User:Lancour

Greetings fellow Wiki user!

I decided it was time I finally started putting a name on my contributions (actual contributions with a name seem more believeable when it's NOT anonymous); so here it is! Contributions thus far are all under 165.154.50.79 (but I don't know how to revert add them to me), with contributions going towards Chest Drops, Globs of Ectoplasm, and annoying Dr Ishmael with my constant babbling.... ('Like a Parrot of the Sea he was!') But I digress... I did a little bit further in depth approach to the whole Chest Drop info I was working on, and of course shortly after I started collecting data I found flaws....

• I thought Chests always dropped 3 items: 1 armour piece, 1 weapon, and 1 upgrade slot piece
  • I've gotten some drops of 2 armour pieces and 1 upgrade, and also 2 weapons and 1 upgrade (flawed method already)
• I am using characters who are below level 20 in this testing; thus the option for specific items (specifically a Mark) is not possible
  • To explain this further, every drop I have ever gotten is always either equal in required level as the character opening it or lower (usually 3-4 level below); but there is no Crest upgrade that has a requirement below level 20, so drops for those characters (below level 20) are giving better outcomes for Doubloons (specifically Copper) and Gems (spefically Tier 1: Pebbles)
  • Also, drops of Green rarity do seem to have a minimum level requirement (like the Asuran Trident at level 4) thus not a possible drop, possibly skewing the rarity of drops
• I'm doing only 1 Chest for this, specifically a Splendid Chest
  • I don't really have time (at all) to do many Chest runs, so it's limited to a grand total of 10 Chests a day: high accuracy might take a while
  • I'm going to have totals made up to coincide with game updates; hopefully I can get a half decent number before a major game overhaul
  • Is there a difference between a Splendid Chest, a Grand Chest, a Magnificent Chest, and the rest? I don't know if there is a noted difference between of one done as of yet.... Lancour 20:20, 21 February 2013 (UTC)

Chest Drop Testing

First, an explanation of how the testing was done.

• Character was logged in sitting at the Splendid Chest at Urmaug’s Secret in Lion’s Arch
• Chest is opened and contents are recorded
• Waypoint mapped over to Farshore Waypoint (or Alt. 1)
• Character is run through Weyandt’s Revenge to the Magnificent Chest
• Chest is opened and contents are recorded
• Character is logged out

The next day (after the chest reset) the character is run in reverse of above; so yes I have four (4) characters getting two (2) chests worth of items for running only one (1) jumping puzzle daily. (NOTE: Alt. 1 is when characters have full inventory: I took them to a merchant in Lion’s Arch and sold off all the loot then continued on with the test)

Chest Contents Explained

Drops always are your Character Level equal to or up to -4 Levels from your Character Level. (ie- Character Level 80 gets Item Level 76, 77, 78, 79 or Level 80). I had an equal drop of each (~20% of each). There is a difference in Chests but they all follow a common Legend of sorts:

• The number of drops from a Chest is static: you always get the same number of items (ignoring Continue Tokens, they are not included in this test)
• There are two types of drops from Chests: Wearable Items and Upgrade Items

Wearable Item	Upgrade Item
Armor Piece	Gemstone
Weapon	Crest
Jewelry	Doubloon

ALL Upgrade Item drops are according to your Character’s level. For example:

Character Level 15	Character Level 28	Character Level 80
Gemstone Tier 1(Pebble)	Gemstone Tier 2 (Nugget)	Gemstone Tier 5 or 6 (Crystal or Orb)
Doubloon Tier 1 (Copper)	Doubloon Tier 2 (Silver)	Doubloon Tier 4 (Platinum)
N/A	Crest Tier 1 (Mark of the ____)	Crest Tier 4 or 5 (Medallion or Crest of the ____)

If the required level of the item is above your Character’s Level it will not drop. ANOMALLIES:

• The lowest Crest is level 20; Characters under Level 20 cannot get this drop
• Gemstone of Tier 6 (Orb) dropped for myself at Character Level 67+
• On two separate occasions I received drops which were not for my Character Level: my Level 67 Character (and Later Level 70) received Loot which corresponded to her Scaled down Level (she was scaled down to Level 12 in the area and received loot for a level 12 Character: Gemstone of Pebble quality and same as the Wearable items of Level 12 and 10).

Characters of Level 15 and below always had Masterwork items drop with a Level required equal to 14.

