Weekdays and Associated Gods

Why is Monday called Monday? Why is July called July and August called August? Most often these names come from ancient times or are inspired.

Just A Click Away

Something I really enjoy about google and especially about the internet is that you can easily find where words or names come from. For example, I can go on google search for "Monday" click the Wikipedia post and in the first paragraph I'm already told that Monday is derived from the Old English "Mōnandæg" and Middle English "Monenday". This was translated from the Latin "dies lunae" which means "day of the moon". You can go through every day of the week and you will find something interesting. 

TUESDAY This day is derived from the Old English "Tiwesdæg" and the Middle English "Tewesday". This literally means "Tiw's Day". Tiw is also known as Tiy which is a Norse god.

WEDNESDAY  Again derived from the Old English "Wōdnesdæg" and the Middle English "Wednesdei". This means "day of Woden". Odin is known as Woden in Old English.

THURSDAY This one is derived from the Old English "Þūnresdæg" and the Middle English "Thuresday", which means Thor's day.

FRIDAY Friday is derived from the Old English "Frīġedæġ" and it means "day of Frige" which associates the Old English goddess Frigg with the Roman goddess Venus.

SATURDAY Coming from Latin "Sāturni diēs" meaning "Saturn's Day" devoted to the goddess Saturn.

SUNDAY The last day of the week is named after the sun. Actually after the god of the sun. The god sol.

Notice Something?

Did you notice something? Every day has been devoted to a god. When working in ritualism or when doing magic we can use these associated gods to use their energies to increase the intensity and improve the chance of our magic projects.

Try It With Your Language

I did this with the German names before and I never did it with the English names. The result is fascinating. The respective gods the names were derived from actually depend on the language and its evolution. As you just read Wednesday came from a day of Odin however if you look at the Italian name for Wednesday, for example, it has been derived from the god Merkur instead.

Using This Information

To use this information we need to know, which god is associated with which day and what these gods are associated with. For example Sol the sun god is associated with vitality and drive and more. This means if you want to make some ritual that is supposed to prepare you for some upcoming event and need motivation you should most likely do this on Sunday.

Here are some gods and some brainstormed words that are associated with them.

SOL 

Vitality, inner being, inner drive

LUNA

Feelings, expressive fantasy, dreams, wishes, desires

MERKUR

Ability to learn, mind or wit, communication ability, understanding, making things understandable, spiritual swiftness

VENUS

Aesthetic sensibility, art, well being, enjoy, nice things, pure luck

MARS

Energy will drive, inner drive, fighting spirit, courage, ability to get through arguments, assertion ability

JUPITER

Luck, wealth, prosperity, growth

Let's check the other way around which days should be used for what. Again I'll give the day the associated god and some keywords, which rituals, projects or magic matches the respective day.

MONDAY
is associated with the goddess Luna.
Femininity, intuition, feeling, sensitivity, dreams, strength to give birth, receiving, spawning, dissolution, change, volatility, rhythm, cycling knowledge, emotional synthesis, feeling of structure;

TUESDAY
is associated with the god Mars.
Impetus (Dynamic), self-assertion, sexuality, zeal, fight, contest, aggression, courage, self-defense, fight for structure;

WEDNESDAY
is associated with the god Merkur.
Intellect, language, communication, the art of healing, cunning, finesse, thievery, business sense, noticing structures;

THURSDAY
is associated with the god Jupiter.
Overview, abundance, wealth, overflow, religion, generosity, consecration, ethic, extent, growth, increasing structures;

FRIDAY
is associated with the goddess Venus
Harmony, connection, love, erotic, beauty, art, romantic, flair, harmonizing structures;

SATURDAY
is associated with the god Saturn
Restriction, concentration, hardness, inauguration, concrete, grounding, durability, wisdom, attention to detail, illness, death, time, Chronos, enforcing structure;

SUNDAY

is associated with the god Sol

Vitality, ratio, conscious, centricity, potency, giving, creating, linear knowledge, intellectual analysis, giving structure;

More Than Just For Rituals

These don't have to be used for rituals only. Technically you can use this information to restructure your life accordingly. It probably won't hurt if you go with the flow so to speak. I haven't tried myself but in my conversation with my "teacher" I mentioned this idea and there was an agreement that this would definitely be possible and would probably improve life. Though it's questionable if the outcome is worth the structure and input. So whether or not you want to try it I'll leave it to you.

Diablo III: Primal Ancient Hellfire Chance

Correction Statement
So apparently the drop rate of primal ancients isn't 10% of the ancient rate as I picked up back when it came out. Additionally, the attributes or stats that are rolled for items aren't evenly distributed. Both these facts render the used variables and parameters of the calculation to being false. Since the amount of work to correct everything is higher than I'd like I'll leave this post as a 'what if' kind of post. I might pick up the topic again later someday using the data that was posted on Reddit. Thanks to everyone. 

I've always been a fan of mage classes. In Diablo III, however, I play a demon hunter. It's weird but the demon hunter is a lot more fun in my opinion. Especially the multishot build with the unhallowed essence set. Though there is a really annoying thing.

The Hellfire Amulet

Hellfire amulets, oh sorry, The Hellfire Amulet is a special item that can only be crafted. Being able to craft it requires you to buy a recipe from the Squirt. It doesn't stop there though, obviously, we need the crafting materials as well. The materials for this craftsmanship drop from the uber bosses. To fight the uber bosses you have to get the infernal machines from the keywardens and use them in the heretic's abode in Tristam in Act I. So we have to defeat the keywardens in Act I to Act IV, kill the uber bosses and then we can basically craft the hellfire amulet.

RNG

Unfortunately forging this hellfire amulet may or may not be in vain. The unique property of this item is that it gives you one of your class's passive abilities. Usually, you're limited to four passive abilities but thanks to the amulet you can have five. This is also the reason why it's so interesting for certain classes. Well as you may notice you'll want an amulet that has rolled one of those five passive abilities you want to take with you.

So let's check out our chances to get what we want. When we craft a hellfire amulet we get a hellfire amulet with 100% certainty. So the first limiting factor will be passive. There are 19 different passive abilities, the amulet has only one of these and 5 are okay. So the chance to get one of these five we want is 5 / 19 = 0.2632, 26.32%. Well, that sounds... doable.

Once we have our hellfire amulet for a while over time we start to build on ancient pieces. At some point you also want your hellfire to be an ancient item. So let's see what the chance is for us to get our passive and an ancient hellfire amulet. The chance for a legendary item to roll ancient is 10%. So we want two chances to hit at the same time. We can use stochastic to calculate this further.

A = "Chance to get our passive" P(A) = 0.2632

B = "Chance for it to be ancient" P(B) = 0.1

We want both at the same time so:

 P(A and B) = P(A) * P(B) = 0.2632 * 0.1 = 0.0263 = 2.63%

Our chances just dropped drastically.

Unfortunately, this is not the end.. I'm sorry but.. there's still the chance for it to be primal ancient. Primal ancient items are the creme de la creme, they always roll top value on all stats. However, there are two limiting factors for getting these.

1. We need to have done a greater rift 70 or higher solo
2. They have a drop chance of 0.01 or 1%

Well if we go with the odds our chance change from 2.63% to 0.2632 * 0.01 = 0.0026 or 0.26%

Still Not Done!

Even if we get a primal ancient item, it may have stats we don't want. We can only switch one stat but if we roll badly twice it'll look bad. Luckily there isn't much to roll around. There are five attributes on it aside from the passive ability. Two of these attributes are fixed. It will always have a socket, which we need and it will always have the main stat, for demon hunters its dexterity, that we choose when crafting. This means we have two of five variables we don't need to worry about. Leftover is the three others from which two are primary and one is secondary. Which stat combination is the best, of course, depends on your current stats, most often you will see amulets rolled with critical hit chance and critical hit damage as primary stats though. The secondary effect is your personal preference, never the less I'd assume reduced damage from ranged attacks would most likely be the best. To determine the chance we need to know how many options we want and how many options are available. For our secondary stats, there are 15 different attributes and we want one of those. So the chance to get this is 1 / 15 = 0.0667, 6.67%. For our primary attributes, we have each 16 available and we want two, however, once we got one of these our chance changes. This means our first primary attribute roll has a 2 / 16 = 0.125, 12.5% chance to be successful and our second one has a 1 / 15 = 0.0667, 6.67% chance to be successful.

