What is the named item drop rate, really?

[Cowzrul]

I've read many times on the wiki and this forum that the named item drop rate for most "recent" content since Ravenloft is 33% on elite, plus 1% per skull on reaper. (Ignoring the rare item nonsense for this question)

My personal experience does not align with this percentage at all, and it's not particularly close. I regularly run entire sagas like Feywild, IOD, whatever, and get absolutely no named item drops. The probability of this occurring if the named loot percentage is 33+% is incredibly unlikely, and if it had just happened once I wouldn't be making this thread, but it is a regularly occurring thing for me. I'm very familiar with how statistics work, and I know I'm going to get a bunch of responses of "bad luck happens" and "even something with a low probably still happens" and other similar responses, but I'm curious if my experience aligns with the rest of the player base? As a recent example, within the last week I ran the entire saltmarsh chain on heroic and 3 feywild quests on heroic R1, and got zero named items, the probability of striking out that many times on something that's supposedly a 34% chance shouldn't happen most times I run a saga.

 

[GioAvanti]

I have not tracked my drop rates, but I have completed Sharn part 1 and part 2 and cogs on more than one occasion and get only a pair of items at best out of 9 quests.

Ravenloft seems like it at least appears to close to 33% because I am assuming that the weapons are there to simply pollute the loot table. Kind of a mean design to make sure player do not get what they are after.

 

[Svirfneblin]

The 33 sounds correct to me.

I ran Ravenloft chain on R1 last week and have a bunch of named loot to crunch. Ran more on R 1 recently and same.

Some people play for years and never get a 100 on Daily Dice.

 

[J1NG]

Near as I can tell, it should be correct, although the data I've collected thus far supports the rate that we have been given on Normal (checks also confirm Elixirs are working). But the check hasn't gone towards checking Hard and Elite yet as I wanted a larger pool of data (at least 100) before I start heading towards the higher difficulty drop rates.

Back to Basics (Heroic Normal - No Elixir Boost)
63 Pulls on Normal, 5 Named Drops. Giving ~8% drop rate (close enough to 10% given amount of sampling data thus far)

Back to Basics (Heroic Normal - With Elixir Boost 15)
63 Pulls on Normal, 17 Named Drops. Giving ~25% drop rate (close enough to the 10% base we are seeing without the Elixir 15 boost)

PS. RNG is God. When RNG hates you, there is nothing you can do about it. I bring back an example I provided a few months back where it can really mess with perceived rates:

https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/did-items-get-deleted-from-the-rog-database.14075/#post-169200

J1NG

:: edit ::
PPS. The reason the data gathering is so slow, is because I am using a controlled method. It's the same toons doing the pulls (from one account to prevent any account being luckier having an impact), and the same character finishing the quest quickly for them to pull (to prevent different characters from being luckier impacting on drops). All the characters pulling are identical (Iconic Default Path) to prevent anything obviously changing during their build impacting their pull outcome. And they complete a series of this in the same order (first character, then second, then third, etc), every so often (not every 7 days, to prevent accidentally discovering and repeating any "luckier days" for drops).

:: another edit ::
And to make it a little clearer
Character 1 (No Elixir): 21 Pulls, 2 Drops - Around 10% - Longest time no Drops 8 (and still going)
Character 2 (No Elixir): 21 Pulls, 2 Drops - Around 10% - Longest time no Drop 10
Character 3 (No Elixir): 21 Pulls, 1 Drop - Around 5% - Longest time no Drop 14 (and still going)

Character 4 (Elixir 15): 21 Pulls, 5 Drops - Around 24% - Longest time no Drop 5
Character 5 (Elixir 15): 21 Pulls, 8 Drops - Around 40% - Longest time no Drop 7
Character 6 (Elixir 15): 21 Pulls, 4 Drops - Around 20% - Longest time no Drop 8

 

[AbyssalMage]

Can't speak for IoD but Feywild, Saltmarsh, and Ravenloft I have farmed fairly extensively for both Heroic TR gear and select quests in Epic. I won't comment on the exact percentage (i.e. if it is really 33% on Elite +1% skull) but it is awfully close. I routinely run 3 accounts to ransack on a single quest. 33% of 24 = 8 items which is about what I see.

p.s. Chasing a specific item can be really painful sometimes

 

[TempestAlphaoMega]

When random comes into play some people will see average results, some will see better than average and others will see below average results. Throw in a pinch of observational bias and dash of understanding statistics is hard and you get this discussion about named drop rates in one form or another coming up pretty consistently.

