Chest & Drop List Explanation

The Chest & Drop Lists now contain the following information:

Most are the same as 7Heaven's original data, I have changed a few for easier understanding. One example would be Anselm. Anselm drops nothing but the Savant Orb guarding the Tower in Arnika drops everything on Anselm's Drop List so it has been renamed to Savant Orb. The list is used only by that Orb and only that one Orb drops any items in the game.

Chest or Treasure Name will link to a Treasure List page listing all the possible items for the Chest or Monster Drop. See below for the explanation of the contents of the Treasure List pages.

Links to the map with reference # when applicable, (c) where chests are denoted with the letter c and any additional information to make them recognizable. Some maps have different chest types and some chest types exist in more than one map. 

Monsters/NPCs:

Each Monster who may drop the items from the designated list is listed and links to the Monster Pages.

Refer to the Level Sensor Value Chart for the values associated with party level:

level  1 less than            500
level  6 less than         1,000
level 11 less than        3,000
level 16 less than        5,000
level 21 less than      10,000
level 26 less than      20,000
level 31 less than 1,000,000

Basically this means if your party is level 1 to 5 all items valued at 500 or higher would be removed from a Chest or Monster Drop List.  If you are level 6 to 10 all Items valued at 1,000 and higher would be removed, on so on until the party reaches level 31 and is eligible for any item in the game since none have a value over 1,000,000. 

If a level sensor is "off" you have a chance to receive any Random Item the Chest may contain or the Monster may drop. If the level sensor is "on" your party will need to be a certain level if you want a chance to get the higher quality Random Items. Exception: Fixed Items will always be available no matter party level. 

Note: Chest contents are set the first time you enter the map where the Chest resides. This means if you are level 1 entering Arnika, all the Chests with level sensors "on" will only load items less than 500 gold pieces in value. Leaving the map with the Chests unopened then returnng at a higher level category doesn't do much other than remove the least expensive item from the chest.

Refers to the number of Fixed Items available in a Chest or from a Monster Drop. Fixed Items will always be there for the party.

The number of Random Items that can be available to the party from a Chest or Monster Drop. 

The range of Random Items that may be obtained from a Chest or Monster Drop. A Monster may not always drop items, but when they do the range applies unless otherwise noted on the Treasure List page. This range only applies to the Random Items.  Random Items will be in addition to any Fixed Items. 

You are guaranteed to receive the Min# of Random Items from a Chest. For example if a chest contains 5 Fixed Items and has a range of 1-5 Random Items, you will receive the 5 Fixed Items and 1 to 5 more Items from the Random list for a possible total of 6-10 items. 

Many Monster Drops are based on a Random Drop possibility so you may get 0 Random Items. Using the same example as above we find that you will receive the 5 Fixed Items and 0 to 5, more Items from the Random list for a possible total of 5-10 items. There are some exceptions, most notably NPC's and RPC's who will always drop some Random Items.
 

Ok now comes the hard part. Trying to explain, in an understandable way, how Random Items are generated. 

Wizardry8 uses a double random standard to determine what Items will appear in a Chest or from a Monster Drop. 2 Steps if you will. 

Step 1 involves randomly selecting an Item from the Treasure List for a comparrison.

Each item has an equal chance of being selected for comparrison. How do we know this? Lets look at it this way. Ever drawn names out of a hat? You write a Random Item name on one piece of paper and toss it into the hat. Repeat this until all Random Items from the list are in the hat. Now ask a friend to pull a piece of paper out of the hat. You have an equal chance of selecting any given piece of paper with the Random Item name on it. This is basically what the game does. 

Step 2 of the Random Item generation process is quite a bit more involved. 7Heaven dubbed the LOP (Level of Appearence) value, a value assigned in the game database to each item in a Chest or Monster Drop List. I will continue to use that naming convention. Basically what happens after one Random Item is picked for this comparrison several things happen. The intricasies of the computations require a statistical formula which I have no intention of getting into here. Suffice it to say the games does the expected dice rolling, totals the LOP values and uses that as a range of numbers to be compared, and then computes the possibilities. 

The dice are used to determine how many items from the Random Range you will receive. For example a Random Range of 3-7 will use 2 three sided dice with the numeric value of 1 already in the outcome. Or for those who are familiar with this ages old RPG standard we have 2D3+1.

What it boils down to is this: If the LOP value of the Item selected is greater than or equal to the number picked from the range (sum of LOPs in that list) then the item will be selcted and placed in the Chest or dropped by the Monster. If the LOP is smaller than this number then the item is rejected. Once you take a look at the lists you'll have a better idea of why some items show up so rarely. Let's say we have an item with an LOP value = 1 and a total comparrison range (sum of LOPs) equal to 175 you can see the odds are most definitely not in our favor.

So now, lets hope we all understand what goes on to determine just what little trinket might come into our possession.

The Treasure Lists contain the following Information:

(All Treasure Lists are in printable format. Links will look like all other text on the page but should alter in color when the mouse pointer is hovered over it.)

1) Fixed Items: #
2) Level Sensor:  On or Off
3) Random Items: #
4) Random Range: Min# - Max#
5) LOP (Level of Appearence)
6) Value of the item for Level Sensor comparrison (see chart above)
7) Dice Used
8) Chance Avg%
9) Link back to the Chest or Drop List
10) Link to the Chest Location(s) or Monster Info Page(s) 

A Way to make a "Guestimate"

If you'd like to make a "guestimate" of what the % might be a quick and easy way with fairly accurate results can be done as follows.

The Monster Pages contain a percentage of the Monster Drop. For example lets says a Higardi Highwayman drops items from the Higardi Bandit Treasure List 85% of the time. They may also drop a Thieves Buckler 1% of the time and a Ring of Protection 1% of the time. Well that 1% is the overall chance you have of getting those particular items but what about the items on the Treasure List?

We're back to our LOP and Random Range values. Without getting into all the statistical calculations there is a way of calculating the pecentage. Its not totally accuate but comes close in most cases. 

Simply take the number of random items in the drop, in this example it will be 1.

You need the LOP value of the individual item and the sum of all LOPs in the list, this example is 201.

Now we need to know how many monster are in the group, we'll say there's 4 in this example group.

Let's say we want Prospero's Cloak, what are our chances?

So we have:
4 Monsters who may drop 1 item from a Treasure list of 201 items 85% of the time.

Drop%*((# of Monsters*Random Range)*(LOP/Sum of LOPs))

(85*((4*1)*(1/201)))
(85*(4*.004975))
(85*.01990)
1.6915
about a 1.69% chance of getting the Cloak