Baubas Cave (HG 370) Primus gear drop rates and the ever elusive LOOT CHANCE discussion

[sanders]

Okay so a few days ago in a middle of a HG farming session, I asked in Telsiai shout chat if its possible to get Primus gear drops from the mobs in HG 370 and someone replied saying that its possible but only with a loot chance buff of over 1000++ for HG 370.

From an hour’s farming session with a loot chance of 700, I managed to get about 65% weight worth of equipment, mats and whatever.

Fast forward to today, I managed to grab the 1000 looting chance buff from the no.1 etching rank dude (thanks man) + etching buff from statue (100) + popo shop loot chance potion (300), bringing my total loot chance to 1400 for a good 25 mins. Of course, I farmed but to my dismay, I did not receive a single primus drop.

My questions:

1. Aside from ■■■■ luck, why am I not getting any Primus gear from the drops?
2. Is anyone aware or is kinda sure of what the minimum requirements are before one is given a chance at Primus drops?
3. Has anyone actually ever seen a Primus equip drop from a mob in HG 370 with their own two eyeballs? I just want to know if there is even a chance to get it so I don’t get disappointed at the end of every HG 370 farming session.
   BONUS QUESTION: Has anyone ever gotten a Golden Anvil drop from HG370 btw too? I’ve gotten plenty of them in HG 340 with 200 loot chance but I’ve not seen a single one drop in like 8-9 hours of farming this stupid HG.

Some speculations I have (that have no basis whatsoever but feel free to discuss):

1. One must complete the HG gimmicks to “unlock” Primus gear drops
2. One must farm in the map for more than a certain period of time (30 mins minimum or smth like that)
3. Primus gear drops from the mobs that I am NOT farming (stupid piece of ■■■■ tala wizards/archers/battle boss/lakhwhatever). I’m farming with 24k HP so you can understand why I avoid these mobs.
4. Primus gears have abysmally low drop rates for whatever reason.
5. I did not kill enough mobs during the 1400 loot chance session to warrant a single primus drop. (this one makes the most sense). I average about 16 [swelled] mobs every 40 secs btw because of how my class works.

My observations (between a 700 loot chance(LC) and 1400 LC session):

1. In about 55 mins with 700 LC, I managed to fill my inventory to 99% weight before I warped back home. I enter the dungeon with about 30-35% weight most of the time, so thats about 65% worth of equips/mats/whatever in one hour.

2. In a 25-ish mins session with 1400 LC, I managed to get to 85% weight before I warped back home. With roughly same amount of starting weight, that’s about 50% worth of equips/mats/whatever in half the time.

3. Thus I conclude (with an embarrassingly small sample size) that LC definitely improves the quantity of the drops, unsure about the quality.

4. Most of my drops were blue, maybe 85%? Take a look.

   

5. I hold my statement about material (opals, sapphire, ruby, topaz and BS), and monster card album drop rates for now because I wasn’t too focused on these items (yes I know its the main reason for farming HGs).

Anyone else care to share their experiences with farming HG370 in general?

Build is wiz2-link2-thaum3-featherfoot3 with 6.8k MAtt after buffs btw in case anyone’s wondering.

These are the rest of my drops from the 25min 1400LC session.

[Zeucleio]

A while ago they incrased the drop rates for primus on normal maps and CMs by a lot, but didnt increase the chances in HGs. To me, farming HGs feels like a waste of time, I can get a lot more primus(and silver) by spamming CMs instead.

And yeah, Loot chance increases the amount of unidentified drops, but doesnt improve their quality. Loot chance does not increase drop rate for anything else, so even with 1000+ loot chance, golden anvil drop rates are still really bad (Golden anvils are 0.02% drop chance if I remember correctly)

With 890ish Loot chance, I average 0-2 primus every 1h farmed with Swell body…

[crevox]

HG has double the drop chance for weapons and armor compared to any other map. Challenge modes are not a good comparison because you get 600+ free looting chance while participating in a challenge mode.

Yes, looting chance improves the drop chance but not the quality of drops.

[Patsch2]

I dont really do any CMs and I only farm HG
I’m also most of the time the only person on all channels, no one does HG anymore as they used to.

I think what happened with the new HG that they raised the scaling of looting chance
In the old HG I used to get tons of drops with my looting chance gear, now in this HG with the same looting chance the drops basically halved. And primus drops are even rarer than ever before

I’ll do some more tests with the “speculations”
I like that one with the gimmick because all my Primus drops have been after I’ve completed that gimmick which takes a little bit of time to farm up the crystals
I wouldnt dismiss that, even if it sounds crazy

It might also be just that the higher level the HG the lower the droprate becomes
In comparison the lvl 100 hunting ground has a much much higher droprate of primus items than the 340

[streamside]

Nah, the main problem of HG is the steep increase of “difficulty” from Rank 9 Hunting Grounds onward.

The HP of some monsters in Baubas Cave are way over 1m, which takes more time/investment to kill, in contrast to Nazarene Tower, which has around 350-600k HP only.