For our perfect roll we want all possibilities to happen at the same time. Multiplying them we get:

0.2632 * 0.01 * 0.0667 * 0.125 * 0.0667 = 1.4637 * 10^-6, 0.0000014637 or 0.00014637%.

No Worries! We Still Have Rerolls

We can reroll one of the stats. One and only one. This means our chances improve! If we assume one of our primary attributes rolls successful and one doesn't we have a 2 / 16 = 0.125, 12.5% chance to get the successful one and our 1 / 15 = 0.0667, 6.67% chance for the other fails yet our secondary attribute succeeds with a 1 / 15 = 0.0667, 6.67% chance. So we have a 2 / 16 * 1 / 15 = 0.0083, 0.83% chance for this to be the case. If both our primary attributes roll successfully we have a 2 / 16 * 1 / 15 = 0.0083, 0.83% chance for this to occur. Adding both calculations together we get 2 / 16 * 1 / 15 * 2 = 0.0167, 1.67% . Now since we want a primal ancient item with the correct passive we do the following calculation:

0.2632 * 0.01 * 2 / 16 * 1 / 15 * 2 = 4.3867 * 10^-5, 0.000043867 or 0.0043867%

One Day

Don't worry if you won't be able to farm it this season, someday you'll have this on your account, forever, next to your 10000 paragon levels.

Guild Wars 2: Magic-Warped Bundle - Worth

I did a post on the Magic-Warped Packets. It was bound to happen that I'm going to make a post about the Magic-Warped Bundles. And yes, I know by now that people say the new volatile magic is better but hey! I have my infinite unbound magic tools and I like my farming route through Bitterfrost!

What's the Difference?

So what makes these Magic-Warped Bundles different from the Packets? Well, they are more expensive. Logically more expensive things must come out? That's actually true. The bundles include rare items like lodestones, tier six materials, and unique upgrades. In total 30 different items can be collected via these bundles.

These items include:

10 ancient bones 10 armored scales 10 elaborate totems 10 karka shells 10 piles of crystalline dust 10 powerful venom sacs 10 pristine toxic spore samples 10 vials of powerful blood 10 vicious claws 10 vicious fangs

2 charged lodestones 2 crystal lodestones 2 destroyer lodestones 2 evergreen lodestones 2 glacial lodestones 2 molten lodestones 2 Mordrem lodestones 2 onyx lodestones 2 mystic clover

1 amalgamated gemstone 1 black diamond 1 ebony orb 1 flax blossom 1 freshwater pearl 1 giant eye 1 maguuma burl 1 maguuma lily 1 moonstone orb 5 globs of ectoplasm

To recap more expensive and different loot. Actually checking the prices the value is more distributed than with the Magic-Warped Packets.

Drop Research

I did some drop research of my own and got 640 samples. Back when I checked it was more than on wiki now it's the opposite around. The wiki now has 7764 samples. Out of curiosity, I'm still going to compare my results with the wiki results but I'll use the wiki results for the calculation later on.

Of course, the calculation is the same as usual. We open X samples or bundles and see how often the item type comes out. Then we're dividing the number of occurrences through the number of samples. Keep in mind the actual amount that comes out does not matter we want the item type. That means 10 ancient bones are not handled as 10 but as one. This is also the reason why we have to divide the amount that has dropped in the wiki research through the amount we get. In our ancient bones example, the wiki notes a drop amount of 3620 from 7764 bundles. However, 10 ancient bones dropped only 3620 / 10 = 362 times from those 7764 bundles. So in the end, we calculate
totalAmount / droppedStackSize / bundles = dropRate or in our example 3620 / 10 / 7764 = 0.0466. That's 4.66%. Doing this for every single item we get the following table.

Item My drop rate Wiki drop rate 10 ancient bones 2.97% 4.66% 10 armored scales 4.69% 4.31% 10 elaborate totems 6.41% 4.97% 10 karka shells 6.09% 4.73% 10 piles of crystalline dust 5.16% 4.70% 10 powerful venom sacs 3.44% 4.52% 10 pristine toxic spore samples 4.69% 4.50% 10 vials of powerful blood 4.22% 4.81% 10 vicious claws 3.13% 4.78% 10 vicious fangs 4.53% 4.39% 1 black diamond 1.72% 1.30% 1 flax blossom 0.94% 1.52% 1 giant eye 2.81% 1.39% 1 maguuma lily 1.56% 1.34% 5 globs of ectoplasm 4.53% 4.24%

Item My drop rate Wiki drop rate 2 charged lodestones 2.66% 2.61% 2 crystal lodestones 4.53% 3.05% 2 destroyer lodestones 2.66% 2.77% 2 evergreen lodestones 2.81% 3.08% 2 glacial lodestones 7.34% 6.16% 2 molten lodestones 3.13% 2.77% 2 mordrem lodestones 3.13% 3.14% 2 onyx lodestones 2.97% 3.13% 2 mystic clover 1.72% 1.87% 1 amalgamated gemstone 2.66% 3.98% 1 ebony orb 1.09% 1.64% 1 freshwater pearl 1.25% 1.52% 1 maguuma burl 1.25% 1.58% moonstone orb 1.09% 1.65%

Something you notice when comparing the numbers is that the data from the wiki is more evenly distributed and fluctuates less between the drops.

Calculating the Value

Determining the worth we need to look at each item type that can drop from the bundle. Here we're looking at the whole stack we get. So if we get ten tier six materials we got ten times the price of one. Additionally selling items on the trading post costs a fee of 5% for placing the item into the trading post and 10% for the transaction. So what we're calculating is the value the item has in the market - I'm going to use the selling price instead of the buy price since it's higher and materials always sell good - minus the trading post fee of 15% and then multiply this with the amount we get. In the example of ancient bones, it has a selling price of  2571 copper the fee is 377.4 copper. So we get 2571 - 377 = 2193.6. Multiplying it with the amount we get 2194 * 10 = 21936 copper or 2 gold 19 silver and 36 copper. You may notice that I'm rounding the numbers. This is what the trading post does as well.

Item Single value TP fee After fee Total value 10 ancient bones 2571 386 2185 21850 10 armored scales 2605 391 2214 22140 10 elaborate totems 2845 427 2418 24180 10 karka shells 1009 151 858 8580 10 piles of crystalline dust 1143 171 974 9740 10 powerful venom sacs 2510 377 2133 21330 10 pristine toxic spore samples 380 57 323 3230 10 vials of powerful blood 3300 495 2805 28050 10 vicious claws 2589 388 2201 22010 10 vicious fangs 2600 390 2210 22100 1 black diamond 7399 1110 6289 6289 1 flax blossom 2129 319 1810 1810 1 giant eye 2101 315 1786 1786 1 maguuma lily 84991 12749 72242 72242 5 globs of ectoplasm 2006 301 1705 8525

Item Single value TP fee After fee Total value 2 charged lodestones 11886 1783 10103 20206 2 crystal lodestones 5692 854 4838 9676 2 destroyer lodestones 5767 865 4902 9804 2 evergreen lodestones 10839 1626 9213 18426 2 glacial lodestones 3807 571 3236 6472 2 molten lodestones 5099 765 4334 8668 2 mordrem lodestones 148 22 126 252 2 onyx lodestones 6395 959 5436 10872 2 mystic clover 640 - 640 1280 1 amalgamated gemstone 18311 2747 15564 15564 1 ebony orb 2556 383 2173 2173 1 freshwater pearl 65407 9811 55596 55596 1 maguuma burl 2210 332 1878 1878 1 moonstone orb 1972 296 1676 1676

Notice that I calculate the mystic clover by their vendor value. To determine the value of mystic clover that's quite a bit harder so we're going with this. This also assumes that you don't want or don't need mystic clovers! Anyways with the whole table filled up and all the values in copper known we can start to calculate the actual worth of our bundle.

