Drop rate

From GuildWiki

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DISCLAIMER: The information in this article is based on experimental research conducted by the community, and may contain inaccuracies and speculation. While we strive for accuracy in these articles, we make no claims of experimental rigor or unbiased conclusions. Caveat lector.

1 Types of Drops
2 Party Size and Drop Rate
3 The Project
4 Currently Compiled Data
5 Related Articles

Drop rate is a term defined in this wiki (not by ANet) to refer to the patterns that govern how drops occur. There are two sides to studying drop rates in Guild Wars:

How often does a certain type of loot drop?
What kind of drops does a certain creature drop and what is the rate of each?

The main focus of studying drop rates of loot is obviously farming. Successful farming is not just based on having the best build to successfully kill and survive, but also, killing the right monsters that produce the desired loot as quickly as possible.

An example of this, is farming Ecto. Most farming groups farm the Smite Crawlers, while actual statistical data shows that the Bladed Aatxe drop Ectos at twice the rate.

The specifics of how a drop rate is determined in-game are unknown. ANet has not published any statistics on any item or monster. Still, basic data can be collected on each monster to record the kind of drops that they leave behind. This data compiled in large amounts can show the rough percentages of the different kinds of loot that a monster drops.

[edit] Types of Drops

In general, there are several types of loot that a monster can drop:

Gold: This actually varies based on the level of monster rather than the type of monster. The higher the level, the higher the amount of gold. Data gathered in high-level areas like the Fissure of Woe, show that the gold dropped varies between 98 gold and 130 gold in those areas. The possibility of gold drops varies sometimes according to area (FoW is less than 10% while UW is more than 25%) and sometimes according to creatures (those that drop armor usually drop gold less frequently).
Equippable Items: This refers to weapons, shields and focus items. For each species or faction in the game, they will usually have a pattern of dropping items specific to their area (like Shadow Bows in the Fissure or Summit Axes in the Shiverpeaks) and items more general. In addition, a creature will drop items in its own profession fairly often. For example, Smite Crawlers drop a lot of Holy Rods and Smiting Staves while Shadow Beasts drop a lot of Grim Cestas and Deadly Cestas.
Salvage Armor: More technologically advanced creatures will drop pieces of armor that can be salvaged for crafting material or runes. Examples include the White Mantle, the Charr and Ettins. If a creature drops salvage armor, it will actually drop it at a fairly high rate. Notable exceptions include the Shadow Army and the Skeleton Army.
Crafting Material: Creatures that do not drop salvage armor will instead drop crafting material (though at a lesser rate). The majority of the materials dropped will be common crafting material but there is a small chance that a creature will drop rare crafting material. This chance apparently increases as the creature's level increases. Some groups drop both crafting materials and salvage armor; such as Avicara and the Undead found in Kryta.
Collectable Drops: Almost all creatures in the game have a stackable collectable drop that they leave behind at a fairly consistent rate. Examples include Mursaat Tokens, Hardened Humps and Charr Carvings. This rate is found to be around 20% for most creatures that do have collectable drops. Creatures that do not drop collectable drops include Ancient Skales and Doubter's Dryders.
Salvageable Remains: Some races will drop remains that are marked as "salvage items" but also stack in the inventory like collectable drops. These include hides, spider webs, and half-eaten masses. These remains drop from creatures that drop armor and creatures that do not. For example, the Charr drop Charr Carvings, Stalker Armor and Charr Hides while a Maguuma Spider drops an Ebon Spider Leg and a Maguuma Spider Web.
Keys: Each creature has a very small chance of dropping a key. The key the creature drops is the key of the area that creature is originally from. Thus, Banshees in the Fissure of Woe drop Phantom Keys because they are originally from the Underworld.
Dyes: All creatures have a chance of dropping dye. The chance of a specific dye dropping varies depending on color with black being very rare and orange being very common.
Nothing: There is a chance that a creature will drop nothing. The probability of this happening early on in an outing into an explorable area is high and drops quickly as players delve into the area and kill more monsters. This seems to occur most when repeatedly solo farming the same area, some of the first 5 or so kills each trip will yield no drop.

[edit] Party Size and Drop Rate

Generally speaking, the larger the party size is the fewer the drops will be assigned to each party member. It is believed that each additional NPC (henchmen/heroes) added to the party also detracts from the overall drop rate (which can be seen by all PC's in the party). This affect on drop rates is assumed to be slightly less with NPC's than if each additional party member were a PC instead.

[edit] The Project

This article is the cover page of a project to document each and every creature in Guild Wars in term of their Drop Rates. Users who wish to contribute to this project should follow the following steps:

Please, create a user name as it will make tracking the sources of the data much more efficient.
Create a spreadsheet for monitoring the creature you wish to gather Drop Rate data about. The format should be something like this:

Creature	Gold	Equippable Item	Salvage Armor	Common Materials	Rare Materials	Keys	Collectables	Dyes	Other	Nothing	Signature
Bladed Aatxe	102	74	0	43	14	0	72	1	0	12	Karlos 13:38, 2 March 2006 (CST)
	12	4	0	3	1	0	5	0	0	2	Skuld 8:24, 5 March 2006 (CST)

Record the drops after each kill of this specific monster. If the monster appears at different levels (like Charr and Grawl), then record the data of each level separaterly.
Do not record drops from bosses. Their drops and the drops of their species/factions are not always the same.
Create (or edit) the page for the monster as a sub-article of this article. For example, for the Aatxe above, the data article would be: drop rate/Bladed Aatxe. Use the notes section to record any anomalies in the drops of the monster. If you created the article, please list add it to the list below.
If a sub-article already exists for a monster then do not overwrite the numbers. Instead, add your numbers in a new row to the table then update the totals and percentages at the end of the table. This will increase the data available and prevent addition mistakes that alter the data. You should sign next to the row you add using ~~~~.
Once enough data has been collected (say 200+ total drops), then the monster's page can be updated with a section titled Drop Rates that lists the percentages of each drop. For examples, see Bladed Aatxe and Smite Crawler.
If more precise data is to be stored, it should be stored in a separate table below the main one. For example, a break down of each of the weapon types the monster drops, or the frequency of dropping gold, purple and blue items.

The hope is that with this project, players can make informed decisions instead of following rumors about drops.

See User:RolandOfGilead/Java/Drop Rate Tool for a Java program that simplifies the task of recording drop rates.

[edit] Currently Compiled Data

Monster data:
This is a list of sub-articles containing data collected so far, sorted by region:

[edit] The Underworld

[edit] Fissure of Woe

[edit] Kryta

[edit] Ascalon

drop rate/Hulking Stone Elemental
Drop rate/Charr Stalker (lvl 6)

[edit] Southern Shiverpeaks

[edit] Jade Sea

[edit] Kaineng City

[edit] Pre-Searing Ascalon

[edit] Plains of Jarin

See also: Template:Drop Rate Table for creating Drop Rate Tables.

[edit] Chest data:

Part of this project is that we are also recording the quality and type of drops that fall from chests. In this we are trying to understand the likelihood of getting good drops from chests:

Prophecies Chests: