What is the shortest method to get most gold pieces (gp)

Just out of curiosity Jarmo, how long did that experiment take you?

 

I didn't log it, but I'd estimate two hours and change. The level 16 battle was a bit slower than the level 3 one which I could do about 25 of in an hour.

 

Andrew, Aldones and Hatchhermit, thanks for joining the ranks of the loggers! Let's fell 'em data redwoods with our Mouseclicks of Short Travel (Level 3 Uncommon Arcane Item).

 

Nothing is safe to say when gathering data. That's the fastest way to bias and creating more gaming folk tales. Your quote seems reasonable enough, but then we don't really know what correlations there are or aren't, do we? Best and most hygienic to keep data gathering separate from the working theories. The final chests might or might not change the item level spread, that's why we need to log the data separately if end-of-dungeon or other uncommon chest varieties are used.

Any data is welcome but the origin needs to be included or it's practically unusable.

 

So I've already messed up my data points twice (derp, clean slate), but in case anyone was thinking about doing it, I've taken dibbs on the first two battles of Cardstock II. I'm a little curious to see if there's any noticable difference between the first and second loot tables, in case there's any progression of any sort.

 

There aren't many level 16 items to choose from: (from the wiki)

Code:

Lv     C     U     R     E     L    Tot
13    20    17    13    16     7     73
14     3    11     5     3     1     23
15    43    36    27    30    34    170
16     9     8     7     9     9     42
17    12    11     9     5     2     39
18    38    37    36    42    44    197 

Though that doesn't explain why you got more level 17 items, since there are even fewer of them.

 

So I ended up running Tomb of Tvericus instead of the goblin ones since they were on cooldown.
Out of 10 plays I got the following breakdown:

Code:

Lv    C    U    R    E    L    Tot
9    1    0    0    0    0    1
10    3    0    0    0    0    3
11    1    2    0    0    0    3
12    6    0    0    0    0    6
13    4    3    0    0    0    7
    15    5    0    0    0    20

Not a very promising rarity count, but that will require a larger sample size. I'll keep adding to this as the week goes on, but I wanted to give some preliminary data.

 

This data is from 22.5 re-runs of the first two battles of Cardstock II, a level 17 adventure (45 battles total).

I wouldn't really suggest farming this one for gold, unless there's a specific item you're after.
Both the Wand of Seared Air and Bejeweled Shortsword dropped for me. I know those are kind of hot items to some folks.
Level 17 treasure did drop, but the time it took to get it felt extremely inefficient.

I kept my loot lists for each battle separate just in case one had a different loot trend, but from what I could see they're extremely similar, so I'd also advise against wasting time with the dwarves on map 2 once you beat map 1. It's probably just easier to re-run map 1 over and over. Because of this, I've just combined my data points into a single list, but if you're really curious I can separate them back out for you. Map 2 did trend a bit more towards uncommon from common, but not enough that I think anyone would find the difference significant.

I also kept an eye on the club window and am proud to report that it's loot was fair. Each item type had a pretty consistent 2:1 ratio. In other words, for every valuable rare that appeared in the window that I couldn't keep, I had gotten two more from the chest that I could. This is what you'd expect if there were no weightings giving the paid club members some sort of slight rarity advantage.

This list is for non-treasure items:

Code:

Lv    C    U    R    E    L    Tot
13    0    0    0    0    0    0
14    2    0    0    0    0    2
15    19    3    0    0    0    22
16    9    0    0    0    0    9
17    8    7    4    0    0    19
18  41    14    3    1    1    60
 
112  total items.

This list is for treasure items:

Code:

Lv    C    U    R    E    L    Tot
13    1    1    0    0    0    2
14    0    0    0    0    0    0
15    0    0    0    0    0    0
16    0    0    0    0    0    0
17    15    6    0    0    0    21
18    0    0    0    0    0    0

Remarkable things that stand out to me include:
- For a level 17 adventure, it seems to be heavily weighted toward level 18 items.
- Perhaps because we've hit the ceiling, the lower loot level limit extends clear down to -4.
- Loot to treasure ratio was 112:23. About 17% treasure? This might be a good way to rate an adventure for gold grinding; by it's treasure %.
- By my count, I made 384 gold if I just sold everything. that's 8.53 gold per battle with my luck, and of course a single legendary treasure could have totally skewed all this.