Calculating the Worth

To do this we simply say that each valued drop has a certain relevance. The relevance is the weight of how much it plays a role in our worth. This weight is the chance for the respective item stack to drop. Thus we're going, to sum up, all our total values multiplied by their specific drop chances from the first table. The end result will be the worth of our magic-warped bundles.

21850 * 4.66% + 22140 * 4.31% + 24180 * 4.97% + 8580 * 4.73% + 9740 * 4.70% + 21330 * 4.52% + 3230 * 4.5% + 28050 * 4.81% + 22010 * 4.78% + 22100 * 4.39% + 6289 * 1.30% + 1810 * 1.52% + 1786 * 1.39% + 72242 * 1.34% + 8525 * 4.24% + 1280 * 1.87% + 20206 * 2.61% + 9676 * 3.05% + 9804 * 2.77% + 18426 * 3.08% + 6472 * 6.16% + 8668 * 2.77% + 252 * 3.14% + 10872 * 3.13% + 15564 * 3.98% + 2173 * 1.64% + 55596 * 1.52% + 1878 * 1.58% + 1676 * 1.65% = 14212.32

The percentages need to match the prices of the same item or else it may result in errors or deviations from the result we want.

So now we know that we can expect to get 1 gold 42 silver and 12 copper when selling the materials we get from the bundle. The buying price is either 1 gold and 500 unbound magic or 40 silver and 1250 unbound magic. If we're only looking at our gold we would make 14212 - 10000 = 4212 copper buying the expensive one and 14212 - 4000 = 10212 copper buying the cheaper one. So we have a plus of either 42 silver and 12 copper or 1 gold 2 silver and 12 copper by paying another 750 unbound magic.

What Now, Captain?

Next, we can compare bundles and packets! If anyone cares.. but now in this post. These posts get big enough and very time-consuming. Of course, I could leave all those tables away and focus on the calculation... hmm I don't know.

What Is Theorycrafting?

So I've done over 50 posts, not all are about theorycrafting but most of them. Not everyone knows what theorycrafting is so I'll devote this post to explaining what theorycrafting is.

What Is Theorycrafting

Let's start off with a TL;DR (too long; didn't read) definition of theorycrafting.

Theorycrafting describes the act of mathematical analysis of video games to achieve an advantage. 

 This describes theorycrafting very well so let's go into detail by explaining parts of this definition more.

MATHEMATICAL ANALYSIS We're literally talking about calculation here. Whether it's physics, some formula we want to know or income, prices, and gain, in the end, we will use math to understand the game world like we use math to understand the real life. A lot of useful systems we use today, like a lighter or a crank, has been established by either trial and error or mathematical analysis (physic) of the real world. We're doing the same in games though more limited due to the rules that are set. Some examples of what you would do are, working with stochastic to determine chances, analysis to look at changes in formulas and calculating formulas as well as being able to plot these. Simple math in between to calculate values, physics to determine the fastest way to move, whether or not falling is faster than by foot and more. Technically theorycrafting is science applied to games to gain an advantage in the games.

ACHIEVE AN ADVANTAGE  The goal of theorycrafting is to gain an advantage. Not all of my theorycrafting does this but the definition says this. So what is an advantage? It really depends. Usually, the goal is to reach the end of the game or achievements or beat the game in a certain time. In the first case, any calculation that lets us skip content or get to the end game faster would be considered theorycrafting. The second case is much broader, achievements make players face challenges or spend a lot of time. Depending on which achievement it is the goal would be to find a strategy to skip hard parts, make them easier or work on them most efficiently. This may or may not include alternatives to gain in-game currency most efficiently. The last case matches with the first. Here we want to find the fastest way to move, skip most or all content.

Classic Theorycrafting Example

Yes, I know my blog has lots of examples but let's go into typical examples. The most typical example and the most common example to represent theorycrafting is the calculation of damage. Any RPG or MMORPG, sometimes even other game genres, has a system with stats and damage you deal with. The goal of theorycrafting here often is min-maxing. Min-maxing describes the act of getting out every single last damage increase possible for you to be able to push your or your groups to damage further up. Often different stats are compared, how they affect each other and how much they're worth it in comparison to determine in the end which is the best option or distribution. This may also take cooldowns of skills and cast time into consideration. (Cooldown describes the time that is required to wait until you can use the skill again and cast time is the time you have to wait or work on a skill for it to affect the target or target area)

Labeled Theorycrafting; Isn't Theorycrafting

Technically speaking some of my blog posts labeled as theorycrafting aren't theorycrafting. The deciding factor here is "achieving an advantage". Not all my posts tell about tips, tricks or fancy things you can do that may come in handy or bring in advantage here and there. Some are analysis just out of curiosity. The mathematical analysis of games doesn't really have a name. If you know the Youtube channel GameTheory it's the same story there. Game theory is a science of game concepts, the Youtube channel even though borrowing the name does theories, trying to explain things in games and every now and then applying game world logic to real life. technically speaking GameTheory has nothing to do with game theory but with theories about games. My theorycrafting is no theorycrafting but the usage of theorycrafting to describe my act of mathematical analysis of games... and doing theorycrafting. It's hard to explain but actually, it's not quite what it is labeled or named as.

In the end, the content will look similar it's gonna be math or physic applied to video games to gain information. If it's about gaining an advantage, just for fun, proving the information is right, trying to get to the bottom of something or out of curiosity, the procedure is the same as the application or conclusion differs.

And maybe just maybe some person may use my blog as a glossary of game analysis or to pick up on something they didn't understand in school/college or pick up something as a teacher to implement when teaching younger generations  (I'm a huge fan of gamification ;) ) or learn how to theorycraft themselves.

WildStar: Contract Board Track Completion

I love the contract board. Most often I can't complete it due to the low amount of people that are doing it or since I'm not online when people do it - if they do. So this is a little disappointing. Why do I love the contract board? Because of the loot, you get.

The Contract Board

The contract board in WildStar is a menu option and a device like NPC you can interact with. This contract board gives you the option to select three out of five contracts in PvE and PvP each. The five contracts you can choose from are:

• Level 1 - repeatable rewards 50 points
• Level 2 - once a day rewards 150 points
• Level 3 - once a day rewards 450 points

These points can be collected and concerning the amount you have you can select rewards. The reward track for PvE and PvP is split and you collect points for them individually just like the contracts are individual. For the PvE reward track, you get rewards at 1000, 2000, 3000, 4000 and lastly 5000 points. The rewards you can choose from 1000 to 4000 is an item of either item level 90 or 100 - this equals early raid gear basically - or alternatively an item that can be used to buy extra stuff or to get reputation in an area that is supported by this faction. The PvP reward track gives you item level 65 items or the same choice as in PvE for an item that can be used to buy extra stuff or get the reputation in an area. The milestones in this one are 1000, 2000 and 3000.

The big thing about these reward tracks is the last milestone. Once you reach 5000 points in the PvE track or 3000 in the PvP track you have the choice. This choice again depends on whether you've done the PvE or the PvP track.

Player vs Environment:

• One random superb, raid-quality assault gear and those items for reputation and stuff
• One random superb, raid-quality support gear and those items for reputation and stuff
• One random very rare character-bound unlock-reward

Player vs Player rewards are similar:

• One random excellent, PvP-quality assault gear and those items for reputation and stuff
• One random excellent, PvP-quality support gear and those items for reputation and stuff
• One random very rare character bound unlock-reward

Additionally completing either will reward you with 2 platinum and 50 gold or 2500000 copper to make the number unnecessarily big.

