Maxil20 Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 (edited) Hey, you over there! Have you ever wanted to: -Guarantee you get a tusk from Mactusk when killing him? -Guarantee Wolfgang's Bonus always procs (without skill investment, might I add?) -Make sure that Walter's slingshot never consumes ammo per shot? -Speed up the farming rate of Snurtles? -Turn the thulecite club from a situational weapon to an undisputed boss killer (in adddition to Wormwood's brightshade perk, that has a similar effect)? -Increase the speed at which you turn grass into grass geckos? -Cut the amount of goats you need to kill for a goat horn in half? -Guarantee every broken clockwork pile drops 2 wires when hammered in addition to massively boosting your rates of the myriad of other drops? -Take the krampus sack drop rate from 1 in 100 to 1 in 40? -And, maybe if you've had a bad day, how to turn that into something positive with more treeguards and hunt surprises? Well, you've come to the right place! I'll be explaining what luck is, how to get lucky (or unlucky?), and the best ways to utilize it! "Wait, DST has a luck system now?" DST now has a luck system, introduced with year of the clockwork knight. While I've seen a lot of people express popularity for the recruiting of clockworks and their buffs as followers, this is easily the biggest game changer for me. Luck impacts a massive amount of the games random chances, including every feature I've just described. Basically, if you stop to ask yourself "is random chance X influenced by luck, and would this improve it?", it very likely is influenced by luck. "Well, that's cool, but how do we get luck?" That's a great question, with a relatively straightforward answer! While there are very few sources of luck, we can reliably obtain the new sources from the new event: the horseshoes, and the guided knight armor. For those who are not aware, building the shrine will give you a new stage play from one of the mocking birds. Taking this play to the stage will spawn a bunch of briar hounds, and you're guaranteed to get the new princess set from them. Wearing this set will spawn the mob in question we want to fight: the guilded clockwork knights! In order to get luck, we'll need to kill these knights. They're pretty difficult opponents if you don't setup a strategy and I won't go into details, but each one of them will drop a lucky horseshoe, and killing the last one will drop the full knight set of a head/chest piece. If you're going to maximize your luck, you need these three items. The lucky Horseshoe normally grants +.05 luck, but you can also stack the benefit with multiple horseshoes, and the event being active triples their benefit to +.15. A full stack of horseshoes (being 10) will grant .5 luck without the event on, and 1.5 luck with it. However, they will nowhere near reach their full potential unless you're wearing the knight set. Doing so doubles the effectiveness of the horseshoes (which stacks multiplicatively with the event bonus!) and provides an innate luck benefit of .2 without the event on, and 5 times as much with it (so a flat 1 luck!) This is... the only way to increase luck so far. But, with just these items, we can already take extreme advantage of what luck has to offer. "Okay, I've got the items, but what can luck do for me?" Oh friend, it will do a lot for you. Lets bite the bullet and skip straight to the one people probably wanna read this thread for: Drops (Mobs and Structures) This is easily the biggest impact luck has. While it does have some caveats/restrictions I'll be going over, it has massive impacts on how you'll go about farming things. Luck will influence the rate of non-guaranteed percentage based things proportional to the amount of luck you have. In particular, 3 luck will double all drop rates. This includes things like the Mactusk tam o shanter and the walrus tusk (which becomes guaranteed), "1-2" drops of many mobs (3 luck will guarantee every nightmare you fight will drop 2 nightmare fuel), and also influence the drop rates of things you have to "mine" and the like to get the contents for (and even structure based things, most notably scrap fences from the junkyard). The most noteworthy example I can think of is krampus, whose krampus sack is influenced by this. By just having 2 stacks of horseshoes in your inventory, you can cut the grind it takes to get a krampus sack on average in half. This is a major time save, and could potentially save hours on farming a rare drop, especially if you want to get multiple on a server with friends. While it is all in good, it does have some caveats: The rate this scales is soft capped. While 3 luck will take you to 2X drop rates, it takes 6 additional luck to only boost the odds to 2.5X. More specifically, it uses the formula chance * (3 - 6 / (6 + (luck - 3) )) . This means that while getting lucky is extremely important for this, you can't expect absurd gains by taking this to the