Dear SE, once and for all, does Treasure Hunter affect Defending ring drop?

[Sacher]

All I know is if you solo with the earring in inventory nothing drops and doesn't matter if you have TH10+. I have solo'd it 6 times with earring and nothing. Granted I assume the no drop is because an erring would drop and I already have. So my dumb question is do you have to drop the earring after each fight in hopes of getting a chance at the ring?

[Railer]

The ring will drop with pixie in inventory tried both ways may as well keep it till ya get ring. 1/50 or so.

[Vold]

That's the point of this thread. Just because testing has been done in the past means next to nothing because FFXI isn't open source. SE can twiddle the drop rates and conditions all they want and you'd have to keep testing indefinitely to be absolutely sure. The point is to get SE to TALK TO THE FREAKING COMMUNITY. It's like pulling teeth, I swear.

(this doesn't even mention the disparity between the developer's intent and what actually gets implemented - which if you've been paying attention for years - isn't always the same thing! hell, there could be a bug they don't even know about because they don't care and don't pay attention. until the source code is open, i'm all for holding their feet to the fire to answer (in specifics!) every unknown that people are still curious about.)

This is the correct mindset to have rather than falling back onto tired cliche player beliefs as an answer. One thing is certain about this kind of a drop system and KB - we have enough data on the DB site to state that at least TH3+(probably an average of TH8 to be honest) nets a 5% chance. The data is skewed because barely no one tries such kills without a THF job around. It's clear that the playerbase may preach the cliche but they certainly don't practice it because they ALWAYS have TH in effect for a KB kill, even when they got the pops from a NPC. The TH0 stat is high enough kill sample clocking in at 2% to warrant the question. Assuming it would eventually round out at 5% too would be a mistake. If the TH2 stat is good enough then the TH0 stat has to be, too. Both are lack luster in kill counts.

The thing is, it's long been accepted even before TH3 that Defending Ring has about a 5% chance to drop, and that holds true for other NMs and drops like it. That tells me that art the end of the day, TH2 and TH3+ makes for the same drop rate. At that point either TH2 is better than TH1 and TH1 is better than TH0 or TH doesn't matter, period. My money is on it doesn't matter, but I still would like some answers for some of the questions we've been asking for 13 years.

[Enochroot]

I wasn't going to bring this up because it's anecdotal, but the irony is that the only time I've ever personally seen a Defending Ring drop was without TH at all. PUP + RDM, in the good old pre-trust days.