Protostar Contractually-Obligated Settlement

The item that gives one random very rare character bound unlock reward is called Protostar Contractually-Obligated Settlement. This item has a secret that everyone should know. There's only a limited amount of unlocks you can get from it. Additionally, once you have the unlock unlocked you won't get it again. So what happens if you have everything unlocked that can come from this item? You get 5 platinum instead. If you reach this point you get 7 platinum and 50 gold every time you complete the contract board. That's 7500000 copper! 7.5 * 10^6!

So How Many Contracts It is?

If we're assuming you do every contract available every day you would finish one level one contract, three-level two contracts, and one level three contract. That'd reward you 50 + 3 * 150 + 450 = 950 points. You need 5000 points in PvE and 3000 in PvP. Dividing the 5000 by the amount we make every day we can determine that we have to do a complete daily round of contracts 5000 / 950 = 5.26 times or 6 days. For PvP it's 3000 / 950 = 3.16 times or 4 days. Unfortunately, depending on which server you play on - I heard American servers are more active - you might not be able to do all the contracts or maybe it takes you too much time. So let's assume you're only going for the big fish. This means you get 450 a day. In PvE, you would need 5000 / 450 = 11.11 times or 12 days. In PvP that's 3000 / 450 = 6.67 times or 7 days. Alternatively, we can say the level three contract is out of our reach. This may often happen in PvP when the contract is to play a warplot match. I haven't seen a warplot match pop up in like 3 or 4 years or so. So if we say we only do the level two contracts we get three times the reward points of 150. That's 3 * 150 = 450, so as much as a level three contract means the calculation is the same.

"I'm Hella Crazy Hardcore I'll Push the Reward Track Through!"

If you plan to do the contract rewards with only level one contracts get ready to be doing 5000 / 50 = 100 contracts in PvE and 3000 / 50 = 60 contracts in PvP. I don't wanna tell you it's not worth it but... I think there are better ways to get 7 platinum and 50 gold.

Daily Income

So as we've calculated it takes 6 days for PvE and 4 days for PvP to get the reward tracks of both done if you do all the contracts a day once. This means that in 6 days you will get the last milestone of both PvE and PvP reward tracks. That's 7 platinum and 50 gold twice. If we want to know how much that is in daily we have to divide the amount through the times in days it took. So for PvE that's 7.5 / 6 = 1.25 and for PvP it's 7.5 / 4 = 1.875. So doing this we will get 1.25 + 1.875 = 3.125 platinum a day.

Income Per Point

Calculating the income per point isn't overly complicated either. We get 7.5 platinum for both PvE and PvP. The PvE reward track requires 5000 points. So one PvE reward track is 7.5 / 5000 = 0.0015 platinum per point. Calculating it in gold we could either recalculate or multiply it with 10^2. 750 / 5000 = 0.15 gold. Going further down we have again times 10^2 (since 1 gold is 100 silver). 0.15 * 10^2 = 15 silver. So each PvE reward track point is worth a 15 silver. 

A level one contract gives 50 * 15 = 750 silver or 7 gold 50 silver.

A level two contract gives 150 * 15 = 2250 silver or 22 gold 50 silver.

A level three contract gives 15 * 450 = 6750 silver or 67 gold and 50 silver.

Next, let's go through the PvP track. Here we need 3000 points instead of 5000. This means each point is worth 7.5 / 3000 = 0.0025 platinum. That's 0.0025 * 10^2 = 0.25 gold and 0.0025 * 10^2 = 25 silver. Doing the same with the contracts as we did before we get:

A level one contract gives 50 * 25 = 1250 silver or 12 gold and 50 silver.

A level two contract gives 150 * 25 = 3750 silver or 37 gold and 50 silver.

A level three contract gives 450 * 25 = 11250 silver or 1 platinum 12 gold and 50 silver.

I Can't Get 7 Platinum and 50 Gold Yet

If you haven't gotten all of the unlock rewards you will only get the normal 2 platinum and 50 gold instead of the 7 platinum and 50 gold. In this case, all our calculations are wrong. However, you can still calculate it the same way you just have to change the numbers.

Our daily income now changes to 2.5 / 6 = 0.42 platinum and 2.5 / 4 = 0.625 platinum every day. Summing it up we get 0.42 + 0.625 = 1.045 platinum every day from contracts.

The income per point also changes. We now only get 2.5 platinum for 5000 points from PvE contracts so 2.5 / 5000 = 0.0005 platinum, 0.0005 * 10^2 = 0.05 gold or 0.05 * 10^2 = 5 silver per point. The value of our contracts now also changes:

A level one contract rewards 50 * 5 = 250 silver or 2 gold and 50 silver.

A level two contract rewards 150 * 5 = 750 silver or 7 gold 50 silver.

A level three contract rewards 450 * 5 = 2250 silver or 22 gold and 50 silver.

For our PvP contract point value it is 2.5 / 3000 = 0.00083 platinum, 0.00083 * 10^2 = 0.083 gold, 0.083 * 10^2 = 8.3 silver. And the contracts change accordingly:

A level one contract rewards 50 * 8.3 = 415 silver or 4 gold 15 silver.

A level two contract rewards 150 * 8.3 = 1245 silver or 12 gold and 45 silver.

Last but not least a level three contract rewards 450 * 8.3 = 3735 silver or 37 gold and 35 silver.

Guild Wars 2: Tests Around the Druids Astral Force

Starting with February I'll have to stream all Guild Wars 2 raids with my druid. Raid lead wants to force everyone who can play the support role at some point. Kinda getting a rotation in or something. I must say I'm not too fond of healing, I'm more about the damage or the numbers.

Astral Force

Astral force is the resource the ranger class gains when specializing in druid. Doing so will add the 5th class skill as well as a resource above the energy resource used for dodging (the yellow bars around your health bar). The color of this resource is light blue. As long this resource is not full you won't be able to activate your 5th class skill. Once you activate your 5th class skill your astral force will decrease steadily until you deactivate the 5th class skill or it runs out completely. During the activation of the celestial avatar or 5th class skill, you have several healing abilities available. Also, you gain the resource whenever you heal damage or deal damage.

Emptying the Force

The first thing I'm gonna test is how long does the avatar hold without doing anything. For this, we'll use a stopwatch and we'll press the 5th class skill and the stopwatch start button at the same time. Then we're gonna wait until we'll leave the form. This took 15.45 seconds. Our resource is now empty. So let's fill it up again. Now we're gonna test whether or not any of the skills have an effect on the duration of the avatar. 15.47 seconds. This seems to be very well in our range of error. So we're going to assume it takes the same time regardless.

Refilling the Force

Our avatar is empty again so let's fill it up and look at the process of doing so. For the first experiment, I'm gonna fill up the whole avatar with the regeneration heals over time. Again once I activate the healing I'm gonna time it. So let's, go in get regeneration up and start the stopwatch right at that moment. Then we just have to keep regeneration up until we're full. Once the 5th class skill is available we'll stop the stopwatch. So this took 1:00.48. though the skill I activated had a 0.5-second delay. Let's assume it actually took 1 minute. Now regeneration isn't the only way to fill up the bar we can also deal damage to fill up our avatar. So let's summon a Golem and auto-attack it until our resource is full. Doing this took 1:01.21. Interesting so far.

Rune of the Monk 4th Bonus

If we're doing the same test like the one above without the monk rune the time we need to regenerate to full avatar is 1:04.70. That's about 5 seconds more. Since the regeneration fills our avatar for 1.5% for each heal and 0.75% for each time we deal damage the rune of the monk will affect the speed on how fast we will up our celestial avatar when we take damage, saving us a few seconds.

