Voidwatch Campaign Drop Rate

I did Bismarck last night and he was kind of a pain in the *** but I walked away with six hmp, two cinder/dross, and a stack of sealord skins. His damage taken mechanisms are lame. BoG frailty, level 10 box step, and Dia 3 along with lots of attack buffs and he takes less than half the damage of the VD ambuscade dragon.

Also, he intimidates my mule somehow.

This is just my belief/... opinion... idk, basically nothing that backs up my statement.

Rub cells increase your quality award... that being the rare item that that VW drops. I don't believe a pouch is under that same table. What I've noticed is when I used a cell, i tend to get the gear related to that VW. I've tried both varieties, but all I can really conclude is... random is random

Theory A is that red alignment is merely your chance at getting a "special" drop in the first slot, be it Ace's Mail, Heavy Metal Pouch, Riftdross, or Delphinius. The rates in the special item table itself are fixed, but increasing your overall chance at a special item still directly boosts your chances at plates and whatnot.

Theory B is that red alignment places you on one of several drop tables for the first slot. The ideal placement for plates (and maybe other goodies) would be around 400 or so, whereas Rare/Ex weapons and armor would be at the max of 550.

lolcells

Yeah, I had never done him on a DD before and was so confused when CDCs were total garbage, with Idris Frailty. It took additional Minuet(s), Chaos Roll, (from trusts) and maintained Nat. Meditation to get normal (expected) damage. Wasn't sure if it was a mob-specific mechanic or due to some level correction ***.

Cells do nothing for HMP.

Posted it in a different thread but cannot find it anymore...
I did some tests last campaign and the conclusion was:

Blue has no influence on HMP drop rate. It determines only the number of drops.
# of all drops = floor(BlueAlignment / 100)
with the possibility of one more item where the reminder of the above determines the chance.
Example: 350% Blue yields 3 drops and 50% to get a 4th.

The first drop in the list (which is guaranteed as base blue alignment is 100%) has a chance to be a HQ slot, i.e. equip, plates and pouches and so on can drop.
This probability is determined by red light (RedAlignment / 10). However, insider the HQ slot the distribution is set!
Example:
450% Red Alignment => 40% for the HQ slot
When you assume inside the HQ slot a HMP has 33% drop rate then you have a chance of
40%*33% = 13.2%
to get a HMP.
If you use a red cell you end up with 550% red alignment so
55% * 33% = 18.15%.
So the 33% in the HQ slot didnt change but the overall drop rate did.

tldr: Blue = no help for HMP. However, eventhough Red cells dont change the HMP drop rate directly, they DO increase the chance of an HQ slot to appear, thus, yielding more HMP eventually.

Red does help with Heavy Metals. When I don't use any cells and there's no staggers, you won't get the max alignment and the treasure pool clearly lacks. It doesn't take two seconds to trade some cells in a macro.

While it would make sense to only trade to increase Red, you're there to farm gil. If you make plenty of space before you head out, you can trade for Blue as well and hoard the many potions and stackables. You know you need a break when you fill your Satchel, Sack, Case and Inventory completely. Then you can go back to home nation and sell all the items to the shop and make quite a bit just on those items.

While you trade cells .. say if you're soloing the Pouch NMs, you could add a Phase Displacer into each macro and speed things up. This makes up for that 2-3 seconds lost using the trade macro.

But you know which NM I hate? That Akvan. Wow, Death spell and Death gaze TP move, and sometimes back-to-back. I can beat that thing and get a winning streak going on DRK, but sometimes it decides ... nope, you're going to die, and there's no way back if you try to zombie. I'm after Heka's though .. so I wouldn't suggest farming Akvan for Heavy Metals even though they drop all the time.

Is there any question related to this in official forums? I dont think it would hurt them too much asnwering this kind of question.

