It's been a pretty hectic time trying (and so far not completely succeeding) in sorting out the fallout from the Find Item fix applied by HCS - so it's been a while since I've posted a new topic
Fortunately, thanks to the efforts of ando I've been able to investigate something a little more mundane, but which I also found interesting at the same time.
As a disclaimer: HCS should not need to make any 'fixes' as a result of this thread. Phew. :mrgreen:
Extractor

Simple buff - simple description. +8.75% chance to extract something usable from a resource. Now, HCS do specifically say that this is a 'fixed' increase, unlike Find Item (which depends on the base rate) - but we thought it would be worth checking. At the same time we compiled some fairly large samples of resource extraction rates from 5 of the most common plants.
Fortunately, news is good on this one - Extractor works precisely as stated, resulting in overall extraction rates as below (at level 175):
Blood Bloom: 75.0% Success Rate (Split 50:50 between Flower and Root)
Dark Shade: 77.0% Success Rate (Single Extract)
Heffle Wart: 82.4% Success Rate (Single Extract)
Trinettle: 79.4% Success Rate (Single Extract)
Jademare: 26.3% Success Rate (Single Extract)
Those numbers should give a rough guide as to what to expect (and how much to pay!) when buying and extracting plants. I'm sure the potion community knows this, but like much of my series this is all new to me!
Resource Finder
Now - we know how often we will get the extract we're after, but now we need to go out and get the resource we need. HCS is less helpful here, offering us an unspecified 'fixed percentage' roll if we don't get what we are after:

I wanted to know what the percentage roll actually is - so ando got sent out to kill over 5000 creatures with resource drops, and I added in another 2500. That's a fairly large sample size, and our results are pretty conclusive:
With RF200:
Killed: 5558
Drops: 1752
Plants: 1629
RF Could Activate: 5385 times
RF Did Activate: 1580 times
Percentage Activation = 29.34% = 0.147% per point
With RF100:
Killed: 2600
Drops: 466
Plants: 399
RF Could Activate: 2514 times
RF Did Activate: 374 times
Percentage Activation = 14.87% = 0.149% per point
Based on these samples we both feel comfortable in concluding the Resource finder offers a fixed 0.15% per point chance of a drop, provided Find Item and Quest Finder both fail to activate.
Quest Finder

I then repeated the research for Quest Finder, based on the same principle - no drop on the first round = an opportunity to activate.
Although my sample size here is only 520 potential activations with QF175, my result of 133 drops gives me:
Activation Percentage = 25.58% = 0.146% per point.
I believe that Quest Finder activates in the same way as Resource Finder, and with the same percentage chance per point - 0.15%.
When Should You Use Them?
The next obvious question is - is it better to use just Quest Finder/Resource Finder, or should you use a combination of Quest Finder/Resource Finder and Find Item for best results? I've assumed here that you are specifically looking for the quest or resource drops, and that the others are worthless to you - something which wouldn't be the case in the scavenging caves!
The answer is dependent on 2 things - the drops rate per item of the creature in question, and the number of drops that creature has. The following three contour charts illustrate this:



We can clearly see that for low numbers of total creature drops, and a low drop rate per item. it is generally best to go with a combination of Quest/Resource Finder and Find Item. As the total number of drops goes up, we want to avoid the junk drops, so turn off find item, whilst still getting the full benefit of that 0.15% per point fixed roll!
Like I said, every creature will be different, but it isn't too hard to work out what you should be doing with a little effort - there isn't a 'one size fits all' answer to this question unfortunately!
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I hope that was another interesting and informative read, and look forward to many more in the coming weeks!
RJEM


