How the drop system works in TQ:AE?

[Ryksa]

I do not mind the deep technical mechanics of the system, but please explain it for me. I know that RNG works in the background, so totally random, but how is that there are sessions, when under 20 minutes I loot 6 epic/legendary items, while on another run hours of farming drops nothing at all.

How is that possible? Somewhere I read about there are "seeds", when starting the game, and that is why it is different so much.

[Gummiel]

yeah it comes down to a seed, this seed get set when you start up the game client itself, so exiting out to main meny wont change the seed you ahve to restart the entire game client to get a new seed

[76561198019218082]

...which is super stupid. I was running Hades from lvl 75 to 80 hunting for some items. Some of them just won't drop. But one time I got one of the items TWO times in side-by-side runs. I mean, that's total ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

[Gummiel]

Originally posted by NetHack:

...which is super stupid. I was running Hades from lvl 75 to 80 hunting for some items. Some of them just won't drop. But one time I got one of the items TWO times in side-by-side runs. I mean, that's total ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥.

Any kind of RNG could produce that effect, if somthing were to be completely random streaks WILL occur at times, in fact high level mathmeticians can easily see if something is completly random, and one of the methods they use is to look for streaks, lack of streaks mean its is NOT random, so that exactly there can't be 100% blamed on the seeds

[76561198019218082]

My frustration wasn't about RNG exactly, but I kinda see what you mean. The sad part is that you may farm one boss 100 times in a row and not get anything, then you return to game next day and you get desired item right off the bat. And this is nothing you are aware of. Having one seed may give you 1:100 chance on a specific item - while other seed would give you 1:50000 chance for example.

Well, it is not too bad in itself, but what really freaks me out is the fact that you need to restart the whole game. And that is not what you would want to do. It's lame.

[Ryksa]

So the drop chances always change in every session. Thats bad. They should be constant.

[76561198019218082]

My guess is that chances are fixed, but seed decides the pool from which the items are drawn. Something like that.

[Gummiel]

Originally posted by Ryksa:

So the drop chances always change in every session. Thats bad. They should be constant.

Yes and No, it is the seed used to calculate the drops that changes every session, which does make it seem like the dropchances change every session at the surface but its a little more complicated than that even, but we are at some quite highlevel math to truely understand the effects of it. I do think if you were to play like 100 hours with one seed and then another 100 hours with another the average drops would probably be withing normal magin of error(and the most hours of each the better ofc as with all statistical analysis), but quite different in distribution throug out, but I am not 100% sure on that either tbh, but one thing I do know is that talking about how an RNG actually works is some very difficult stuff to truely conprehend

EDIT: Hmm yeah could also be what NetHack said as well, but I really do doubt anyone but the very original devs of TQ (and even then probably only a subset of those devs) truely know the exact way it works

[Terotrous]

From a programming standpoint, a seed is just an entrypoint into a series of (for all intents and purposes) random values. Some sequences will of course yield better results for the player, but it can change at any time and there's no way to know if your next results will be good or not. A seed that just gave you 10 great items could be just about to enter a sequence of 1000 terrible items, and similarly, a seed that has produced nothing for a while might be one fight away from producing a ton of incredible items. That's RNG for you.

I recently farmed a few rare items in the game, and it's fairly clear that TQDatabase's item drop percentages are correct. For example, Normal Aktaios (Telkine #2) drops each level 20 formula (there's 4) 1.7% of the time. This means you get one about 1 in every 12 runs, and if you're looking for a specific one, it will take about 60ish kills on average. Of course, it took me ~300 kills to get the Razor Claw formula, but I was getting a level 20 formula about every 12 kills, I just failed the 1 in 4 chance like 18 times in a row before finally getting it.