TOME drop rates still BAD

[revan7]

Im 70 and i already did a repull, I have farmed 1.2 billion exp since the update and not one single tome. Im not sure if the drop rate went from .01 to 1, all I would like to find is a TOA so i can feel that I'm actually progressing and not stuck in limbo forever. Im honestly burned out looking. Im not even sure if EJ checks these boards but please look into this. Its hard for me to understand the mechanics of having two separate classes of players. The 73s who get full experience and power and the 70s who run around like chickens without head because we get pked for our lack of lvls. Achieving lvl 73 shouldn't be rng based. The rest of the tomes sure leave them as they are with your current rate. I would love this to be addressed or at least some words from Ej.
Ty

[Skywalker]

I 100% agree with this post but sadly EJ is either dead(RIP) or he just doesn’t care cause he’s not reading this post i guarantee it

[HomicidalPancakes]

I think part of this issue might be more to do with how the RNG works in the game and not necessarily rates. It is tremendously difficult to generate a truly random number with software and given that this game is 30+ years old it wouldn't surprise me if EJ is just using the C standard library rand() and seeding with the current time or something possibly even worse.

This could be what causes you to find items in batches. You might not see a white potion at hks for 3 days and then all of a sudden you find 10 in a day. It's because pseudorandom number generators are deterministic and will output seemingly random numbers in a set sequence depending on the seed. After that sequence is depleted that exact same sequence will be repeated in the same order. Even worse than that though, with the older PRNGs, particularly linear congruential generators were not very random at all and would instead display patterns and uneven number distributions.

This can become even worse when you use a modulo to reduce the size of your random number (`rand() % N`). This can create biases that will often lead to items being dropped in bursts or being unusually rare for long periods of time.

So it may be that there are times when tomes are findable and times when the odds are extremely against you, despite technically increasing the drop rate percentages.

[revan7]

yes we see drops in batches as to why some people yell on WC "drops are up", but still if this is the case TOA's should be obtained by other means and not just RNG. I dont find anything fun playing the lottery in hopes one day I can become lvl 73 and defend myself from the current 73 player base who must likely found their Tome of advancement through their other mage toons or bought it off FB, and just PK you 24/7.

[HomicidalPancakes]

yes we see drops in batches as to why some people yell on WC "drops are up", but still if this is the case TOA's should be obtained by other means and not just RNG. I dont find anything fun playing the lottery in hopes one day I can become lvl 73 and defend myself from the current 73 player base who must likely found their Tome of advancement through their other mage toons or bought it off FB, and just PK you 24/7.

I don't think it's just that drops are sometimes good and sometimes bad. I think there is something that makes a specific item drop at certain times. If you hunt ultra imps for example you may see 6 black dragon bows drop in one day but no other sparkle item. Another day you will see 4 torment leathers and no other item. Another day you will see multiple war mace of torment but no other item. I'm not sure if this sort of behavior is intentionally programmed in but if not EJ really needs to be aware of it and try to program it out because that sort of ghost in the code can have a pretty massive negative impact. This could mean that an item which is supposed to have a 1% drop rate, may only have a 1% drop rate on every 45th day but has a 0.001% drop rate any other time, or maybe it's impossible to drop any other time.

It's not limited to any one area either.

One day I found a super moon robe at fort and then no more than 10 minutes later I found another super moon robe at cron.

One day I found two triton daggers both on the same screen and within seconds of each other.

Another day I found two frag axes in fort within an hour of each other.

If you look in the NPCs for items people are selling you often see similar patterns. One day there might be 2 or 3 dirus armors being merched, another day 2 or 3 o plates, etc.

These sorts of things cannot be explained by coincidence because you can go a month without seeing a triton dagger at all and then one day you get 2 on the same screen? Something is broken with the RNG/loot tables.

[Omnimultum]

to liven things upp

i got a TOA on my level 73 while only needing a TOV

[Omnimultum]

but yes from farming alot il say i agree that it feels like

when server resets it sets a specific Item seed which increases droprates on certain items

and it feels like seeds that drop Good items are very rare to roll

it could also be that the item seed is character unique. because ive seen some players just have an astronomical amount of luck compared to others.

[ruaware]

once Tomes were made ndnt only, there should have been an added long term quest to obtain them. They are far too important to leave it up to chance and finding them on characters that already used them and no longer need them is...well...dumb, sorry.

[Omnimultum]

droprates still to low especially considering Drops by regular monsters dont take into account what tomes you have previously used so you can easily get duplicated tomes of ones you used

i did on my 73 got another Toa wohoo

[Loki]

I've done 2 repulls since update (Dexter Morgan) and (Loki) and only found a Rune of Omnis but no Tomes