Hunting best practices

randomdigits

As more and more people are starting to do hunts, lets have a thread to discuss the best way to organize hunting groups and distribute loot. Here is an assortment of facts I've learned thus far:
1) Xbox does not have "leader decides" loot mode which PC folks are using to guarantee the intended drop distribution.
2) Some of the one-star hunt are soloable, and some could kill a squishy class character (e.g. as a 13.8K CW I could do the Split-Ti, but am being oneshot by Kakinos and controlled to death Fang of Dendar).
3) One-star hunts drop rings (I've seen rank 1-3 thus far), unique level 480 epic gear, and sometimes trophies - I've only got 3 from about 12 hunts.
4) If you party member steps ~15 feet away from the drop you can loot the drop without the loot vote. (This one I'm not certain about - is this a new mechanic?), that was simply free for all loot mode.
5) There is now more and more people willing to help with the hunt for an extra totem, but if that does not work giving a GMOP as a thank you usually helps. Some folks are asking to help for a vote on trophy, thanks but no.
6) If everyone in your party is killed the hunt is failed and you receive no loot. I don't know what would happen if your party members are in a different instance.
7) Some people use this trick to avoid loot stealing - just before the fight with the hunt is over they kick the helping character from the group. I've been told that this prevents the helping person from getting a totem, but I haven't personally confirmed that.
Any thoughts?

randomdigits

A few more observations:
When farming Batiri Braves, I've noticed that I can go for half an hour killing Batiri in an empty instance and not see any Batiri Brave mob spawn. Yet, I can switch to a more populated instance where no one is farming Batiri and find 2-4 Batiri Brave mobs there. Which brought me to the hypothesis that, perhaps, it's not (or it's not only) the re-spawn that causes the mob to become rare. Maybe, the number of rare mobs of all types in the instance is kept constant and the existing non-rare mobs randomly become rare once someone kills a rare mob somewhere in that instance.

Whether this hypothesis has something in common with reality or not I don't know, but the practice of instance switching for Batiri farming is clearly more efficient than killing mobs in circles. As an added benefit one gets lots and lots of blue flower hidden caches in that area.

On a side note: when fighting against summoned hunts it is extremely helpful to put a health stone on your potion tray.

randomdigits

For storing trophies and lures one can use:
1) 20 emails sent to yourself
2) Personal bank account
3) Personal bag
4) Alt's bag
So in total, one can have up to 22 + N_of_alts copies of the same unique object.

For fighting Tyrannosaurus, it helps to stay just below in front of it, keeping your most powerful attacks (like dailies) for the moments when the its tipped on the side - which is when it's most vulnerable.

Tyrannosaurus and Tyrannosaurus Rex are spawned in 3 specific spots on the map, so if you are farming them it makes sense to keep 2-3 people at each location.

Helping others to kill a hunt while not in their party does not give you a totem (but I'm sure no one would mind extra help).

randomdigits

Some more observations:
1) Rare mob spawn rate for Eotyrannus is approximately 10% (I observed them spawning 12 out 100).
2) Trophy drops rate for Eotyrannus is, probably around 20% (I observed 3 drops out of 12 mobs).
3) Ogre spawn rate is 100 % after you kill a non-Ogre undead mob. Once you kill an Ogre mob it's 100% going to re-spawn as non-Ogre mob, so these mobs are alternating, although re-spawn interval after Ogres is much shorter than after non-Ogres.
4) Ogre trophy drop rate is around 50%.
5) Also, at least for Ogres, as long as you don't have a femur in your inventory, more femur trophies will keep dropping off the killed mobs. This means these are not affected by a cooldown.

So it seems like Ogres are designed as a staple hunt target, something you can farm very quickly if you don't have luck with other mobs...

Also, as mentioned by devs in https://www.arcgames.com/en/forums/neverwinter/#/discussion/1233242/is-hunt-trophy-drop-working-as-expected/p1 there is a known issue with Trex dropping only one fang for all of the members of groups except for the group which did the max dps, so avoid hunting Trex in a group or at least leave the group before the end of fight.

randomdigits

7) Rare mob spawn rate for Smilodons in my sample was 15% (I observed them spawning 15 out 100).
8) Trophy drops rate for Smilodons in my sample was 33% (I observed 5 drops out of 15 mobs).
9) Rare mob spawn rate for Venomtails in my sample was 8% (I observed them spawning 8 out 100).
10) Trophy drops rate for Venomtails in my sample was 37.5% (I observed 3 drops out of 8 mobs).

Assuming that the actual rates are the same for Eotyrannus, Smilodon and Venomtail gives an average rare mob spawn rate of 10% and trophy drop rate of 33%.

sundance777

I would agree that the spawn rate for Smilodons is higher than venomtails, I have not keep exact counts but in a loop that has 4 sets of tigers and 2 sets of scorpions I have seen the smilodons spawn about 4 times and the venomtail once in about 8-10 loops...my sample size was a bit small maybe, but similar results in that it was about double the rate.

randomdigits

There is definitely an issue with the drop rate in some cases, but the root cause is unknown. In one example yesterday I've spent a whole hour running a 9 mob (4 tigers, 4 scorpions, 1 deinonychus) loop in a low populated instance. I stopped counting the exact number of rare mobs I killed, but it was over 20, and with 33% drop rate previously calculated the chance of such event is disappearing small (like 0.02%).

After that hour of "farming" I decided to switch instance to see if anything changes - and within minutes, after killing a couple of rare mobs I've successful received a trophy drop.

I am hypothesizing there may be something wrong with certain instances that disables trophy drops in them. For example, maybe that is somehow related to an HE being active in such instances. I will do some additional testing in that regard, measuring time-to-first-drop in different instances and correlating it with the observed settings.

P.S. I've also got an unconfirmed statement that the combined drop rate for a group is higher if players take turns to kill rare mobs. That, if confirmed, may mean that the theory of a hidden cool down is true.

bratleyray

> @sundance777 said:
> I would agree that the spawn rate for Smilodons is higher than venomtails, I have not keep exact counts but in a loop that has 4 sets of tigers and 2 sets of scorpions I have seen the smilodons spawn about 4 times and the venomtail once in about 8-10 loops...my sample size was a bit small maybe, but similar results in that it was about double the rate.

See, its the exact opposite for me. I get more venomtail spawns and drops than i do smilidons. And only get a smilidon tooth after about 3 hours of farming. That is if i even see a spawn. But every time i see a venom tail i get a drop.