Difference in Chests

Back to the Chests. My tests were done on Splendid and Magnificent Chests.

• Splendid Chests give three (3) drops: 2 Wearable Items (Rarity is Fine+) and one Upgrade Item
• Magnificent Chests give four (4) drops: two Wearable Items (Rarity is Masterwork+) and two Upgrade Items

The rarity of items drops from Chests seem to have a pre-set minimum: Magnificent Chests never give Wearable Items of a Fine rarity. I’ve seen this same translate over to other chest types as well:

• Glorious Chest (end of the Maw event) gave six (6) drops: five Wearable Items (1 Rarity of Rare+, 2 Rarity of Masterwork+, and 2 Rarity of Fine+) and one Upgrade Item
• Grand Chest (Troll’s End) gave three (3) drops: two Wearable Items (Rarity is Masterwork+) and one Upgrade Item

(NOTE:I’ve only run the Glorious and Grand Chest about 5-6 times each so they might be off slightly.)

Math Odds

Now for what the contents include. First the Wearable Items. I found that there was no bias of items dropped at all. There was an equal chance of every Armor type (Head, Shoulder, Boots, et cetera) and level (Light, Medium, Heavy). As well there is an equal chance of every Weapon (Shield, Focus, Spear, Longbow, et cetera). While it sure feels like the random items are never for your Character it’s actually math that’s against you:

• Your Character can only wear 33% of the Armor types (You can only wear your Characters Level type)
• Best odds of a Weapon your Profession can use is ~58% (Guardian or Warrior)
• Worst Weapon odds are ~21% (Engineer)

Also wearable Jewelry can drop, but I don’t think there is Jewelry of Fine Rarity (apart from Karma ones). So here are the odds I got: Splendid Chest (Fine Rarity+, So limited Jewelry) 28 Chest opens (Feb. 26th, 2013 to Mar. 26th, 2013) on Five Characters

Armor	Weapon	Jewelry
121	158	1
43%	56%	>1%

Item Rarities are: Fine 254 drops (~91%) and Masterwork 26 drops (~9%).

Magnificent Chest (Masterwork Rarity+) 28 Chest opens (Feb. 26th, 2013 to Mar. 26th, 2013) on Five Characters

Armor	Weapon	Jewelry
128	141	11
~46%	~50%	~4%

Item Rarities are: Fine 0 drops (0%), Masterwork 274 drops (~98%).and Rare 6 drops (~2%). (Percents are rounded to the nearest whole number, exact values are given for clarity). (AUTHOR’s NOTE: Possible reason for higher weapon drop than armor? There are 18 different Armor pieces, 19 different Weapons, and Rings and Amulets. (46% Armor, 49% Weapon, 5% Jewelry). I have only seen Rings and Amulets drop for Jewelry; never Earrings or Back items.

Upgrade Items: What's That?

I didn't know how to group these items together so I made up a name for them. I called them Upgrade items. They are items which can be put into Empty Upgrade Slots: Doubloons, Gemstones, and Crests. (Hopefully that's a good enough explanation). Now for the Upgrade items. I split this up into two sides. 1 side is for my Characters under Level 20 (2 of them) and the other 3 (over Level 20) on the other side. I know it makes less accurate data but the Characters under Level 20 never get drops of Crests (Marks require Level 20). This would make the Gemstones and Doubloons have inaccurate number boosts. The plus side is I never saw a change in data for these drops based on Chest: item rarity is tied in with the item (ie- Amber Pebble is always of Fine quality, Copper Doubloon is always rare, et cetera).

• Drops for Characters under Level 20: 28+28(double) Chest opens (Feb. 26th, 2013 to Mar. 26th, 2013) on Two Characters

Gemstone	Doubloon
148	20
~88%	~12%

Note: Gemstone here was always a Pebble (Fine Rarity), Doubloon here was always Copper (Rare Rarity), thus percents equaled the drops as well.

• Drops for Characters above Level 20: 28+28(double) Chest opens (Feb. 26th, 2013 to Mar. 26th, 2013) on Three Characters

Gemstone	Doubloon	Crest
149	10	93
~59%	~4%	~37%

Note: At around Character Level 67 the odds of two rarities happen. Gemstones of Tier 5 (Crystals) and Tier 6 (Orbs) can BOTH drop; as well as Crest of Tier 4 (Medallion of the ____) and Tier 4 (Crest of the ____). My Level 80 Character had the following odds:

Crystals (T5)	Orbs (T6)	Medallions (T4)	Crests (T5)
46	4	30	4
~92%	~8%	~88%	~12%

Considering the low test rates it is probably closer to 90/10% odds of getting the different odds.

