Hey guys, the devs managed to fool me. I once told you here how the item creator could be changed in order to correctly calculate the rarity for all existing items. The important part was the "for all existing"-thing. Because the newest AA introduced a constellation that seems to be completely new: A 6-card item with one rare card and four identical cards. Apparently my suggested solution breaks with this new item by assigning it the rarity Epic instead of Legendary. It's been a while since I last looked into the item creator but I guess I already know the solution to this new problem. Instead of limiting the +2 Rarity-Boost in 6-card items to items with 5 identical cards and at least one rare card, this should probably be any 6-card item with at least one rare card and 4 to 5 identical cards. I'll further investigate this in the next days and get back to you all when I have a formula prepared and tested. PS: I'm not sure what to think about the item creator still telling us that Vakaz can't automatize the rarity calculation completely. Shouldn't this be long gone (except for the new item-constellation that, of course, I couldn't have foreseen how to handle correctly)?
Perhaps they're simply making atonement for Hu La Houp's Vicious Circle which should have been an epic, but was released as a legendary, and not corrected? Hypothesis: @Jon is innately chaotic, and we love him for it. (Except when we hate him for it. In which case we still love him because he's Jon.) It's just a hypothesis. I don't claim it's logical. Why, yes, I have been drinking.
IIRC, Hu La Houp's Vicious Circle was a bug, but True Silver was set to legendary quite on purpose. I think this is the case for Unsubtle Knife as well.
Hey, I revoke everything I said earlier. There is no (more) simple (!) formula for the rarity since the newest AA card was added. A month ago I was able to correctly determine each item's rarity based on its cards. Hu La Houp (R[CCCCC], where [...] represent multiple copies of the same card) and True Silver ([CCCCC]R) consist of one rare card and five identical non-rare cards so you could argue that five identical cards combined with at least one rare card get a rarity boost of +2 on top of the base rarity 'rare' from the single rare card. There is no item with the same constellation but a different assigned rarity, so this rule seems to work always. The problem with the new legendary item is its card set: one rare card, one other non-rare card and four identical non-rare cards (R[UUUU]C). There are already items like: Instant Snowman ([RR][UUUU]), Pressing Problems ([RR][CCCC]) and The Inquisition ([CCCC][RR]) but they are all (only) epic. (But when writing my last post, I wasn't aware of them anymore) Previously I'd deduced that four identical non-rare combined with a rare only get a +1 boost. But the new legendary needs a +2 boost to justify its higher rarity. Of course you could define very specific rules that only match Unsubtle Knife. Spoiler: Example Rules four identical non-rare cards + two rares get +1 boost, four identical non-rare cards + one rare get +2 boost OR four identical non-rare cards get +1 boost if the other two card are identical, too, otherwise they get a +2 boost But such specific rules may easily be "exploited" by new AA items. And: They don't make much sense on their own. Why should an item with two rare cards be more common than an item with only one rare card if the remaining cards are similar in their rarity and count. Hence, Vakaz may continue to tell the community, the rarity isn't computable. Because no-one wants such complex and fragile automated rules. And another conclusion for me: The game is really completely controlled by manual files. And, as always, human created manual input is error-prone. Until now I thought that the game had some notion of "correct items" (whether or not it enforces this). What I mean is for example a way to check an item's rarity, level and perhaps other information. Or, if the game hadn't something like that, that the devs had guide-lines for it. But this is the point in time I have to say: The game is a perfect "Garbage In, Garbage out"-System. Next time I'll suggest an AA item with six rare cards and tell Flax that the item's rarity MUST, UNDER ALL CIRCUMSTANCES be common. Happy New Year to you all.
I mean, you could use your simple formula and just have the two or three exceptions and that's it. Seems fine to me?
