Droprate of Heartgem's Burden (is negatively affected by Luck?)

[Mattedatten]

EDIT: It finally dropped, see posts further down. But it only dropped after removing my luck gear. Is that the intended way?

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This isn’t really a confirmed bug, but I wanted to discuss whether I am really unlucky, or maybe have stumbled upon a bug of some kind?

• What is your character name in New World: Matteric
• What server/world did you experience your issue on: Kronos (previously Gaiwan)
• Describe the issue you are experiencing: The music sheet Heartgem’s Burden is not dropping.
• Is this a bug? Unknown
• (if a bug) How did the issue affect your gameplay: Unable to get last available song in game
• (if a bug) Were you able to recover from the issue: No
• (if a bug) Please include a screenshot or video of the issue that you have experienced: N/A
• What are the steps to reproduce the issue as you experienced: Kill everything you see in Amrine Temple for days
• When did this happen? Since around Christmas

Longer version:
I’ve been hunting for the Heartgem’s Burden music sheet since around Christmas. I’ve spent all my logged in time over multiple days just in the Amrine Temple area killing every kind of creature. Those skeletons don’t know what hit them. Kar-El the Gate Keeper and Heartforge Guardan have both been wiped multiple times.

But since time is an arbritary metric, let’s do some math. I realized after my first hour in the area that I might as well skill some random weapon skills while hunting the skeletons. I’ve leveled:
Musket 18 → 20
Blunderbuss 2 → 20
Greatsword 1 → 20
Spear: 1 → 20
Ice Gauntlet: 1 → 20
Fire Staff: 1 ->20
Sword: 6 → 20

If my math is correct, that is 618 800 weapon skilled gained only in Amrine Temple.
Creatures there give between 13 and 68 weapon experience, where around 20 is the most common.

But to be generous, let’s use an average of 35 weapon skill per killed skeleton, since I’ve spent more time near the over level 20 than under level 20 skeletons.
That gives 17 700 killed Amrine Temple enemies without getting the music sheet.
And that’s disregarding all the chests I’ve opened in the area, and all creatures killed after reaching 20 weapon skill.
And when a friend has joined me and also been killing stuff in the area.

I have multiples of all legendary/epic loots from the area, and have even received some expertise from the fire staff drop of Kar-El the Gate Keeper.

At this point it’s getting ridiculous. Could I really be this unlucky? I got the “Aeternum Legend” achievement the other day, for killing 45 000 enemies. Half of those could as well be poor Amrine Temple skeletons.

I’ve tried posting a ticket via support, but the only response I get is that the drop is controlled by RNG.
But could it be this simple, or am I missing something?

Right now I am trying to progress my character’s main story quests to see if the character’s state changes anything.
I had a music sheet in a weird state earlier, see Sheet Music "Courage of the Keys" learned but not available on selection - #11 by Mattedatten , could something be broken?
Does my client affect RNG rates, should I do a file validation via Steam?

Thanks for attending my TED Talk.
Matt(eric)

[TXdude]

RNG in the game sucks… you might be running too much or too little luck(a lot of things are not on the luck-safe drops list)… Side note if you are looking at the drop location on the new world database some of them are off for some reason.

[Mattedatten]

Yeah, I tried asking the support for the details but got nowhere. I’ve read theories in all three directions:

• luck doesn’t do any difference since the item is white/common
• luck can help getting more rare items, including sheets
• luck actively counteracts, since it will make higher rarity (rare, legendary, epic, etc) drop more often instead of “common” (as music sheets are) items

That last one is interesting, and sad if it’s true. Very beautiful paint sketch:

Could adding luck mean that the frequency of common rarity items drop decreases, being “replaced” by higher rarity item drops?
Since the music sheets are common drops, it would mean having more luck actually makes music sheets harder to get.

Yeah, I dunno. Thanks for the answer. I agree, the loot system in this game is very poorly explained and hard to grasp whether I’m doing something wrong, or something actually is wrong.

Bow 1 → 15 with all luck gear removed, no sheet yet.

[Finch_Finley]

Welcome to the poorly designed mob loot There is nothing wrong with you, there is also no amount of luck they will help you. The loot tables of the mobs that drop this music sheet are simply very very very very vast. If you hit the proper loot table, you still roll from available loot and the odds are simply not in your favour.
Your best bet are containers (chests) in the POI area.
If AGS is reading this - please next time, take some time to think about drops design. Items in this game are either overly easy to get (Morning Chorse music page anybody?) or extremaly hard to get (hello Brimstone sands furnishing patterns, where you have to open milion chests to get one - on average as in reality you will never drop it because opening 20 chests daily on 24h cooldown would take you almost 6 years to get to 1 milion openings…).

[Mattedatten]

Yeah, the loot system seems … reasonable. At least mark the sheets with the intended rarity.

I got it, finally.
Bow 1 → 17.5 with no luck gear

Dropped from Kar-El the Gate Keeper.

I removed my Chest armor, earring and two bags, with Luck giving +2.8%, +2.6%, 2.4% and 2.4% chance for better items.
I hate that it dropped relatively fast with the luck gear removed, but never did with luck equipped, because it gives argument for the third theory I described before.

And, wow, glad I focused on music now then, not going for endgame furnishing patterns (yet), hah.

[Dafney]

Luck does not increase your chance of getting a drop.

Luck only shifts loot pool higher, it does not increase your odds.

So if you are looking for a music sheet that is a common item, you would want as little luck as possible, because you want to stay in the lowest loot pool.

This method is used while fishing for specific things like Snails, Oysters.

[Mattedatten]

So it really is like that… I didn’t want to believe it.

Even weirder then that some music sheets show as uncommon/rare when learning them. Do those count as common still?

But for Heartgem’s Burden it doesn’t matter, that one apparently was common all the way through.