There you have it, this was my testing. Hopefully someone else can do some testing of their own and confirm or deny this contribution. I hoped to make a bigger contribution however I am limited in play time (being a parent and all) and of course game updates are affecting Chests (Tokens right now; who knows down the road).

Author’s Heretic Thoughts

Remember the quote from an Anet employee for magic find? The items generated are rolled from tables? I think Chests are similar. Reason for my thinking this: all of my Characters have received duplicate items from Chests (only once were they at the same time though). Halfway through testing this I decided maybe I could generate better armor for my Characters and use them; not only that but I could save Masterwork drops and have multiple Runes that benefit each other (halfway through? Yeah, stroke of genius hidden in the pile of stupid). Level 15 Warrior started saving all the Heavy Armor pieces found and noticed something interesting: The suffix and Prefix for each Armor piece was always the same. How many Mighty Chain Armor of Rata Sum do you think I can get drops of with 1 Character? One seems normal, two is an anomally; well I’m at six now. There is six different possible Prefixes (Healing, Mighty, Malign, Precise, Resilient Vital) and 59 different Runes for the Suffix (I’m not listing them all). So that’s how many possible different combos? About 350 different ones. Getting it twice is lucky, but three or more times isn’t luck at all. I think It really is a table:

• The Magnificent Chest always gives items of Masterwork Rarity or Higher
• At Character Level 15 the items are always Item Level 14

If it is as I think (every item has one predetermined Suffix and Prefix) then there is a total of 39 possible Wearable drops:

• 3 Armor classes or 6 Different Pieces = 18 Armors
• 19 Different Weapons = 19 Weapons
• Jewelry of Ring or Amulet = 2 Jewelry Pieces

Total of 39 Different item Possibilities Having opened the Magnificent Chest 28 Times (for 56 items) the math of course shows at least 17 duplicates (56-39=17). My duplicates don’t look so uncommon now. I of course noticed this with every Character, including my Level 80 Character (not to the degree mind you: I only noticed 2 duplicates (items I kept to wear and got as a duplicate). I don’t know how to prove this other than making a list for all possible drops for a low Level Character (smallest number of drop possibilities) nor do I know if this is unique to each specific Chest or Chest type; but more of something I thought I would include to get people to look at Chest drops differently. AUTHOR’s NOTE: I tried putting 2 duplicates in the Mystic Forge at the same time: it won’t let you place it inside. When I left the Forge to sell them I noticed they were all gone; it’s possible that this is an Anti-Duplicate item coding on ANET’s end. I didn’t get banned or warned or anything but I lost out on about 20 silver worth of items. Next time I had duplicates I went straight to the merchant and sold them. No problems there; so don’t make the same mistake as me! Lancour 16:41, 1 April 2013 (UTC)

Author’s Note (Part Two)

You’ll notice I put this on my own User page then on say the Chest page. First, I wasn’t sure where to put this to begin with (Chest page, Chest Talk Page, Splendid Chest , et cetera). Secondly, I’ve tried contributing to the GWWiki before (specifically GW1) and I didn’t like a specific user that seemed to ‘stalk’ my every contribution and revert my words down to mere bullet points (when I was logged in or not). Thirdly, I ramble. A lot. (Me thinks this ties into point two….). Lastly, (ramble, ramble….) this contribution was for the sake of clarity. I tried to be as thorough as possible with this testing. But alas, with all tests there is flaws and spots overlooked; and quite possibly someone with the opposite opinion. Several people have already put down their own Chest Drops on the specific pages and I didn’t want to correct anyone. If someone else does testing similar to mine I would love to see their results compared to mine (also, message me and I’ll explain how I did my note taking: excel columns out the wazoo). To sum this up:

• Wiki users! Do with as you please! (hack/slash/copy/paste to wherever/whenever you want!)
• Cause I’m not doing above

As for me; I’m now limiting myself to 5 Chests a day (specifically Magnificent) and the occasional Meta Group Event ones when I’m in the area:

• I’m only noting rarity drops, to see how long it takes to get Exotic drops (so far ~800 Chests had nil, wish me luck!) Lancour 17:17, 1 April 2013 (UTC)