Filling Up the Astral Energy

The amount of the astral force can't be determined since each attack and each support fills a fixed amount of the resource. However, we can tell how many heals or hits we need since we know by how much it fills our avatar. To do this we simply divide the 100% avatar through the amount we get per heal or per attack. So that's 100% / 1.5% = 66.67 heals and 100% / 0.75% = 133.33 attacks. So we need 67 heals and 134 hits. Fighting with the staff the auto-attack takes 1.25 seconds and hits three times. This means we would need 1.25 * 134 / 3 = 55.83 seconds. If regeneration ticks every second and we can easily keep it up it will take 67 seconds or one minute and 7 seconds to fill up the avatar with heals. If we have regeneration up and we auto-attack we can calculate that by looking at how much resource is filled with every auto-attack. The auto attacks take 1.25 seconds as stated earlier and each second we get 1.5% filled. So that means we get 1.5% / 1 * 1.25 = 1.875% per 1.25 seconds filled and since our auto-attack hits 3 times we get 3 * 0.75% = 2.25% resource filled. Adding it up we get 1.875% + 2.25% = 4.125% for every auto attack we do when we have regeneration on us. This means we only need 100% / 4.125% = 24.24 seconds to fill up the avatar if we have regeneration on us.

Side Note

Interesting would be if we get 1.5% resource for each player that gets regeneration from us. It would make sense but I did all this solo so I couldn't test it. I know the information here might not be something new and it's not really useful, I guess? I found it really interesting to check these things though so I hope you can enjoy it.

WildStar: Proc Chance in Primals [On-Going]

I've been wondering about the proc chance or chance of items to drop with a higher item level before and asked friends what the proc chance is. Some mentioned that someone tested it on the PTR (public test realm) and shared their results on the Reddit or forum but I couldn't make that data show up. The others said a death mentioned the chance as an example chance. So I guess it's up to myself to test it myself.

Checking Drop Rates

Loot tables, drop rates, etc. are really tedious to check. The reason these things are so tedious is if you have no vendor or alternative to get the drops you need to farm. This means repeating the same content over and over again to check every single instance of the drop.

Calculating the chance of something to happen works via stochastic. We divide the number of instances or cases through the number of all possibilities. So if we say our item dropped three times and we ran the content 25 times we have a chance of 3 / 25 = 0.12, 12% to get that item.

However, what we want is the rate of procs. For this, we're going to assume a few rules that may or may not be given.

1. The proc chance will always be the same
2. Items can proc several times
3. There's a limit to the procs 

The limit is determined by the base item level. Each proc increases the item level by five. The maximum item level is 170. So that means a prime level 0 item, which has an item level of 65 can proc (170 - 65) / 5 = 21 times.

To get the proc chance we're gonna ignore any multi procs for now and just look at any item that procs at least once. We divide this number through the number of items we've gotten in total. The counter chance is the chance to get an item that has no proc, as in an item that has the base item level.

To correct errors and check the values, a double proc must have the chance of the single proc chance multiplied by itself. Vice versa, the double proc divided by the single proc chance must result in the single proc chance.

Gathering Samples

To gather the samples we need to run easy and fast content. It would be even better if we do the same content with the same circumstances to prevent from getting unwanted values in. The fastest prime content is prime level 0. One of my favorite instances to get through fast is the expedition infestation. My runs were around five to six minutes. So I've been running through this expedition in the past days and trying to get a small number of samples:

• 44 items in total
• 35 without a proc
• 5 with only one proc
• 4 with double proc

Knowing this we also know the number of items that have at least one proc is 5 + 4 = 9. We can already calculate the chance of getting an item that has no proc. To do this we divide the number of items without proc through the total amount of items.

P("no proc") = 35 / 44 = 0.7954, 79.54%

We can easily calculate the other ones as well:

P("only one proc") = 5 / 44 = 0.1136, 11.36%

P("only double proc") = 4 / 44 = 0.0909, 9.09%

Though these are only nice to know.

The actual chance that would be relevant is how often we get a proc. There are three ways to calculate this.

P("at least one proc") = 1 - P("no proc") = 1  - 0.7954 = 0.2046, 20.46%

P("at least one proc") = P("only one proc") + P("only double proc") = 0.1136 + 0.0909 = 0.2045, 20.45%

P("at least one proc") = (5 + 4) / 44 = 9 / 44 = 0.2045, 20.45%

Running our checks.

Applying our rules:

P("at least one proc") * P("at least one proc") = P("at least two procs")

Since we had no proc above two we can take P("only double proc") which is 0.0909. Filling everything in we get 0.2045 * 0.2045 = 0.0909, 9.09%. Calculating it gives us 0.2045 * 0.2045 = 0.0418, 4.18%. If we're assuming the rules we've created apply, these numbers will draw nearer.

If we reverse calculate from the double proc to the single proc we divide the double proc through the single proc. Keep in mind:

P("at least two procs") / P("at least one proc") = P("at least one proc")

The actual P("at least two procs") we have is 0.0909. So if we calculate 0.0909 / 0.2045 = 0.4445 we'll get 44.45%. Again the numbers 0.2045 or 20.45% and 0.4445 or 44.45% will draw closer to each other. So we could assume the drop chance may be between 20.45% and 44.45% at this point.

The Myth

I heard the drop chance was 25%. If we assume 20.45% and 44.45% draw closer equally we can find the middle by taking the difference and subtracting half of the difference form the higher value. 

44.45% - 20.45% = 24%

24% / 2 = 12%

44.45% - 12% = 32.45%

This is just an estimate that might not be accurate at all.

On-Going

The sample size we have consists of 44 items which means there are going to be huge fluctuations in percentages for each new item we get. To be certain we need to keep on collecting data until we have enough so that the fluctuations are low enough and the difference in our checks is small enough. Most optimal would be a fluctuation lower than 0.0001 since we've rounded up to 0.01%.

Bottom Line

I'm gonna continue my research and make a new post on this next week since I had this topic planned twice accidentally. Whelp :P If you have the information somewhere I'd be glad if it's shared. Well... I'm off to get more samples now evening or night. :P

How to Actually Weaken A Demon

Heh, defeating a demon. What a weird topic.

What Is A Demon

Definition from the dictionary:

an evil spirit or devil, especially one thought to possess a person or act as a tormentor in hell.

So we're talking about an evil spiritual being. Now I don't know if you've met one of these most likely you did not. There is a reason science doesn't believe in spirits, ghosts or demons. For a long time, scientists tried to debunk all these occurrences for normal natural phenomena, like the heat exchange and the change of the size of materials resulting in certain sounds or for the brain playing trickery due to missing sleep or maybe even electromagnetic waves resulting in something. So technically demons don't exist.

If the Believe Counts

However if the approach this topic with the mindset I've established myself and encourage others to give a benefit of a doubt we can assume demons exist just because there are people out there who believe in them. Any movie, film, imagery or other media that presents the author's opinion or thought of what could be would be enough to increase the chance of one to actually exist. So let's assume they do exist for the sake of this post.

The Encounter

The encountering may be any at hand. You could meet one during your spiritual journey, find it at some forgotten long uninhabited home or workplace or even at an old spiritual place. So exploring places humans don't belong may or may not result in this. However, chances are extremely slim you'll pick one up even if it's shown like that in movies. Movies may or may not depend on real happenings but I'd assume at least 70% of them are made up. Another way to encounter a demon is by summoning. This can be through evocation (manifesting outside) or invocation (manifesting inside or from the inside). Luckily there's nothing to worry about evocation or invocation of a malicious spirit. You can't summon something stronger than you if you do not use tools or aids. So if you think your rituals through there's nothing to worry about.

How Spiritual Power of a Demon Supposedly Works  

I already mentioned this in the Goosebumps post. An entity gains power the more thought and attention it is given. This will mostly count for demons too. The more attention and thought you give it the more powerful it becomes. This is not the only way demons gain power. It is commonly known that evil siphons fear so to speak. Whether it's the case due to people knowing or believing in this or if it really is doesn't matter. Fact is you should know that a demon may gain in strength if you feel fear or if you're scared.