absolute extreme of filling your entire inventory and wearing the knight set to boost drops. I would still probably advise trying to boost it as high as possible for very rare things you are trying to grind for, especially the mentioned krampus sack. Every boost will help! This doesn't do anything for guaranteed drops (duh) and drops that are guaranteed but have different outcomes. A good example of this is a pigman. A pigman is guaranteed to drop either a meat or pig skin. Having high luck will do absolutely nothing when it comes to improving the rate at which you'll get the pig skin. A similar thing occures with bunnymen, spiders, and butterflies, to name a few. The player in question needs to land the killing blow on a mob, or the final work hit on a structure. If a follower/DoT effect/any non associated entity kills the mob that isn't the player, the drop rate will not be boosted. This means automatic farms that get boosted rates are out of the question (probably for the best, though...?). It is also important to note this does impact the enlightened crown. If you hit a mob and the gestalt kills it, you will not get the boosted rates. A similar thing occurs with structures, though with how it works this is far less likely to crop up. Proc Based effects (Character specific perks, thulecite gear, etc) Luck influences the rate various items can proc their abilities. unlike drops, however, these increase linearly and can be made to be guaranteed to occur. Lets look at the thulecite club. The club by default has a 20% chance to spawn a shadow tentacle when you hit an enemy. Each point of luck will increase the chance by a flat 20%. This means that, at 4 luck, you will always spawn a shadow tentacle when you hit an enemy. This creates an interesting luck "crit" build, where you'll be able to turn the weapons ~73 average damage per hit into 127.5, making it phenomenal for taking out bosses. You will need to still deal with the quirks of the weapon (the shadow tentacles have a delay when spawning and will not do nearly as much if the target is moving and you will need to handle sanity issues thanks to the massive amount of shadow tentacles spawning), but can become a potent beast in the right hands. It even works (somewhat) well on the planar bosses, as the damage is spread out across 3 separate damage instances per attack which means it's not nearly as shut down compared to other weapons that do said damage in one go! The most important of these is that luck will impact if a sunken chest contains a surprising seed based on the luck of the reader when the bottle is read. If you are going treasure hunting for these, equip the full set with the horseshoes and read the bottles before going out to sail. The amount of horseshoes needed is inconsistent as the chance for the seed scales up on day count as well, but an endgame world with the knight set equipped and ~1 stack of horseshoes with an event active and ~3 and a half stacks without should be enough to guarantee every single chest you open will have a seed in it! Luck impacts the other options pretty similarly. Things like Wolfgang's crits become guaranteed with 2 luck (ironically with zero skills in the work tree), Walter's mimic band scales and will eventually become unable to use ammo after a modest amount of luck, the thulecite crown's chance to proc a shield becomes guaranteed after 2 luck (note that the crown does have an internal cooldown when the shield does proc, so you won't be using this to spam shield your way to victory), Wormwood's chance of spawning brightshade vines is identical to the club and will be maxed out at 4 luck... You get the picture, I'm pretty sure! Getting "rare mobs" (snurtles and fortunate rabbits) Luck has an impact on getting rare mobs from various sources. In short, when the game goes to spawn a "rare" mob from a spawner, your luck will influence the chance of getting the more uncommon version over the common one. I can't think of many that benefit really well from this except for the slurtle mound. You'll be able to greatly increase the rate at which you farm them, if you've got a bit of luck on your side! The fortunate rabbit is technically a seperate manager entirely, but works in a similar scope. You'll get significantly more of them if your luck stat is high (which, given it's a Fortunate Rabbit, makes sense!) Additional things luck does The rest of these will be in no particular order, and I'm a bit unsure of how strongly luck impacts them, but they will be influenced by your luck stat: -The rate birds drop seeds -The rate damaged clockworks spawn from broken clockworks (higher luck will reduce the chance) -The amount of shadow creatures that spawn around the player when insane -The chance a tool slips out of your hands from high wetness -The chance a treeguard is pacified when planting pinecones by it -The chance a torch will burn a mob when hitting it -The chance a lureplant spawns around the player during spring -The chance a hostile flare rolls for a "successful" outcome -The chance for a message in a bottle to contain a note before the cracked pearl is given to pearl (as with damaged clockworks, this will reduce the chance to get a note) -The chance for wildfires to occur around the player (higher luck, again, reduces the chance) -The chance for possession to occur, being decreased. Note that this WILL IMPACT THE MUTANT BOSSES. Make sure to take off your luck items when killing them if you are going for spark arcs/fluid!! -The chance for a critter to come over and nuzzle you (This is an extremely cute effect BTW) -The chance for WInona's glasses to give pure horror over nightmare fuel if you taked the second shadow skill. Yes, it even influences that. "Huh, that's neat! But wait, what about the mob chances you described earlier in your pitch?" Luck doesn't just mean about being lucky, it's about being unlucky too! Ironically, we already went over a way to decrease your luck. Wearing the princess set will reduce your luck by 1! In addition, holding black catfish will reduce your luck by .25 (like with horseshoes, this can be stacked, and is currently the only non event source in the game to manipulate your luck). There is also an unused code snippet that will give Wes -1 luck for Existing, but is currently unused by the game. "...Wait, wouldn't being unlucky be particularly bad for (X) factor?" While normally being unlucky in games is very bad when it comes to basically any of the events just mentioned, Klei is quite merciful in that most of these events do not scale Downwards with negative luck. For instance, killing mactusk with a princess set and an inventory of black catfish will still roll a tam 25% of the time and a tusk 50% of the time, and whacking it with a thule club still has a 20% chance to spawn a shadow tentacle. Bad luck will never influence factors like drop rates and chance based effects. So, lets talk about what being unlucky does influence: the rolls for "negative" mob outcomes. Specifically, things like spawning a treeguard/birchnut, the chance for a spider queen to spawn an alternative spider, or the chance for a terrorbeak instead of a crawling horror to spawn, or a hunt being a "surprise" hunt will be influenced by negative luck. This creates a more risk/reward dynamic since a lot of these things are things skilled players do want more of. You'll want to try to have ways to both increase your luck for things like drops/proc effects, and decrease it when hunting for treeguards of ewecus! Some effects also have it so luck can go both ways in terms of increasing the outcome, but one side will usually be tilted much more in favor of the other! A good example of this is grass geckos! While grass geckos have a hyperbolic function for spawning with positive luck, they have a multiplicative effect if you have negative luck. Turns out I was partially incorrect. While it does go both ways, good luck will reduce the chance hyperbolically, but bad luck will still increase the outcome multiplicatively. You'll want to be particularly unlucky if you are aiming for these! There's another list of factors that are influenced by luck, that again I am not sure of how strongly they do. In no particular order: -The chance to have an ink squid party show up -The chance for possession events to occur (this time, being increased) -The chance for a splumonkey to follow and harass the player -The chance for a pirate raid to occur on the ocean -The chance for bats to spawn when digging a grave during hallowed nights -The chance for gestalts to spawn, and for the summoned gestalts to be the empowered ones -The amount of shadows that will spawn around the player when insane Okay, I think that's everything I could see from a glance! Note that this is still a new mechanic and there's a very good chance I didn't get everything it does (and I absolutely don't know everything in what ways...) but this should be enough of a guide for you to know what luck is (and how to get it), and what you should use it for! Good luck, everyone! Edited February 20 by Maxil20 Grass gecko change 30 4 2 2 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/ Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pruinae Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 Thank you so much for this guide In my headcannon this all means that Wes is getting his skill tree next, can't wait to see what Klei is cooking up for him 6 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1851501 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Baark0 Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 Damn, I thought this was just going to be another run of the mill lunar near year event with some fun events that don't really keep your attention for long. Thank you for the guide, saves me from having to watch some youtube video about it. 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1851506 Share on other sites More sharing options...
