I just did a fairly deep dive into loot drops from farming the Rare 3 stage of the Wonderland event that just finished, it’s not totally comprehensive but I think it goes a little farther than previous projects.
Besides the fixed drops for XP (best in the game) and Recruits (same as 8-7), I’m mostly interested in farming for resources to level heroes: TC mats and feeder heroes. I tracked the Crafting Materials just because I was doing everything else anyway and it seemed easy enough to include them.
One thing I didn’t track was 1* Crafting Mats because I considered them to be common enough that most people have plenty without even trying, but I probably should have followed at least Large Bones and maybe Crude Iron (sorry bone hunters). I can tell you that subjectively the bones & crude did not seem to drop as often as the other 1* crafting mats (oil, cloth, string, leather strips), but I didn’t keep any numbers on them.
For Ascension Materials I only tracked those that are used by Training Camps, again presuming that the other farmable AMs are not difficult to obtain through regular gameplay and that most players probably have a surplus anyway. (Plus, like I said, TC Mats are one of my primary targets.)
Not really breaking any big revelations here, but a couple things are worth noting:
- My observations match perfectly with the coin drop rates documented by @Pois1 with a coin chest appearing about once every 50 runs or so (roughly 2% chance per run)
- None of the individual Crafting or Ascension Mats dropped at better rates than the best levels detailed in the BarryFarmzHere sheet, however the figures for ANY 3* or 4* Crafting Item were at similar rates (4*) or just slightly better (3*) than equivalent targets in Barry’s sheet.
- The real winner here is the drops for Feeder Heroes, averaging 0.50 feeders per flag; according to Barry’s sheet, this is the best Feeder drop in the game, and about 3x better than any of the common S1 farming stages. The best feeder drop from Atlantis Rises looks to be 0.30 Feeders per flag across all the lower levels.
Since I’m looking for leveling resources, I’m encouraged by the Feeder drop rates - I put a higher value on them than recruits or backpacks or other mats just because they’re ready to go without any extra food, time, hassle, etc. My main feeder production on base are TC2s and sometimes TC1, which means each Feeder is worth 5 Recruits + 1 Kit/Sword + 1600-2000 food. At least this is how I valuate them, please correct me if I’m missing something here.
Overview:
Total Runs: 1278
Refills Used: 17
Total Heroes Gained: 647
Total Recruits Gained: 3834
Total “Top 3” TC Mats Gained (Kits+Swords+Rugged): 826
Cumulative Feeders Gained (Heroes + eventual TC output): 1413, w/ 60 mats left over
Cumulative Feeders per WE (Heroes + eventual TC output): 1.11
–>These cumulative numbers represent ALL current & future Feeders gained from this farming session, both those given outright in the loot and those to be cooked with Recruits & Materials earned during the session.
This is the point at which I hit a wall. I’d like to compare the Cumulative Feeders to similar output from common map farming stages, but it looks like an equivalent measurement hasn’t been established. I started trying to spitball it with data in Barry’s sheet but ended up just calculating in circles, lol. Any help in quantifying Cumulative Feeders per WE for other common farming areas would be appreciated, such as S1 8-7 & 5-8 and S2 1-8, 15-8 & 15-9 during Atlantis Rises (that is, the total real & expected feeders gained: those ready to go plus those to be cooked with the resources earned on that level). The numbers posted above just don’t go as far without meaningful comparisons of course.
Even without cumulative figures for comparison, over 1 finished Feeder per flag sounds like worthwhile farming on its surface. It’s likely somewhere between S1 common farming and AR mega farming, I just can’t say exactly where - I promise to do some more thinking on how to parse this out (as a mathy person in a previous life, I’m a little embarrassed that it’s stumping me). If anyone can help pin this down you’ll be my new best friend :).
So, tldr: Farming Rare 3 is worth it for XP, Feeders, & coins, and is tied with S1 farming stages for Recruits (although some S2 stages during AR are better); targeting any other specific items will be less efficient than the best levels given in the BarryFarmzHere sheet.
Final One-Sheet:
Here’s my raw data sheet (excel)
Tagging a few data farmers in case they want it for any of their projects:
@BarryWuzHere @Pois1 @Guvnor @ierazo
A few other threads that discus farming Rare 3 (mostly focus on coin drops or XP):
mah bad
