Guides

The purpose of this project is assembling a lot of data about Gathering results, so that we find out more about how it works and how often different items show up, and look for irregularities.

You can see the data in THIS SPREADSHEET - there are Hunting/etc tabs, and a Festival tab for currency/chest drop rates. Look below for more info; ping me if you have any questions!

Please keep contributing data! Areas in which we especially need data: anything from users below level 20; festival currency/chest info from any levels. See below for how to contribute.

Summary of results and plans so far:

• Getting general data about the frequencies of different items, the levels they first show up at, etc. If you want to know how long it takes to get 90 cobras, this is the place to look!
• You can also use this data check whether lower-level users get significantly more of some items than higher-level users - they obviously do, since they also don't get some items at all, and their total average number of items should be the same.
• Looking at whether festival currency Gathering chances change with level/area - looks like they don't, or at least not by more than 5%! Also the average per week is about 150 festival currency and a bit more than one chest.
• Should still look at whether the average total items and chances of higher-star items changes by level, but really it probably doesn't.
• How do stack sizes depend on rarity? Finished analysis (see "stack-sizes" spreadsheet): 1/2/3-star items (including festival currency) have equal chances of 1-5 items per stack, 4-star have equal chances of 1 or 2 per stack and never have more, and 5-star and rainbow-star only ever show up as singles.
• Got the admins to fix a HUGE discrepancy in how frequently old vs new items of same star-rarity were found (about 3x more clover than maiden's blush, squirrels than ermines, for level 25 players). This was fixed after we pointed it out. See second post for details.
• Investigating whether anything else looks odd - missing or odd-frequency items, etc.

Each spreadsheet has several columns giving a data summary of how many items were found and what's the average frequency for different level bracket. More involved analysis and plots are in the Analysis tabs of the spreadsheet, after the basic data. The second post has links to my update posts in this thread.

Feel free to add your own analysis if you like - just make a new tab, and don't forget to put your username and date on it!

The INFO tab of the spreadsheet has a ping list you can add yourself to if you want to be pinged for updates about any new and interesting Gathering-related results (such as when there's a new analysis, a change or more information to how the system works, or a need for more data).

---

How to contribute: I had to lock down the spreadsheet due to vandalism, so there are two options:

1. To contribute data on a regular basis, please PM me your gmail (or a non-gmail address associated with a google account) so I can add you to the list of people who can edit the spreadsheet. (see the INFO tab for instructions, or feel free to ping/PM me with any questions!)
2. If you just want to contribute your festival currency/chest counts, you can also ping me and post them here (along with the Gathering type, level, and number of turns).

IMPORTANT: please do NOT add only really lucky or unlucky days! First make a decision that you're going to contribute to the spreadsheet, and then add your data no matter what it is. You can start in the middle of the week, and skip days if you forget or don't have time or such, but DON'T decide to add your data only after you see that it's unusually good/bad - if too many people do this, the total numbers in the spreadsheet will end up skewed toward better (or worse) results, rather than accurately reflecting the real Gathering chances.

---

Associated threads:

Azophel's [http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/gde/136122/1]very useful Gathering guide[/url], which I used for setting up the spreadsheet and figuring out which items were found where and how many stars they have.

Links to all my update posts (newest on top), if you want to see more detail on any of the subjects:

• Average food points per day from Hunting: enough to feed 150 dragons for a day at level 25, or 80 dragons at level 1. Or if you only convert 1-star items, 105 dragons at level 25 and 50 at level 1. (I just did a rough calculation for Hunting, but probably other disciplines are the same) 09 May 2015

• Festival currency drop rates: I can pretty confidently say that there's no difference between levels on festival currency drop rates, or if there is, it's less than 5%. The average currency/week is still at 151, plus 1.1 chests 03 May 2015

• Stack size data final results: at 1-3 stars stack sizes 1-5 are equally likely; at 4 stars stack sizes 1-2 are equally likely and they're never higher; 5-star and rainbow-star things only come in singles. Also, the festival currency chances over three festivals are similar to before: about 150 currency and 1.2 chests per week, with differences between levels probably non-existent but potentially no larger than 10% (still need lower-level data). 29 Mar 2015

