Drop rates bug with mounted pair or high/combined LUK?

[KFCrispy]

http://www.gamefaqs.com/boards/536777-s ... i/60663852

Have you had experiences similar to Sin Jackal at gamefaqs where you were hunting for drops using a mounted pair or Treasure Hunt support and seemed to get nothing for hours but drops started pouring out when you disabled the pair or removed the support character?

[gildedtalon]

Support character has nothing to do with it I think

[Celes]

Well, I suppose its one of the numberous "recipe"-bug like errors in the Suiko games, which are hardly noticed unless someone tries a certain, exclusive attempt over and over again. I wouldn't be surprised if this happens to be a programming error which indeed does a wrong calculation on the drop rate. Without looking at the code itself, its hard to tell.

[eldrasidar]

hard to say whether or not it's a bug, given the lack of information give, and the amount of factors which may or may not go into deciding whether or not you get an item drop. One would like to think that a Character with Treasure Hunt should if anything, improve your odds, since that what the skill is supposed to do. I'm also not sure whether it matters who lands the killing blow as to whether or not that effects it, I think that would take more testing to figure out. For example, having only a low luck character or characters kill off monsters over say twenty battles, then only have high luck characters do it over another 20 battles, and see what happens. When I've done treasure hunting in the past, I've always brought parties of nearly all high luck characters, so I really don't know if this does anything or not. If there is point when a mounted pairs effective luck goes over a threshold from high to low, it would be interesting to know what that point is.

[KFCrispy]

yeah i'm not sure the LUK stats are really used. i'm more interested in the mounted pairs part--we should be able to confirm if a mounted pair screws up drop rates by fighting enemies who drop items commonly (that Screw item is pretty common)...

[eldrasidar]

Hmm, I feel as though Luck probably is involved. Whether it's the party's combined, the mounted pairs combined, or the individuals, plus any support skill bonus, I do not know, but it's feels like it should be involved, even if the event described only triggers with mounted pairs, or perhaps if you abused a luk stone to boost someone's individual luck past a certain point. If I had to guess, I would assume that every dropped item has a numeric value assigned to it, so lets say for one item, it's 100, when the monster dies, the game makes a calculation combining a random number, presumably between 1-100, and then adds some bonus based on luck and treasure hunting. If the resulting number is 100 or more, you get the dropped item. In theory, then so long as your luck bonus isn't negative, there should always be a tiny chance of you getting a dropped item.

So for example, Geddoe in Chapter 1 could possibly get a Rage rune off the troll dragon area boss. However, nobody in his party would be particularly lucky at that point, so it'd be really hard to get it, but by chapter 3, with their luck stats being higher, and having access to prosperity hats and stuff, it becomes far more likely.

For the mounted pairs to make item getting impossible(at least if they do the killing blow), then they would have to bestow a negative modifier to the random dropped item calculation, to the degree to which there would never be any random number high enough that you could acquire the item in question. This seems to be the case described by the poster on gamefaqs, as over the course of 8 hours, he did receive a very small number of more common items, The problem is, without looking at the code to see if this is possible or not, it would be completely indistinguishable from really bad luck.

[gildedtalon]

in my case for suikoden ii, black urn just won't drop until I defeated Harpy. but since no one can confirm it, celes dismissed my claim

http://suikosource.com/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=12542

[KFCrispy]

i would think the LUK used in drop calculations is usually done based on the party and not the character who killed the enemy. but there's never been any info on that for this series..

[eldrasidar]

As it happens, I actually have a game save right at Hugo Chapter 3, so I can actually do some testing of this at some point in the near future. For the sake of my own sanity, I will use 25 battles per scenario, and I will only fight in battles where I could potentially get a Fury rune. I'm thinking doing one scenario where hugo and fubar are together, doing all the damage; they are together, but all the damage is done by whoever my luckiest character is; they are together, using my unluckiest character to do damage; they are apart, luckiest character does damage; they are apart, unluckiest character does all the damage. So there's 5 different scenarios making 125 battles to run through. When I get done, I will post the results. Could be a day or so.

[KFCrispy]

woohoo! thanks a lot and good luck!

[eldrasidar]

alright, so I was gonna wait until I had done all 5 tests, but I thought the results from the first one were fairly conclusive at least to the original point of this thread. I will post the others as I get them done. okay to start of with here is the party I was working with:
Hugo
Fubar
Landis
Mua
Sgt. Joe
Hallec
Guillaume(support)

okay so the party was about level 41 on average, with an average luck of about 101.
The highest luck character was Sgt. Joe(119)
The Lowest luck character was Landis (70)
Hugo and Fubar's combined luck was 215

All the tests involve 25 fights against Bronze Suns, be they alone or in pairs and/or with terror knights.

the first scenario I tested was if Hugo is Mounted on Fubar, and does all the damage, how many dropped items will I receive?
Over 25 battles, I received 7 Fury Runes, a rare drop, and 0 flame armors, a very rare drop. 28% drop rate per battle overall then
Conclusions that can be made thus far:
-Having a mounted pair doesn't not inherently prevent the acquisition of dropped items.
Conclusions to be made still:
-does it lower/raise the rate of dropped items?
Unknowns still to be factored:
is there a point at which they do negatively affect the acquisition of dropped items?