Knowledge Is Power - The Greatest of Mankind

The saying "knowledge is power" plays a great role here. We now know that demons gain power through attention and especially through fear. This is what we can use against the demon. If we don't take the demon serious and maybe even laugh at it by heart it can easily be weakened and a weak demon can be banned.

"Laughing is the best way to ban"

The problem with this? If you have your first encounters with a demon and it goes crazy all-out throwing stuff around or attacking, are you able to laugh it off in all seriousness? Can you actually stay positive enough and believe in yourself to be stronger? These questions play a huge role in something I would call "The Believe Fallacy of Magic". The power of magic is unlimited they say. You can do anything you want with this power. If you're able to.

How to actually ban the demon is another story. One I don't know as of now, but I assume it depends on the culture and what's a way that you find appropriate.

Minecraft: Player Velocity

Still, remember Minecraft? The blocky game that sold minions? I've decided to do some theorycrafting on a different game this time. Just to throw something into the mix. Since I've been very hyped about velocity in the past days.

The Same Like Before

No! Let's do it differently! Well... we're still forced to do the calculation the same basically. The easiest way to determine the velocity is by using the formula in physics. Velocity equals the distance done per second. So the easiest way would be to determine the distance and the time and calculate velocity that way. I still wanna do things differently than before so instead of using my stopwatch I'm using Minecraft's features.

Getting the Value of the Variables

This is some common knowledge but if you didn't know yet you know now. In Minecraft, each block has a size of 1-meter times 1 meter. Using this we can easily determine the length of a distance by counting blocks. It's as easy as it sounds. For the time we're gonna do something different. The best way to get the time is by using the in-game time system. Minecraft has a day and night cycles that are 20 minutes long or 24000 ticks. Using the time command we can determine the current amount of ticks of the day:

  /time query daytime  

However, this will probably return some number between 0 and 24000 depending on what time of day it is. So we need to reset this count to a value that makes it easy for us to calculate the difference. Of course, we could use the query command twice and subtract to get the value but that makes things more complicated. Using this command we can reset the ticks of the day back to 0:

  /time set 0  

Building the Experiment

The next step is building the experiment. For this, we will build several blocks in a straight line and place redstone signals to the start point of the measurement and to the endpoint of the measurement. I did this for a normal line for us to walk and run on and another one for minecarts on a boosted railroad. counting the blocks between both results in 41 blocks or 41 meters in my case.

For our detection mechanic, we're gonna use a classical tripwire trap using string and tripwire. Once something walks upon it these tripwires will set off a redstone signal. We're going to use this signal to power the first command block that is going to set the time to zero ticks. At the end of the path, we place another one of these that will send a redstone signal to the other command block which will query the current time. This way we can determine the time it took us from the first tripwire to the second tripwire.

For the mine carts, we're going to use a detector rail instead. Detector rails send off a redstone signal when there's a  minecart on them. Just like the tripwires, the first detector rail will send a redstone signal off to the first command block resetting the number of ticks to zero. Another detector rail at the end will send off a redstone signal to a command block that will query the current amount of ticks that have passed.

And Now The Best Part About Experiments

Nothing is better than executing the experiments. Even though it's more fun when things blow up.

So for our player movement and riding movement, we simply run over the first tripwire until we reach the other tripwire. So let's see how long it takes me to walk this. It took me 195 ticks to walk this. How much time are 195 ticks? Using the Minecraft Wiki we know 1000 ticks equal to 50 seconds. That means 1 tick is 50 / 1000 = 0.05 seconds. So in our case 195 ticks are 195 * 0.05 = 9.75 seconds. So we did 41 meters in 9.75 seconds. That's a movement speed of  41m / 9.75s = 4.21 m/s.

Next up let's run our stretch. This time I got 150 ticks. Going through our calculation again we have 150 * 0.05 = 7.5 seconds. So we did 41 meters in 7.5 seconds. Now we're running with a  41m / 7.5s = 5.47 m/s.

Let's Move On With Riding

First the most fabulous of all the ridable animals. The Pig. Get a pig, put on a saddle, get out the stick with a carrot and off we go. This amazing gracious animal maxes out at an unbelievable time of 346 ticks. That's a whole 346 * 0.05 = 17.3 seconds. So the pig puts on a surprising amount of 41m / 17.3s = 2.37 m/s.

Let's better go into the opposite direction of the movement speeds. Spawning a horse and taming it we can run our stretch taking a time of mere 73 ticks or 73 * 0.05  = 3.65 seconds. That's a whole 41m / 3.65s = 11.23 m/s.

Now it also would be interesting to know if the other horse types have the same or nearly the same speed so let's check them out.

Going with a mule the time I reached was 127 ticks or 127 * 0.05 = 6.35 seconds.  So the mule did me a 41m / 6.35s = 6.46 m/s.

The donkey gave me a time of 114 ticks or 114 * 0.05 = 5.7 seconds. So it did a 41m / 5.7s = 7.19 m/s.

I also figured out pressing the run key must do something on mounts and well... the times are the same. So aside from changing the camera view and looking fancy holding the run key does not increase your speed at all.

Last Animal: The Mine Cart

What do you mean the mine cart is not an animal? I bet one can somehow craft together a theory explaining mine carts to be animals, but that's not our topic. Let's check out our minecart track, time and speed. I've built some more boosters before the first signal for the mine cart to reach the maximum speed before the first detector rail. So I'll take back at the beginning and place the cart there. Let's see what the times gonna be.

It's 105 ticks. That's 105 * 0.05 = 5.25 seconds over a distance of 41 meters. We got 41m / 5.25s = 7.81 m/s.

Bonus Experiment: Ship

Decided to add an additional bonus experiment. The concept is the same as without first track but on water now. 

We have to start a little earlier than our first checkpoint to reach maximum speed before. We need to do this to prevent the acceleration to inflict an error on our time. I made sure it's again 41 blocks so let's see what the time is.

It's 106 ticks. Nearly the same as the mine cart. That's 106 * 0.05 = 5.3 seconds over a distance of 41 meters. So that's 41m / 5.3s = 7.74 m/s.

No, mph?

Yes, no mph. Instead, you get this bonus experiment with the ship. If people really, really want me to do mph here I'll do it but for now, bare with what you get. It's not that hard to be like "7.74 m/s in mph" on google. :P

WildStar: Total Essences of Daily Areas

Less theorycrafting, more analyzing. Something  I was wondering is... aside from the ten times bonus, we get once a day, which of the daily areas rewards the most essences? I did my research and now I know.

How to Figure It Out

Simple. Go to the daily areas, complete the quests, look at the quest rewards. Okay, let's take a step back and look at what we have. There are four daily areas. Crimson Badlands, Northern Wastes, Star-comm Basin and Malgrave. Additionally, we have Arcterra but I'm not gonna count it in since it doesn't reward any essences and it isn't in the daily area rotation of the ten times bonus. So we need to know how many quests each of those areas has and how many essences they reward.

Crimson Badlands

Going down our list we start with Crimson Badlands. This deserted area has got a total of 16 guests. We have six NPCs or quest givers that give between one and three quests. In total, they give 11 quests. Additionally, in the underground, we got another quest. So that's 12 quests in total. There are 4 additional path quests, one for each path. Each and every one of these rewards 24 essences by default. So we get 24 * 16 = 384 essences doing them and 240 * 16 = 3840 essences when it's daily. However, we just looked at one side. Crimson Badlands has quests for Dominion and quests for Exiles. Both sides have the same amount of quests but once you finished the Exiles quests you can still do the Dominion quests even with the ten times bonus. So we get twice the amount of essences. That's 384 * 2 = 768 or 3840 * 2 = 7680 essences during the ten times bonus.

Having a signature account increases this amount further. We now get another 120 essences for each quest. So we have 24 + 12 = 36 essences for every quest, 16 Dominion and 16 Exile quests makes 32 quests, which in return results in 36 * 32 = 1152 essences or 360 * 32 = 11520 with the ten times bonus. We also may get the Drusera bonus but that one differs from person and person respective to the amount of missed essences so I'm not going to calculate this one.

