in white at the end of the bonus list. If you equip an item with CtFV, it is added together with the map CtFV and in the bonus overview, it changes the color to the color of the bonus on the item.

CtFV from EP and SB is not shown in the bonus overview. EP lists its bonus to CtFV separately though, leaving only the bonus to CtFV coming from SB as the only unknown. It can safely be said from observation that a character with 95% SB will get more rare items than a character with 0% I was just wondering just how much impact it has and whether or not the bonus from SB perhaps stacks multiplicatively with other sources etc.

Edited July 11, 2022 by idbeholdME

[Lindor 438]

47 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

Yeah, I was aware that the item bonus only increases your current SB by a portion of your missing SB. Example. You have 90% SB base and equip an item with 10% bonus to SB, you end up with 91%.

That's not how it works. I have written the formula above. For your exampe it would be (0.1*0.9+0.9)/(0.1*0.9+1)~90.82%. Has nothing to do with being a portion of your missing SB.

50 minutes ago, idbeholdME said:

It can safely be said from observation that a character with 95% SB will get more rare items than a character with 0% I was just wondering just how much impact it has and whether or not the bonus from SB perhaps stacks multiplicatively with other sources etc.

Why can that safely be said though? It was so in Sacred Underworld, but why in Sacred 2? Usually chars with high SB also have high map reveal, unless you let your char stand in bronze near an enemy close to the starting area for 500 hrs to farm SB. Or is there some sort of character editing which can set your map reveal to zero?

I know that SB is allergic to modding, even Dmitriy couldn't do anything here and that says something. I'm not sure wether any amount of reverse engineering will ever be able to answer your question. Nevertheless it's worth a try.

[idbeholdME 388]

1 hour ago, Lindor said:

That's not how it works. I have written the formula above. For your exampe it would be (0.1*0.9+0.9)/(0.1*0.9+1)~90.82%. Has nothing to do with being a portion of your missing SB.

Oh right. Then the item bonus is actually much worse than I had previously thought. I only ever tried equipping items with it in the 90%+ SB territory where my original theory seemed close enough. But trying out the formula and comparing it with the in-game numbers, the formula is obviously correct.

1 hour ago, Lindor said:

Why can that safely be said though? It was so in Sacred Underworld, but why in Sacred 2? Usually chars with high SB also have high map reveal, unless you let your char stand in bronze near an enemy close to the starting area for 500 hrs to farm SB. Or is there some sort of character editing which can set your map reveal to zero?

Because I tend to get much better gear in general on my late game characters than on my starter ones. Especially on those that don't take EP, nor gear for CtFV. The CtFV from map revealed is quite negligible by itself (unless you specifically farm it) to be making such an impact by itself. I originally attributed the difference to SB, but there could also be some hidden difficulty related bonuses at work, as I seem to be getting much more blue and yellow items in general in Niob than in Silver, even with the same CtFV.  So it's either SB's hidden bonus to CtFV, or a hidden increase to CtFV depending on difficulty.

It also begs the question, why would Ascaron change the SB mechanic when it seems mostly untouched in all other ways.

 

Side note:

It could also simply be that the base chances of different item tiers dropping are also dependent on enemy level. And as SB increases the enemy level, it could indirectly be contributing to better drops. But sadly, it seems no one will ever know for certain.

Edited July 11, 2022 by idbeholdME

[idbeholdME 388]

Also, just realized that there is sometimes this tip on the loading screens:

Which is yet another pseudo-confirmation that SB does increase CtFV.