Artifact of Sacrifice - Absurdly low item drop rates intentional?

[Hexerin]

By the description of the artifact, it's implied this is supposed to simply shift item gain from chests (passive) to enemy kills (active). In theory, this is a great artifact to have because it allows two differing playstyles to both have what they want (a win-win).

However, it looks like this artifact massively reduces item rates. Without it, chests are plentiful all over the maps. With it, you'll get maybe a couple items within a similar time frame. This doesn't feel right. Was it a bad translation on the artifact effect description or something?

[Herr Quezt]

I think item drop chance is based off of enemy xp values. So the later you go the more drops you'll get. Early might get a bit harder though.

[Hexerin]

Originally posted by Herr Quezt:

I think item drop chance is based off of enemy xp values. So the later you go the more drops you'll get. Early might get a bit harder though.

If that's the case, then that's perfectly fine. We'll have to try running with the artifact again to see if that pans out. We stopped on the second stage because we weren't getting items, and figured it would just stay that way throughout.

[mcb0ny]

Try Sacrifice + Swarms ;] Loot is only marginally better (not doubled for sure ;] ) but half HP on enemies really make AoE shine ;] Also, in my runs i get most of the loot from portal fights.

Also, there is that thing with farming hidden stages ;] You know, time stops there so you can stay as long as you feel like it....

[Seishisha]

Different enemies also have higher or lower base drop chance, boss's being higher weak enemies like wisps being lower, elites also have different drop rates, just from personal experience some of my best monsoon runs have been done with just sacrifice enabled and no other artifacts, i find it much easier to go fast when not worrying about buying items, drop rates again in my experience seem just about right.

[SkyCake]

I find the way that it can snowball to be a lot of fun and hope you enjoy your second run!

[lilheartless]

Sacrifice is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ in the first loop loot wise and far superior loop 2 and beyond ( on the first loop the directors just don't have enough money to spam units at you all the time)

just for point of reference I was doing a sacrifice command run with engi last night by the time i got to sky meadows on the first loop i had like 15 items 1 of them being the legendary chest and 5 of them being teleporter drops (1 shrine of the mountain on stage 3)

by the time i got to stage 11 (aka 1 stage 3rd loop) i literally could not pick up items as fast as they were dropping ( i play with a controller and that means you have to jump to select each item with command) by the time i hit 140 minutes into the run i had over 100 syringe teddy crowbar and like 20 of everything else thats relevant except for soda's. plus over 150 green items and idk 15 red items.

TL;DR sacrifice makes loop one harder then turns into a lootsplosion gamemode making it basically impossible to lose.

[Zeddy]

It starts poorly as it's based on the enemy type. Later enemies have higher drop rates and are more plentiful, so it will snowball. You're sacrificing consistency for highly accelerated growth in the lategame.

There are modifiers that reduce chances, like spawning in the teleporter fight, but the minimum drop chance is also 5%. If you want earlygame items, triggering the teleporter immediately and farming enemies from there is a good way to go.

[OG.UA SAPUTRA]

Originally posted by Hexerin:

Originally posted by Herr Quezt:

I think item drop chance is based off of enemy xp values. So the later you go the more drops you'll get. Early might get a bit harder though.

If that's the case, then that's perfectly fine. We'll have to try running with the artifact again to see if that pans out. We stopped on the second stage because we weren't getting items, and figured it would just stay that way throughout.

Thats the case and you guys dont need to do some test run because all of the detailed info is on the wiki

[Hxppy Thxughts]

With sacrifice on you want to pretty much skip the first two stages.
Bum rush tele and just move on to the next stage because sitting around isn't gonna do anything for you.
If you want to get really cheesy then use Artifact of Kin so boss is a horde of monsters so your chance for drops increases more.

In general I hate loitering around in the first two stages. If I'm not on the third stage by 9 minutes I start to get really antsy.

[DaBa]

It's low early, but as you fight more enemies, harder enemies, and more elites, the drop rate will quickly start giving you more items than there are chests on each floor.

Also, one of the big advantages of sacrifice is that you don't have to waste time farming and looking for chests, you can rush teleporter every single time. It's a good trade off for having less items early on.

[Dudeskio]

Sacrifice + Swarms. Rush teleporter the first 4 - 5 stages. Profit.

[itssirtou]

If you take the time to get every early game chest, it's worse. If you rush to the TP and clean up the nearby chests, it's about the same.

If you run it with swarm you get a lot more items. It's not a clean double, but early game it's close. Woolie did a video on it. Basically Swarm cuts the Difficulty rating of each mob in half, but the 5% base is stil there. So early game when you're facing weak enemies with nothing more than the base anyway you get about double items for the first 2 stages. And late game Sac is amazing anyway, and Swarm makes proc chains even more OP. Although Swarm/Monsoon is pretty belligerent in the first 2 stages...

[Cassunshine]

Sacrifice's drop chance is directly related to how much an enemy costs to spawn by the Director. Generally, this means that stronger enemies give more items. This is also multiplied by the same multiplier the game uses to increase the cost of Elites, meaning that rarer elites give more items as well.

The lowest drop chance for any normal enemy also can't be below 5%, period. Any naturally spawned enemy has a minimum chance of 5%, no matter how much they cost to spawn.

Sacrifice reduces the chance by a bit, but because of the 5% minimum chance, it doesn't affect normal enemy drop rates, only elites. The extra rolls from more enemies is worth more than the loss in each roll's individual chance, iirc.

In general, this means that the longer the run goes, the more items you get, but early game it's entirely based off of RNG, because the percentage chance that a given lemurian or wisp drops an item is pretty low.

Source : https://riskofrain2.gamepedia.com/Artifacts#Drop_Chance & having looked at the drop chance code myself