For the record I used to track my named item drop rates (not specific items, just any named item dropping) and eventually I decided that this was unhealthy for me because I am one of those all so lucky people who consistently see below average named item drop rates, so I deleted my tracking sheet while humming that song from Frozen.

It's still a running joke in my static TR group that I suck the drop rate right out of everyone as evidenced by running chain after chain with nobody seeing a named item drop.

 

[Sturmbb]

Can't speak for IoD but Feywild, Saltmarsh, and Ravenloft I have farmed fairly extensively for both Heroic TR gear and select quests in Epic. I won't comment on the exact percentage (i.e. if it is really 33% on Elite +1% skull) but it is awfully close. I routinely run 3 accounts to ransack on a single quest. 33% of 24 = 8 items which is about what I see.

p.s. Chasing a specific item can be really painful sometimes

I would definitely agree on Ravenloft having the drop rates advertized, but i believe Feywild is slightly lower and saltmarsh is even lower.
I think the saltmarsh quests themselves have a slightly lower drop rate than Feywild, but the Wilderness is alot lower than the quest areas. I have run that area extensively in groups and the drop rate really is poor. Please bear in mind this is the level 3 areas i am talking about, I've not had chance to run the legendary version as i normally play in Permadeath play styles.

One of the best things i love about the game is the wilderness areas. I find it really relaxing to run around the wilderness areas farming for stuff.
Saltmarsh is actually on my not to run list now. As the drop rates in there are just soo ridiculously low. I actually love the setting and the music in there. ( I really regret buying the expansion now, if i'd have known about the drop rates, i would have given this pack a miss).

I'm assuming both Vecna and MD have the same low drop rates as well.

After thinking about this, i am wondering if its a bug and the latest expansion packs have the same drop rates between the Herioc versions and the legendary versions. This would actually explain alot, as i have said in the past i am happy to farm/grind end game content as it gives us something to do. But having stupidly low drop rates in Herioc is just counter productive.

I was actually talking to someone yesterday, who said you can get from level 1 - 20 in a day of playing the game, if thats the case any heroic gear you get, you are only going to be wearing it for a for hours, before you need to upgrade to the next set.

 

[DBZ]

Worse much worse

 

[Cowzrul]

I would definitely agree on Ravenloft having the drop rates advertized, but i believe Feywild is slightly lower and saltmarsh is even lower.
I think the saltmarsh quests themselves have a slightly lower drop rate than Feywild, but the Wilderness is alot lower than the quest areas. I have run that area extensively in groups and the drop rate really is poor. Please bear in mind this is the level 3 areas i am talking about, I've not had chance to run the legendary version as i normally play in Permadeath play styles.

One of the best things i love about the game is the wilderness areas. I find it really relaxing to run around the wilderness areas farming for stuff.
Saltmarsh is actually on my not to run list now. As the drop rates in there are just soo ridiculously low. I actually love the setting and the music in there. ( I really regret buying the expansion now, if i'd have known about the drop rates, i would have given this pack a miss).

I'm assuming both Vecna and MD have the same low drop rates as well.

After thinking about this, i am wondering if its a bug and the latest expansion packs have the same drop rates between the Herioc versions and the legendary versions. This would actually explain alot, as i have said in the past i am happy to farm/grind end game content as it gives us something to do. But having stupidly low drop rates in Herioc is just counter productive.

I was actually talking to someone yesterday, who said you can get from level 1 - 20 in a day of playing the game, if thats the case any heroic gear you get, you are only going to be wearing it for a for hours, before you need to upgrade to the next set.

The wilderness area having a low drop rate makes sense as those are always on normal, so a 10% drop rate is expected, and low.

What doesn't make sense is having 12 to 15 pulls with zero named items dropping, and this being a regular thing that people experience. The probability of that is well under 1%. 0.66^15 is 0.00196 and 0.66^12 is 0.0068. I understand when you consider the several dozen people still playing this game that means it could happen to someone or even multiple people a day on the server across the entire population, simply because the population is so large. What doesn't make sense to me is that I don't play this game an extreme amount, but I distinctly recall complaining to a friend about doing multiple entire Feywild saga clears and getting nothing. The probability of going on sub 1% probability runs of getting no items on a regular enough basis for me to be writing this post would be in the 1 in hundreds of thousands of 1 in a million type of range. Something is either fundamentally flawed with the RNG process behind loot, or the drop rates aren't what we've been told.

 

[Xgya]

Many gacha games added this "grace period" wherein if you're unlucky too many times in a row, you get a thing anyways.
I don't know how many would be too many in a row in DDO (probably around 10?), but I'd love this kind of implementation.

Something like: "Accumulate 300% chance to find a named item from chests without getting one, get a named item."

