Question about levelled items...

[Guest deleted2027229]

Here is the levelled list for clams... at level 1 it seems you will only find flawed pearls, then from level 3 onward, you only find regular pearls... if that's the case then why are there 3 entries for regular pearls at level 1, what purpose does adding it 3 times to the list serve when it seems that once would've sufficed. I'm just using clams here as a simple example as I see this trend repeated in more complex lists.

 

TL:DR - why add flawed pearls three times to the list?

 

Edited November 13, 2022 by WanderRA

[showler]

75% chance of getting a flawed pearl three times. So you can have zero to three flawed pearls found in a clam.

[Guest deleted2027229]

Are you sure, never in all my time playing the game have I found more than one pearl in a clam.

[Striker879]

So overall there is a 25% chance you will find no pearl regardless of your level, and at no time will you find more than one.

 

When populating the clam (which is simply a container) the game evaluates the chance, and 75% of the time it will select a single item from the list. At player level 1 and 2 it cannot select anything except one of the three flawed pearls so you will only ever find a flawed pearl or 25% of the time nothing. At level 3 the game can select either a pearl or a flawed pearl from the list, and because there are 3 flawed pearls and only a single pearl that it can select from you have a 75% chance of only finding a flawed pearl rather than a pearl (but at least you have a 25% chance of finding a pearl).

 

By the time you are level 9 half the time you'll find a pearl and the other half only a flawed pearl (and of course through all of this there is an overall 25% chance of finding nothing).

[showler]

Huh. I'm routinely finding multiple pearls and just assumed it was because they are clam clusters rather than single clams.

[Guest deleted2027229]

Thanks for the explanation Striker that makes sense. I actually edited the clams to be a bit more balanced -

 

LL0LootClamPearl75 > 1x flawed, flawless + regular pearl > 50% chance none

[RomanR]

@Striker879:

 

So for short this repeating is for raising a chance to generate Flawed Pearl with low-level player ?

[Guest deleted2027229]

Additionally, does the 25/50/75/100 suffix refer to % of obtaining? So in the clam example, the 75 actually means the 75% chance you have of getting a pearl?

[Striker879]

@Striker879:

 

So for short this repeating is for raising a chance to generate Flawed Pearl with low-level player ?

 

The three flawed pearl entries are so that once the player hits level 9 there is a 50/50 chance of the clam holding a flawed pearl (unless of course it is going to hold no pearl). If there was only a single entry for flawed pearl once the player hits level nine then the chance for a flawed pearl goes down to 25% as the game could use any of the entries in the list (i.e. any one of the three pearl entries opened up by level 9 or the flawed pearl entry that has been available since level one).

 

I'm not saying the Bethesda way is right or wrong ... my guess is they wanted the pearls to be less common than the flawed pearls to make them more 'special'.

 

The same concept can be used to make anything distributed by leveled list less likely to be spawned. It's not much of a problem if the list has a fairly large number of possibilities, but a list that only has a small set to select from will spawn any of the list with equal chance. If there were three entries each would have a 33.3% chance of spawning. If you wanted one of those to be an uncommon find you just increase the entries for the other two until your 'uncommon' one actually becomes uncommon.

[RomanR]

@Striker879:

Thank you.

 

@WanderRA:

Seeing the other lists I can say that your thinking is correct.