• Preliminary stack size data: at 1-3 stars stack sizes 1-5 are about equally likely; at 4 stars, all of my stacks were 1-2 items, but I have very little data. 7 Feb 2015

• Elemental currency results from Ice festival: average is 153 snow and 1.2 chests per week; probably no difference between areas/levels, but not enough data to be sure. 1 Feb 2015

• Some thoughts on how to do statistics on item numbers with the extra randomness from stack sizes (this and next few posts) - 17 Jan 2015
• Explanation of new auto-updating summary columns (average drop rate per 100 turns etc) - 17 Jan 2015

• Item frequency bug looks fixed based on new data and before/after comparison - 14 Jan 2015
• Admins say item frequency bug is fixed, I started new spreadsheets so we can compare before/after - 18 Dec 2014
• First larger-scale data on item frequency bug: when you're level 25, the items that were available at level 1 still show up about 3x more often than the higher-level items. 14 Dec 2014

[b]VARIOUS INFO[/b] [quote name="Aequorin" date=2015-05-29 17:55:33] [quote]When it comes to gathering for festival currency does the task (Hunting, Gathering, Digging, Scavening, etc) affect the amount of currency earned or is it equal across the tasks. If the task does matter, does it change according the festival? Also does your gathering level effect the droprate of currency?[/quote] You can gather using any [url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=wiki&article=16][b]Gathering profession[/b][/url] and your chances of acquiring festival currency will be the same. Gathering skill has no effect on the currency, as it is a separate independent "roll" that is the same for everyone and occurs only during festivals. [/quote] (from http://www1.flightrising.com/forums/frd/1327998/35)

[u]ISSUE 1: much lower chances of newer items at same star-rarity - FIXED[/u] [b]Problem:[/b] As far as we understand, Gathering only depends on star rarity, area and level, right? (Aequorin confirmed this for me in the Questions/Concerns thread.) Of course it's random, so the results will vary, but overall a level 25 player should have the same chance of getting any two items that are the same star rarity, and after enough Gathering in the right area, the numbers should be approaching a reasonably even distribution. This does not appear to be the case! I have data from a lot of people - see "analysis1-old" tab of the spreadsheet for results. Very briefly, it looks like the 1-star items that are available from level 1 are about [b]3x more common[/b] than the other 1-star items, even for level 25 players; similar patterns are showing up for 2-star and 3-star items, some of which are more common than most 1-star items. [b]Result:[/b] Aequorin said in the [b][url=http://flightrising.com/main.php?p=mb&board=bug&id=1275882]bug report[/url][/b] that Gathering was in fact bugged, and has now been fixed thanks to our demonstration of the problem! YAY. Please keep entering data into the spreadsheet, so we can make sure everything's working right and see what the changes look like. [quote name="Aequorin" date="2014-12-18 15:43:16"]We believe we’ve pinpointed the issue with Gathering and are implementing a change to the code; it should now be behaving according to the parameters answered in The Questions/Concerns Sticky. This change will be noted in the next content update. Thank you all for your diligence and dedication; the data you provided was very helpful. With that information we were able to look at Gathering from a different angle and a fresher pair of eyes.[/quote] [b]Checking:[/b] It does look fixed - see the "analysis1 old-new" spreadsheet tab, which compares the old and new data at level 25. The numbers within each star rarity look a lot more even now. (The analysis was done only for Hunting and Foraging - we don't have enough data for Fishing and Insect Catching, and Digging and Scavenging are too messy for me to want to deal with for now. But presumably whatever fix they did was implemented for all types.)

@Mags No, I didn't record the groups, I decided it would be too complicated. But the admins said that both the chance of finding an item AND the stack size should be the same for items of the same star rarity, so either way my data looks like there's a bug in the system.

I found Aequorin's quote and added it to the top post.

@Mags Oops, I just now saw that you ninja'd me and tracked down Aequorin's answer too! So yeah, it looks like the data contradicts what she's saying, right? Or am I missing something?

And yes, the scatterscroll bug needed a LOT of evidence... Luckily Gathering evidence at least doesn't cost 350 gems per pop! XD

Btw, I think I figured out how to do the statistics - see the first post update.