Shulula of Asura - Treasure Hunter Testing - Part 4

I finished collecting data for my Treasure Hunter testing for the TH4 setup. You can read the first 3 parts here:

Treasure Hunter Testing - Part 1
Treasure Hunter Testing - Part 2
Treasure Hunter Testing - Part 3

Why test Treasure Hunter?
It seems that there is a lot of confusion about thieves and their treasure hunter ability. I used to farm with my monk and ninja but once I got THF leveled it was clear to me that treasure hunter helped a great deal. However many people, including quite a few THFs, think that treasure hunter, and TH4, is just a placebo. So after reading many threads I decided to sit down and find a way to test it.

Why hasn't more testing been done?
Treasure Hunter is a difficult job trait to test because it doesn't affect the thief. If you take something like Berserk, you can easily see how it works because there is an Attack value. Even for things like Haste which don't have a value, you can measure them because they always affect you the same way. Treasure Hunter is different because it doesn't affect the job with the trait or other players (not like you get better drops from killing a blm in ballista with TH4). It only affects mobs and we don't know much about the drop rules for mobs to tell what effect it has.

Also the effect may be different depending on the mob you kill. Bees outside of Jeuno might have different drop rules from bees outside of Kazham or Tavnazian Safehold. On top of that, there are many rumors that moon phase affect drops above and beyond Treasure Hunter.

This leads to quite a bit of anecdotal evidence, but many times there isn't any data to back up a feeling. You can see some of the theories on TH on Wikia.

Method: (I presented the method in much more detail in my previous posts but here is a quick summary.)
The method I came up with was to find a mob with multiple separate drops and track the number of drops with different TH setups. I wanted something that was Too Weak so that beastman seals wouldn't add extra drops. It also needed to be plentiful and not heavily camped (if at all). It should also have multiple spawns in a small area and hopefully drop something I could sell.

My targets were bees near Rose Garden spawn point. That way I could also camp an NM while I was working on this. I knew that those bees had four drops and you couldn't get a double drop of the same item. I gave each drop a code (0001 for Beehive Chips, 0010 for Honey etc...) so that I could track the number of items dropped. Code 1111 would mean that all 4 items dropped from one mob.

Data:
   
This was my baseline without any Treasure Hunter. As you can see, the most common result is for nothing to drop from the bee. A little more than a 1/3 of the time you get one drop and very rarely do you see 2, 3 or 4 items from one mob.

   

When you use THF as a subjob, you see the chance that nothing drops from a mob go from 63% to 49% and an increase in the chance at a double drop.

   

Using THF as your main job really improves your drop rate. The No Drop percentage is almost halved (63% to 33%) and the chance at a double drop goes from 1% to 10%. The total number of drops increases just by the fact that you have a 2/3 chance to get any type of drop from the mob.

   

Adding one of the items that increases your treasure hunter ability does increase your total drop rate. The No Drop percentage stays about the same as TH2, but the double drop percentage increases quite a bit. This was the only setup where I saw a quadruple drop.


   

Using both Thief Knife and Assassin's Armlets gives you the maximum Treasure Hunter ability. Again you notice that the No Drop percentage stays at 33%, but the double drop percentage increases again. Getting 3 and 4 drops remains a rarity though.

Analysis:
I have color coded the drop table to show the codes that correspond to No Drop, 1 Drop, 2 Drops, 3 Drops and 4 Drops. This table below contains all the drop values for the different TH setups. I also calculated 2 measurements. The first one is called "Total Drops/Total Kills" and measure the total number of drops per mobs killed. This may go over 100% if you get more than 100 drops over 100 mobs. This would measure total loot output. The second measurement is called "Drop Mob/Total Kills" because I couldn't come up with a good name. It measures the chance that a mob will drop anything at all.




The two important lines in this chart are the blue and the green. The blue, No Drop, line shows that as you go from TH0 to TH2 you reach the minimum No Drop rate of 33%. It seems that no matter how much you TH you add, approximately 1 in 3 bees will not drop anything. So if you reach that limit with TH2, does TH3 and TH4 increase your drop rate?

Luckily the answer is yes through an increase in your double drop rate, the green line. You can see a steady increase in the double drop rate by adding TH3 and TH4 even though you hit the No Drop limit.



This chart shows the total number of drops in blue, and basically the mirror of the No Drop Rate in Red. The chance that a mob will drop an item caps at 66% in this case so the red line flattens out after TH2. The effect of increased double drops causes the total drop line to keep going up even though you've hit that limit.
So what does it mean?
TH0: You get about 40 items per 100 kills
TH1: You get about 60 items per 100 kills. ~ 50% increase over TH0.
TH2: You get about 80 items per 100 kills. ~ 100% increase over TH0 and ~ 33% over TH1.
TH3: You get about 88 items per 100 kills. ~ 120% increase over TH0 and ~ 10% over TH2.
TH4: You get about 95 items per 100 kills. ~ 137% increase over TH0 and ~ 8% over TH3.

I would say that as far as these bees are concerned, each TH+1 item adds +9% to the total drops. Far from the +1% I hear. Of course not all mobs drop as easily or as many items as bees.

Further Testing:
I still have many questions about treasure hunter but it will require quite a bit of testing.

• How does the number of people in a party affect drop rates?
• Do two THFs in one party affect drop rates?
• Does a TH have an effect between parties in an alliance?
• Does dual wielding Thief Knife lower TH effect?
• How does moon phase affect drop rates?
• Do all mobs have a 33% No Drop rate?
• How does TH work for mobs other than these bees?