Malbatross Beak Is Rarer To Get In Klaus Boss Bundle Compared To Its Peers

[lakhnish]

The TL;DR:

The Malbatross Beak is rarer to get from the boss bundle that Klaus gives, specifically from giant_loot3, which is as follows:

Spoiler

local giant_loot3 =
{
    "bearger_fur",
    "royal_jelly",
    "goose_feather",
    "lavae_egg",
    "spiderhat",
    "steelwool",
    "townportaltalisman",
    "malbatross_beak",
}

 

Moving the Malbatross Beak to not be last in the list would be appreciated since Malbatross Beak is much nicer to get compared to most items in this list imo. (Having it placed after a Jelly Bean would be even better for an extra Jelly + Malba beak combo.)

Also, the Desert Stone should always be the last item in the list as no one ever likes getting a Desert Stone from Klaus.

The Technical Details on why this occurs: 
This just explains why it occurs.

My suggested simple solution is to just move one line around rather than doing something more complex that would cause other issues.

Spoiler

When the game chooses what two items to choose from giant_loot3, it does the following:

The first item chosen from giant_loot3 picks a position b/w 1 and the max size of the table, which is 8. That is, it chooses between bearger_fur and malbatross_beak).

The second item chosen from giant_loot3 picks a position b/w one and the max size of the table minus 1, which is 7. That is, it chooses between bearger_fur and townportaltalisman. 

Here is the relevant code from component klaussackloot.lua:

Spoiler

local giant_loot3 =
{
    "bearger_fur",
    "royal_jelly",
    "goose_feather",
    "lavae_egg",
    "spiderhat",
    "steelwool",
    "townportaltalisman",
    "malbatross_beak",
}

--from function KlausSackLoot:RollKlausLoot()
items = {}
local i1 = math.random(#giant_loot3)
local i2 = math.random(#giant_loot3 - 1)

table.insert(items, giant_loot3[i1])
table.insert(items, giant_loot3[i2 == i1 and i2 + 1 or i2])

This creates 56 total combinations and ends up looking like this below. You will see that the last item in the list (i.e. the malbatross beak) shows up in less combinations compared to its peers (8 out of 56 (14.29%) of combinations versus 14 out of 56 (25%) of combinations):

Spoiler

You can also use this modified code from klaussackloot.lua that prints all possible combinations of giant_loot3 to verify this as well:

Spoiler

local giant_loot3 =
{
    "bearger_fur",
    "royal_jelly",
    "goose_feather",
    "lavae_egg",
    "spiderhat",
    "steelwool",
    "townportaltalisman",
	"malbatross_beak",
}

for i2 = 1, #giant_loot3-1, 1 do --i2 is done first as in-game, the last slot doesn't do any additional pairings
    for i1 = 1, #giant_loot3, 1 do
		print(giant_loot3[i1 == i2 and i2 + 1 or i2]  .. " + " .. giant_loot3[i1] )
    end
    print()
end

 

 

 

[DajeKotlyar]

What townportaltalisman is?

[Cheggf]

3 minutes ago, DajeKotlyar said:

What townportaltalisman is?

Think it's a desert stone.

[HowlVoid]

Desert stone should be removed all together.

[BonesJrOfficial]

If I can suggest...

Spider hat, desert stone, or Larvae egg should be last. Or the list should be altered... I understand having the RNG that includes some less or outright undesirable items as an outcome in contrast makes the good items feel like that much more of a reward... but I feel like that philosophy is not very fun.

If at minimum, maybe have the coding to be altered to just include all items evenly? -rather than exclude the last one on second draw

[lakhnish]

39 minutes ago, BonesJrOfficial said:

If at minimum, maybe have the coding to be altered to just include all items evenly? -rather than exclude the last one on second draw

They could do that, but that runs into two issues.

What happens if the game chooses the same item twice? Well the game just picks the next item on the list.

For example, if the game picks a 1 twice, it won't give you two Bearger Furs. Instead, it will give you one Bearger Fur + the next item on the list, which would be Royal Jelly.

There are two effects to this:

1. A bonus repeat combos is created, where a combo shows up for a third time instead of twice (which can be nice).
2. The last item on the list misses out on this (not so nice for the Malba beak).

This is more clearly shown in this chart here. The cyan shows the the bonus combo that gets repeated for a third time while the green is the combo that it's repeating. The white cells shows combos that only get repeated twice. 

Spoiler

If they tried to make it even, the last item on the list can't choose the next item on the list cause it's the last item. Trying to figure out which item the last item should even get a bonus combo with would require more complicated logic, which is why I suggested a solution that takes only 2 minutes to do, moving one line and letting a less favorable item be the one to suffer lol.

