Have you only had two blue gems appear from Saronite Ore? or have you seen it with other ores?

I looked at the data again, in light of the comments that sometimes a second blue gem is prospected.

This helps explain why some of my numbers were not as tight of a fit as I would have liked. I could not figure out why a few of my calculations varied from the observed results by up to 3% of the result.

If we add a new rule and revise another:

• If GroupB gems are blue and if a gem from GroupB is found, a second gem from GroupB may also be found (same probability used as for the first GroupB gem) (NEW)
• Each gem from GroupB is equally likely to result; the color of a second GroupB gem is the result of an independent event

This means that the total probability for a GroupB is when GroupB are blue. The probability of getting two of the same blue gem is , which ranges from 2/3 of 1% to 1/100 of 1%.

Lower level ores are not included because they never drop blue gems. The new values for the higher level ores seem to be:

Ore	GroupA	GroupB
Thorium	3%	2.5%
Fel Iron	5%	6.33%
Adamantite	10%	17.5%
Cobalt	50%	7%
Saronite	10%	20%

I would also be very interested if anyone has ever seen 4 of the GroupA gems result from a single prospect attempt. At least for Saronite, the 10% is too far off the observed for me to be really happy with the value.

Doesn't work, you never got two blue gems in a single prospect from Fel Iron, Adamantite or Cobalt ores. Not sure about blue gems from thorium, however thorium ore has an additional wrinkle in that it will sometimes (rarely) give Outland green gems rather than old world gems.

I've just picked the profession up and the best way to level it (obviously) is to mine everything yourself, picking up gems and some ore from the auction house, I estimate it to take less than 1000g and probably 2-3 days of ore grinding (non-intensive).

All loot in the game, regardless of how it is acquired, is set up by cascading table entries. Each prospecting loot table has it's own set of named groups, and though they follow a theme, they do not all follow a general rule that applies to all prospecting. As an example, the Saronite Ore prospecting drop table entries looks roughly like this*:

Name	Draw	Count	Name	Draw	Count	Name	Draw	Count	Name	Draw	Count	Name	Draw	Count	Name	Draw	Count	Group	Sum
Saronite	-1	0	WrathUGem	-1	0	WrathSaroniteUGem	-2	0	WrathSaroniteRGem										0
WrathSaroniteUGem	1	1	WrathUGem	1	9	None													10
WrathUGem	1	1	Bloodstone	1	1	Chalcedony	1	1	HugeCitrine	1	1	DarkJade	1	1	ShadowCrystal	1	1	SunCrystal	6
WrathSaroniteRGem	1	1	WrathRGem	1	7	None													8
WrathRGem	1	1	ScarletRuby	1	1	SkySapphire	1	1	MonarchTopaz	1	1	ForestEmerald	1	1	TwilightOpal	1	1	Autumn'sGlow	6

Name = Name of the table lookup, it must either exist in the drop table or the item table (each name is unique)
Draw = Number of items to pull from Name, a negative number means it must be drawn from Name that many times and Count is ignored
Count = Number of chances to pull from this Name
Sum = Sum of all Counts for the row (I'm not sure if this is actually used, or it's a reference. It may simply be that it's easier to store the sum per row rather add up the Counts all the time)

Saronite draws 1 from Wrath Uncommon gems (for the love of intelligence stop calling them green gems), 1 from Wrath Saronite Uncummon Gem, and 2 from Wrath Saronite Rare Gem

Wrath Saronite Uncommon Gem has 2 possibilities; a Wrath Uncummon Gem (10%) or None (90%)
Wrath Uncommon Gem has 6 possibilities, 1 for each uncommon gem with an equal chance (1/6)
Wrath Saronite Rare Gem has 2 possibilities, a Wrath Rare Gem (20%) or None (80%)
Wrath Rare Gem is just like Wrath Uncommon Gem, but with the rare gems instead.

So you have a 100% chance to get an uncommon gem, a 10% chance to get a second one.
You then have 2 chances to get a rare gem which comes to 76.56% chance of none, a 21.87% chance of 1 and a 1.56% chance of 2.

*The values are roughly accurate guesses.


The purpose of this post is to illustrate that attempting to clump all prospecting into a single set of rules is just going to lead to confusion. Knowing the results of any given ore you can logically recreate it's table entries, but they shouldn't be lumped together.

