Hunting carabok puny

Is only me that have a bad return on them ?
i am using ep-2 proton and the average loot is like 70% or under.... what do i do wrong ?

 

In short, nothing wrong. That's about the average loot return that you can expect. The Carabok hides have a reasonable mu though you should not expect to profit from hunting them.

 

What shall i hunt and expect to be on even (free skilling) as a noob ?
I just got lvl 1 today

 

About carabok ... i am camping them atm .
Does anyone else keep crashing in the woods hunting them at like 20-30 min ? depending on the zone ?
Does anyone else have periods of lag on loot for like 1-2 min ? then all the loot pop-up ?
Does anyone else observed that on the hill is an increased drop-rate of the hides and on the rest area you barely find any hides ?
I can continue with observation and statistics if anyone is interested

 

Hi there

Lag is often like that you described. Not related to carabok only, I had it on gallard too and in Calypso. So I think is server-related.

Gallard hide drops come in waves. Sometimes you can kill 100 mobs and don't get any, then sometimes for a certain period of time almost every kill gives you hides. Maybe same thing happening with carabok, not sure about that.

 

I'm currently doing the Carabok missions, I'm up to 4,600 kills and I've tracked my stats the whole way.
- I haven't been crashing at all in the area, but I do have problems elsewhere in EU.
- Loot lag happens quite often recently but it's not just Carabok, I get it on other mobs, mining, crafting, and on other planets.
- The hides seem to come in waves. I'll get no hides or 1-2 for a while then I'll get a couple kills that drop 25 or so. This doesn't seem to be related to location at all.
- My TT returns are currently at 79.43%. This has a LOT to do with the weapons you use. On such a small mob, only 10hp, you get a lot of overkill (wasted damage that you're still paying decay/ammo for). Just 1 point of wasted damage on a Carabok means you pay 10% more than you had to to kill it. This can have a big impact on TT returns.

When you're figuring out what weapon to use make sure you're using the average damage and not the max. For instance the CAP-TT R is listed as 6 damage but really does 3-6, so 4.5 average. 4.5+4.5 = 9... so not quite a dead Carabok, add 1 more shot in there and you have 13.5 damage, 35% overkill which is terrible.

The Cyrene TT Weapons are a bit better, at 2-4 dmg they average 3, so 12 dmg average per kill. The ASI-TT R is probably your best bet from the Arkadia TT. 5 damage = 3.75 average x3 shots = 11.25 dmg, only 12.5% wasted, you should see improved TT returns.

Your only other option if you want to see better TT returns is to hunt bigger things so 1 or 2 points of overkill isn't 10-20% of your kill cost.

 

Try a different weapon, in my opinion the HK110 or the S.I. Scorpion works well and uses less ammo.
Hk110 just over a 1000 shots before repair @ 3.85 ped
S.I. Scorpion over 2000 shots @ 2.99 ped

After careful calculations u will find the S.I. Scorpion is more economical. a saving of around 0.71 ped compared to HK110.

Hope this can help you.

 

I do have scorpions and hk110 and the cyrene blades if you want to try out a weapon with lower damage (less overkill). Price is TT + 0.25 ped.

 

I was going to go into more detail but my last post does that fine. Heere's a list of Cyrene and Arkadia TT weapons, their damage, and the average overkill on Carabok (higher % overkill = lower TT returns!)

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 75%, align: center"]

[TD="align: center"]Weapon Name
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Average Damage
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Average Overkill
[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]S.I. HK110
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]3
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]20%
[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]S.I. Scorpion
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]3
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]20%
[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]S.I. Psy-Blade
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]3
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]20%
[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]S.I. Psy-Sword
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]6
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]20%
[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]S.I. Combat Knife
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]3.75
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]12.5%
[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]S.I. Flame Thrower
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]3.75
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]12.5%
[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]Herman ASI-TT R
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]3.75
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]12.5%
[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]Herman ARK-TT R
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]5.25
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]5%
[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]Herman LAW-TT R
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]6
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]20%
[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]Herman CAP-TT R
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]4.5
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]35%
[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]MAKO FAL-1(L)
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]9
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]80%
[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]MANTA K-1(L)
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]6.75
[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]35%
[/TD]
[/TABLE]

As you can see the ARK-TT R is by far your best bet for doing 10 hp mobs. Please keep in mind that they above chart applies only to mobs with 10hp. Also you could use the MAKO or MANTA along with a weaker finishing weapon to eliminate much of the overkill.

 

It's not simply a matter of taking the average damage and assuming you get "average" hits every time, you need to do a practice test. So for example, a weapon that does 14 max dmg also does relatively little overkill if used with a small finisher, and you can on-shot kill most mobs. I use that size for the puny mobs in the instances... once they start wiggling it's hard to get a second shot in.

 

Thank you for the infos !
One question , it is said that the loot is corelated with the decay .... so if you use MAKO FAL-1(L) for example shouldn't it is supposed to increase the loot on them ? Becouse... the average is still 0.03 and 0.01 .... Just you loose much more money -> that make me think that the loot system and the things with decay waves etc can be correlated with the mob itself not with the loot in general that apply to every mob. What do you think ? Is loot correlated with mob or is a general system ?

 

Oh and don;t forget : ep-2 proton , rubio and azzuro which are made for punyes (the most eco in my opinion , the ones i used)

 

Yes, and the average damage for a 14 dmg weapon is 10.5. A 1 hit kill most of the time and average overkill of only 5%.
Personally I use Ancient Red Scorpion + a101 (14 dmg) or Chickara LR-3 (14 dmg) and a low dmg finisher, depending on what I want to skill. For those without the levels or PED to use these the ARK-TT R is a nice option.