Overall this test actually was probably one of my better fury rune farming runs. I will do the other tests too, but I don't imagine the drop rate is going to get much better than 28%. If anything, I expect at this point I will probably end up with a bunch of fury runes by the end of this.

[KFCrispy]

so this seems pretty consistent with the Sin Jackal's drop rate after he separated the mounted pair...... so your test showed the mounted pair didn't seem to affect it. thanks! can't explain Sin Jackal's situation, maybe it was 'bad luck'

[eldrasidar]

okay finished the next two parts of this experiment:

Test 2: Hugo mounted on Fubar, only my lowest luck character does damage(Landis:70)
Result: Acquired 2 Fury Runes in 25 fights. 8% drop rate

Test 3: Hugo mounted on Fubar, only my highest luck character does damage(Sgt. Joe:119)
Result: Acquired 2 Fury Runes in 25 fights. 8% drop rate

Notes:
So at least from the modest sample size I did, there is no appreciable difference between luck 71 and luck 119. However, both fall immensely short in comparison with Hugo and Fubar's combined luck of 215. This suggests to me that the luck of the killing character matters, but it seems that an incredibly large amount of luck is needed to gain any appreciable advantage in finding rare or very rare items. It should also be noted that even with a high luck character or mounted combo, the success rate was not even close to 50%, let alone 100%, which could explain why even over an extended period of time, one might not see a particular dropped item.

Although I am trying as hard as I can to match the original circumstances, I do not have access to Kidd in this part of my playthrough(recruited by thomas to help pick gale runes), So at moment, that is the one variable I cannot account for. If there is a point where having too much luck ruins one's chances, than it may be that Kidd lowered that threshold enough to make it easily reachable. Presuming it is 256 luck(since 255 is normally the cap) and Kidd increased treasure hunting by 15%, it is possible that on my hugo/fubar pair, he'd make their effective luck 247. If the combined luck of the pair was only 8 points higher, I'd break past 255, and thus potentially break the system. This would be something that would very easy to do in chapter 3, just through random stat increases and/or a few more level gains. As of right now, this is the only theory I can present which might explain the complete lack of item acquisition. If true, the solution is fairly simple, just take out your support character, and hope that your pair doesn't exceed 255 on its own.

[eldrasidar]

so I decided to reconfigure the last part of the test, based on the results of the previous tests. For a final test, I just separated Hugo and Fubar, and let everyone attack, since everyone's luck in my party was practically speaking the same(since there was no obvious distinction between 70 and 119). Anyway here are the results:

test 4: Hugo separated from Fubar, anyone does the damage
Result: Acquired 1 Fury rune, 1 Flame Armor in 25 fights. 8% drop rate

That's right. There is essentially no difference in results from tests 2 through 4. Rather than harming attempts to get dropped items, it would appear the exact opposite is true, in that it dramatically helps them. The only way it could seemingly make it far worse is if the combined pair breaks a certain luck level. When I get a chance, I will attempt to find that level.(lots of hats of prosperity). Could be a few days though...

[eldrasidar]

ok, so it turns out that I did have a save file for hugo chapter 3, with Kidd available, so I tested the original circumstances. I had a slightly better party in this playthrough, so hugo and fubar's combined luck was 228, enough for Kidd to hypothetically boost over 256.

the results were as follows:
in 25 battles with Hugo mounted on Fubar, doing all the damage, I received 1 fury rune.
in 25 battles with Hugo not on Fubar, and everyone doing damage, I received 2 fury runes.

I can't conclusively say from these results that Kidd negatively affected drop rates for a mounted character, but it's clear that he doesn't make them impossible, since I did get one rune with him. Moreover, it doesn't appear as though he particularly aids drop rates, since 2 drops in 25 is essentially the average I got with Guillaume(assuming I got especially good luck with my first test).

I also did some further testing on mounted pairs, this time using a save from chapter 5, and using all three mounted pairs in the mid 50's, with and without Kidd, to obtain warrior runes, which have the same rarity as fury runes do, according to the bestiary. Of the three mounted pairs I used, Hugo and Fubar combined to have 280 luck, Futch and Bright had 247 luck, and Franz and Ruby had 234 luck. Here were the results of those tests:

out of 25 battles, with Kidd, I received 1 warrior rune, plus 2 mega medicines(common item)
out of 25 battles, without Kidd, I received 3 warrior runes, plus 2 mega medicines.

From these battles, I can conclude even more so that mounted pairs, with their high luck are capable of obtaining rare drops, even with Kidd in the party. While it does look like Kidd doesn't work well with mounted pairs, I don't have enough data to make any real conclusions about whether the combination of the two really lowers the drop rate, or why. Particularly since Hugo/Fubar received 2 of the drops when without Kidd, it's appears that having luck above 256 doesn't matter, and thus I can't figure out how Kidd's bonus could somehow turn things for the worse. If anything, it seems to me, over these 200 collective battles, that there is simply a ~10% drop rate for rare items, that is largely unaffected by either the parties luck or the treasure hunt skill, which is another issue in its own right.