Mabar Drop Rate 100 Kill Trials

[samthedagger]

For this thread I will be documenting the drop rates in the Mabar Festival by conducting a series of individual trials consisting of 100 kills per trial. For the time being, these trials will be conducted using the following conditions:

-15th-level half-orc monk in the level 12-17 range areas (I would do a 20-25 but those areas seem to be completely messed up for spawn rates right now)

-All kills will be attempted solo. Though I cannot control this with absolute precision, I will avoid heavily populated areas and not attempt to "kill-steal" as this is widely believed to divide the chances of a drop between all players hitting the enemy.

-Kills will be counted in increments of 100.

-Accidental kills of monsters which are classified as "too weak" will not be counted.

-Drop rate will be counted as (Drop)/(Total Kills).

-A "drop" means any kill which produces one or more items. It does not account for multiple items per kill (which can happen with vampires, liches, and perhaps others).

-Ethereal keys will not be counted as a drop, as their drop rates appear to be independent of other drops. However, I will note how many ethereal keys were dropped per trial.

-Approximate time for 100 kills will be measured purely in the interest of academia. My monk is a gimp, so I doubt this will end up being a very competitive time to beat.

Trial
01: 27/100, 1 ethereal key (28 minutes)*
02: 25/100, no ethereal key (19 minutes)*
03: 28/100, 2 ethereal keys (16 minutes)*
04: 26/100, no ethereal key, 10 opals/5 skulls/11 bones, 483 motes, (21 minutes, 1380 motes/hour)
05: 29/100, no ethereal key, 3 opals/10 skulls/16 bones/2 fangs, 648 motes (17 minutes, 2287 motes/hour)
06: 30/100, no ethereal key, 8 opals/10 skulls/12 bones/2 fangs, 581 motes (18 minutes, 1937 motes/hour)
Edit: Trials 07+ for now will be conducted using a 10th level (Ftr3/Rog1/Wiz6) as the instances for level 12-17, 16-20, and 20-25 are ALL borked. I am receiving errors that my own spawns are too weak. This is making me upset. But I want motes.
07: 25/100, 2 ethereal keys, 7 opals/16 skulls/2 bones, 384 motes (15 minutes, 1536 motes/hour)
08: 29/100, 2 ethereal keys, 11 opals/10 skulls/8 bones, 475 motes (21 minutes, 1357 motes/hour)
Edit: Back to my Mnk15. It appears the 12-17 is working again.
09: 23/100, no ethereal key, 9 opals/5 skulls/9 bones, 391 motes (18 minutes, 1303 motes/hour)**
10: 25/100, 1 ethereal key, 6 opals/9 skulls/9 bones/6 fangs, 487 motes (15 minutes, 1948 motes/hour)
11: 22/100, 1 ethereal key, 7 opals/3 skulls/12 bones, 444 motes (18 minutes, 1480 motes/hour)
12: 25/100, 2 ethereal keys, 3 opals/10 skulls/12 bones, 527 motes (16 minutes, 1976 motes/hour)
13: 25/100, no ethereal key, 9 opals/4 skulls/12 bones/2 fangs, 467 motes (17 minute, 1648 motes/hour)

*Starting with Trial 4, I began keeping track of my actual motes and collectibles earned as well as calculating the rate of motes earned per hour.
**This trial might be a little off. There was a cleric who kept following me around trying to burst stuff I was killing. So he may have taken some of my kills and drops. I tried my best to stay away from him. But I am relatively certain most of those kills were mine alone.

Side Note: Part of the reason I am doing this is so I can update my Mabar guide (see sig) by this weekend. I wish I could have a better comparison for the Level 20-25 instance but right now the spawn rates are absolutely abysmal, which is odd, because they were just fine on Tuesday and Wednesday night so I am thinking there was a patch Thursday morning that attempted to "fix" something. Either way, there is no point running the epic instance unless you just need lich dust, which is probably all that I will do it for until I see the spawn rates fixed. Walking around for a minute and a half just to get one giant to spawn is pretty ridiculous.

[Terebinthia]

Good idea!

If you can bear it, might be worth documenting the number of opals, skulls and fingerbones, given their rewards at turn in are so different?

[samthedagger]

After four trials, it appears like the drop rate is around 1/4. I will see if the trend continues. As you can probably already tell, there is a bit of luck involved.

Good idea!

If you can bear it, might be worth documenting the number of opals, skulls and fingerbones, given their rewards at turn in are so different?

That shouldn't be a problem. I'll note it next time.

[Virella]

conducted one of my own

-7th-level drow cleric in the level 8-13 range areas (the only 4-9 instance has only cr 1 versions of higher lvl mobs spawning in it0

-using turn undead near no other players as whoever has the first hit on the mob gets the chance at the drop

-Kills will be counted in increments of 100.

-Accidental kills of monsters which are classified as "too weak" will not be counted.

