Cloud Of Darkness HTBF

I'm still of the opinion that it's based on the jobs brought into the fight (possibly including trusts used). Mage job gives him a chance to absorb magic and melee gives him a chance to absorb physical.

I don't know the exact job breakdown but the reason I think this is because I've NEVER had him absorb physical while I was soloing on SCH (without trusts), but when I've brought a THF along for TH (still no trusts and I tell them not to do ANYTHING until 2%) he suddenly sometimes starts absorbing physical. So the actions being performed on him doesn't change, but his behavior changes. So I think it has to be based on the people who enter the fight.

Someone could probably test this by going in to SCH solo and summoning 5 meat-head melee trusts (but don't engage or they'll feed TP, just let them follow you around). You should see 5/6 runs absorb physical.

I've been multiple times with the same two jobs (2boxing) and got both phys and magical absorb at different times, but maybe different trusts each time.

I'd be curious if you remember exactly which jobs and which trusts, but I suspect anyone using trusts will end up with a mix because you'll probably have a tank job for physical and a few healers for magical.

We've had it alternate between Phys and Magic absorption and we run with the same setup each time.

BLU/RUN
RNG/DNC
SCH/RDM
COR/WHM
Star Sibyl
Moogle

Though I'd say 9/10 times it's physical absorb, so I'll heal it a few shots, pop off Trueflight. Repeat til Waning

I'm gonna presume the people suggesting they're getting the absorb mode (it can be phys or magic, depending whos doing the suggesting) they want 80% of the time using the same setup every time are telling the truth, and based on this assumption will assume that the phys/magic isnt random and there is some other influencing metric.

To clarify, we do the same strat each time.
Blu runs in, Flashes and pulls hate. Subduction kite (this lands every time, it's glorious) I pew pew for TP. SCH makes Fusion, I Trueflight to turn it to Light. SCH MBs Helix 2. Usually it's around 76 ish then. Wait to see which phase it goes into. If it's physical absorb, I just keep going. Shoot for TP, pop off 99k TF, repeat. If it's magical absorb, we just hold damage for a minute. Using any WS feels like poop compared to doing TF. Use bounty shot as needed, usually get it to 7 or 8.

This is just spamming D though in like 8 minute runs which includes buffs. Pro/Shell/Regen, COR busting 307 times, you know how it goes.

honestly, it might be intended to be random and just really poorly determined by the random number generator (by which I mean that it isn't intentionally the same way, but all the math boils down to it only based on something like "number of 50k+ hits taken" or "how far ahead 1st place is on enmity" or something else that's consistent across runs)

...because square-enix(tm)

I use the same trusts every single time and it's 50/50 like I've stated before.

Another observation: Adds will only pop after Cloud of Darkness does Primordial Surge/Waning Vigor once, but never before. This behavior is not reset if you wipe and allow CoD to go back to 100%, even if she doesn't pop adds yet. I had an instance where CoD killed all of my trusts prior to Primordial Surge, so it wasn't worth me pushing it further. I decided to die/RR in a corner of the battlefield. She eventually used Primordial Surge > Waning Vigor while I was trying to die but never got to the point where she could pop adds. After recovering, her first TP move spawned an add.

I swear it popped two adds in one TP move in that run just, then a 3rd very soon after.

Yeah I've seen him pop up to 3 adds from one TP move when his HP was low. I think the most adds I've ever seen out at once was around 8.

Edit: Side note: The adds cannot be parried, or one of them has an avoidance down aura or something. Do not try to use Turms Mittens to keep yourself alive as a RUN tank when the adds start overwhelming you because they won't work. Even with 97% parry rate I wasn't able to parry anything.

That lines up with my theory. RNG and COR would be physical, BLU probably physical, SCH magical. It's possible the non-combat trusts are just lumped in with physical? That would give you 1/6 chance of magic 5/6 physical. Or if Star Sibyl & Moogle just don't count as anything, then you'd be 1/4 chance of magic and 3/4 chance of physical.

I think it is HP % based tbh, if you rapidly push it low it will spawn 2 instead of 1.

This is the dumbest BC since Odin. Doing things absolutely the same way each time you can randomly get 3-5 adds when on DD, even if it is 0-1 most the time.

It is pretty annoying and pretty dumb if soloing on DD.
And that's exactly the reason why you should move to soloing as SCH.
Much more predictable, better drop rate, win:win!

It's so painfully boring though, and having to focus for 20minutes!!

20 min… I don’t get it. Find ppl, the fight takes literally 3 min or less including buff and no SP. Tank pull to the side, RDM gravity, kite from there, everyone engage/WS savage blade special, no SC, everyone/drg and shed hate at 50%, congrats, everyone has 5 min, and everyone has merits. If you don’t, well do D with 4 ppl but that strat works

The hardest part of ffxi, for many people...