40 hrs no cells, 700 plates. idc cells and never did and ended up with 5 bodys and 2 HQ weapons when VW was the thing. I dont have data nor did i make a list to write my stuff down, what i can confirm is i opened so much pouches w/o cells that ppl felt like they HAD to disband because i drain their luck xD

Bismarck has a severe resistance of some kind to Critical Hits. this was pretty well known during the heyday of Voidwatch, and was why a lot of the normal heavy hitters had issues and thus the fights lasted longer. CDC/Smite/Ukkos just didn't wreck him like expected, and so folks spamming Reso were generally the way to go.

New to this farming but:

If doing it solo I basically have to do 5 battles, warp, replenish stones, tele back, 5 battles, warp, etc. etc.?

Talk to one of the Voidwatch NPCs that provide the stones. There's an option in the menu for you to pull stones from your built up stock rather than the stones you carry as key items, and then you can do as many fights as you want without warping (until you run out, of course).

Okay, thanks! Once I run out and purchase more from Conquest NPCs > trade to VW npcs can I store those up or will it only let me have 5 at a time?

With the new campaign I seem to be having worse luck than last time. As is 4 pouches in ~300 kills. Friend is similar drop rate.

Not enough to make a real statement on drops, I know. Was just wondering if someone else was seeing bad drops, or just usual rng being a pain?

Probably just bad luck from the rng. I've had pretty good luck so far. In 52 Aello, I've gotten 130 hmp so far between 2 characters. Not sure how many pouches I've gotten. Wasnt keeping track of that.

4 pouches in 60 kills for me this afternoon

Just usual rng being a pain 0/200 on qilin then my new record of 13 in a row. Still havent seen a knife in around 3k kills.

A little off topic, but I've been farming Hahava for SMN AF2. I've beaten it ~50 times, with no drops. Do lights affect the drop rate on crafting goods, or just weapons and spells?

Yeah If I go with my 4 chars I get about 100 an hour. Ofc the mules get majority but w\e

between two characters, i saw 20 pouches in about 180 kills, thats been pretty normal for me over the past few days.

I've also seen the HQ dagger twice on my main character in about 800 Qilin kills.

well guys i got 23 pouches out of 384 stones doing aello thats about 5.7% drop rate, so since its depends also on RNG i guess is pretty close to 6%, also on my 2nd char i got 24 pouches so thats about 6.25% drop rate, and my 3rd account got 18 pouches not on all kills like 300 or so (didnt math it since i started on him long after i did on both main and mule. SE did nerf drop rate is just our patience playing on us.

iirc, Blue increases reward slots and Red increases reward quality. Not sure if people got the exact science down, but I'm assuming that since Blue increases amount of rewards it indirectly increases chance of weapons, armor, HQ synth items (eg Mail, Pinion, Cuticle). I'm also assuming Red increases the chance of turning crap synth items to HQ synth items (Green Rock >> Mail/Pinion/Cuticle).

HMP's should have been revamped/redone 6 years ago ;/

Just need to trade red cells

Sad thing is most people consider them "a waste of time": it literally takes 3 seconds.

Dem 3 seconds really add up over the course of 5 thousand kills /s

really just put it in your macro for displacers if your popping or make a separate macro if not

I swear to god I'm the only one who reads updates.....

tp://forum.square-enix.com/ffxi/threads/11231-July-12-2011-(JST)-Version-Update

* A minor full-spectrum alignment bonus based upon the player's Treasure Hunter effect level will now be granted upon defeating an enemy.


Ever since I've been using a thf in my party even without cells
I've been getting at least 1 to 2 pouches out of 12 qilins. Say what you want on this but I started doing my emps to 99 and finished from mid 2015 to now: daruba (or whatever it's called.)
Ochain (I was bored.) Armageddon, ukon and I think one to two more stacks of heavy metals twastar (I usually buy the 60 riftdrosses or riftcinders during event.) And I only dead voidwatch during event.

And yes I sometimes dual box or trio box. But drop rate was pretty constant. Without thf "had to put 6 stones in" 0/22