You could technically try to abuse it by doing easy quests until you reach a bad streak, but that'd be a TON of work for not much payoff.

 

[mikarddo]

200 chests in wilderness in MD today during loot bonus weekend. A third looted with discovery pot too.

Atleast 100 items looted.

 

[Smokewolf]

Near as I can tell, it should be correct, although the data I've collected thus far supports the rate that we have been given on Normal (checks also confirm Elixirs are working). But the check hasn't gone towards checking Hard and Elite yet as I wanted a larger pool of data (at least 100) before I start heading towards the higher difficulty drop rates.

Back to Basics (Heroic Normal - No Elixir Boost)
63 Pulls on Normal, 5 Named Drops. Giving ~8% drop rate (close enough to 10% given amount of sampling data thus far)

Back to Basics (Heroic Normal - With Elixir Boost 15)
63 Pulls on Normal, 17 Named Drops. Giving ~25% drop rate (close enough to the 10% base we are seeing without the Elixir 15 boost)

PS. RNG is God. When RNG hates you, there is nothing you can do about it. I bring back an example I provided a few months back where it can really mess with perceived rates:

https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/did-items-get-deleted-from-the-rog-database.14075/#post-169200

J1NG

:: edit ::
PPS. The reason the data gathering is so slow, is because I am using a controlled method. It's the same toons doing the pulls (from one account to prevent any account being luckier having an impact), and the same character finishing the quest quickly for them to pull (to prevent different characters from being luckier impacting on drops). All the characters pulling are identical (Iconic Default Path) to prevent anything obviously changing during their build impacting their pull outcome. And they complete a series of this in the same order (first character, then second, then third, etc), every so often (not every 7 days, to prevent accidentally discovering and repeating any "luckier days" for drops).

:: another edit ::
And to make it a little clearer
Character 1 (No Elixir): 21 Pulls, 2 Drops - Around 10% - Longest time no Drops 8 (and still going)
Character 2 (No Elixir): 21 Pulls, 2 Drops - Around 10% - Longest time no Drop 10
Character 3 (No Elixir): 21 Pulls, 1 Drop - Around 5% - Longest time no Drop 14 (and still going)

Character 4 (Elixir 15): 21 Pulls, 5 Drops - Around 24% - Longest time no Drop 5
Character 5 (Elixir 15): 21 Pulls, 8 Drops - Around 40% - Longest time no Drop 7
Character 6 (Elixir 15): 21 Pulls, 4 Drops - Around 20% - Longest time no Drop 8

Q: Are you testing this using a VIP or F2P account ?

I ask as VIP "should" have better loot rolls.

 

[Smokewolf]

I would definitely agree on Ravenloft having the drop rates advertized, but i believe Feywild is slightly lower and saltmarsh is even lower.
I think the saltmarsh quests themselves have a slightly lower drop rate than Feywild, but the Wilderness is alot lower than the quest areas. I have run that area extensively in groups and the drop rate really is poor. Please bear in mind this is the level 3 areas i am talking about, I've not had chance to run the legendary version as i normally play in Permadeath play styles.

One of the best things i love about the game is the wilderness areas. I find it really relaxing to run around the wilderness areas farming for stuff.
Saltmarsh is actually on my not to run list now. As the drop rates in there are just soo ridiculously low. I actually love the setting and the music in there. ( I really regret buying the expansion now, if i'd have known about the drop rates, i would have given this pack a miss).

I'm assuming both Vecna and MD have the same low drop rates as well.

After thinking about this, i am wondering if its a bug and the latest expansion packs have the same drop rates between the Herioc versions and the legendary versions. This would actually explain alot, as i have said in the past i am happy to farm/grind end game content as it gives us something to do. But having stupidly low drop rates in Herioc is just counter productive.

I was actually talking to someone yesterday, who said you can get from level 1 - 20 in a day of playing the game, if thats the case any heroic gear you get, you are only going to be wearing it for a for hours, before you need to upgrade to the next set.

I'd 100% agree with you if the Wilderness areas didn't also carry ransack penalties. While I can totally understand having a ransacked mechanic in place for raids, normal contend should be free to farm as a player pleases.

 

[Cowzrul]

Many gacha games added this "grace period" wherein if you're unlucky too many times in a row, you get a thing anyways.
I don't know how many would be too many in a row in DDO (probably around 10?), but I'd love this kind of implementation.

Something like: "Accumulate 300% chance to find a named item from chests without getting one, get a named item."

You could technically try to abuse it by doing easy quests until you reach a bad streak, but that'd be a TON of work for not much payoff.