wormwood123 Posted February 14 Share Posted February 14 54 minutes ago, Baark0 said: Damn, I thought this was just going to be another run of the mill lunar near year event with some fun events that don't really keep your attention for long. Thank you for the guide, saves me from having to watch some youtube video about it. Yeah it seems that with event updates recently they’re updating the game a little bit and I’m very happy at that fact because these recent updates have been amazing 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1851511 Share on other sites More sharing options...
ForbiddenHat Posted February 15 Share Posted February 15 7 hours ago, Pruinae said: In my headcannon this all means that Wes is getting his skill tree next, can't wait to see what Klei is cooking up for him I am all in with Wes' misfortunes bringing good fortune to others, like in the animated short. 1 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1851534 Share on other sites More sharing options...
djturner Posted February 15 Share Posted February 15 9 hours ago, Maxil20 said: There is also an unused code snippet that will give Wes -1 luck for Existing, but is currently unused by the game. Great catch. This bodes very well. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1851536 Share on other sites More sharing options...
gaymime Posted February 15 Share Posted February 15 thankyou for writing this up ^^ 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1851551 Share on other sites More sharing options...
kroban Posted February 15 Share Posted February 15 (edited) So far I have been testing this luck system with Walter and...its pretty interesting Im currently pre-rift, only 10 horseshoes and knights armor. And it makes it so dreadstone rounds almost never break, I would say that in average every 5-7 hits one round breaks. For example, I just killed Celestial Champion using dreadstone, and pretty much, I only wasted 60-ish rounds for the total fight. Gunpowder rounds also get affected, the explosion triggers way sooner. Usually it triggers around the 4th-5th consecutive hit. But with luck it can trigger every 2-3 hits, which makes it so gunpowder dps is overall higher. Thulecite Rounds work the same as the thulecite club, you do get more tentacles spawn than normal. I haven't tested the exact DPS, but, damn, Walter with Royal jelly grip, thulecite rounds and luck, can easily melt some bosses Edited February 15 by kroban 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1851562 Share on other sites More sharing options...
twitchgabo Posted February 15 Share Posted February 15 By far the best feature of the update. Thank you so much for the info! This can be really good in future, like having rabbit's foot to increase luck or something from the shadow manipulator to decrease luck. Can't wait for the upcoming updates! Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1851568 Share on other sites More sharing options...
mima_ Posted February 15 Share Posted February 15 how much horse shoe should we bring to get max luck ? with and without horse set ? Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1851594 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maxil20 Posted February 15 Author Share Posted February 15 1 hour ago, mima_ said: how much horse shoe should we bring to get max luck ? with and without horse set ? The stat doesn’t have a max cap, but with the event on, general for day to day tasks 2-3 stacks of horseshoes (or 3-4.5 luck) is the best between benefits and not cluttering your inventory with horseshoes. You can cut that roughly in half with the armor. I would personally put setups where you have a bunch of horseshoes/the armor in areas where you particularly want to try to benefit from as much luck as possible. In my case, I have been starting to do so at my junkyard to get as much scrap from the fences as possible, as scrap is particularly hard to farm if you’re not trying to run scrappy werepig farming strats. I would especially recommend it after the event ends as carrying horseshoes will be nowhere near as effective with 2-3 stacks, but can still be so if you really push it as far as you can go. 1 2 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1851599 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassielu Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 (edited) On 2/15/2026 at 3:53 AM, Maxil20 said: Getting "rare mobs" This part of ChildSpawner really confuses I've almost given up trying to understand it and waiting for someone who can explain it. Edited February 16 by Cassielu Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1851729 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bumber64 Posted February 16 Share Posted February 16 Does it affect spider dens at all? IIRC, they use ChildSpawner, but the number of warriors is fixed per den size. Spider queens and snurtle mounds are more obvious. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1851744 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lovens Posted February 19 Share Posted February 19 Do you know if weed planting is affected by holding black catfish in your inventory, by any chance? Specifically the weeds spawned by Lord Of the Fruit Flies minions? And if yes, how much would one held fish increase weed rates then (I wonder if this could allow rarer weeds to become equally probable to forget me lots with more fish held). Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1852091 Share on other sites More sharing options...
