Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Some research on Duriel's crap drops.

I was recently trying to figure out why Duriel so consistently drops crap, and if I could correct it. I don't know anyone here and I play strictly single player, but I wanted to tell someone about my results and didn't know anyplace else where people might be interested. I did search back posts and didn't find anyone who'd looked into it.

For background, I was digging through the game's data files and came up with the following treasure class drop data. I'm showing Andarials and Mephisto's for comparison, and only listing the relevant parts. These are for normal difficulty non-quest drops.

Duriel - Base: 7 picks

NoDrop: prob 19

Item 1: "gld,mul=1280", prob 11

Item 2: Act 3 Equip A, prob 19

Item 3: Act 3 Junk, prob 15

Item 4: Act 3 Good, prob 3

Andarial: 7 picks

NoDrop: prob 19

Item 1: "gld,mul=1280", prob 11

Item 2: Act 2 Equip A, prob 19

Item 3: Act 2 Junk, prob 15

Item 4: Act 2 Good, prob 3

Mephisto: 7 picks

NoDrop: prob 15

Item 1: "gld,mul=1280", prob 5

Item 2: Act 4 Equip A, prob 52

Item 3: Act 4 Junk, prob 5

Item 4: Act 4 Good, prob 3

Diablo and Baal are functionally identical to Meph. On the face of it this means that Duriel should drop more or less like Andarial, just with equipment appropriate to different acts. The Prime Evils have a much higher Equip TC probability and lower NoDrop and gold values, so on average they should drop much better. This seems consistent with observation. OTOH, the lack of the high Equip TC weighting explains why Andarial is more likely to drop jewelry. Duriel looks like he *ought* to have the same propensity, but in actual play doesn't seem to.

The reason why: "Duriel - Base." This TC is equivelant to Andarial's, but Duriel does not drop straight from it. He drops from this:

Duriel: 5 picks

NoDrop: 0

Item 1: tsc (Town Portal Scroll), prob 1

Item 2: Duriel - Base, prob 2

This "outer" TC gives him his special town portal drop...incorrectly. What it means as far as I can tell is, roll five treasure picks. Each roll has a 1/3 chance of being a town portal and a 2/3 of being his regular 7-pick drop. This is why sometimes he drops no scrolls and sometimes drops nothing but; it's possible for all five picks to roll TPS, or none of them. (it's also possible to get a TPS from the Junk TC in his standard drop, I think, but the same goes for any non-quest act boss)

What if he rolls all normal drop? Well, he tries to make his normal 7-pick drop five times. Mathematically that could go up to 35 items (!), but monsters are capped to drop only six so when he hits the sixth item it aborts any further rolls. (I think)

It's that six-cap, and the ****ed up attempt to add a TPS to his drop, that makes him crap. He has andarials poor (relative to meph and the others) drop type probabilities, compounded by the fact that any time he makes his TPS drop -- which he might do multiple times -- it comes out of the six-item cap. I'm not sure of the exact math, but by his reputation I suspect that outweighs any benefit of rolling his regular drop multiple times (which guarantees he will nearly always drop six items)

The correct TC, I think, should look like:

Duriel: Picks -2

Item 1: tsc (Town Portal Scroll), prob 1

Item 2: Duriel - Base, prob 1

The negative 2 is intentional. This would make him always drop a TPS and then do his normal Andarial-like drop. He'd still lose a potential item to the cap, but I think this is what Blizzard actually intended. Why they did it the other way I've no idea. I can't think of any combination of typos that would make his existing outer TC make sense.

Anyone who's read this far, I'd like to know if you think I've got this right -- especially anyone who knows more about the game's data files than I do.

(side note: Hell duriel also has double weighting for essences for some reason, but it doesn't look like it would have that much of an effect.)

--

Tasogare|||1.12 Duriel drop:


Code:
Duriel: Picks -2
Item 1: tsc (Town Portal Scroll), prob 1
Item 2: Duriel - Base, prob 1

Here Duriel drops always one scroll of town portal and then makes 7 picks from Duriel - Base which can generate up to 5 more items.

1.13 Duriel drop:


Code:
Duriel: 5 picks
NoDrop: 0
Item 1: tsc (Town Portal Scroll), prob 1
Item 2: Duriel - Base, prob 2

Basically what you said is the way it works.

When you compare Andariel and Duriel drop for any practical use choose Andariel quest drop(Andariel bug) and Duriel non-quest drop. Quest drop do not contain junk and gold. That's why it looks like Andariel drops good items and Duriel - crap. In 1.13 Duriel drop is even more crappy because of the multiple scrolls he drops.|||I did 100 Hell Duriel runs in v1.10, on /players 3.

He usually dropped 2-4 equipment items, sometimes 5 and sometimes 0-1, and always one TP scroll. I had two of the 100 drops that were just the TP scroll and 'junk'.



It�s a shame they messed him up 1.13.

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