I think a mechanic like this would be really good for the game overall. I also think there should be vendors added to old content to trade named items for others. Does it serve any good purpose in the game to require new or returning players to grind old quests 30+times to get a particular item they need for their build? I understand wanting players to engage and stay engaged with new content, but I've ransacked House of Pain on two characters for two weeks in a row and still haven't gotten the family recruit sigil after 32 runs. It isn't fun, and honestly doesn't motivate me to keep playing this game or want to spend money on it.

 

[J1NG]

Q: Are you testing this using a VIP or F2P account ?

I ask as VIP "should" have better loot rolls.

The tests are being done on an account that is VIP. However, I can easily drop some non-controlled F2P data (and easier to do as well since I can just create, delete and recreate and just grab data points) to see if VIP and non VIP (F2P) match. But given that the tests is on Normal, there shouldn't be any bias towards VIP.

Although I must ask, where did you obtain information that VIP "should" have better loot rolls?

J1NG

 

[Smokewolf]

The tests are being done on an account that is VIP. However, I can easily drop some non-controlled F2P data (and easier to do as well since I can just create, delete and recreate and just grab data points) to see if VIP and non VIP (F2P) match. But given that the tests is on Normal, there shouldn't be any bias towards VIP.

Although I must ask, where did you obtain information that VIP "should" have better loot rolls?

J1NG

It's not informational so much as what I remembered it being sold as a long time ago. No doubt this is no longer the case as things tend to conveniently stop working in the Dev's favor.

 

[Speed]

I'm very familiar with how statistics work, and I know I'm going to get a bunch of responses of "bad luck happens" and "even something with a low probably still happens" and other similar responses

What doesn't make sense is having 12 to 15 pulls with zero named items dropping

Are you sure that you are very familiar with RNG?
12 to 15 pulls is very small data.
There is no guarantee in pure RNG, especially in low number of tries.
Having 12 to 15 pulls with 0 luck in a row is exactly the same chance as any other possible order.
If you throw 12 dices, then possibility of all having result 1 is the same as any other that may look more expected random for your brain.
In practice, think of each try like it would be first try without remembering your past rolls.
You probably already heard gamers complaining or saw memes about having a lot of misses with very high chance to hit in tactical strategy games like X-Com.
Computers use pseudo RNG and thats why some games offer result tracking with additional manipulation like for example Karmic Dice in BG3.
You can code script that 10 times simulates drop rate with just 12 to 15 pulls to see how results can be different and then 100 pulls to compare average result which will not be exactly the same as math shows, but more pulls go closer to it.
Your brain will probably take more attention into all your bad luck in a row experiences than good that probably already happened in other quests.
I sometimes get about 10 common augments (not counting special drops) on one character, to later have 0 luck on another.
As far as I know, Ravenloft weapons count as named, so they decrease chance of others and this can be additional factor in similar cases.

 

[Blaster]

@Sarlona Raiding put up an earlier post mainly regarding the Myth Drannor drop rates, and for comparison they used Vecna Unleashed. Now, I'm not wanting to turn this thread into another MD loot one, but their post is worth looking through as various people posted their experiences tracking pulls and what they've come up with. (@PraetorPlato brings up some good info in the thread as well in regards to this.)

https://forums.ddo.com/index.php?threads/analysis-of-drop-rates-vecna-vs-myth-drannor.13775/

 

[Sturmbb]

Are you sure that you are very familiar with RNG?
12 to 15 pulls is very small data.
There is no guarantee in pure RNG, especially in low number of tries.
Having 12 to 15 pulls with 0 luck in a row is exactly the same chance as any other possible order.
If you throw 12 dices, then possibility of all having result 1 is the same as any other that may look more expected random for your brain.
In practice, think of each try like it would be first try without remembering your past rolls.
You probably already heard gamers complaining or saw memes about having a lot of misses with very high chance to hit in tactical strategy games like X-Com.
Computers use pseudo RNG and thats why some games offer result tracking with additional manipulation like for example Karmic Dice in BG3.
You can code script that 10 times simulates drop rate with just 12 to 15 pulls to see how results can be different and then 100 pulls to compare average result which will not be exactly the same as math shows, but more pulls go closer to it.
Your brain will probably take more attention into all your bad luck in a row experiences than good that probably already happened in other quests.
I sometimes get about 10 common augments (not counting special drops) on one character, to later have 0 luck on another.
As far as I know, Ravenloft weapons count as named, so they decrease chance of others and this can be additional factor in similar cases.

