Gathering % Rates

[USMCJEV]

It's an overall average. You as an individual won't get 85% of the mats you go for just because it says 85%. It means that of all the thousands of players mining millions of times, on average 85% of the attempts will be successful.

In other words, learn to statistics.

[Rabbio]

I've been very lucky with my mining. I mine up a stack of each material while leveling and then check how many HQs I received. It is always above the 15%, and usually even at or above the 25% I can occasionally buff to.

99 alumite / 33 HQ alumite = 25%
99 iron ore / 27 HQ iron ore = 21%

I also don't get very many bad streaks in the gather percent. If it is at 70%+ I don't remember ever failing twice in a row. Sometimes in the 60% range though I'll fail a whole node. I'm happy if I'm trading some luck on gather chance for higher yields on HQ items!

[Tirocupidus]

There have been lots of times that I didn't get an HQ from 5 attempts at 25%. I've failed all four gathering attempts at 65%. Honestly, it's more of a pain when you're synthing HQ because you lose materials and more time. "96%, okay it's in the bag! ... What?!"

You can play around with the generator at random.org if you want. Using the default values of 1 to 100, every time you see a number greater than your percent chance, you fail. Pretend mining! Or wait, we already pretend mine. Pretend pretend mining! Really, though, it'll help you understand how it works if you don't already.

Edit: Actually with their integer page, you can just tell it how many times you want to mine and view the results. Try 1,000 and look for the failure streaks.

[RedMoko]

These rates are very accurate. In every case when looking at percentages you must use very large data samples(not one node or 10 - you need somewhere around 100 or more to get accurate data to make your conclusions, some would suggest 1000 or 10000 for better accuracy). I have my luminary botany tool already and I can assure you that the percentages are correct. When I farm 5-10 stacks of any item I am always within +- 1-5% accuracy without using any of my gp abilities. Of course If I use them things change drastically! I honestly think for leveling purposes there should be a much smaller HQ chance to make the economy work better for those that put the time in....

[gigi_frana]

I often "miss" 5 tries in a row from a node with 74% chance.

Calculate the chance of this happening, and compare it to 25%.

[Lux_Rayna]

I've been very lucky with my mining.

Its not really "lucky".

For one, your % is not at a constant 15%. It will vary anywhere between 15-50% depending on what abilities you use and when. If you use your abilities regularly, your avg % HQ will be quite a bit higher than 15%. There's no way we could do the math on it w/o a lot more information, but what you're saying is not lucky nor unusual. You just aren't accounting for all the variables that lead to those results.

[WarJunkie]

It's called the 'relative frequency estimate of a probability'

In laymen terms it means the more times you attempt the listed activity, the closer you get to probability of that activity occurring.

Problem is the number of times you can do it is limited by the game mechanics and RNG. End result % achieved is never going to exactly the % listed for the activity unless its 100%.

Statistics can be a real headache, and SE can't do anything about it.

[Duuude007]

Your sample size is too small. Anomalies are bound to occur.

Come back to me after 10,000 gathering attempts of the exact same item, and we can talk about your result accuracy.

[Arbitrage]

yes a particular node at 85% is per hit, but when you're getting 3000 / 5000 tries, you have to be close to approaching the relative point


the logarithm needs some work, a checksum where the % was taken into account that based the upcoming hits off the previous hit would be more accurate unless the point of it is to piss people off and make yields lower than actual, in my experience I have never out of all the mining/gathering i've done, ever come remotely close to the %'s described

[Ksenia]

You guys are gathering above your level. It might only be a level or two but you are really hurting your numbers when doing that.

I Gather by HQ stacks and I get a 99 HQ stack with 450-500 NQ in the process. I've done it well below level and at level and the number never changes. If I go even one level above though, that gets dicey. It might seem tempting to over level gather but in the end, it doesn't work out to a benefit. If you are 22, gather the 22. Vendor it, sell it, throw it away but don't skip materials.

Just my experience.