Mythbusters is back! Albeit without its founder, RJEM - may his FS account rest in peace. That said, I will never be able to replicate, exactly, what the wonderful RJEM was able to produce during his time with FS, I would like to make an attempt to carry even just a slight portion of the giant mantle he created for something of this magnitude.
Now, let’s get to what everyone came here to see: the results!
When Frag Finder was introduced with the new Composing Levels, it was a sign for potential “easier frags” for all of those looking to make big moves on the frag farming front:
Frag Finder: +0.1% chance per point that a Fragment Stash will drop the maximum number of Fragments
This sounds like an easy win for those looking to maximize their frag gain during our beloved Global Events that HCS so graciously provides to us. The question proposed here, though, is, “is Frag Finder worth using to maximize my optimal frag gain?” To answer this question, two separate hunts were done initially to see what effect Frag Finder would have on the optimal frag income as opposed to the original frag hunting way.
As we can see by both of the graphs here, the amount of frags gained per 1 stam and per 1 kill is actually GENERALLY LOWER when using Frag Finder during your hunting sessions. When using Reckoning and the usual frag farming buffs, you actually still yield more frags than when taking the chance by adding another potential buff for Reckoning to activate on.
Hmm...well that doesn’t look right. Farming with Frag Finder actually yields less? Well, then what’s the point in having Frag Finder around as a buff at all? That brings us to question number two: is there a feasible use for Frag Finder, and if so, where?
What if we were to turn off “Auto Open Fragment Stashes,” farm frags without Frag Finder first, then, when our hunt was over, use Frag Finder on the stashes that we have allowed to drop to our backpack? Seems like a lot of work, but let’s think a little more about it: I gain the positives of only using Reckoning, Conserve, Animal Magnetism, Lady Luck, and Find Item without having the added buff of Frag Finder for Reckoning while also gaining the benefit of Frag Finder at the very end for the frag stashes that have dropped to my backpack. That seems like a lot of work for minor benefit. On top of that, how many people would benefit from using Frag Finder this way? Probably only the minority who are able to keep a large number of open Backpack spaces to allow those frag stashes to drop.
While looking at some of the numbers throughout the farming process and testing Frag Finder, it was also thought to take a look at just how often Frag Finder would potentially activate throughout the time it was used. Three separate farms were conducted over the course of the Piñata Global Event that just occurred: 3000 kills were completed without Frag Finder while auto-open frag stashes was turned on, 3000 kills were completed with Frag Finder DURING the hunt while auto-open frag stashes was turned on, and 3000 kills were completed where Frag Finder was used ONLY AT THE END as frag stashes were allowed to drop to the backpack. The overall yield here shows that Frag Finder at the END is the best option, no Frag Finder AT ALL is the second best, and lastly, using Frag Finder during your hunt actually provides the least benefit. Wait, what!? That also can’t be right, can it? There must be something wrong.
Let’s take a deeper dive here: when manually opening frag stashes, you are provided a log message that shows when Frag Finder activates as such:
With the use of Find Item and Lady Luck throughout the 3000 kills, a drop was gained 821 times; out of the 821 times, using Frag Finder 200, a log message as above was displayed only 15 times. 15 out of 821 times sounds a little low at level 200. Revisiting our skill description, we should hope to achieve an activation rate of around 20%, but 15/821 = 1.82704%. A-ha! That might be a little bit of a problem. Is there a misplaced decimal point, or is the lower activation rate intended and the skill description is what needs to be adjusted?
While I do believe in outliers, the difference between 20% and 1.8% (2%), is much too large to be a simple outlier - stealing a page from the great RJEM’s Find Item findings, I hope something here gets taken a look at for the benefit of the newly introduced buff. HCS, we could really use your input here, even if it’s just taking a little look over it to ensure things are working correctly.