It’s also harder to group a lot of monsters in Baubas Cave since they are ranged (Talas Archer/Wizard, Stonacon e.g.), and there are less regions to efficiently mob monsters (and I guess the overall number of monsters is smaller,too, or they are more widespread).

The main problem is that in challenge mode, it’s easy to get loot because you get relatively weak monsters that die quicker and are limited to a certain area, so you can kill more per second than in Baubas Cave.

The things that bugs me the most about Baubas Cave are two things:

1. it’s on the list for daily quests, which can make it hard to finish them on side characters/new players
2. it doesn’t have an increased drop rate compared to lower Hunting Grounds;
   I can understand that the unidentified equipment drop rate is the same throughout all Hunting Grounds except the very early ones, but why do things like Card Albums or jewels drop with the same rate in every dungeon?
   If you want to farm card albums, isn’t it better then to just go to the lowest Hunting Ground and mass murder there than struggling against Baubas Cave monsters?
   I can understand that IMC wants to keep card albums rare, but that is not achieved by forcing players with bad equipment to hunt them in lower Hunting Grounds just because it’s way faster and way more efficient.

Also, the exp in the Hunting Grounds sucks compared to the effort put into killing the monsters, so people who want to level just go for Sausys Room and kill 5 mobs in 2 seconds that give about as much EXP as 1 Baubas Cave Monster that takes 6-10 seconds to kill…

[Instantnoodle]

I am 0 looting chance (not invest in any looting chance gear) but still can get a few of primus weapon/armor in 370 HG.Sometimes not dropping,sometimes drop 1-2 in an hour.I didn’t do any gimmick,and also got one golden anvil from there.
I don’t have ff so only use my cleric to farm

[draconis]

Last time I went in Baubas Cave for farming, I got something like 3 primuses in 30 mins, so if you don’t find any it’s just the RNG cursing you with bad luck. And I almost always have 0 looting chance…

Of course, when I go in lower HG to farm card albums for guild event, I never find any… RNG giveth, RNG taketh…

[ultimapi]

All Loot Chance does is increase the amount of equipment you get. Law of Averages says you will get more Primus on an absolute scale, but in relative terms you’ll still get the same % of Primus.

[sanders]

Sorry for abandoning the discussion for a while.

So basically from what I gathered compared to the replies here is that I pretty much have ■■■■ luck in HG370 for whatever reason and confirmed that loot chance increases number of drops but quality of drops remain the same.

Sidetracking a little, I notice that during the sparkling twinkling sound when a loot is about to drop, the light that comes out is initially purple and then the sparkling twinkling sound loops like 3 or 4 times and then the loot finally drops. Its just an observation but, does this mean that the way the engine works is that the drop rate is rolled from a mob first and then the engine rolls the drop rarity based off that?

For example (with arbitrary numbers): 15% chance of dropping item (1st check) followed by loot rarity (95% blue, 4.9% purple, 0.1% red) (2nd check)

Or am I just lagging and thinking too much? lmao

I like the train of thought about the current state of HG370; it being a massive increase in difficulty from HG 330, the lack of benefits for the effort put in compared to other maps, the same drop rates for items (ores, monster card albums, golden anvils)

I think hunting grounds should stay true to its nature, being a grounds for hunting stuff. I don’t think its the right place for leveling up (though I have to admit the class exp ain’t too bad) but what I disagree with the most is the steep increase in difficulty compared to other HGs. I don’t mind the drop rate for items being the same as other HGs but it just doesn’t seem proportionate. Ergo, another case of high risk low reward.

However, with the incoming of enchant jewels in the upcoming patch, I’d like to think positively that some meaning will be given to HG 370 since enchant jewels only come with dismantling Lv 75+ Rare, Unique or Legend equipment item and such equipments drop like candy in HG370 (with high loot chance ofc).

[draconis]

However, with the incoming of enchant jewels in the upcoming patch, I’d like to think positively that some meaning will be given to HG 370 since enchant jewels only come with dismantling Lv 75+ Rare, Unique or Legend equipment item and such equipments drop like candy in HG370 (with high loot chance ofc).

Don’t bother with HG. You get WAY more loot from CM. 99% of drops in Baubas Cave are those useless gimmick crystals anyway…

[sanders]

From experience I’ve gotten more drops with high loot chance in Baubas than CM mode. I mean in the original post you can see that that was the amount of equips I got from a 25 min run (a CM 5 run is about the same time too).

I probably would get gear from CM but when the server-wide loot buff kicks in I’m definitely switching to farm mode in Baubas Cave.

[lastea]

I haven’t stepped into Baubas Cave since completing the map the first time. Designing a dungeon or hunting grounds with monsters just to annoy players with bad drops on top of it is not good game design.

[bia98303]

Most of the time I get primus from cm. I believe we can gain more in HG, depending if we can do the same kill rate with cm. Regarding the sparkling twinkling, it happened to me too. I believe it just a lagging issue. Another one about gimmick quest, if the crystal won’t drop anymore after completed the gimmick, I think maybe the drop will be better. This thing need developer’s answer about how they have done the dropping method in 370 HG? I can be sure that for every kill there is chances for stuff to drop because it is not drop per kill anymore, however someone still need to look into this and clear our own confusion.