Northern Wastes

Our second area the cold and snowy Northern Wastes daily area presents us with a 5 NPCs or quest givers. Aside from the first, they all give 3 quests. So that's 1 + 4 * 3 = 13 quests. Again here too we have four path quests. So in total, we have 17 quests available in this frozen place. Just like Crimson Badlands we can complete all these quests on a Dominion character still getting the ten times bonus as the Dominion and Exile quests are unique. The essence reward for each quest is the same. Just like in Crimson Badlands we get 24 for each quest. So that's 24 * 17 = 408 essences on one of the faction sides with the ten times bonus 240 * 17 = 4080 essences. Doing both sides we get 24 * 34 = 816 essences without ten times bonus and 240 * 34 = 8160 with.

So we can already see an increase in essences for this area but it also takes an additional quest.

Star-comm Basin

Here we've got a... special daily area. This one shares the quests for both Dominion and Exile so we can only get the bonus with one of the characters. Another specialty of this area is that the quests change. There are 3 quest givers. Each gives 2 quests, so that would be 3 * 2 = 6 quests. However one of the quest givers gives different quests according to the position he's standing at and the position is relative to the current theme. So depending on when the theme changes and how often you can do six to ten quests a day plus the four path quests. So in total ten to 14 quests. The essence reward is also higher in this area. We get 40 essences instead of 24 for each quest. That means we get between 40 * 10 = 400 and 40 * 14 = 560 essences. With the ten times bonus that's 4000 to 5600 essences. Now assuming you still do the area with the other faction you get an additional 400 to 560 essences.

With all this data we're left with 400 + 400 = 800 to 560 + 560 = 1120 essences without ten time bonus and 4000 + 400 = 4400 to 5600 + 560 = 6160 essences with ten times bonus. Assuming we have signature bonus this amount increases by 50%. So we get 60 instead of 40 essences. Going through the numbers again that's between 60 * 10 = 600 and 60 * 14 = 840 essences. With ten times bonus it's 6000 to 8400 essences and last but not least doing it with another faction it's an additional 600 to 840 essences. So between 600 + 600 = 1200 and 840 + 840 = 1680 essences. Now with the ten times bonus it's 6000 + 600 = 6600 to 8400 + 840 = 9240 essences.

Malgrave

The last daily area and again a special one. This daily are consists of one quest rewarded after the 4th phase of a five-phase event that occurs every four hours. It happens around the R-12 containment facility. This quest does reward quite a handful of essences though. Accepting the quest and getting the reward from the respective faction NPC rewards 120 essences with the ten times bonus it's 1200 essences. These are also possible to get with both factions so we can get 240 essences without the bonus and 2400 with the bonus. Being a signature player we get 360 essences without and 3600 essences with the bonus.

Conclusion

If we would do all the daily areas in the order they reward the most we would start with the ten times bonus. Aside from that one listing the top reward areas, we would get the following ranking:

1. Northern Wastes with 816 essences 
2. Star-comm Basin with 800 - 1120 essences
3. Crimson Badlands 768 essences
4. Malgrave with 240 essences

Why I May Share Myself

Welcome to 2018. Another year for technology to grow further. Another year for more and more people being introduced to the internet. More and more generations grow up with technology and the internet.

Question of Confidentiality

Everyone has to ask themselves this question when going online. The question of whether or not they should share information about them or not. Once something is on the internet you won't get rid of it. So the question of what you write online, what you tell others about you, what you write on your profile is really important. How much do you want to share of yourself? How much of you do you want public? These questions become even more interesting in the future.

The Generations

Different generations had different experiences with the internet and modern technologies. I had access to the internet in the 3rd or 4th grade of primary school and as long I had at least average grades I could go on the web as long as I want. Of course, except logging off for bedtime. I used that time when not playing with my friends and I spent hours and hours on the web. At some point, I spent more time on the internet than a part-time job would take. When there were holidays I've spent more time on the web than a full-time job. Older generations hadn't the ability to do that and newer generations may or may not grow up differently with more or less access to these technologies. Though it also depends on the parents, friends, and situations in one's life.

My Answer

As I already mentioned everyone has to decide for themselves and it's not an easy question. Your answer to this question can always be no but if it's a yes there's no turning back. Honestly, when I think about how my life has been up to this point this was a dilemma, I don't want everyone to know everything about me and yet every piece of information I share about me every now and then will probably be sold from person A to person B to earn money. The information age, isn't beautiful? The other thing is nationality. You were born in a country, this country knows probably a lot about you, of course, it must be able to administrate their citizens and that stuff. Though I never really felt myself being German that much - that's another topic in detail later someday. So if I feel more home on the internet than Germany, I can just share the data Germany has with the internet? I don't think the internet or Internetian goes through as nationality as of yet, lol. Anyways without further talking around it. I don't mind not "hiding in the dark" anymore. If the situation brings it I won't doubt myself for sharing. You live only once they say so let's make the best out of it as I can.

"You know you gotta, you know you gotta eventually make up your mind.
'Cause no one's gonna find you when you're hiding in the dark.
No one's gonna find you when you're hiding in the dark.
No one's gonna find you when you're hiding in the dark. No one's gonna find you."

~ "End Love" by OK Go 

Guild Wars 2: Magic-Warped Packet - Worth It?

Back in the old days (Living World Season 3) many people were skeptical. I looked up what dropped from them and I was hooked. They drop an interesting bunch of materials, they can't be that bad, can they?

Magic-Warped Packet

These bag items include a handful of different materials and can be bought for different prices at the vendors in the Living World Season 3 areas. (Bloodstone Fen, Ember Bay, Bitterfrost Frontier, Lake Doric, Draconis Mons, and Siren's Landing) The prices for this one are always 50 silver and 250 unbound magic. So let's see what we get from it.

We have a chance to get one of these:

10 copper ore 10 iron ore 10 silver ore 10 gold ore 10 platinum ore 10 mithril ore 5 orichalcum ore	10 green wood log 10 soft wood log 10 seasoned wood log 10 hard wood log 10 elder wood log 5 ancient wood log	10 jute scrap 10 wool scrap 10 cotton scrap 10 linen scrap 10 silk scrap 5 gossamer scrap
10 rawhide leather section 10 thin leather section 10 coarse leather section 10 rugged leather section 10 thick leather section 5 hardened leather	1 deldrimor steel ingot 1 bolt of damask 1 spiritwood plank 1 elonian leather square 1 mystic clover

Now to determine whether or not these packets are worth it, we need to know how much the content is worth. This should be no problem we can check it out in the trading post or via the API. Since we can simply look at the prices let's wait with actual numbers until we start our calculation, since the prices may change while we're going throughout our theorycrafting.

Drop Research

We can't expect the packet to drop all of those items we've listed at the same time. Especially since that's not the case. We only get one of the items listed above. The question here is what is the chance to get each of them. We could assume the chance to be equal for every. Though making some research is better. So how does the research work? It's quite simple to believe me. It's done straight forward:

• buy packets
• open them
• look what comes out
• take notes

So if we say we open 50 packets and from these, we get 30 times the iron ore, we say the chance to get the iron or is 30 / 50 = 0.6, 60%. We continue this for each item to get our drop rates.
Back when the magic-warped packets and bundles first came out I started to make this research once I've bought everything I wanted for the unbound magic. By now the Guild Wars 2 wiki has some drop research too.

So let's compare the drop research from me to the one from the Guild Wars 2 wiki. For that, we need to convert the Guild Wars 2 wiki numbers into a drop chance. This is done by checking the drop research and dividing the drops through the total containers. Copper ore, for example, they got 20 copper from 195 containers during the writing of this post. Though you get 10 coppers instead of 1 so they had two 10 copper ore drops, which means it has a drop chance of 2 / 195 = 0.0103 or 1.03%.