HeatAndRun Posted February 20 Share Posted February 20 (edited) If you want to get lucky horseshoe faster, don't forget that the respawn timer of guilded clockwork knights applies individually to each players! Mannequins also work, but seems like the mannequins share the respawn timer of the players who gave the princess costume to those. Edited February 20 by HeatAndRun 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1852139 Share on other sites More sharing options...
DVGMedia Posted February 21 Share Posted February 21 This is still probably the best description of luck so far. But its still missing a few more details and im working on those atm 1 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1852242 Share on other sites More sharing options...
cybers2001 Posted February 23 Share Posted February 23 (edited) I'm not quite clear on luck for loot drops. Does it work for tumbleweeds, for example? Or not, since tumbleweeds always drop 3 items regardless? My other question is does this increase the chance of ancient seeds from sunken chests, or if there's any impact at all for sunken chests, does the impact apply at the moment the chest is opened, or the moment the message in the bottle is read? Edited February 23 by cybers2001 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1852378 Share on other sites More sharing options...
blacknight7890 Posted February 24 Share Posted February 24 On 2/14/2026 at 3:40 PM, Pruinae said: In my headcannon this all means that Wes is getting his skill tree next, can't wait to see what Klei is cooking up for him With bad luck spawning stuff like tree guards, pirates, shadows and surprise hunts, Wes will be way harder than ever before but great for pro's. Personally I love that, because once you master his low stats he's not that bad. I hope he gets even unluckier the more skills he unlocks, would be very funny. I can also imagine him having unique bad luck events that can be exploited if your good enough. Maybe he also can't gain any good luck, which would definitely track. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1852445 Share on other sites More sharing options...
HiImChris333 Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 Truly fantastic news for wormwood mains such as myself, thanks for the info. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1852674 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Deerclops Mika Posted February 27 Share Posted February 27 Is there a command that allow me to check how much luck do I have right now? Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1852686 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassielu Posted February 28 Share Posted February 28 I noticed that Luck Items have a peculiar feature. If you place them in a container and then put that container in your inventory, you can still obtain the luck they provided. The only manifestation of this feature at present is that if you place a black cat fish in Wilson's beard, it will still reduce your luck, but technically thats not part of the player's inventory. 16 hours ago, Deerclops Mika said: Is there a command that allow me to check how much luck do I have right now? c_announce(ThePlayer.components.luckuser:GetLuck()) 1 Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1852724 Share on other sites More sharing options...
BB Marioni Posted April 4 Share Posted April 4 Dows luck affect ocean fish spawn? And the chance to get caught in a trawler? Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1858100 Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassielu Posted April 5 Share Posted April 5 On 2/28/2026 at 6:34 PM, Cassielu said: If you place them in a container and then put that container in your inventory OK Its call back now. WX theoretically can have infinite luck. Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1858402 Share on other sites More sharing options...
dexobj Posted Sunday at 04:22 PM Share Posted Sunday at 04:22 PM It was good while it lasted. Hopefully they will add other ways to get luck. Or to get the princess costume outside the event Link to comment https://forums.kleientertainment.com/forums/topic/169798-a-guide-on-gettingutilizing-luck-to-the-best-of-my-ability/#findComment-1863256 Share on other sites More sharing options...
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