-Drop rate will be counted as (Drop)/(Total Kills).

-Ethereal keys will not be counted as a drop, as their drop rates appear to be independent of other drops. However, I will note how many ethereal keys were dropped per trial.

-Approximate time for 100 kills will be measured purely in the interest of academia. My monk is a gimp, so I doubt this will end up being a very competitive time to beat.

Trial
01: 35/100, 1 ethereal key (16 minutes) 23 opal 9 skulls 3 bones (351 motes)
02: 21/100, 2 ethereal key (18 minutes) 9 opal 4 skulls 7 bones (345 motes)
will see if this repeats itself for me

[samthedagger]

Interesting data, Virella. It definitely seems so far like the drop rate of bones is reduced in the lower level instance. I would be interested to see more.

[sandypaws]

Have you tried not using turn undead?

My feeling, and I surely have not done enough stats to be at all sure of this, is that the drop rate feels higher if I use implosion/beat critters down one at a time than if I use things like burst/turn undead/reaving roar. If you're doing a comparison between a monk and a cleric, this could complicate things.

Would be nice to know if other folks have also had this same experience, and unless I'm misreading your trials it seems like you're getting more motes/kill from your monk.

[samthedagger]

I have yet to try this with my cleric. On Tuesday I was running in a group with several guildies and spawn rates were great, so a combination of implosion, mass heal, and the occasional mass cure, AoE, or radiant burst in between reduced the undead to dust. But it would be difficult to track the number of undead I was personally responsible for in that scenario. I did attempt about a 10 minute run with my capped cleric to see how effective this solo strategy might be in terms of rewards, but the spawn rates on epic are just way too low today for some reason.

Also, note that Virella's test was not one of my characters. Virella was running a 7th-level cleric. I was running a 15th-level monk. Higher-level mobs drop better rewards. This has been fairly well-established in the past. So it should be no big surprise that the higher-level character is capable of better motes/hour than the lower-level character.

[sandypaws]

Drp. Not noticing poster names ftw.

[samthedagger]

Added trial 07, with more to come. Apparently instances 12-17, 16-20, and 20-25 are ALL now messed up. I am now farming with a level 10. It is lame, but I don't have any other choice right now. We'll see how this goes.

[samthedagger]

Back to farming with my monk. Seems like 12-17 is working again.

[Lucalbizz]

12cleric/1 fighter, 12-17 instance, same method as Virella

trial
1 28/100, 2 keys - 9 opal, 10 skulls, 9 bone - 440 motes (28 minutes)
2 25/100, 1 key - 7 opal, 6 skulls, 12 bone - 518 motes (27 minutes)

(if only I had read this thread before, I could have provided plenty more of data)

[Brennie]

if anyof the testers in this thread feel the inclination, I'd love to see what happens if you tried using AoE one-hit-kill focused abilities (Delayed Blast Fireball, Everything is Nothing, basically anything that can and will kill multiple opponents with only one action. I'm assuming cleric "turn undead" and radiant blast like effects would count as well).

It has long been rumored that killing multiple enemies with a single action only yields results as if you had killed one enemy. Variations on teh rumor exist, including that you are safe to use AoEs as long as you "activate" the enemies first, so that they are in aggro mode when they die, rather than being wiped out en masee in passive mode. I know that when i use a caster on HUGE groups of mobs, it certainly *feels* like i get less drops, but that could be because 1) large groups of mobs means otehr players around, who could be splitting rewards, 2) Sporatically getting multiple drops might feel like less than consistantly getting single drops, or 3) dumb luck.

Insight would be appreciated!

EDIT: It'd also be neat to have a group of testers camp an area, to see if the "big group" method is better, worse, or equivalent to the solo method. This method would likely have to be time based rather than kill based, however, as tracking kills among multiple people fighting huge spawns would be a massive pain. Alternately, a raid group size of testers all split up and running as if they were solo might be an interesting test too.

[samthedagger]

I might get on one my wizzies to test out the AoE theory. But I will say this: in the past during this event I have been soundly convinced that soloing is the surefire best way to get the most motes, whether melee or caster. I seem to be doing very well with my monk right now though so I will probably keep running that until I make what I want this time around. After that I will do a little more variety testing.

There is one key advantage to grouping that I will note. If you have the Monster Manual, you will get far more kills in a raid group or party group than you would solo. This can help you farm out MM bonuses fairly quickly. But I doubt you will get as many motes unless perhaps you are using drought of midnight (that is something else I will test).

[samthedagger]

More data points added. I really hope the fix the higher level instances. I want to know what the difference is when you add in farming high level mobs.