On a side note. My research opened 375, theirs is 195. Assuming neither had any errors or false entries my research should be more accurate since I had more trials or more data.

Drop GreenyNeko GW2 Wiki 10 copper ore 0.80% 1.03% 10 iron ore 6.67% 7.69% 10 silver ore 1.60% 2.05% 10 gold ore 1.60% 1.54% 10 platinum ore 4.27% 2.56% 10 mithril ore 4.80% 3.08% 5 orichalcum ore 1.87% 2.56% 10 green wood log 2.67% 2.05% 10 soft wood log 2.93% 5.64% 10 seasoned wood log 6.93% 3.08% 10 hard wood log 5.33% 5.13% 10 elder wood log 3.73% 3.59% 5 ancient wood log 4.00% 7.69% 10 jute scrap 1.87% 3.08% 10 wool scrap 3.20% 2.56%

Drop GreenyNeko GW2 Wiki 10 cotton scrap 6.93% 6.67% 10 linen scrap 3.73% 4.62% 10 silk scrap 1.33% 1.03% 5 gossamer scrap 2.67% 1.03% 10 rawhide leather section 0.53% 3.08% 10 thin leather section 3.47% 5.13% 10 coarse leather section 5.60% 3.59% 10 rugged leather section 2.93% 3.59% 10 thick leather section 2.93% 3.08% 5 hardened leather 8.27% 4.62% 1 deldrimor steel ingot 2.93% 5.13% 1 bolt of damask 2.40% 1.54% 1 spiritwood plank 1.33% 4.10% 1 elonian leather square 2.67% 4.62% 1 mystic clover 0.00% 0.00%

Since the wiki only has 195 opened packets their research fluctuates much more than mine but you can see that here and there both numbers behave similarly. Of course, the drop chance is the same for every player so similarities are bound to happen.

So let's go with the research that has more data since it is more likely to be accurate and a small error or a small amount of false data doesn't affect a big data pool that much. Though you know.. never trust a statistic you didn't fake yourself so if you do not trust my data collection for yourself. Whether or not it's worth doing that.. we will find out now.

Determining the Value

We can use our drop research to determine the value of the packets. If you have a coin flip and you get $1 from heads and lose $1 from tails assuming both have a 50% chance to drop you have a 50% chance to get $1 and a 50% chance to lose one. So you could say with each turn you have a plus of 0.5 * $1 = $0.5 and a minus of 0.5 * $1 = $0.5. Summing it up you get +$0.5 and -$0.5 which equals zero. So on average, there is no win nor loss. This is the expected value. You could also say the chance of a case happening is the weight of the amount you get. A number with a higher chance or a higher rate of occurrence has more relevance to a higher weight.

With this defined we can now use the drop chances from our drop research as weights and multiply them with the value of the items themselves. Summing it all up we get the worth of a package. Then we can subtract the buy price and we get the plus. So let's do this. For the prices, I'm going through the current trading post prices using the instant sell. That means if you make sell orders it's you're getting more than written here.

Item	Drop Rate	Total Value in copper	Expected Value in copper
10 copper ore	0.80%	10 * 80 = 800	0.008 * 800 = 6.4
10 iron ore	6.67%	10 * 171 = 1710	0.0667 * 1710 = 114
10 silver ore	1.60%	10 * 6 = 60	0.016 * 60 = 0.96
10 gold ore	1.60%	10 * 31 = 310	0.016 * 310 = 4.96
10 platinum ore	4.27%	10 * 152 = 1520	0.0427 * 1520 = 64.90
10 mithril ore	4.80%	10 * 38 = 380	0.0480 * 380 = 18.24
5 orichalcum ore	1.87%	5 * 89 = 445	0.0187 * 445 = 8.32
10 green wood log	2.67%	10 * 14 = 140	0.0267 * 140 = 3.74
10 soft wood log	2.93%	10 * 56 = 560	0.0293 * 560 = 16.41
10 seasoned wood log	6.93%	10 * 147 = 1470	0.0693 * 1470 = 101.87
10 hard wood log	5.33%	10 * 95 = 950	0.0533 * 950 = 50.63
10 elder wood log	3.73%	10 * 142 = 1420	0.0373 * 1420 = 52.97
5 ancient wood log	4.00%	5 * 211 = 1055	0.04 * 1055 = 42.2
10 jute scrap	1.87%	10 * 81 = 810	0.0187 * 810 = 15.15
10 wool scrap	3.20%	10 * 278 = 2780	0.032 * 2780 = 88.96
10 cotton scrap	6.93%	10 * 91 = 910	0.0693 * 910 = 63.06
10 linen scrap	3.73%	10 * 278 = 2780	0.0373 * 2780 = 103.69
10 silk scrap	1.33%	10 * 33 = 330	0.0133 * 330 = 4.39
5 gossamer scrap	2.67%	5 * 12 = 60	0.0267 * 60 = 1.60
10 rawhide leather section	0.53%	10 * 75 = 750	0.0053 * 750 = 3.97
10 thin leather section	3.47%	10 * 272 = 2720	0.0347 * 2720 = 94.38
10 coarse leather section	5.60%	10 * 169 = 1690	0.056 * 1690 = 94.64
10 rugged leather section	2.93%	10 * 488 = 4880	0.0293 * 4880 = 142.98
10 thick leather section	2.93%	10 * 65 = 650	0.0293 * 650 = 19.04
5 hardened leather	8.27%	5 * 1245 = 6225	0.0827 * 6225 = 514.81
1 deldrimor steel ingot	2.93%	48069	0.0293 * 48069 = 1408.42
1 bolt of damask	2.40%	42103	0.024 * 42103 = 1010.47
1 spiritwood plank	1.33%	36573	0.0133 * 36573 = 486.42
1 elonian leather square	2.67%	76360	0.0267 * 76360 = 2038.81
1 mystic clover	0.00%	640*	0.0000 * 640 = 0

* this is the vendor sell price, economically the value of mystic clover depends on how important it is for you.

Now we have the expected value of each drop. Next, we need to sum it up to get the expected value of the packet.

6.4 + 114 + 0.96 + 4.96 + 64.90 + 18.24 + 8.32 + 3.74 + 16.41 + 101.87 + 50.63 + 52.97 + 42.2 + 15.15 + 88.96 + 63.06 + 103.69 + 4.39 + 1.6 + 3.97 + 94.38 + 94.64 + 142.98 + 19.04 + 514.81 + 1408.42 + 1010.47 + 486.42 + 2038.81 + 0 = 6576.39

So after all this calculation, we can say according to our research so far we can expect 65 silver and 76 copper for each magic-warped packet. Since they cost 50 silver we are left with a plus of 15 silver and 76 copper. This answers our question of whether or not they're worth it. Let's even go one step further.

BUT! Trading Post

Huge "but" and something I forgot myself. A fellow Reddit user was so kind as to remind me. Thanks to rude_asura. Selling items on the trading post costs a fee of 10% of the selling price. Listing items, or more like placing items into the trading post costs a fee of 5% of the selling price. So in total, we have to pay a fee of 15% of what we would get from selling the item. We could subtract that 15 %. However, we can just say we are left with 85% of the gold. This makes it easier to calculate it. So now we have to multiply every single number with 0.85 or instead we multiply our result the 6576.39 with 85%.

Selling all our items gives us 6576.39 * 0.85 = 5589.93 copper.

That means we expect to get 55 silver and 90 copper from every packet. Since they cost 50 silver we are left with a plus of 5 silver and 90 copper. So they're still worth it at the current market prices. Even if not much.

Value of Unbound Magic

If we say we make no plus on this item the rest of the money we get is the unbound magic part of the items price. Then we're saying 250 unbound magic equals those 25 silver and 76 copper. Doing this we can say one unbound magic has a value of 2576 / 250 = 10.304 copper. Though there might be better deals for unbound magic, so we should look at those first before claiming the unbound magic value to be 10.304 copper.