It would also just lower the odd of all the loot combos since you've just added more combinations, which I don't think people would like.

[BonesJrOfficial]

9 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

They could do that, but that runs into two issues.

What happens if the game chooses the same item twice? Well the game just picks the next item on the list.

For example, if the game picks a 1 twice, it won't give you two Bearger Furs. Instead, it will give you one Bearger Fur + the next item on the list, which would be Royal Jelly.

There are two effects to this:

1. A bonus repeat combos is created, where a combo shows up for a third time instead of twice (which can be nice).
2. The last item on the list misses out on this (not so nice).

This is more clearly shown in this chart here. The green is the combo that's normally repeated twice while the cyan color is the bonus combo that gets repeated for a third time. 

  Hide contents

If they tried to make it even, well guess what, the last item on the list can't choose the next item on the list cause it's the last item. Trying to figure out which item the last item should even get a bonus combo with would require more complicated logic, which is why I suggested a solution that takes only 2 minutes to do, moving one line lol.

They could just let the item drop twice (which I don't think Klei wants to do since they coded it this way), but that would also just lowers the odds of all the loot combos since you've just added more combinations, which I don't think people would like.

 

I understand why they chose the coding if to avoid doubles even if it grants a slight disadvantage to receiving the last item... 

However they could code it as conditional branches based on the value... its a much lengthier process so I completely dont blame the devs not choosing to potentially spaghetti up the code.. but they could do it so like if it rolls values 1 to 8, and 8 is chosen it will roll 1 to 7 for the second roll. And if the first roll is 1 to 7, than the second roll chooses a number from a specified series of 1 to 8 but excludes the first chosen value (ie 3 is chosen first, than the second rng is of 1,2,4,5,6,7,8)

27 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

Having three items be last won't make a difference.

It's only the last item that makes a difference (ie only the last item gets rarer). (Unless I misunderstood you and you meant either one of the three).

Also, I meant any of those 3. I'd consider them the least desired.

[lakhnish]

22 minutes ago, BonesJrOfficial said:

However they could code it as conditional branches based on the value... its a much lengthier process so I completely dont blame the devs not choosing to potentially spaghetti up the code.. but they could do it so like if it rolls values 1 to 8, and 8 is chosen it will roll 1 to 7 for the second roll. And if the first roll is 1 to 7, than the second roll chooses a number from a specified series of 1 to 8 but excludes the first chosen value (ie 3 is chosen first, than the second rng is of 1,2,4,5,6,7,8)

Yeah, they could do that too (I'm guessing with a while loop that rolls a new number for i2 when the two numbers are the same), but I'm not a dev so I don't know what's good practice or not.

[hhh2]

why is the second roll not all 8 items anyway?

[Cheggf]

1 minute ago, hhh2 said:

why is the second roll not all 8 items anyway?

Because the RNG picks a random entry for both and its solution for a duplicate entry is to just add 1 and try again. If it picked 8 twice in a row the second would become 9 which doesn't exist.

[hhh2]

1 minute ago, Cheggf said:

Because the RNG picks a random entry for both and its solution for a duplicate entry is to just add 1 and try again. If it picked 8 twice in a row the second would become 9 which doesn't exist.

oh

[Faintly Macabre]

Knowing only enough about LUA or programming in general to basically follow some stuff, can't they just copy the table, take the first roll's selection out, and roll for what's left in the copy? I realize it's not the most clever, efficient way to get the job done, but surely nobody's performance will be made or broken by an extra table in a roll generally done once per in-game year at the most.

[Hornete]

4 minutes ago, Faintly Macabre said:

can't they just copy the table, take the first roll's selection out, and roll for what's left in the copy?

I was thinking that while reading through this whole post, not sure why they dont do that.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

6 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

Desert stone should be removed all together.

spider hat too and the feathers should be something like a 3-5 stack

[Faintly Macabre]

6 minutes ago, Hornete said:

I was thinking that while reading through this whole post, not sure why they dont do that.

Well, I think seasoned/well-trained programmers are kind of always on the lookout for a resource-cheap way to accomplish certain things because in many situations, every little bit can help. Since the last thing in the list would previously have been desert stones, the person who put this together might have thought "screw it, who wants an equal chance at those anyway" and someone later added the beak to the list without knowing about the shortcut's caveat.

[lakhnish]

1 hour ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

7 hours ago, HowlVoid said:

Desert stone should be removed all together.

spider hat too and the feathers should be something like a 3-5 stack

Getting 3-5 Down Feathers should be possible.

I saw that for Winter's Feast cookies, they managed to make it so that you can get 4 cookies in one slot.

While we're at it, maybe they should just get replace a Spider Hat with a Strident Trident? 

