Guide to determine the DECAY of any item

MG Mighty

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I think that it is time for me to share with you the best method to determine the decay of an item.

This included Armor, Weapons, Tools, Limited items or Not.

The method is very accurate.
The accuracy is almost 1/1000 of the PEC
=> 0,00001 PED

I say almost because sometimes it is "only" 0,00002 PED
Of course for more trustworthy results you'll shall need to crossexam several data that you'll obtain.

Anyhow it is quite simple:

There are ingame several stackable items that are worth 0,00001 PED.
What are they and how do I know this:
The examples are Vibrant sweat; Fruits (Bombardo;Haimoros;Papplon;Caroot) ; and Common Dung.
If you use big enough stacks you are able to see that the Trade Terminal (TT) actually shows that they have value.
If you put 1K of it in the TT it show 0,01 PED
If you put 10000 it show that they are worht 0,10 PED.

The trick is that the TT can only show 2 decimal.
So with a stack of 501 it shall show 0,01 PED when it actually are worth 0,00501.
Because it rounds up.
To make it more clear if you put 9501 it shall show 0,10 PED
But if you put 9500 it shall show 0,09 PED.

This method is very usefull to test the actual decay that the item has taken since the beginning of your test.

This would be an example of what a test would be like:

You put the item in the Trade Terminal before the test to determine it's inicial TT value (be carefull you don't want to sell it so abort the trade once you've done what you need)

In this example I put a 0,57 PED Pixie Harness (M)
Afterwood I will put several stacks of Vibrant Sweat and point at each point the TT value of the trade passes to 0,58 PED
In my example I discovered that if I put a stack of 500 Vibrant Sweat it still show 0,57 PED value but if I put a stack of 501 it shown a 0,58 PED value.

Now I know that if I put 501 Vibrant Sweat in the TT it will show 0,01 PED.
Therefore

The actual value that should be shown isn't 0,58 PED.
But 0,58-0,01+0,00501=0.57501PED.

So I found out that that Pixie armor plus the 501 Vibrant Sweat were worth 0,57501.
Since the Vibrant Sweat was worth 0,00501 then the Pixie armor is worth 0,57000.

Afterwood I went testing how much decay would I get after I get hit by a Ambulimax young (non-critical hit)
I found that after I got hit (my HP was very low so it took one hit to kill my avatar)

The Pixie Harness (M) was worth less.
If I put it plus 619 Bottles of Vibrant Sweat (BVS) it still shown the value of 0,57 PED in the Trade Terminal.
Only at 620 BVS that it passed to 0,58.
So I can conclude that that hit made my armor decay the value of 119 (620-501) Bottles of Vibrant Sweat.
Or in an other way:
The value of the armor was 0,57501-0,00620=0,56881
0.57000-0,56881=0,00119 PED.

I made an other tests following this just to gather more data to have a better understanding of the decay of the pixie armor.


TT Value......No.BVS
0,57...............500
0,58...............501

1Hit (Ambulimax Young)
0,57...............619
0,58...............620

1Hit (Ambulimax Young)
0,57...............738
0,58...............739

But it would be hard for you to verify this data so I made it with a fully repaired armor as well

TT Value......No.BVS
2,90...............500
2,91...............501

1Hit (Ambulimax Young)
2,89...............6
2,90...............7

decay=0.00506 PED

and after 2 more Hit (Ambulimax Young)
2,88...............15
2,89...............16

decay=0.01009 PED
0.01009 PED/2 = 0.00505 PED.


One other conclusion is obvious now.
Armors with less TT value than full status althought protecting less will also decay less.
(The diference is only obvious and statistically valid if the difference it big enough, with this I mean that if you test the decay you'll see that it will vary usually less 0,00002 from consecutive hits near its actuall average; but between significant differences in TT value bettwen the armor it is quite obvious and impossible to deny and call it just a statistical glitch)
0.00506 PED is significantly different from 0,00119 PED.

This method can be used to test the decay of all the items ingame that I know of (of the items that actually do decay)
And it is very accurate.
 
Here are a few examples of my results:
Armors were repaired to full status before the start of the test.

Salamander....................(5 Impact).........0,750 PEC.........6,667 Dmg/PEC
Decay in 1000 Damage.....(5 Impact)......150,00 PEC

Warrior..........................(5 Impact).........0,224 PEC........22,321 Dmg/PEC
Decay in 1000 Damage.....(5 Impact)........44,80 PEC



Pixie.............................(9 Impact)..........0,505 PEC........17.822 Dmg/PEC
Decay in 1000 Damage.....(9 Impact)........56,11 PEC



Nemesis........................(15 Impact)........1,091 PEC.........13.749 Dmg/PEC
Decay in 1000 Damage.....(15 Impact)......72,73 PEC

Rascal..........................(15 Impact)........1,103 PEC..........13.599 Dmg/PEC
Decay in 1000 Damage....(15 Impact).......73,53 PEC


I don't know why the Salamander decay is so out of balance (Maybe Ambulimax is buged and makes other kinds of damage or maybe it is the armor)
I know for sure that it has been this way in Female and Male armors for several months now.

