Please look at the loot code & RNG

Why is it a regular occurrence to get duplicates, triplicates, or even quadruplicates of the same item from a raid mob with a supposedly equal chance to drop different items? I'm not saying duplicates should never happen, but when it happens on a weekly basis, often from the same mobs, it really begins to get tiresome.

Why can a raid guild go for an entire expansion of killing a mob without ever seeing an item that was never intended to be ultra rare (Fangs of Vyzh`dra are a good example of this)? Only to revisit that expansion and have it drop on a regular basis.
Please, please, look into the loot code. I hate to say it but the open source codebase has way better performance in determining loot drops and so if you're low on developer resources maybe take a look at the way they've designed it, compare them and try to deduce the issue?

Of all the issues on the table right now, this has got to be one of the most frustrating, especially given this was never an issue back in the day. Somebody somewhere made some changes to the loot code and in my humble opinion, it's beyond messed up. I don't often post on issues, but I don't think I am the only one that feels this way.

I've lost count of the number of time clears we've done now, but the number of class specific items we've yet to see in that number is staggering. On the other hand, there are plenty of items that we are seeing *almost every kill* and it would be surprising NOT to see atleast one duplicate drop from P4-Q

wow, that kinda sucks silly. I don't think it should ever get duplicates of any count, but if not then should at least be a more rare occurrence than you describe.

Hope this gets fixed, no doubt it's an annoyance, especially if that item is on rot status.

0/10 shield of strife on phin. RIP knights

IMO you guys are lucky enough to have instancing in the first place. On RF the top three guilds share this content. For instance we each only get one Cursed cycle per three weeks or so (depending on server down/up and zone crashes). Therefore certain guilds have seen two total bloodfrenzy's, and a whole bunch of craptastic caster daggers off the other Ssra named. For us, we have always just chalked it up to simple RNG, and play with what we have. Not everyone should be rocking BIS right when the new expac drops.

I realize the OP is not talking BIS anymore because Phinny is in PoP... and perhaps with the instancing, something is borked with the RNG of bosses, but I cannot speak to that as I do not play there. I just simply mean to say that some people on other servers have been doing just fine with a much more rare loot pool.

RNG was never a problem back in the day!?!?

Also, the everything on the Thall Va Xakra loot table does NOT have an equal chance at dropping.

RNG is RNG. We've killed those Thalls literally hundreds of times on this server and seen plenty of variance. 4 of the same item is indeed rare and unfortunate - but nothing crazy. Kill them again tomorrow!

Yeah... you're operating under the assumption that all of the items drop equally.

They just don't.

Certain items are coded as more common than others that's for sure, and it's always been that way.


Also, depending on the mob, they have different ways of picking loot.


Vulak for instance, has separate tables of gear. He'll drop 1 item from each table, so he can never duplicates a loot item, only Ancient spells, but that also means if he drops Item #1 from Table #1, he cannot drop Item#2 from Table#1 on the same kill.

Other mobs are different, and their loot works differently. Items like the belt of the Thall Va Xakra have say, a 20% chance of dropping, and can repeat, so chances of duplicates are more common.

4 of the same drop though would be exceedingly rare.

Hopefully we get 3x Time's Antithesis from Saryrn tomorrow night.

We're at 30+ Saryrn kills at 1 TA! Shaman threatening to stop pushing buttons

We've picked up 3 total so far, which is enough for all of our primary Shamans at least. Hopefully you'll be able to get enough also.

I feel your pain. My guild has had bad Monk/Beastlord weapon drops over the last few expansions.

Vulak H2H - 2
Tunare H2H - 2
Eashen H2H - 2 or 3
Cekenar H2H - 1
THO H2H - 1
IV H2H - 1 or 2
Cursed H2H - 2
XTC H2H - 0
Emp 2HB - 0
TZ (Tactics) H2H - 1 (off night raiding)
Xegony H2H - 1
Time H2H - 1
Time 2HB - 1
Fire 2HB - 1
Sol Ro 2HB - 3 (2 from off night raiding)
HoH H2H - 0

And... Sleepers Tomb H2H - 7 or 8 in 1 night =/

We do/did each mob every week in era. Just bad luck on drop rates. And with 7 Monks and 5-6 Beastlords; that's a lot of mouths to feed.