Very helpful. One question, I don't see anything about quantity. Some loots appear to have a the item and quantity as independent results. You might get 2, 3, or 4 Foo, or 2, 3, or 4 Bar, but never 2 Foo & 2 Bar. How does this map to the table structure you describe?

If you will induldge, one more question, as you seem to have spent a bit of time researching loot tables.

Is there a case where draw is greater than 1? I'm not clear on what a draw of 2 would mean.

Also, you last comment is very helpful. Not just as a reminder that each item can have its own table entries, but also that everything comes from a table, so ratios of whole numbers are the relevant topic, not percentages. And having a sum column makes perfect sense from a development persepctive; much faster to use a precalculated total for getting a random value than adding up all the possibilities.

Draw of -2 is very common; boss tables where they have to drop 2 shoulder (chest, helm, etc...) set pieces.

A draw of greater than 1 can be seen in old Titanium Nodes (example):

Name	Draw	Count	Name	Draw	Count	Name	Draw	Count	Name	Draw	Count	Name	Sum
TitaniumNode	-1	0	TitaniumOre	4	1	TitaniumElementChance							1
TitaniumElementChance	1	1	TitaniumElement	1	1	None							2
TitaniumElement	1	1	CrystallizedAir	1	1	CrystallizedFire	1	1	CrystallizedEarth	1	1	CrystallizedFire	4

Which could strike you rich and get you 4 assorted stacks of Crystallized X, or get you 3 singles of Crystallized Earth (I had that happen*), or even nothing at all. Obviously whatever data is necessary to specify 1-3 of each element is missing.

*Which is why I'm fairly certain it wasn't a single draw of 0-3 of each element, as you often got the same element twice.

I saw someone present a theory that each item that is in the loot window is the result of an independent random pick. This would seem to make sense, as some items (especially containers and chests) seem to contain "duplicate" items, where the same item appears multiple times in the loot list rather than being stacked.

If this is true, then the way the gems show in the loot window could be a hint as to how the tables are configured. When two primary gems are prospected (uncommon gems for higher level ores), do they appear as a stack of two or as two individual items?

Always as separate items.

In your example, what would the difference between having a draw of 4 vs -4 for TitaniumElementChance be? Or would they mean the same thing?

Maybe a better way to ask is to use this example:

ClassName	Draw	Count	Name	Draw	Count	Name	Draw	Count	Name	Draw	Count	Name	Draw	Count	Name	Sum
BakoniteElement	1	1	WoodParticle	1	2	FireParticle	1	1	EarthParticle	2	3	MetalParticle	1	1	WaterParticle	8

Assume all the *Particle references are items

Would this imply that you have:
1:8 chance to get 1 Wood Particle
2:8 chance to get 1 Fire Particle
1:8 chance to get 1 Earth Particle
3:8 chance to get 2 Metal Particles (and always 2)
1:8 chance to get 1 Water Particle

Or did I misunderstand?

And how sure are you of this structure in WoW? Clearly they don't download the loot tables to the client, otherwise we would have perfect loot information and sites like Wowhead, Thottbot, WowDB, etc would not need to have clients that collect info.

Yes, you are correct. There would be no difference between -4 and 4, as there is only one option to choose from.

Yes, to my knowledge the second table would result as you have suggested

I'm fairly certain that this structure is the basis for loot generation. It is known as fact that this is how it is done in Diablo II (which does include rules for generating a quantity in a stack; gold, arrows, bolts, etc... I have just forgotten those rules and don't have Diablo II installed anymore) and that it is not done like this in Warcraft III (which results in a noticeably different feel to loot). They already have all the tools from Diablo II to read/write/process the tables and all the loot generation in WoW can be traced backwards to fit into these rules (though, the cascading table structure can literally do anything you can possibly imagine, so that's not exactly evidence). Moreover, they can be traced back to follow very simple sets that neatly fall into this type of generation. Why would they go to the effort of using a different method to emulate the same result?

So, I'm mostly leaning on Occam's Razor: It's extremely fast, they have the tools and the loot patterns fit neatly into the simplest sets of cascading tables. Why wouldn't they use it?

I found a nice reference to the Diablo II loot tables. They are close to what you posted but with a key difference that makes it somewhat easier to reverse them:

ClassName

Picks

Item1

Prob1

ItemN

ProbN

...