Might be helpful to know that the Equipment file has all of the following items noted specifically to have a manually set rarity which may be a good part of what's throwing you off since it includes a fair number of your example items: Pressing Problems The Inquisition Instant Snowman The Goldleaf Blade Hu La Houp's Vicious Circle Mail of the Novice Holy Leather Armor
But how should those exceptions be formulated? Image you are the Vakaz's Item Creator and the user inputs six cards, what will you tell the user? Thing is, if I get a list of items with their cards I could say "Ok, here is an AA item with the new Foreshadowed Strike card and four identical uncommon cards, so this is legendary". But the question is how to go the other way from the cards (without knowing what the resulting item will be) to the rarity of the created item. Should all items with Foreshadowed Strike be more rare? (Then every other of the four new items would perhaps have the wrong rarity) I know, but until now you COULD find a formula that nonetheless justified each single rarity (although it is clearly more complex than what the devs initially used). And that's what saddens me. Also, see the question in my answer to Stexe. How to translate this to the Vakaz's Item Creator.
It just has a different value than the actual value? Or it knows what the unique ones are so if you input all those cards exactly it says "this is the item it is but it has a "SPECIAL" rarity" or something. They use a formula but can then manually adjust it as needed. Just like all cards in an item had to be in terms of color, rarity, and alphabetical, but they can manually change that by having cards in whatever order they want.
But then again, the best strategy for the Item Creator would be to say Unsubtle Knife should be Epic. And the Item Creator should say: "The created item is {insert Rarity here}" without this vague additional sentence saying the calculation isn't easy. And that's it. And here's why: If we follow the argument that the devs can manually adjust each rarity, those adjustments are unpredictable (and not logical in terms of any set of fixed rules). And even if Unsubtle Knife now is Legendary, who knows whether another item with the same cards (or similar cards) would be Legendary, too. Given another mindset of the devs while editing the csv or given some other reality, the devs might decide to assign the actual calculated rarity to the new item or any other (reasonable) rarity (e.g. make it Rare). The (original) calculation is in fact really easy! It's just that the devs haven't incorporated every corner case when defining their rarity formula back in the days and hence have to make manual adjustments. So either we assume that there is a formula that satisfies each and every item's rarity (but accept that the formula may get really complex with new items coming up) hoping/assuming that the devs will stick to what we think is the most likely rarity. Then we should put this formula in the Item Creator and keep it up to date all the time. Or we see all those AA items (and a few others) as exceptions and we really look for the simplest formula that satisfies every item with no manual rarity adjustment. That could (!) mean we even have to delete some corner case handling the Item Creator already does. Then we could add a statement like "Keep in mind that the actual item may get an other rarity when added to the game to keep the game in balance" to the Item Creator. But we shouldn't speculate in this case. PS: Has anyone realized that the Unsubtle Knife doesn't have a manual rarity adjustment according to the csv??? PPS: Don't get me wrong, the Item Creator is awesome. It is so good that I already got asked whether I would consider adding it to the Card Hunter Utils. But as long as this is under maintenance by Vakaz I don't see the necessity to recreate something that is already there and working.
Is anyone else having problems typing card names that have an apostrophe? It keeps telling me no such card exists, and I have to search for it in the dropdown list. I'm using LibreOffice 5.4.3.2, and I've tried downloading the tool from Google as both .ods and .xlsx and I can't get it to recognize those cards.
With OpenOffice 4.1.1 and my downloaded xlsx v1.32 everything works just fine regarding Wizard's Hat. Are you perhaps using the wrong apostrophe? The keyboard knows three of them ( ´ , ` and ' ). The Item Creator only works with the last one (the only not-diagonal one).
My keyboard only gives me the first two (next to the Enter key and next to the 1). But you told me enough that I could edit the list of cards to change everything to what I'm typing, so now it works for me.
Would be nice if there was a version of the Spreadsheet where all the items were alphabetized together, so you don't have to try to find the right category first before finding the card up alphabetically! The way it is, it takes a really long time to find the cards in the pulldowns.
A simple method for speeding up this form of Card Hunting (using Open Office): 1. Select the Cards tab, then in the top menu select Data > Sort. 2. In Sort Criteria change the first entry from ID to Card Name. 3. Return to the Item Maker tab, then build and save (save as) an item. Whenever you double click that saved item to open the creator, it will open that item with the card database sorted by card name. Now you're set to build another item. This will not change the default spreadsheet. Other spreadsheet programs should work in much the same fashion. Good Hunting!