If you find different results, I'm sure that lots of people will appreciate if you share it with us :cool:
 
MA has given us the require tools to obtain a pretty accurate view of what the decay of an item is with just 1 decrease in value (Items that have several decay accordingly to their TT will of course need more tests)

Resume:
BVS- Bottle of Vibrant Sweat.
TT- Trade Terminal.

You put the item in the TT.
You take note of the value of the item displayed X
You take note of the ammount of BVS V that it requires for the actual value displayed in the TT passes to X+0,01

The "true" value T of the item should be then:
X+0,00501-V

V= no. BVS/100000

(I accept that this will give a margin of error of 0,00001 PED sometimes, but this is so little :D )
 
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MG Mighty said:
Resume:
BVS- Bottle of Vibrant Sweat.
TT- Trade Terminal.

You put the item in the TT.
You take note of the value of the item displayed X
You take note of the ammount of BVS V that it requires for the actual value displayed in the TT passes to X+0,01

The "true" value T of the item should be then:
X+0,00501-V


(I accept that this will give a margin of error of 0,00001 PED sometimes, but this is so little :D )

Thanks for sharing this method!
 
MG Mighty said:
MA has given us the require tools to obtain a pretty accurate view of what the decay of an item is with just 1 decrease in value (Items that have several decay accordingly to their TT will of course need more tests)

Resume:
BVS- Bottle of Vibrant Sweat.
TT- Trade Terminal.

You put the item in the TT.
You take note of the value of the item displayed X
You take note of the ammount of BVS V that it requires for the actual value displayed in the TT passes to X+0,01

The "true" value T of the item should be then:
X+0,00501-V

V= no. BVS/100000

(I accept that this will give a margin of error of 0,00001 PED sometimes, but this is so little :D )

This is the smartest uses of the system I ever saw. You can determine the decay for any item this way, in maybe just a few uses and a repeated experiment for verification.

See what happens when you get hit with less damage than the armor expecs (shows as 1.0 damage)
 
Ic, your method I have to say is excellent :D If you want to do the testing for the rest of the armors, please continue. In the mean time, I'll consider whether I will continue with my testing or not..


Edit. There is no point for me to continue my tests. If you'd like to cooperate, by all means PM me but since the tests is so pain free to carry out, I look forward to seeing the decay rates on the rest of the armors!
 
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Nice find!

So i guess i will need some sweat now ;)

BTW, in the meanwhile, I would like to see what happens after 2 hit, or 3. Just to see if the difference increases, stays the same, or decreases.

My guess is that de difference is caused by rounding. If so, it will get corrected in following hits. If the difference increases, it will mean that the decay rate realy IS slightly different.

Edit: another possebility might be that the mob did more damage when hitting the rascal. Although MA claims you dont pay for unabsorbed damage, I heard several reports stating otherwise.
 
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I tested gremlin this way. Here are my results:

test1:
sweat:599
damage:??
part:harness

test2:
sweat:594
damage:38.1
part:shin

test3:
sweat:592
damage:36.0
part:arms

test4:
sweat:592
damage:20.2
part:harness

Then I got bored. The results seem not to be very consistent.

My conclusion is: we need mode data to come to a conclusion.

My suspision is: Rascal, nemesis and gremlin decay exactly the same, with small variations caused by either damage dealth, rounding errors, or some randomizer.
 
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I suspect the reason salamander decays more is the "overprotection" of the burn and penetration aspects, and you were testing it versus other types of damage.

An ideal armor would protect ONLY for 1 type of damage. For example, an armor with 15 impact protection and nothing else, to hunt Falx. since falx only do impact damage, this would be perfect.

This is the problem I see: MA claims if an armor doesnt protect for a certain type of damage, the armor doesnt decay (which btw has been shown not to be true in some cases). BUT, take for example Rascal VS cut damage: it protects 5 of this type of dmg. Perhaps the armor decays for ALL the different types of dmg it can protect against, even if the hit you take doesn't include that type of damage. And perhaps if you get hit with a pure stab hit (for which rascal has no protection) then it doesnt decay at all.

Also, from a programming standpoint this would be simpler: each armor has only one decay multiple.

