Dry Shiva rate

An observation. Shiva with many hellions et al is a beast to get down #1. #2 you will certainly get your stats drained significantly to go along with death and possible comp. As it is currently over 30 to 40 approx encs, easily over 50% are dry. Since I have not hard counted I will just say over 50%, but my guess is more like 3 in 5 dry. Not knowing all that lies beyond, Shiva is as tough as any around. That kind of dry box rate seems quite high to me. Risk is our business I know, but reward at a higher rate on tough encs like Shiva would be nice. Does not need to be always top of the elite items (elite item drop rate seems about right, not common), but dry is quite harsh.

2 cents.

Agreed. In addition-- where you find the ubers seem to influence what you get out of them (or don't get) IE there is a room in the uber area, that I have much better luck in 1) Finding Ubers and 2) getting an item from the box.
The same logic applies to when I am hitting the "stud" room on 15 inside the dragon area. I find ubers there from time to time, but they almost never have anything in the box.

I am guessing that JPA has set up multiple 'areas' the have different drop rates or have different drop tables entirely. Why? I dunno. Just to make us crazy.

Jake-- astute observation. There are subtle differences in the encounters and the monsters themselves among the various locations you can find them. The key word is subtle. If it is glaringly apparent, then I may have made a mistake when I constructed the various tables and encounters. I intend to make this a top priority, because I don't like it when I screw something up, and it has been happening much too often. Unfortunately, this is going to be a time consuming affair... as I peace this together and try to figure out where I went wrong. I will be out of town from Thursday thru Tuesday. Expect to hear something concrete on this issue by Friday, 21st.

Great for answer to Jake, but a non answer on the drop rate for Shiva eh?

Fair enough. The answer is the part I left unsaid. IF I made a mistake (seems likely) then it is entirely likely that the mistake carries all the way thru the data on Shiva Ubers. There are 4 different encounter possibilities if memory servers. It isn't as simple as going and twiddling a knob. They SHOULD all have about the same drop rate and it should be similar to the other ubers within any given locale. There is a tight fisted uber, but it isn't supposed to be SHIVA -- so I need to go tear this all down and figure out what I did wrong.

Recall, I built a lot of this data a year or more ago, and there is a lot of data here. I have forgotten some of this stuff already.

I looked this over briefly and not in great detail.. but there is nothing glaringly obvious in the data that would point to a problem with the drop rate associated with SHIVA.

I will have to go tear into this... there may be something going on with the code mechanisms that I am not understanding correctly.

I am on this issue now as well.. there may be an underlying code error that I need to root out. It looks to me that the data as entered is not getting processed correctly by the game engine.

Glenn, can you provide a detailed list of the item types you have found from Shiva here on Javatar? (You can email it if you don't want details of your finds made public.). We have a weighted list associated with the encounter--if we compare it to yours, and find stuff missing, it might help me get to the bottom of this...

I responded via email.

I believe I have fixed this issue (or at least part of it) on the test server. I will be pushing the fix to the live server soon, and will take a look at another piece of code which could be exacerbating the issue.

The OP suggested that an almost 100% drop rate is in order--

That isn't going to happen with SHIVA or any other mob. The data was not designed with those sort of rates in mind, and I don't think they will support it -- but what WILL happen is that the % age chance of getting some random common item is going to be really really low. (like under 10%) and the drop rate should be in the "significantly greater than 50/50" range. Now this encounter is semi-unique to Ubers-- because it gives a couple different burnable items. Therefore the drop rate is higher-- but still not approaching 100% .

So when this is all sorted out things are going to be significantly better... but perhaps still not what you had in mind.

Back from vaca, good to leave, good to get home

Significantly better sounds great, look forward to it.

The fix is in place and is on the live server. The drop rate, as the DM said, is significantly better. We have simulated 1000s of drops and the statistics are there.

Here's what the issue was: the code that allowed Shiva to occasionally drop lesser (more common) items was not working, and now it is. Let us know how it feels/plays. Getting the drops to feel right in the deep dungeon is one of the most important aspects of dialing in this simulation.

Thanks for your patience.