For me running wilderness areas, i actually run multiple toons to ransack. Not only that but i tend to run with an LFM open which actually fills quite nicely as i am doing my runs. I can categorically say in my experiece, that saltmarsh has a much lower Named Item drop rate than other wilderness areas.

Now i could be extremely unlucky while in saltmarsh and lucky when im in other wilderness areas. But i have spoken to many people on this and everyone i have grouped has the exact same experience.

I have also noticed in IOD wilderness that the rares do not actually show up as much as other wilderness areas.
I can quite easliy do a run that goes past 12 rares, and none of them appear. I must admit i have not run IOD as much as Saltmarsh, so i may have just been unlucky. (i cannot comment on Vecna or MD).

At the moment Saltmarsh is on my not to run list and i am still undecided on IOD (will probably give it a few more weeks of running just to see if the numbers even out).

 

[Cowzrul]

Having 12 to 15 pulls with 0 luck in a row is exactly the same chance as any other possible order.
If you throw 12 dices, then possibility of all having result 1 is the same as any other that may look more expected random for your brain.

This is technically true, and also incredibly misleading to the conversation at hand. Are 15 tails in 15 coin flips equally as likely as any other sequence? Yes, it is. But there is only one sequence that is all tails, and it is very unlikely to get that sequence if you flip 15 coins. There are 15 sequences that have exactly 1 heads and 14 tails, you're 15 times more likely to get one of those sequences than the one with all tails. As you get closer to the sequences with 7 or 8 tails and 8 or seven heads, there are many more of those sequences, and they are more likely. If you're incapable of understanding this, I don't think we can have a meaningful conversation about probability. Go flip coins until you get 15 tails in a row while claiming "it's just as likely as any other sequence", film it, and come back to me when it happens.

Edit to expand on this:
I calculated the probability of getting exactly X heads in 15 coin flips, to further clarify this.
Probability of 0 heads in 15 flips is 1 in 32,768 (one sequence that has no heads)
1 heads = 1 in 2185 (15 sequences that have exactly 1 heads)
2 heads = 1 in 312 (105 sequences that have exactly 2 heads)
3 heads = 1 in 72 (455 sequences that have exactly 3 heads)
4 heads = 1 in 24 (1365 sequences that have exactly 4 heads)
5 heads = 1 in 11 (3003 sequences that have exactly 5 heads)
6 heads = 1 in 6.5 (5005 sequences that have exactly 6 heads)
7 heads = 1 in 5.1 (6435 sequences that have exactly 7 heads)
8 heads = 1 in 5.1 (6435 sequences that have exactly 8 heads)
9 heads = 1 in 6.5 (5005 sequences that have exactly 9 heads)
10 heads = 1 in 11 (3003 sequences that have exactly 10 heads)
11 heads = 1 in 24 (1365 sequences that have exactly 11 heads)
12 heads = 1 in 72 (455 sequences that have exactly 12 heads)
13 heads = 1 in 312 (105 sequences that have exactly 13 heads)
14 heads = 1 in 2185 (15 sequences that have exactly 14 heads)
15 heads = 1 in 32768 (1 sequence with 15 heads)

Is the probability of getting any particular sequence the same? Yes, it is 1 in 32,768. The probability of getting a certain number of successes in that sequence is not even remotely the same. Over 99% of the time you would get between 3 and 12 heads in a sequence of 15 coin flips. The likelihood of getting anything outside of that is very small.

For instance, let's say that I run 150 quests in a month. That's 10 sequences of 15 coin flips. Is it possible that I would get the 1 in 32,768 sequence that has no heads in it, in that 10 sequences? Yep, there's a 1 in 3,276 chance of exactly that happening, which is still less likely than getting exactly 1 heads for a particular sequence. For each of those sequences, there's also 32,767 in 32,768 chances to get literally anything else that includes at least one heads. If I had run many thousands of sequences of 15 quests in a row, it wouldn't be unreasonable to have pulled that 1 in 32,768 chance a few times. I do not run anywhere near the hundreds of thousands of quest completions that would require. It's like going to the gas station and winning big money on scratch off tickets multiple times a year. Is it possible? Yes! Is it at all likely? No, and the lottery would be bankrupt if it was.

Is it more likely for me to remember that I struck out 15 times in a row? Absolutely! Because it should be a monumentally uncommon event, it will be memorable to anyone who experiences it. Is it memorable the times when you go 15 quests and get 5 named items? Nope, because that's what you expect to happen the vast majority of the time. The probabilities are somewhat different than coin flips because we don't think there's a 50% chance of named items dropping, but it's close enough, especially on high reaper levels, that something definitely seems wrong for this to be occurring regularly to people playing this game if the drop rates are really what is claimed.