How are Giant Monster Mini Pet drops supposed to work?

[Zhym]

From the patch notes:

 

Quote

The following Giant Monsters found in city zones now have a 10% chance of dropping an invention recipe of a miniature version of themselves. This chance is rolled individually per character who received credit and is tied to the same drop table as the Reward Merits.

 

What does that mean, exactly?  I thought it meant that if you got enough credit on defeating a GM that you received reward merits, you also had a 10% chance of getting a recipe for a mini pet version of that same monster.  But I joined Scrapyard Beatdown 2024 for a while today, and after defeating Scrappy about 70 times, I don't see any pet recipes.  So now I'm wondering if I'm reading the patch notes wrong. 

 

Edited February 24 by Zhym

[Judasace]

I farmed him on 3 characters for roughly 1000 kills total so far, got one recipe drop.

 

Have done Adam twice since the patch dropped, got the recipe both times.

 

Random is random.

[tidge]

20 hours ago, Zhym said:

From the patch notes:

 

 

What does that mean, exactly?  I thought it meant that if you got enough credit on defeating a GM that you received reward merits, you also had a 10% chance of getting a recipe for a mini pet version of that same monster.  But I joined Scrapyard Beatdown 2024 for a while today, and after defeating Scrappy about 70 times, I don't see any pet recipes.  So now I'm wondering if I'm reading the patch notes wrong.

 

I haven't done anything like repeat farming of a single GM, but I have done a significant number of solo GM defeats since the update (probably ~300 regular merits, including a couple of solo Lusca runs) and I've only gotten two recipe drops. I've joined up for many more GM fights(*1). I've accumulated enough Monstrous Aethers for over 20 random mini-pet recipes. I kinda lost track after Saturday.... I am beginning to wonder if my henchmen are getting the drops and not telling me!

 

(*1) If I conservatively estimate 40 solo monster takedowns, and a recipe drop rate of 10%, only 2 recipes is on the "bad luck" side of the distribution but not inconceivable. If I had done 70 or 1000 kills (yeah, lets get that Scrapyarder exploit closed) and only gotten two... that seems wrong.

 

Straying away from evidence-based math: There has long been as sort of feeling among some players that "random table" reward drops don't quite skew evenly for teams and leagues. Writing only for myself... I often do enough x8 content solo that within an hour or two (of enemy smashing) I get a Very Rare or PVP recipe drop. When I am on a PUG for the same amount of time, it is far less likely (but not impossible!) that I get that kind of drop... and often I feel (sorry no evidence!) like I've gotten significantly fewer common recipe drops as well. LVL 50 Common recipes are pretty easy to pay attention to, as the retail for ~100K each and none of my characters need them.

 

The RNG and I have our issues! I do believe that it is implemented in almost as fair a way as possible (flat filling of the probability space in a pseudorandom way) but that doesn't mean I like it when it skews deeply unevenly. I have to believe it takes a lot of work for Streakbreaker RNGesus when a 95% chance ToHit AoE on a tightly clustered spawn of 8 enemies ends up with 3 MISSES.

 

 

[Zhym]

I ended up getting the pet recipe after about 160 kills or so.  My working theory is that it's tied to the criteria for getting the badge: if your team doesn't get enough of the damage percentage, the drop roll doesn't even happen.  But that's just a theory.

[Ironblade]

16 hours ago, Zhym said:

I ended up getting the pet recipe after about 160 kills or so.  My working theory is that it's tied to the criteria for getting the badge: if your team doesn't get enough of the damage percentage, the drop roll doesn't even happen.  But that's just a theory.

 

From the patch notes:
"This chance is rolled individually per character who received credit and is tied to the same drop table as the Reward Merits."

So yeah, if you don't qualify for the reward merits, you don't qualify for the recipe drop.

[Zhym]

12 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

 

From the patch notes:
"This chance is rolled individually per character who received credit and is tied to the same drop table as the Reward Merits."

So yeah, if you don't qualify for the reward merits, you don't qualify for the recipe drop.

 

I did quote that language at the top of the thread. :)  And I've been getting reward merits at an insane pace—so it's definitely not the case that there's a 10% chance of getting the pet recipe every time you get reward merits.  Whether that's WIA is a different question, of course.

Edited February 26 by Zhym

[Jimpy]

I got an Echoia, Eichoa, Echaoi, whatever on the first kill of him I had.  Haven't got another since, but I haven't done that many GMs

 

[Ironblade]

On 2/26/2024 at 2:42 PM, Zhym said:

And I've been getting reward merits at an insane pace—so it's definitely not the case that there's a 10% chance of getting the pet recipe every time you get reward merits.  Whether that's WIA is a different question, of course.

 

I'm hearing this from a lot of people and I haven't gotten a recipe drop yet, either.

I wonder if the odds are set correctly.  Maybe someone misplaced a decimal point.

[Zhym]

8 minutes ago, Ironblade said:

I'm hearing this from a lot of people and I haven't gotten a recipe drop yet, either.

Is that from monster hunting in general, or specifically Scrapyard?  Scrapyard was such a weird mega-event that I'm not sure what to make of drop rates on that one.  But if the drop rate is supposed to be 10%, that would mean there's a 90% chance of getting at least one drop after defeating 22 GMs and a 99% chance after 44.  There's a 50% chance at 7.  So if we're seeing numbers in the 22-44 range without a drop (Scrapyard excepted), it seems like it's not a 10% chance, whatever the patch notes say.

 

I haven't battled enough non-Scrapyard GMs to do those numbers personally, though.

[Major_Decoy]

On 2/26/2024 at 11:30 AM, Ironblade said:

 

From the patch notes:
"This chance is rolled individually per character who received credit and is tied to the same drop table as the Reward Merits."

So yeah, if you don't qualify for the reward merits, you don't qualify for the recipe drop.

The drop requirements for reward merits are a lot more lax than the drop requirements for badges. I'm pretty sure that, as long as you do one point of damage, you qualify for the reward merits.

[Excraft]

On 2/24/2024 at 2:38 PM, Zhym said:

But I joined Scrapyard Beatdown 2024 for a while today, and after defeating Scrappy about 70 times, I don't see any pet recipes.  So now I'm wondering if I'm reading the patch notes wrong. 

 

I was also on leagues that had to have killed him hundreds and hundreds of times over the weekend and never received a single recipe drop.  Drops in general for everything seem off to me.  I freely admit I don't have hard data to back this up so take it for what it's worth, but my experience is drop rates are even lower than they used to be across the board.  Running story content as of late on various alts, I'm lucky to get any enhancement drops, anything above the occasional common salvage is rare, let alone anything above common recipes.  Seems like stuff dropped more frequently before.  Again, just my observation.

[Ironblade]

20 hours ago, Zhym said:

Is that from monster hunting in general, or specifically Scrapyard?

I only fought scrapyard once.  I fought Jurassik and the Goliath Warwalker multiple times, plus a few others once each.