Did plenty of lvl 1 and lvl 3 instances for fun and noticed something ... thought to share with the community, maybe some other views can help in better understanding the mechanishm behind instances loot... Can only speak about the big chest - the one upstairs. i saw some theories about the rest but I do not agree to them nor do I claim to know how the small ones work So ... 3 or 4 times in a row when opening the big chest of a lvl 3 instance I get a glob of 89 peds. Coincidence ? Hmm ... that got me thinking ... I always used same setup - Philo for small mobs (yes, i know is overkill ) and asi-30 artic for bosses & defenders. So I tried a different approach with cap-101 for small ones ... 2 times in a row 78 glob on big chest :huh: ... as a note, that's killing every single mob in the instance (382 kills total everytime) Payed a bit more attention and think the damage dealt counter is related to the actual damage u deal and not the mob HP u hit. For example, even if a worm has 10 HP, if I hit for 29 dmg that's what's going to the counter. Considering u always get the same no of mobs and thus the same overall HP, seems the damage u deal (thus the weap u use) has a role to play in the return u get from the big chest. So far I can defo say the big chest return is based on key value + something else. My guess is the damage u dealt during the instance ... any other observations/opinions ?
Overkill IS included in the damage stats of the players. I totaled about 15k last night on key 1, just to see if loot was affected. Overkill does not appear to affect loot in any way.... but running thru one-shotting every mob is GREAT fun. T79x also did a similar test and got no increase in loot. However, I expect the loot distribution to the various players is affected by overkill, since it changes your stat numbers. I didn't test it though, but it would be logical. Oh, one other thing, I heard from Zume that a player does not need to be in team to get loot. Being in team only gets you INTO the instance. You can leave team after that and still play the instance (use force chat). Anyone want to test what the max number of players in an instance is?
If this is true it be good and bad. Good cause MA is actually trying to balance out cost. Bad because it could be exploited. So if i go in there and overkill everything i should get a big cash out at the end? Be interesting to do like a 100dmg weapon to all those 10 hp mobs and see what happens. Should be interesting doing what i plan to do. Which is Elect Strike try to multi dmg as man mobs as possible then follow up with flame thrower or powerfist.
Decided to test that overkill. One test only - who says is not concludent can test more at his own expense So, for 31:55 mins was MA's best friend and used only ASI-30 Artic + Dante in a lvl 3 instance. Defo that counter counts dmg dealt by gun, not dmg received by mob ! Reached 45,137 dmg inflicted (normal for me was 34-36k) and cannot describe the pain & horror to do so much overkill :soangry: Anyways, all in all took 123 ped ammo. Did not count decay on weap & amp. Return ? The small chests gave sh*t (one of them actually gave nothing ) and the big one globed for 114 - highest i ever got in a lvl 3. Total return : 134.46 TT (and TT is cause was all ammo and robo junk) .... if we count the key value I'm down 50 peds not talking about weap+armor+amp decay - so don't recommend doing this to increase your returns For me is now clear the big chest return takes key & overall kill cost into account ...
I can say that ive done a few lvl 1 keys solo now.. at first it was ARK-10 for normal mobs and Cold-Ir for bosses.. then it was Opalo and cold-ir .. (less overkill) .. Then m2100 for most snakes and hoppers, Opalo for some (something with strategy) snakes and hoppers and Ubos, and cold-ir for bosses.. my last run, I spent 22.65 ped ammo - I killed all.. That was the run with least overkill and thereby over-use in ammo.. ive had 10,15,12 and 6 ped losses (including key TT and MU).. the one with only 6 ped loss, was the round where I spent less ammo..
Rex, I said that overkill is not reimbursed in loot. Lucky got one test that gave him a good global. We did two tests on level 1, doing 2x more damage than normal, the level 1 gave normal loot both times (30-33 ped return). Wasted ~50 ped extra each run. It would be fun if loot included overkill, but imagine using an insane dmg weapon... you'd basically turn loot from a level 1 instance into, say, level 6 category, without any of the difficulty of level 6. Of course, you'd want to do more (very expensive) tests to be sure that overkill is not compensated. Probably 20 tests, at a cost of 1k ped on level 1, should tell you with a good probability of certainty.
Based on Neil's results, and from seeing the overview provided solo and in team when an instance is done, dmg clearly does calculate the dmg each person does, whether or not that is overkill for the mob. BUT if that is not calculated towards the loot return, what is? I understood so far from the bits we have been told by David that is dmg based plus some random factor plus the tt of the key used is calculated in like ammo spent (I think). Looking at the overview final screens, all sorts is noted there, number of creatures killed included, so what exactly decides the final loot? Hoping for a full and clear idea on all this soon, plus still curious if team settings have any effect at all, has anyone tested different settings to see if it changes what happens at the end, like Leader takes all team settings?
Anthony said he tested looter takes all and that's what happened. As far as instance dmg and loot... we know that if you don't kill any mobs other than the boss, you get less loot, so mob damage does contribute to the loot amount. There are two possibilities... we'd have to test to see which is correct. The way it SHOULD be done is like normal hunting: if you kill a puny mob with overkill, you only get loot based on 10 hp. Now applied to instances, that would be that: #1 each mob contributes at most its amount of hp to the final loot payout or #2 an instance can give out loot based on total mob HP plus key value, and doesn't really look at individual mobs (this could be a coding shortcut, so...) Now the difference between the two situations is significant... say instance 1 has total mob hp of 7k. All you need to kill is the big boss. So if case #2 above is true, you can run through the instance, doing huge overkill on a few punies and get 5k dmg, then kill the big boss which is another 2k or so. Then you'd get the maximum instance loot, even though you didn't kill most of the creatures, AND you did not lose a pec due to overkill, AND you did it really fast.
