Path of Exile 2 gamers grew more and more determined whereas developer Grinding Gear Games was away for the vacations, even resorting to apocryphal rites in hopes of summoning patches to deal with their early entry woes. But for YouTuber Slipperyjim8, the interregnum supplied simply sufficient time to descend right into a 16-day spite-fueled mania of knowledge assortment and monster killing to show whether or not or not PoE 2’s merchandise rarity stat does, in actual fact, produce extra loot.
The Slipperyjim saga started on December 23, when Jim uploaded a video known as “Does Rarity offer you extra foreign money drops?” The video was, itself, an offshoot of an earlier investigation of whether or not Waystone rarity impacts loot quantities, spurred by a notion amongst PoE2 gamers that the merchandise rarity stat—a stat that may seem on each objects and map-generating Waystones to enhance the drops from enemies—is overtuned. In the video, Jim defined that, whereas gathering loot information from 150 Waystone clears, he started having “doubts” about how the merchandise rarity stat features, significantly because it pertains to foreign money objects.
“Here’s how I believe it really works: Rarity ought to make it so you do not get any extra foreign money; the foreign money you do get has a better likelihood of being extra beneficial,” Jim stated. “That’s how I assumed it labored. But based mostly on simply feeling, I do not know. I’m beginning to be uncertain of that.”
Comparing the information he’d gathered whereas working Waystones at totally different rarity ranges, his outcomes appeared counterintuitive. As Jim crunched the numbers from 150 Waystone clears in actual time, his information appeared to indicate that the merchandise rarity stat was truly lowering the quantity of foreign money that dropped. “That’s the exact opposite of how I assumed this labored,” Jim stated.
The numbers appeared to trigger a small disaster of religion. Worse, Jim’s commenters did the cruelest factor you are able to do to a spreadsheet-wielding man in a precarious state: They criticized his dataset. Jim, they famous, hadn’t been contemplating Scrolls of Wisdom as a foreign money merchandise—a basic blunder! I assume!
In doing so, they’d initiated a grim transformation.
One week later, Jim uploaded a follow-up video known as “I killed 500 uncommon monster and recorded each drop – ship good vibes.” The video started with Jim, carrying tinfoil over his scalp for causes I didn’t and won’t examine, declaring that “there’s nothing helpful on this video.” Its most important thrust was to stipulate a harrowing journey that Jim had determined to embark upon: He’d killed 500 uncommon monsters in PoE 2 with no will increase to his merchandise rarity stat, recording the variety of modifiers affecting the monster, every of which gives a rise to ensuing loot, and the loot that they dropped.
And he was going to do the identical for 500 extra. And then 500 extra—repeating at progressively larger merchandise rarity stat ranges to show, definitively, what precisely the stat was doing. “There’s no data on this video! Go away. There’s nothing helpful right here,” Jim stated, hexing his viewers as he peeled the tinfoil from his head. “I put this out as a result of I would like constructive vibes and plenty of help in order that I can go in and farm one other 500 monsters.”
The course of would take one other 10 days.
On January 8, Jim uploaded a video after 16 straight days of uncommon monster information assortment, killing a complete of 1800 uncommon monsters within the effort. Here’s Jim’s course of, in his personal phrases:
“What I did is I went right into a map, discovered a uncommon monster, stopped, and I took a screenshot of his title with all his modifiers, as a result of every modifier provides uncommon monsters extra rarity, and I need to understand how a lot rarity do these modifiers offer you, so I wanted to kill a bunch of uncommon monsters with a bunch of modifiers with none rarity on myself, with none rarity on the maps, with none rarity on my atlas, after which do it once more however rarity on me, not on the map and never on the atlas, then much more rarity on me, none on the map, none on the atlas, after which much more rarity on me but additionally rarity on the map and on the atlas.”
To paraphrase, Jim developed an intricate means of snapshotting uncommon monsters and recording their ensuing loot drops, which he’d accomplished 500 instances at escalating ranges of merchandise rarity stat—besides he solely killed 300 on the final one, as a result of he’d, you understand, been doing it for 16 days.
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“16 days? 16 days of my life,” Jim stated. “And now the Sun is up!” He’d then inserted a brief interlude, throughout which he ventured outdoors to absorb the air, his process full, a plate of hen nuggets in hand. Tragically, by setting the plate right down to intentionally contact grass, Jim gave a close-by chook a chance to run off along with his meals. Man is simply too typically destroyed by his labor, even because the work is completed.
So, what did Jim’s information point out? What did every meticulously recorded merchandise and related rarity, every pile and respective amount of gold, every orb, map, shard, and prism—and each ensuing chart—inform us? Does merchandise rarity give higher loot?
I imply, yeah.
As Jim had initially theorized, the merchandise rarity stat does not produce extra loot. Instead, it provides the loot that does drop a better likelihood of being a greater merchandise. As you equip objects with extra loot rarity affixes, monsters will drop fewer gold piles, however every gold pile will include extra gold inside it and the gold piles that in any other case would have dropped are as an alternative transformed into rarer foreign money objects. Likewise, monsters will drop progressively extra magic and uncommon objects as your rarity stat will increase.
Jim’s total evaluation: “This shit’s effective.” His learn is that the sense of merchandise rarity being a busted stat is a product of gamers obsessively evaluating themselves to others.
“The complete motive that individuals are like, ‘Oh my god, rarity is so damaged, Breach is so damaged!’ is as a result of they’re wanting over the fence they usually’re like, ‘Damn, that man appears to be like like he is getting some huge cash,'” Jim stated. “That’s not the way you’re speculated to play this recreation. You’re supposed to simply do no matter’s enjoyable.”
