Mining hat

[TPC]

So I've been trying mining with the mining hat, and I'm wondering: what exactly is it supposed to do? Because I'm not noticing much of a difference.

Picks seem to take a little longer to break, but not much, and small enough difference that I could just be imagining it. Other than that, I'm not getting more golds, not getting less stones, not more money per run from selling junk, etc. The weight the loot from 100 picks take up (after throwing away stones) is about the same as without the hat.

Its not like with the fish hat where there is a quite noticeable difference, where you get a lot more good fish and less bad fish when you have it on. And definitely not any improvment in the rate of getting orichalcum, like there is with fish hat where you get tons more fish bottles with it on.

So what exactly is it supposed to do? Is it bugged or something, or have I just had a couple of unlucky runs?

I'm gonna do a more scientific test of it, do 500 picks with the hat on (5 runs with 100 picks per run) and then the same with the hat off. And compare items/time spent and items/picks, see how it compares. I'll report the results within a couple of days.

[GM-Ayu]

The mining hat works similar to the fishing hat.

Basically whenever you mine, there is a x/y chance of getting a certain item, and anything else means the picks break. Having the mining hat will lower the denominator value, thus indirectly do the following:

-decrease the chance of the pick breaking/getting nothing
-increase the chance of the pick getting any items (but not in an uniform equation)

Note: if you want a scientifically relevant test on either fishing or mining hat, you probably need a lot more picks than 500... If I remember correctly, the denominator value is something close to 340-ish with many sub-cases (eg. if you got number 21-40 out of 340 possibility, then there is a further 1/17 chance to get Result A, 5/17 to get Result B, 11/17 to get Result C, and so on.) Anyway, it's quite a mess if you want to calculate the exact statistical increase in probability of getting certain item with or without the fishing/mining hat.

The overall *GENERALIZATION* is that having the hat reduces chances of the pick breaking by approximately 3%.

[Emerald]

The overall *GENERALIZATION* is that having the hat reduces chances of the pick breaking by approximately 3%.

...I... really... really... REALLY... wish somebody would've mentioned that it was that useless before I decided to spend months clickspamming that NPC

If it were like the fishing hat, it would have been loads more effective; or did something to at least speed mining up, rather than simply drag it out longer. You already get enough bang for your buck on picks, adding 3% less-chance-of-a-pick-breaking just gives you the opportunity for more stones.

Blah. I need an aspirin

[GM-Ayu]

I don't remember (it was quite awhile ago) if it was 3% preventing a break or getting a stone, or are these two events actually the same thing (breaking may be a sub-category of getting a stone)... cause fishing hat is also ~3% prevention of losing the bait.

However, do keep in mind again that a decrease of an event happening by 3%... it implies an increase in the probability of other events occurring in its place.

[TPC]

What about fish bottles? You can't tell me that the chance of getting fish bottles with fishing hat is just increased with some low percentage. Without the fish hat you get maybe 0-1 fish bottle per run, two if you're really lucky (one run = 3000 bait), and with the hat you easily get 4-5 every run, sometimes more. This is quite well known among people who fish, ask anyone. Thats not a 3% increase, thats more like a 250% increase (for that particular item). Why is it not the same with orichalcums?

Are you sure that its only 3% increase for other things? Because the increase in getting angel and dory/nemo seems higher than that.

Maybe fishing and mining just can't use the same formula, due to baits and picks not working exactly the same? I mean if for baits it decreases chance of not getting anything then you would get more fish in the same time. But decreasing chance of pick breaking is useless, that just gives you picks that last slightly longer (in effect it would be the same as slightly lowering the price of picks), you still get the same amount of items in the same amount of time spent mining.

For it to be useful you can't decrease the chance of breaking picks, thats totally useless. You should decrease the chance of getting stones, thus the chance of getting all other items are increased, and you get more items in the same time spent mining.

[GM-Ayu]

Fishing/Mining generally looks like this in script

<><><>

set x, rand(1,y)
[where y is total number of possibilities]
if x = 1 to 3, then goto A
if x = 4 to 6, then goto B
{and so on}
if x = 100 to 300, then get 'junk'
if 300 < x < y, stone/pick break [note: again I don't know if pick break is a subset of stone, or is it a totally different category, but it should be the last few numbers either way]

What's A, B and so on? They maybe...
1) getting an item directly (simplest case)
2) enter another round of random number generator, which for simplicity's sake, we'll call it a subset.

Eg.
If A, then set z, rand (1,10)
if z = 1, then A1
if z = 2, then A2
etc etc

And you may get items now, or enter even more subsets within the subset.

now if you have fishing/mining hat, then y = y - c (where c is some constant, for fishing hat it's 40. For mining hat, don't know what the value is... but probably something similiar)

So you see equipping the hat is just lowering the denominator.

The "3%" is a decrease in chance of pick/bait disappearing (or getting stone, again depends if breaking is a subset or not). The chance of any other event therefore increases to fill up the gap of this 3%. However, this doesn't mean that every other event increases in chance by 3% either.

Since the denominator changed, then all the other cases get an indirect increase again. However, because it's a subtraction in the denominator value, it will not result in linear change for all other events... Hopefully showing the super-simplified-psuedo-code can briefly explain mathematically why the rate of increase for any particular item is by no way linear. It's pretty complicated without the real script, which I haven't seen either (so I don't know the exact numbers) but I know that this is how fishing/mining works in theory.

[TPC]

I understand your code/explanation. But breakage must be a different category than stone then, because I'm not getting any less stone, the trend seems to be getting more stones with it on.

So what I said stands: The hat is useless, because you still get the same amount of items in the same amount of time spent mining, picks just last a little bit longer.

And I'm still wondering why you get so many more fish bottles with fishing hat on, that doesn't seem to fit into this model.

[GM-Ayu]

If fish bottle isn't in any subset, then you get a much better boost out of a decrease in denominator. If your initial numerator is high, then you also get the better deal.

Eg.
40/300 is 0.13
40/350 is 0.11

Event with numerator 40, if the denominator decreased, you get a whole 2% increase.

4/300 is 0.013
4/350 is 0.011

Event with numerator 4 however, you only get a 0.2% increase by the drop in denominator. Thus, it hardly change a thing.


So... it'll depend on what's the numerator value of "stone" and what's the numerator value of "fish bottle" in their respective script just how much of a benefit do you get.

Again, I only got to see mining script once a *long* time ago (and it wasn't even intentional; I was never intended to see it) and I pointed out some problems, gave it to Pandora and she made some changes. So perhaps there are additional mechanisms? Who knows, but from the version that I (accidentially) got, that's how this is going to work.

Best to ask a non-retired GM if they got more updated input.

[TPC]

Yeah, would be nice if a current GM could comment. Thanks for trying to explain Ayu.

[GM-Aki]

The hat should give a 5% bonus or there about IIRC what Pandora told me last night while I was multi-tasking a gazillion things at the same time.

We'll check the code to make sure it does what its supposed to but in the mean time, congrats on the new hat and ticket me if I forget? My to-do nao list is at home

Thanks!