[IronClan]

I'm a big proponent of the big group method and have run a bunch of live experiments in mabar, this is my third Mabar, I've run raid groups on Thelanis with "Ironvalkyrie" and "Irongaiden" (Capped FvS and mid level Shadow Ninja). I choose large groups if only because I seem to manage the same roughly 1800 motes per hour (without any boosters or dought) while being able to go make a sammich or tuck my girls into bed or take a bio break and still keep the spawn up and the drops flowing. I can also play one handed while enjoying a beverage or bouncing a kid on my knee.

And yes I admit it... occasionally outright piking when life distracts, it happens.

Things I have observed that run counter to the observations of others (done mostly by timing the party chat scroll as drop messages appear):

1) Another large group in the same area seems to wildly increase the spawn rate, and thus the drops increase. It does NOT seem to lower the drops. Small numbers of other players has no effect at all, and are not worth getting annoyed or upset about, unless they are lower level, but they rarely hang out for any length of a time as getting even one hit in before a raid group eliminates an entire spawn is not easy, and not a good way to farm motes for a solo player.

2) AOE/Insta killing seems to give less drops per spawn... But see below

3) "activating mobs" by not killing them outright with big damage max/empowered spells, but intentionally activating them and using combinations of melee and mass cure minors, and other weaker AOE's; DRAMATICALLY increases the drop rate...

For about 2 minutes then the spawn rate drops too low because we're seeing a lot more "stop signs" despawning/tethered mobs, and just slower respawns. The drop rate tails off significantly lower than just maintaining a high spawn rate which takes a while to ramp up.

4) instance wide bugs of "too weak to give rewards" mobs have been a thing in all the Mabars, it's just a lot more obvious now when no one under 18 is around in a 16-20.

5) My biggest "secret" for fast mote collection: Keep your party level range within 3 levels, in Ironvalkyrie's case that's 18-20 level range in 16-20 instances. I LFM with this in the title: 18-20 tight level range = better drops... My LFM's fill up like mad, and I get a LOT of returning players, I've got people from the first Mabar sending me tells asking if I'm running a group, 2 o clock in the morning I've got more people trying to join than I've got openings. I attribute this to the drop rate actually being very good and consistent (thought there are still always ebbs and flows). Mostly though what this does is it reduces the spawning "too weak" mobs in your area. having 16's and 17's in your group spawns more Blackbones, and will even spawn Wights, those mobs give absolutely no drops to a 20, thus effectively lowering the drop rate.

We've run experiments where everyone turns off max/empower, I've run parties where I had primarily melees (yes I admit to selectively accepting melees just for experiments sake). I've run some where I had almost only devine casters or mixes of arcanes and devines with no melees, but never noticed much difference in overall motes per hour.. That said I honestly think there's something to the idea that insta kill/one shot on fresh spawns doesn't give the expected number of drop chances. I think especially bad are instant death from Clerics radiant burst and Turn undead... It may be a balance check that Turbine put in to level the playing field.

[sandypaws]

I've been having -very- good luck with one-shotting everything using meteor swarm.
That said, meteor swarm is multiple hits, so....not sure how the event would count this.

[Suhcer]

if anyof the testers in this thread feel the inclination, I'd love to see what happens if you tried using AoE one-hit-kill focused abilities (Delayed Blast Fireball, Everything is Nothing, basically anything that can and will kill multiple opponents with only one action. I'm assuming cleric "turn undead" and radiant blast like effects would count as well).

It has long been rumored that killing multiple enemies with a single action only yields results as if you had killed one enemy. Variations on teh rumor exist, including that you are safe to use AoEs as long as you "activate" the enemies first, so that they are in aggro mode when they die, rather than being wiped out en masee in passive mode. I know that when i use a caster on HUGE groups of mobs, it certainly *feels* like i get less drops, but that could be because 1) large groups of mobs means otehr players around, who could be splitting rewards, 2) Sporatically getting multiple drops might feel like less than consistantly getting single drops, or 3) dumb luck.

I've read on other threads as well, so i started paying some (meaning a bit of) attention to this.

On one instance of turn undead, I noticed a chipped skull and an ethereal key drop. I remained skeptical as perhaps Ethereal keys might have been a seperate loot roll/table. (like vamp fangs).

However, just today I got a chipped skull and cursed fingerbone from a single TU as well. This was on the first action of a fresh login so there was no mistaking the 2 drops on the log.

While this may just be a single (or two) data points, I'd say it does indicate that it is possible to get multi-drops from an AoE instakill.

My fuzzy impressions is that it doesn't seem to make much difference whether i just nuke them all with TU or pick them off one-by-one with searing light. My overall motes per hour remains quite the same.

With the one at a time method, I'm constantly busy but the drops still seem to come every 2-4 kills.

With the kill them all method, I go longer between groups but get drops almost every other group of 2-4 that i nuke.

The only difference for me is that my spell points do not deplete quite as fast as my TU attempts. So picking them off is a busier method but i can stay in the graveyard longer. Using TU's I spend more time running to taverns/Delera's tomb to recharge ... but yet my per hour seems to remain fairly constant.