I mean this one of the least demanding VD HTMB for a full party setup.

We did this fight pretty easily yesterday as MNK/BRD/COR/RDM/WHM/THF, about 10 times. Lots of loops/belts/shawls, but no masks, unfortunately. Our primary strategy was to MNK+subtleblow zerg the mob in about 6-10 minutes and turning when his eyes went red. (We would test to see if Physical or Magic damage was being absorbed and wait or re-engage accordingly).

Then, a thief joins our party for a few runs and was insistent that DRK was a better option than MNK. Is there any sound reasoning to this? Is there anything about Endark/Absorbs/Drains that make DRK especially stand out against Cloud of Darkness?

I suspect I may be overthinking this as this person may have just been implying to "face-roll with Torcleaver" as is sometimes the case with many assertions calling for DRKs primary DD.

MNK is best for low TP feed. Otherwise bring a SAM and 5 step.

Drop the THF, VD you get 2 drops slots with or without a THF.

Exactly what they were saying. Torcleaver spam Drks are a dime a dozen. A mnk that knows what they're doing and can solo multi-step? Not as common.

Extremely high chance, but not 100% guaranteed to have 2 slots on VD.

I had zero drops from the BC, killed VD with TH4 and we got a single drop (Mask).
I seem to recall it was the only time.
Or rather there have been more for sure of course, but in the other ones everybody in the pt had some drops so we can't be sure if the single slot was because of a real single drop, or if because the second was an item we all already had.
But on that first run I can 100% say only one item dropped.

I think there's a lot of speculation about how drops work at play here.

Just because there is a maximum of 2 drop slots, doesn't mean TH can't increase the chance of something dropping.

It could be (for VD):
4% chance of masque dropping
25% chance of belt dropping
25% chance of neck dropping
25% chance of back dropping

Keep going until you fill the 2 slots. Each % is affected by TH.

In which case, you could bump 4% up to 6% (or whatever arbitrary number you choose).

We can only see the results of the drops, not the process by which it chooses, so I think theories making definitive claims about whether TH works or not should be taken with a boulder of salt.

For my part, I bring a THF when I do this BCNM because the fight is a joke and doesn't need 6 jobs to clear, so we drop a slot to bring in a THF on the off chance that TH could increase masque drop rate. It might cost you a minute on your kill speed, but probably not even that.

The question people care about is does TH increase the distribution. Thorny said this some years ago, which seems to directly contradict what you are saying here about bumping 4% to 6%.


Both can't be true? TH is hard to quantify and test and I get that, but my question is: CAN TH increase distribution of an item within a slot or does it simply increase the "chance" (as the description says) of an item dropping at all. My understanding is that it's always been the latter, it just increases pool/slot chance of occurring, but has no distinct ability to target any specific drop within that slot.

Like if we use the old Ochiudo's Kote as an example: it only ever dropped one item, knuckles or hands. This implies there's only one drop slot, and TH doesn't target either since that drop slot/chance is already 100%. Now if you have two drop slots, The kote could in theory drop from either pool slot, and you would see both items appear. But TH would only be increases the chance that the second pool loads. With HTBF, functionally the same thing we are talking about? TH is just "give a chance more treasure loads", but not "bump up the rate of distribution of rare treasure".

All theories, but I get confused after years of this back and forth.

edit: i wrote this like i was thinking it out loud, so it doesn't follow an intelligent sentence structure xD apologies for grammar

I don't like people.

I hear VE can be done on THF, what is likely to give drops faster if just chasing accessories - E with no THF or VE with THF?

TH works when you get the drop, but doesn't when you don't.

TH is easily testable on common items. Go out to farm Illumininks with zero TH and you will fight 20 dolls and maybe get 1 or 2 inks. add TH4 or just go on THF and you will get 20 inks. It basically turns whatever the drop pool for Illiminink "ON" with TH. So that proves it "works". We know that. Move on to a less common item.

I farmed my own Luminocloths from Ghosts in Fei'Yin for a TVR mission (at the time it was 200k on AH). It didn't take long, within about 15-20 ghosts I got it, but I got tons of double/triple trash before I saw one cloth. Was TH "working" on that specific cloth, or was I just constantly opening the most possible drop slots and giving myself the highest "chance" that I could actually get the cloth? It's like playing slots at vegas. Play once, maybe you don't win, maybe you do. Play 1000 times, you will win by sheer number of attempts.

I'm not convinced TH does anything besides open up more "attempts" at a drop, but the HTBF drops are absolutely F*cked because of the distribution, and nothing can be done about it.

Has anyone, in the entire history of XI, ever presented solid data demonstrating that TH can change the distribution of drops within a single slot?