Now you want to hear something crazy... We've gotten 5 Bard swords in a row from Inny in Time.

Double post

Likewise... we were getting stiffed throughout Velious/Luclin on Monk weapons. Recently started to pick up though.
Think we've gotten 2 Time Staffs, 2 Fire Staffs, 2 Shinais? For about 5 active Monks / 2 Beastlords

And yet, literally none of this has anything to do with what Seveian is talking about really. The meat of the issue is.. duplicates shouldn't be this frequent, if at all even possible, from the same mob. At the end of the day RNG is RNG.. but something needs to be looked at.

Umm, it has everything to do with it.

Okay... let's say an item has a 10% chance of being picked from the list of mob items (10 different possible items with equal chances), on a mob that drops 4 items at a time.

Chance that you will NOT get any duplicates:
1 x 9/10 x 8/10 x 7/10 = Roughly 50% chance that you get ZERO repeats of any kind if the mob has a loot determination based on drawing from the same table repeatedly.

Now, if a specific item has a higher probability of dropping than the other items in the list, then the chance of a repeat increases rapidly.

Let's say an item like the belt in question has a 20% chance of being pulled from the list each time. If the belt is pulled on the first item, chance of not getting a second belt at all is like 51%

So 49% of the time you'll get at least 1 duplicate belt.

These aren't exact numbers, but based on the design, the developers wanted some items to be more common, and others to be much harder to acquire.

Not every item is intended to be in the game on the same level of rarity. Personally, I've never seen the quadruple belt drop before, because it's an extremely rare chance. This is really like opening a booster pack of cards, and you're more likely to get certain common items, versus a chance at 1 very rare card. Like, you might have seen 10 Holographic Foil Machamps, before you got your first foil Charizard.


There weren't many bosses coded to prevent duplicates, which is why I gave the example of Vulak, since he was designed with a different style of loot table from other bosses to prevent duplicates, but it also meant that overall, there were less chances of getting some pieces in certain streaks of the RNG, because you only had 1 draw of that chance instead of 4 possible draws at a time.

Right, thanks for the math lesson. Again, unimportant to the discussion
The discussion is "duplicates should rarely happen, if at all, triplicates and quadruplicates should never happen". Your drop rate assertions are meaningless to this discussion, your chance to get duplicates is meaningless to this discussion.

On top of that, there seems to be a fundamental flaw where an item that has a [low arbitrary number calculated out of your ] chance to drop doesn't drop in a 3+ month span of weekly clearing. Then you go back expansions later, and it drops like candy? Again, I know RNG is RNG, but at least RNG shouldn't eliminate possibilities due to crazy circumstances. On top of that, having items drop so frequently they are rotting or going to alts half way through top content feels bad. Some Balance needs to put in place, because it is frustrating. If you haven't experienced it, then I say you are quite lucky.

Lol look at what? Ok DBG, take a look at the random number generator....still random? yup. ok cool.

The Thalls in VT are a bad example because they have a relatively small loot table but still drop 4 items. Its extremely common to get duplicates and in fact I'd be willing to bet getting duplicates is more common than getting 4 unique items for the Thalls.

A few issues here
1) You are suffering from confirmation bias
2) Saying duplicates shouldn't happen is just your opinion. It seems the original devs at the time disagreed with your opinion. Welcome to EQ.
3) Some items are rare, some are not. The items that are not as rare are sometimes going to rot. Once again, Welcome to EQ
4) Suggesting math is unimportant for a topic regarding RNG is humorous

In all my Lodizals I never saw the mythical 2Belt + 2 Shell. FeelsBadMan.

We also never did get a 3 Braid and Beastlord BP Tunare. Sad times.