How Random is Random Loot?

I don't mean rarity - I mean item type.

Why do I ask? Well, I miss my Bejeweled Shortswords. I had two each for my warriors in beta, and I could swear I remember buying at least one of them at the Goblin Bazaar. With the game live, it would seem that the Goblin Bazaar doesn't sell items above level 16 (or at least that has been my experience, and for a while I looked every day after the shop opened), so I'm waiting to find some as loot in high-level adventures. And waiting. And waiting. Really, I'd settle for two at this point. One? Please?

I replay the CardStock II Secret Preview all the way through pretty much every day, and sometimes an extra play of the first two battles. I'm up to 5 Box of Smoke, 4 Cinnabar Ring, 4 Crimson Staff, 6 Glittering Pin, 4 Firewall Amulet, 6 Reflex Stone...and so on.

I have 1 copy of Perfect Toughness and 1 Thick Iron Club, but at least 2 of every other level 18 common item that I know of (I can't or don't know how to search the database on the wiki by item level). Except for that pesky Shortsword.

Now, I realize that this could just be the randomness goblins tormenting me, but the disparity between 6 Glittering Pin and absolutely no Bejeweled Shortswords was starting to make me wonder if the loot for certain adventures is skewed towards a particular item type. Because I feel like I have waaaaay more common level 18 wizard loot than I do for the other two classes combined. Do I need to be replaying some other adventure to get weapons? Is CardStock II loot slanted towards wizards? Do the randomness goblins hate me for some reason?

 

Man that sucks man, I have like 8 Bejeweled shortswords and even when I play triple warrior I usually only play 1 sometimes 2. I wish I could give you a couple. I think most of mine did drop on CardStock II Secret Preview so it is definitely the level to farm for them.

 

Sigh. So it is just the randomness goblins. Thanks for the info, even if it isn't very good news.

 

I've been accomplishing this by searching for the text string "level 18" (double quotes included). It would be great if Phaselock added searching by level to the item search form.

Oh, and I've got five of the elusive Bejeweled Shortswords so far. Can't recall where they dropped.

 

Hmm...that sounds handy, but I tried - "level 18" weapon - as a search, and only got back 6 results, though there are at least 21 of those. So there's something wrong there.

 

I feel you pain. Being farming cardstock for Wands Of Seared Air for ages, have only 3. Got 5 Bejeweled though

 

Yeah, for some reason the search doesn't work right with that kind of combination. What I've been doing is searching for just "level 18" and then manually going through the results to find what I want. The search results seem to be grouped mostly together by item type so once you find one weapon the rest are near, so it's not too bad (although the level 18 weapons are for some reason in two groups several 20 item pages apart).

There's another way to search, though, at least for level 18 weapons. From the Item vs Token Table page we can see all level 18 weapons, and only them, require two major power tokens. On the Item Search Form you can thus make the following selections:
Item type: Weapon
Power Token: exactly 2 pips
Pick a combination:
Run this query and voilà, there's your neat and tidy list of all 21 level 18 weapons.

 

Using the pages mentioned in my post above I found out that out of the 38 level 18 Common items only two are Weapons whereas six are Arcane Items. One is a Staff, four are Divine Items and two Divine Weapons. Summing up, there are seven Common wizard items compared with six priest items and two Weapons. It's therefore quite natural that there will be more wizard items dropped than items for the other two classes and that the Weapon drops are relatively rare.

No anomaly here. If you had more Weapons than Arcane Items, that would be exceptional. To compare, I currently have nine Common level 18 weapons and 38 Arcane Items.

Kogi, only one of my 38 Common level 18 Arcane Items is a Wand Of Seared Air. This leads me to suspect there is something else behind the scenes affecting the drop rate for some items. Maybe it's the hidden introductory item level? What, then would we need to do to better our chances of getting the Wands? Which adventure/stage to farm? Or is it only possible to get it from a certain place/chest/quest/whatever? Does anyone have several and recall where they dropped?

 

That makes me feel a little better...but I have well over two dozen arcane items and only one weapon (and of course not the weapon I want), so it's still nowhere near the 7:2 ration we might expect.

I do appreciate the power of the searches by tokens/no tokens and such, and a search for weapons does indeed double as a search for level 18 weapons. For now.

Well, I also I have 3 Wand Of Seared Air. But it sounds like you're looking for 6 or 9 of them?

 

In such small sample numbers the ratios will vary wildly quite within normal variance. In other words, it's only to be expected that for some people they'll be badly off. We should get in the thousands to see more even distribution ratios. Also, it's the ratio being off that prompted the post in the first place so there's some heavy self-selection there already.

Case in point, I only have the one out of 38 similar items. Maybe there's nothing more to it then than blind luck where it comes to the Wand, too. I'd be convinced if someone reported having ten of them out of 40-60 Common level 18 Arcane Items.

 

8 wands out of 26 lvl 18 arcane items. Which seems like completely normal result. Distribution certainly looks like something you would expect.
8xWand Of Seared Air
6xGlittering Pin
5xReflex Stone
3xCinnabar Ring
3xFirewall Amulet
1xBox Of Smoke

Also 11 common lvl 18 weapons and 23 Divine items. Btw, either my mind is playing tricks or they've changed the starter pack, but I could have swore that I got one wand from starter pack.

 

Thanks Forduc, my mind is at ease now as to the wand. Back to grinding CardStock II, then!

 

Wouldn't Runestones actually be better? I take it squeamish is bad for your build?

 

It's still there in the elven magic starter pack.

 

You know what, guys? This conversation has made me realize that a single Common or Uncommon level 17 or 18 item is one of the hardest to get in Card Hunter. Why? Because you can't buy them anywhere * and because there are so many of them in levels 15-18. The level 17 adventure random item pools are so diluted you will rarely get just the Common or Uncommon level 17 or 18 item you're looking for. This is why a Common like Wand Of Seared Air can be so scarce for some of us. You can grind for a long time without ever seeing it. If the RNG gods are not on your side, it'll be a long time in coming.

* No shop sells Common or Uncommon level 17 or 18 items. The Goblin Bazaar only sells items up to level 16 and Randimar's Rarities only sells Rare, Epic and Legendary items. I wonder if the devs realize they have created this black hole of availability for some supposedly Common items. Yes, you will get a lot of them in general, but for any one in particular, hoo boy, it can be a very different story.

 

* starts nervously glancing at his Pizza Slice count *

So the wand is on sale after all, for 50 Pizza a pop... The only other item in the pack I don't already have plenty of is Acidic Gland and I don't even use the two I already have...

 

Oh no - I totally get that it's within the realm of normal probability, and that's it's a small sample. I was just trying to say that even if I'd realized I should have more than three times as many arcane items as weapons I still would have posted to ask the question, because my numbers were still pretty far from what I might have expected.

 

Yeah, I get that, and it's a good thing you asked, I think we realized some useful things about the loot system in the conversation!

 

And people who are not at either side of the bell curve won't be vocal and you won't hear them complaining. From my personal experience, I got like 5 wands of sear air and never have a single copy of bejeweled shortsword until weak 2 after release. Then I got 2 more copy of it soon after. While some items may be common, the shear amount of item in the game results in some luck required to get all of them.

 

Aha! Got one at last! AhahahaHAHA!

...and not a moment too soon. Two battles previous I got my second Acidic Gland, and started to despair that I was duplicating level 18 rares before finding the common that I wanted.