 

Kalin, how did you achieve that nice table layout? It seems very hard to do manually as the post editor is not WYSIWYG re: monospace font. Pasting in a right-aligned source table comes out that way?

 

Dungeon: Level 3 - Lair of Trog Wizard.
Runs: 36

Code:

Lv    C    U      R    E    L    Tot
01    18    03    00    00    00    21
02    19    03    00    00    00    22
03    14    04    00    01    00    16
04    06    04    00    00    00    10
05    02    00    00    00    00    02
06    01    00    00    00    00    01 

 

Thanks for the data, Arondight! Which battle/battles did you run? The first one only?

 

yep the first one: Scuttler Warren
i'll be doing the level 6 dungeon: Diamond of the kobolds - Gashtone Pass next in a few minutes

 

My data slanted in the opposite direction. I'll guess that's just because it was a max level adventure. What do you think?

I've gotten a rare treasure from the level one dungeons more than once. It certainly made them feel more like they were worth the time. I know the barrels are extremely common, but I don't think they're fixed as the only option.

 

Currently I have no coherent theories. I'll be able to formulate them once there's more data and from more levels. As it is things are murky.

They're not fixed to one option, they have their own, limited loot tables. The general loot rules don't apply in the same way because of this. We don't know the composition of the special loot table. This would be revealed with heavy testing, of course. No other way to tell. That's why I recommended level 2 as it's a more known quantity, although the data coming in threw the original theory out the window. I'll probably give level 2 a good few runs to see what's what.

 

Ok, thanks! I'll be able to add your data directly into mine for that battle, then. Every rep adds to the reliability of the results so keep them coming in, everybody! Hope the loot RNG shines it's loving light on you!

 

Looking closer it's actually item level 17, where 100% of legendaries (2/2) and 60% of epics (3/5) are treasure. The jury's still out on from where and how easy or even possible it is to access them in any significant ratio of total item drops.

For level 5 the numbers are: legendaries 67% treasure (2/3) and epics 60% (3/5).

 

I played the level 2 adventures "Caverns of the Troglodytes" battle 1 "Trog Cave" and "The Wizard's Workshop" battle 1 "Workshop Level 1" 33 1/3 times each. I got 200 items. Here's the breakdown.

Code:

All							
Lv	C	U	R	E	L	Tot	
01	59	22	0	2	0	83	41,5 %
02	49	4	2	0	0	55	27,5 %
03	39	13	2	0	0	54	27,0 %
04	3	1	0	0	1	5	2,5 %
05	1	2	0	0	0	3	1,5 %
Tot	151	42	4	2	1	200	
	75,5 %	21,0 %	2,0 %	1,0 %	0,5 %		
							
Treasure							
Lv	C	U	R	E	L	Tot	
01	12	3	0	0	0	15	
02	7	0	0	0	0	7	
03	0	0	0	0	0	0	
04	0	0	0	0	0	0	
05	1	1	0	0	0	2	
Tot	20	4	0	0	0	24	

 

Updated my test, do you prefer us editing our post(s?) or making a new one? I don't mind either way.

 

Feel free to edit your post. Just make a note there when the data is final and ripe for harvesting.

 

In my breakdown above the total treasure % was 12 (the treasure numbers are included in the "All" numbers). The treasure was worth 80 gold. I did not happen to get any epic or legendary or even rare treasure. The one legendary was Relic of St. Darqar. Again. Dagnabbit

I logged the numbers separately for the two adventures to see if there was any difference. There wasn't so I summed them up.

By the way, I don't recommend grinding the level 2 adventures. It's crushingly dull and the items you get are pretty useless to a very large degree.