Miscellaneous: Manastone drop rate research

[Dildy]

From this website I found an interesting tidbit of information for potentially reverse engineering the actual true drop rate of Manastone using the blue server.

Rumor Mill: "There is no replacement for the manastone on the EE in Lguk, therefore if you hunt this mob and don't get a bag, it should have been a manastone...nah nah :P, bet that would make ya feel great..."

referencing this website: http://www.hyperhighway.com/bilgehunter/Bilgeachive.htm

Now this could be complete rumor or maybe there is some truth to it?

Does EE bag always drop off evil eye on blue?

Please note I have not done any additional research so if anyone has logs to help me that would be greatly appreciated.

Artelius Longwood <50 Ranger>

[Dolalin]

Short answer is yes, I think it almost always drops, but this seems to be a post-manastone-nerf change:

12/13/99

The Sewn evileye bags come from the evil eye in lower guk (live side) NOT
from xorbb in runneye. The evil eye in lower guk spawns every 32 minutes
(and has a plaseholder sometimes) and now has the bag almost every time.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....U/_xjARd1QO1IJ

So I'm not sure you can rely on "reverse engineering the drop rate" like this.

[Dolalin]

What you can definitely do, though, is look at every other mob that drops a common/rare combo in Lower Guk and make some inferences.

https://eq.magelo.com/npc/380900
https://eq.magelo.com/npc/96109
https://eq.magelo.com/npc/381563
https://eq.magelo.com/npc/14264
https://eq.magelo.com/npc/24593
https://eq.magelo.com/npc/97728
https://eq.magelo.com/npc/41999
https://eq.magelo.com/npc/23949
https://eq.magelo.com/npc/380966

They're all 75% common / 25% rare or thereabouts.

[Dolalin]

That being said I did find this post that sort of puts the drop rate in a ballpark:

10/6/99

In article <7tffbb$fkl$1...@birch.prod.itd.earthlink.net>,

Mark Boudoin <mbou...@technologist.com> wrote:
>I am interested in purchasing a sewn evil eye bag on the rathe server, but
>seem to not be able to find a price for them. Does anyone know about how
>much they run for? Are they still 75% reduce bags? THanks

My suggestion would be to head down to Lower Guk and find people
camping the eye and ask them if you can have a bag when it drops.
Most of the people there are for the manastone, and by the time
anyone is done with a camping session, let alone the four or five
that's frequently necessary to get the stone, they have more bags
than they know what to do with. When we were camping the stone we
would typically just /shout that we had yet another bag and it was
up for grabs if someone could come get it before the corpse decayed.

Of course, you have to be able to make it to the eye, which can
be tricky, since a lot of the stuff down there can see invis, but
you might be able to work something out.

Archi Tuttle
Monk at Large
Innoruuk

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....U/0gRDnVF-QCIJ

[cd288]

I think you'd need to know what a "camping session" is considered to be length-wise before that last quote would be very helpful. Four or five camping sessions could be 25 hours to people back in 1999.

[Dolalin]

Oh sure. But the most ridiculous camping session imaginable would be what, 12 hours? So it's gotta be less than 4 or 5 of those.

It's a big ballpark but it's there.

OP still had a good idea though. I will see if I can find any info on what the EE bag drop rate was before the nerf. If it was 75% or so that would be a very good indication the manastone worked like every other rare/common combo in LGuk.

[Videri]

Originally Posted by Dildy [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Does EE bag always drop off evil eye on blue?

Yes. If you see the evil eye on Blue, you're getting a bag.

[Dolalin]

WOO got a hit:

10/20/99

Dear Brad, Verant, John, anyone [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]
Is the stoppage of manastone spawn (1) a bug? (2) an
intentional change? (3) a temporary change? Since Wednesday the 13ths
patch nobody on any server that I have friends on has seen a manastone
drop off the Evil Eye in live side lower Guk. I personally camped the
EE for 24 real-time hours, going through 30+ evil eyes (not including
placeholders) and not one single stone was dropped. Everyone I've
talked to has said for the longest time the ratio is about 1 in 8.
Would somebody address this situation, because manastones at my level
(46) are very necessary. And by stopping the spawn, be it voluntary or
bug you encourage those who've camped and harvested and now allow them
to reap insane rewards and punish those who just never got the chance
to adventure and get the item.

https://groups.google.com/d/msg/alt....c/4YkGk0ctJ7QJ

Edit: Sunderfury already beat me to it. Bugger.

https://www.project1999.com/forums/s...0&postcount=26

[Nirgon]

. I personally camped the
EE for 24 real-time hours, going through 30+ evil eyes (not including
placeholders) and not one single stone was dropped. Everyone I've
talked to has said for the longest time the ratio is about 1 in 8.

Wew

[DMN]

Nah, there were certainly LG mobs that had different rare drop rates. The hand was like 40/60(maybe 30/70) same with the evil eye, the noble. They certainly changed the droprates on stuff on thee. they added drops too it looks like further complicating the matter. Like all that "darkened" gear.

But here's what happened.

The uber guilds, including the one i was on, had "scouts" on the test server figuring out what chnges were going to be coming to the "production servers" as the GMs called them back then. We found out about the manastone being removed and then all these same guild permacamped the eye from then on their home servers. Then verant knowing that these guilds wee trying to monopolize the spawns decided to massively reduced the drops rate until they eventually were ready for the patch to remov eit.