After 20+ years, the community has a lot of examples and data to support the idea that TH works by increasing the chance of additional drop slots. But ruining the mystery like that is a major buzzkill, so the TH conthpirathists moved the goalposts; The same folks who used to insist moon phase affected drop rates now claim that TH works on personal drops in Sortie, or that SE secretly changed how TH works for <insert newest content here>.

Mee Deggi / King Behemoth have LONG been known/considered as exceptions to the TH effect, since they drop an item every time and it's just random which one it is. This is even specifically called out on the Treasure Hunter page as a place where TH (almost certainly) doesn't work. It's kind of the dumbest example you could possibly point to for how TH works.

Looking at examples like these:


the mobs drop their cloths more often when you have TH than when you don't. There's only one Illuminink per doll, and only one Luminocloth per ghost. What's the functional difference between these?


If you farm enemies with multiple drops, like ore eaters while wearing TH, you will notice that you get more of ALL their ores, not just a single ore. Is this "increasing the chance of dropping an item within a slot" for each slot, or "increasing the chance of an item dropping at all"? How would you tell the difference?

...I think even considering "drop slots" is really silly.

Maybe I should have used an Omen Boss drop/body/scale as an example, but that's not necessarily the point I was trying to imply with the example, bad or not.

Not long ago during Shinryu D/VD discussions (and by extension other HTBFs on same difficulty), people verified that those difficulties had a damn near guaranteed drop because at least the accessories were set insanely high. In your example, how is TH able to improve the drop rate of one item over another? The Mee Deggi example might seem dumb because something is guaranteed, but that's pretty much how D/VD HTBFs work, right? You will get a drop on D/VD (just did a few HTBFs for some friends recently with zero TH, got a drop every time). So if TH isn't working for any distribution for 100% drop slot items (because its random as you say which one it chooses), why would it be working for HTBF to improve Masque from 4% to 6%? Does that mean it lowers the rate other items drop in that pool? I'm honestly asking why you think the distribution can increase for an item with TH.


My understanding is Illuminink is a common drop and Luminocloth is a rare drop, and they have a different distribution across the pool of items they can load from. I don't know exactly how the drops are coded, so I can't say for certain, but I can express an example how it might behave based on people's theory/understanding

Illuminink (a common drop) can only drop once per doll. Dolls have one drop slot (for example purpose of explaining, not dogma, but it doesn't actually matter, it could be 3 drop slots for argument's sake). TH increases the likelihood of this slot being ON/loading an item. If I kill 20 Dolls with TH8, I will probably see 20 inks.

Luminocloth (a rare drop) can only drop once per ghost. Let's say Ghosts have three drop slots (because I don't really know how many they have). TH increases the likelihood of the all 3 drop slots being ON/loading an item, but it doesn't target a rare drop or common drops. You can get a Luminocloth in either of these drop slots, but not multiple. If I kill 20 Ghosts, I might see one cloth due to the item rarity (not 20 or 60 cloths). The rate of Luminocloth doesn't increase at all with TH, just how many rolls/instances at the additional pools loading with an item. Whatever the individual drop rate of Luminocloth is stays constant, only thing that changes is more chances at getting that additional spot to load with an item, which can be a Luminocloth. Most of the time I get everything else, because those drops are common. So TH "increases" chance to see Luminocloth in general, but not directly on item itself.

This was the understanding some have had with how TH interacts with Rare drops.


`
I don't really know, but it seems similar to the Ghost example. Just looking at the data, it's clear to me which item is the common drop and which is the rare drop. This example does not disprove the drop slot theory/idea that TH opens up more possibilities to see treasure. You can't tell the difference, but does that matter from SE's perspective as far as TH is concerned? it "increases the chance of loading treasure" just as the description implies, the player doesn't really need to know how it works exactly.


Maybe a different example to illustrate the point: What are the odds of rolling a 6 on a normal dice? 100/6, like 17%. If I add another dice and roll 2 at once, does the individual odds of rolling a 6 on either dice increase? No, but combined, I have a greater chance between both die to land a 6. So the rate of 6 increases the more dice I roll. Now imagine if the chance to land a 6 was insanely low like 1% or half a percent. This is how I functionally have understood the "drop slots" theory as explained in the past. You're not pushing the drop rate on any one item higher than it already is, because the distribution is set. All you're doing is giving yourself an additional chance or two or three (whatever) to get extra treasure. Again, you don't know the difference between the two, and players might wrongly assume TH "affects" something directly when it's not really working that way, but players are none the wiser. It's not my theory, just explaining how it's understood. Correct me if I am wrong. It doesn't seem silly at all IMO. Sounds exactly like how a video game company would code things in order to keep insanely rare items insanely rare.

Anyways, when the drop rate is set so low, it doesn't matter how many rolls you have at getting the drop, it's so small regardless (higher is better, but still super low).