The armor that never drops

[DrDior]

DrDior 9252

Latest IOS on tablet

 

This is a very odd case.   I have 36 deck 5 armor pieces.  20 of them are Spell Ward Shield.  In the past, I picked up 4 (I think), in PA scenarios.   Now, I never pick one up.  

 

I started testing my hypothesis by running deck 5 and deck 6 scenarios, specifically aiming to pick up armors.  While I often get a deck 5 piece, I can never get the shield.  I have picked up a good 20+ deck 5 pieces, to no avail.

 

Could there be a problem using a 20 count threshold.  I don't know.

 

The odds on getting this result is so long against it, I doubt  that this is just happenstance.

 

 

 

Here is an update on the shield not dropping.

 

Due to a crashing problem, I had deleted my parties.   After that, the scenarios were all hard, but not legendary.  So after some additional failed attempts, I played D6.1 to completion a couple times.  Then I tried farming D6.1.   Indeed, after a handful of attempts, I got the shield to drop. 

 

I believe that all the conditions stated below may not cover everything.  In this case (Spell Ward Shield), I believe that you won't get the drop until you play (or possibly complete) at legendary level.  I have not seen any thread to support this, but my anecdotal evidence very strongly supports this analysis.

Edited June 7, 2017 by DrDior

[Ethics Gradient]

It depends on more than the number of AD 5 Armors you possess.  Treasure statistics are spread across the entire adventure deck level, not just by card type.

 

For instance, when you start an AD5 scenario, all normal AD5 cards are added to the vault.  However only about ~15-25 of all AD5 treasure cards are randomly included in the scenario vault.  From there, the game then deals out the location decks.  No matter how many treasure cards you have, they never comprise more than about a third of the active scenario vault.  If you have a lot of treasure cards, it is quite likely that the majority of them never make it into a specific game.

 

If you have 20 Spellward Shields, it seems quite probable that you have a metric boatload of Pure Holy Waters and other AD5 uncommons.  When all the AD5 cards compete to be included in the vault, it is possible that one specific card can be drowned out by other cards you have a ton of.

 

You may need to salvage a bunch of AD5 cards, or wait for the next patch and see if anything changes in how treasures cards are handled.

[DrDior]

It depends on more than the number of AD 5 Armors you possess.  Treasure statistics are spread across the entire adventure deck level, not just by card type.

 

For instance, when you start an AD5 scenario, all normal AD5 cards are added to the vault.  However only about ~15-25 of all AD5 treasure cards are randomly included in the scenario vault.  From there, the game then deals out the location decks.  No matter how many treasure cards you have, they never comprise more than about a third of the active scenario vault.  If you have a lot of treasure cards, it is quite likely that the majority of them never make it into a specific game.

 

If you have 20 Spellward Shields, it seems quite probable that you have a metric boatload of Pure Holy Waters and other AD5 uncommons.  When all the AD5 cards compete to be included in the vault, it is possible that one specific card can be drowned out by other cards you have a ton of.

 

You may need to salvage a bunch of AD5 cards, or wait for the next patch and see if anything changes in how treasures cards are handled.

 

The other armors consist of only 16 of the 36 pieces.   So, when I keep getting deck 5 armors, with all other things being equal, I should get a good number of the shields.  It makes no sense that I get all the others (even though I may have only one piece as in the winged shield) and I never get this shield.

[Ethics Gradient]

So, when I keep getting deck 5 armors, with all other things being equal, I should get a good number of the shields. 

The problem is that all things aren't equal in the way you expect.  

 

First of all, treasure cards essentially don't "exist" in your vault.  Before each game, a small number from each Adventure Deck is randomly selected and shuffled into the rest of the Rise of the Runelords campaign cards.  I don't know how many AD5 treasure cards you have in total, but it is entirely likely when the game decides which ~20 Treasure cards from all of AD5 to put in the vault, few or zero Spellward Shields even make the first cut.  

 

And even if a treasure card does get selected... then it has to survive the cull.  

 

At AD5, about 40% of all Elite cards get randomly pulled from the box to simulate the tabletop mechanic that allows you to remove Basic/Elites from the game.  Spellward Shield does have the Elite trait, so even if a copy is lucky enough to get picked, it has a 40% chance of being tossed back out before the game even starts.  AD6 culls even more cards.  The probability of encountering a specific Basic or Elite card in AD6 is preposterously low.

 

Finally the game randomly deals out location decks for the scenario.

 

The double-RNG sandwich (with a cull in the middle) is partly why the treasure system can feel a little unrewarding.  @BAdler mentioned as much in this post.  You can find some awesome cards in Treasure Chests... and then almost never see them again in play.

 

If you're looking to max your chances to specifically find the Spellward Shield, play a large party on an AD5 scenario with a bunch of armor cards in the location decks.  The stats might be against you, but the underlying math has been pretty consistent.  It'll come up eventually.