I realize that a weapon will not always do average damage but it is the average... so taken over a large enough sample, say 16,600 mobs for the missions, you will get an average damage per hit of... the weapon's average damage

There are of course other factors involved in the costs to kill, misses (always use a maxed weapon, or as close to max as you can get!), evades, low damage hits. These are things you can't control though, what you can control is the weapon you use and you want one that averages the least overkill for the mob you're hunting while still killing it relatively quickly. Since quick kills aren't much of an issue with 10hp mobs the average damage becomes the most important factor, followed by the damage per pec of the weapon.

Again, this information only applies to puny mobs where the overkill adds up to a large % very quickly, on a larger mob damage per pec may easily outweigh overkill.

 

This depends on a few things. First, these are all (L) and dropped, not crafted so supply can be an issue. Also, remember to account for the MU paid on the weapon when you're figuring out the damage per pec, most of these weapons sell for quite high MU since the minimum you can list them for on AH is 1 ped and they are all under 1 ped TT weapons.

Here's a break down on average overkill for the weapons you've listed along with the damage per pec at common MU's. Obviously if you pay lower MU then you will have better Damage Per Pec, but really anything over 120% is a bit ridiculous to pay for a weapon unless it gives some other benefit you need.

[TABLE="class: grid, width: 500, align: center"]

[TD="align: center"]Name[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]Average Overkill[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]MU[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]DPP[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]EP-2 Proton[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]20%[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]500% (1 ped in AH)[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]2.752[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]Sollomate Rubio[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]12.5%[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]1111.11% (1 ped in AH)[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]2.546[/TD]

[TD="align: center"]Sollomate Azuro[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]12.5%[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]285.71% (2 ped in AH)[/TD]
[TD="align: center"]2.592[/TD]
[/TABLE]

Compare these to the ARK-TT R, it is available in the TT so you never have to worry about MU, the average overkill is only 5%, and the damage per pec is 2.780. The only one of those weapons close in DPP is the EP-2 and it averages 4 times the overkill. Low damage is not always the most eco.

As for your loot question, it is based on the damage done, not the decay used to get that damage. Also any damage done above the HP the mob has left does not count (hence, overkill = bad). If loot was based on decay as you say then we could all run around with the biggest gun we could find and the eco of the weapon wouldn't matter at all. If you take a look on the calypso forums there are a bunch of logs and tests people have done for things like this over the years.

EDIT: The above chart assumes you buy these weapons at full TT value. Buying them under full TT will lower the DPP as the unusable TT on them becomes a larger percentage of the total purchase price. That and the MU will likely be higher.

 

My best weapons for puny mission

Name Avarage cost to kill
------------------------------
S.I. Psy-Blade 0,0407
S.I. Scorpion 0,0409
S.I. HK110 0,0409

They're UL with SIB. No problem to buy them. I have also ARS + a101 but it's pain to change weapon to finisher all the time

EDIT: Difference between EWE EP-1 Neutron (L) with mu 0% and psy-blade is around 16 PED per 16k carabok kills. I think that it's not worth to buy those. Also extra MU will bump cost to kill a bit. So finally difference between SI series and most eco EWE is really really small.

EDIT 2: As for loot. I've killed around 8k of gallards last week. My loss was around 30 peds. Could be less but I was skilling Mindforce a bit with Corrosive Attack Nanochip I (L). I've had one global 16 ped during that time. I have another 10k gallards to kill so after that I'll be selling hides / residue and other loot so MU should minimaze loss a bit.

 

I think you'd find a lower cost to kill using the ARK-TT R. Haven't tested this myself but the math works out better than Cyrene TT weapons. I'm sitting at 0.0372 cost to kill, most of this was ARS + a101 with HK or Psy-Blade finisher. About 1k was just HK / Psy-Blade (Cost to kill on that batch was .0385) and the last 750 I've been using LR-3, not as eco as the ARS + a101 but I want to skill rifle.

The cyrene TT weapons are nice, but for 10HP mobs there are better options, the most eco 2, 7 or 14 damage weapon/amp combo you can get is the way to go. And ofc a finisher. I really wish they'd put something like the EP-1 in the TT but I guess overkill = MA wins so why would they, lol.

 

You're right Zorander. I'll have to do my math again

 

Loot correlated with decay - is one theory but not one I subscribe to.
The other common theory is that loot correlates with the damage done (not including overkill) - this the one I go with. So tougher mobs tend to give more loot.

Suggest you aim to minimise your cost to kill. Try for good damage per pec, minimise overkill, minimise defense costs (there should be none with carabok anyway).

In an earlier post you suggested there might be some geographic distribution of the types of loots for a given mob. My understanding is that it doesnt really matter where you kill a mob when it comes to frequency of hide drops etc. This is in contrast with mining (at which I am no expert), where a great deal of your success depends on working out where you should mine for specific resources.

Regards,
KikkiJikki

 

Really? I'm sure that there are lots of people on forum willing to disprove that theory. For good reason, MA have never said anything about how loot is assigned - anything else is just speculation. That said, its good practice to minimize your kill cost as much as possible by avoiding overkill.

 

It's pretty easy to show that TT of loot correlates with damage done to the mob minus overkill. But it's harder to show that markup/rare loots are not related to the type of weapon you use or the decay you generate, since those events are just that, rare. So there are a lot of people with different theories about that.

The other point I wanted to make was that the best way to view overkill on small mobs is using the average "cost to kill" determined from actual hunting and these numbers will change as you max your weapon.