I noticed that thematically, the boss bundle is full of rare items or boss drops, and I don't really see how the Spider Queen fits either of these. A Strident Trident is actually made up of rare materials and is indirectly a boss drop. 

Idk, just a thought I had.

[ArubaroBeefalo]

4 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

Getting 3-5 Down Feathers should be possible.

I saw that for Winter's Feast cookies, they managed to make it so that you can get 4 cookies in one slot.

While we're at it, maybe they should just get replace a Spider Hat with a Strident Trident? 

I noticed that thematically, the boss bundle is full of rare items or boss drops, and I don't really see how the Spider Queen fits either of these. A Strident Trident is actually made up of rare materials and is indirectly a boss drop. 

Idk, just a thought I had.

would make more sense to get the strindent trident instead of the recipe (the only real drop from ck)

4 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

and I don't really see how the Spider Queen fits either of these.

is a boss but having her loot is like adding living logs cuz treeguards are epic mobs...

[lakhnish]

20 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

s a boss but having her loot is like adding living logs cuz treeguards are epic mobs..

Is it a boss? It never got it's own statue (like Treeguards or Fruitfly), so I always assumed it was just a bigger monster.

Regardless, Spider Queen hat needs to go lol.

[Notecja]

I would add guardian horn. Is not that big deal imo, especially now guardian is harder, funnier and not-so-cheesable, but to repeat his fight you still need to kill fuelweaver (reset ruins) and that is a bit more painful.

[Faintly Macabre]

Just now, lakhnish said:

Is it a boss? It never got it's own statue (like Treeguards or Fruitfly), so I always assumed it was just a bigger monster.

Regardless, Spider Queen hat needs to go lol.

Spider Queen has the "epic" tag, yeah.

Only tangentially related, but when I went to double check, I was curious about other mobs people might not know are tagged "epic", so I just grepped for them all. While looking through the Fruit Fly file (Lord of the Fruit Flies is epic), I came across this and in light of my suspicion above re: the loot table selection trick I chuckled:

    --V2C: I think this is trying to refresh the inventory tile
    --     because show_spoilage doesn't refresh automatically.
    --     Plz document hacks like this in the future -_ -""

 

[NightfallsCurse]

Instead of putting desert stones at the bottom of the list, we should just get rid of them entirely, because no one ever likes getting desert stones because only one desert stone doesn't have a purpose

malbatross bills are good, yes, but they do not deserve to be at the bottom of the list, it should be at least above the spider hat

[ArubaroBeefalo]

6 minutes ago, lakhnish said:

Is it a boss? It never got it's own statue (like Treeguards or Fruitfly), so I always assumed it was just a bigger monster.

Regardless, Spider Queen hat needs to go lol.

originally we could only get statues from the 4 seasonal giants from RoG so i wont take statues as a proof of which mobs are bosses since we needed many suggestion topics to add AG to the list of new statues added in the QoL update that included them

fruit fly, tree guards and spiderqueens triggers the boss music (for some reason birchnuts dont) and have the epic tag in their code (for some reason vargs no even when are more difficult than spiderqueen)

so in my head klei wanted to add the tree bosses, the spider boss, the hound boss that also worked as the boss for hunts, etc but dst isnt like other games so the line between boss or not can be weird so i just called them giants from the RoG roots

[Lokena]

16 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

in my head klei wanted to add the tree bosses, the spider boss, the hound boss that also worked as the boss for hunts, etc but dst isnt like other games so the line between boss or not can be weird

They were bosses in the original DS, but DST has greatly shifted the bar of what players are willing to recognize as a boss. However, as you noted, they are still listed as such in the game. And while I support the idea that the loot drop rate could be revised to add value to the battle with Klaus, I would rather vote for Spider Queen, Treeguards and Fruitfly to get their statues too. Varg got a statue in New Year's event, and it's not even a boss. More statues for the joy of those who like to decorate their base! More statues in general! Why not statues of the Pig King and the Merm King too? I consider this an omission from the Year of Pigs, given that we received statues for other events. Oh, and christmas tree toys for all of them too! It just would be fair for everyone.

[lakhnish]

Spoiler

28 minutes ago, ArubaroBeefalo said:

 

Ah good catch. I never even noticed them in this section.

For a boss though, it's loot sure sucks though lol

[Bumber64]

13 hours ago, Cheggf said:

Because the RNG picks a random entry for both and its solution for a duplicate entry is to just add 1 and try again. If it picked 8 twice in a row the second would become 9 which doesn't exist.

Sounds like a job for modular arithmetic.

Actually, you should just roll 1 to 7 and add 1 if at or above the duplicate:

table.insert(items, giant_loot3[i2 >= i1 and i2 + 1 or i2])

You never land on 8 if it was the dupe. Simple fix by changing one character.