TotalProb

I suspect (and would love to have someone disprove) that there are two more columns per item, Min and Max. This give the range of stack sizes, each of which has an equal probability to drop. (So min 2, max 5 would have an average size of 3.5)

The loot window appears to give a strong hint as to the stack sizes. It looks like items will only show stacked in the loot window if they are from the same pick (with a max > 1). If they are not stacked, they they were from separate picks.

MMO-Champion just released several new profession craftables:

* Alchemy can craft a low level 10 hit rating battle elixir.

* Blacksmithing can now craft 3 new belts and 3 new boots, 1 each for physical DPS, tanking and Holy Paladin healing. Armor values match with ilevel 226 items.

* Blacksmithing can now also craft a Titansteel Spellblade (Dagger-type). Spell power value matches an ilevel 200 weapon.

* Enchanting can now craft a low level (Vision Dust and Lesser Nether Essence) 5 hit rating boot enchant, a level 49 BOE trinket with 24 hit rating, and a WOTLK-level spell power enchant for staves.

* Jewelcrafting can now craft a level 29, 11 hit rating amulet, as well as converting Black Diamonds into random (TBC?) gems.

* Leatherworking can now craft leather and mail versions of physical DPS belts, spell power belts, physical DPS boots and spell power boots. Armor values match with ilevel 226 items.

* Tailoring can now craft hit rating and Spirit-endowed versions of cloth spell power belts and boots. Armor values match with ilevel 226 items.

* Tailoring can now also craft a level 19 caster cloak.

The ilevel 226 items all use a heretofore unknown material: Runed Orbs. Given the ilevel of these items, one can assume that they're similar to Sunmotes and will drop in Ulduar.

Those Blacksmithing Items look nifty. Especially the DPS Plate Belt... Getting tired of waiting for a Razuvious Belt to drop.
Guess dropping Mining won´t seem such a good idea at least in a monetary view, they seem to keep using titansteel. It went close to unused anyway, so a needed addition.

Now, the question that remains... What is a runed orb? The naming similarity to Frozen Orb and it being used in craft recipes leads to believe its either a drop a'la Nether Vortex/Heart of Darkness/Sunmotes from Ulduar like above poster suspects or possibly through the Argent Dawn Tournament (purchasable with the Tier 8 Badges?)

Small correction here, the hit rating trinket appears to be Engineering-made, though it has no skill requirement to use. Not sure why MMOC has it listed under Enchanting.

I'm assuming they'll be BoE, since the resulting pieces are BoE. My impression from the 2.4 changes to rare crafting mats is that it wasn't really a "nerf" so much as a design change. I don't think Blizzard liked the whole "nether fee" system that evolved out of the BoP mats style of doing things.

I found this one in the spell database that MMO Champion seems to have missed:

Reticulated Armor Webbing
Requires Plate
Permanently inserts reticulated armor webbing into plate gloves, increasing armor by 800.

Attaching the armor webbing causes the gloves to become soulbound. An Engineering skill of 400 is required to keep the webbing active.

Also this

Springy Arachnoweave
Permanently attaches a springy arachnoweave to a cloak, increasing spell power by 11 and allowing you to turn the cloak into a parachute to fall slowly for 10 sec.

The cloak can only be used once a minute and requires an Engineering skill of at least 350.

Due to very limited download speed on my university-connection I have problems getting on the PTR.

Would anyone that has a character with blacksmithing please be kind enough to give us some examples of the increased stat allocation on the 1-300 skill level items?

(or any possible major material changes to say the 250-300 segment)

Game-mechanics junkies may wish to know that patch 3.1 changes the mechanics of the fishing skill required to cast and fish without get aways. It seems to now be:

The percentage chance of catching a fish when your fishing skill is below the skill required to fish without get aways = (current fishing skill as % of area's no-get-away skill) ^ 2.

In practice this makes Northrend fishing much less skill/gear-critical, while lures become much more important at skill 1.

There's further evidence and analysis here.

El,

I'm not sure if your analysis was able to predict this, but does caching "junk" give skillups or not?

I.e. can a person than ignore the lures at the start, sit in Dalaran, and keep getting a lot of junk to skill up to 300/400?