Logic flow would look something like this:

1. Incoming hit, 100% cut
2. Can the armor worn protect this tpye of damage?

2a. Yes, decay=X*D, where X=amount of damage absorbed, and D=decay factor for this armor

2b. No, take full damage, no decay.

If armors only decayed on the portion of the type of damage being deal, armors would need a decay factor for each type of dmg it can protect against.

I have not tested this, but it seems to fit the salamander anomaly, and is something that I have noticed anecdotally with various armors.
 
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I should say, an ideal armor would only protect for the type of damage the mob you want to hunt deals.

Many times I think we "carry" cold and acid protection for nothing on good armors, and get charged decay for it.
 
Witte said:
I tested gremlin this way. Here are my results:

test1:
sweat:599
damage:??
part:harness

test2:
sweat:594
damage:38.1
part:shin

test3:
sweat:592
damage:36.0
part:arms

test4:
sweat:592
damage:20.2
part:harness

Then I got bored. The results seem not to be very consistent.

My conclusion is: we need mode data to come to a conclusion.

My suspision is: Rascal, nemesis and gremlin decay exactly the same, with small variations caused by either damage dealth, rounding errors, or some randomizer.


Witte, if you are only wearing 1 armor part, how do you KNOW that 38.1 damage was ALL on the shin. Maybe 30% was on harness area, 5% on gloves area, which u were not wearing. You cannot be sure the shin took all that damage. I think trying to test individual pieces unnecessarily confuses the matter, and is not very useful anyway, since most people wear complete sets of armor (perhaps not all parts the same armor, but you get my meaning).
 
neomaven said:
Witte, if you are only wearing 1 armor part, how do you KNOW that 38.1 damage was ALL on the shin. Maybe 30% was on harness area, 5% on gloves area, which u were not wearing. You cannot be sure the shin took all that damage. I think trying to test individual pieces unnecessarily confuses the matter, and is not very useful anyway, since most people wear complete sets of armor (perhaps not all parts the same armor, but you get my meaning).

I was wearing a full armor, and after one hit, only one part got decayed. Thats how I know ;). And I noted the armor part, because it could be the reason why there are small differences in decay after each hit. So please try to learn abit more about the subject before you call it confusing :confused:.

Anyway, I read your theory on the previous page. I have one question for you, why does it only occur in some very specific situations? Until now it has only occured with Vigi impact, Gremlin cut and salamander impact. There are about 20-30 other situations tested where the effect doesnt occur.

I am more likely to think its a bug, or its randomly implemented by MA. I can remeber that right after the big armor VU, the impact decay of vigi was allot lower.
 
Witte,

You didnt make it clear that you were wearing full armor. Sorry for my misunderstanding. Notice i DID say "if" you were wearing one armor part, which indicated I was not sure one way or the other.

You seem not to like anyone who says ANYTHING that disagrees with your ideas, so I will crawl back in my hole. Sorry for offering ideas.
 
neomaven said:
Witte,

You didnt make it clear that you were wearing full armor. Sorry for my misunderstanding. Notice i DID say "if" you were wearing one armor part, which indicated I was not sure one way or the other.

You seem not to like anyone who says ANYTHING that disagrees with your ideas, so I will crawl back in my hole. Sorry for offering ideas.

Well I don't mind people disagreeing, at least, not when they come with valid arguments. But most people with a different oppinion don't have any argument at all, and somtimes start saying stuff like: I play this game for XX years, so shut up.

Anyway, if I offended you, sorry for that. And honoustly, I dont have any ideas. I am just saying I think yours are wrong. If you have reason to believe its not wrong, you can simply come with counter arguments. Thats what discussing is right? ;)
 
Perhaps you are right about the bug.

I will defer to your expertise.
 
I prefer to display the results in another way:

I must thank -Archangel- for this tests results


Nemesis harness (F)

Impact decay tests

~15 Damage~Ambulimax Young

Start Full Repaired Armor V.U. 8.3.2
64,13 999
64,14 1000 64,12501

1 Hit
64,11 91
64,12 92 64,11409

2 Hit
64,10 180
64,11 181 64,10320

3 Hit (wasn't record the data because of double hit on harness)
▬ ▬ ▬
▬ ▬ ▬

4 Hit
64,08 361
64,09 362 64,08139

5 Hit
64,07 451
64,08 452 64,07049

6 Hit (wasn't record the data because of triple hit on harness)
▬ ▬ ▬
▬ ▬ ▬

7 Hit (wasn't record the data because of triple hit on harness)
▬ ▬ ▬
▬ ▬ ▬

8 Hit
64,04 718
64,05 719 64,03782

9 Hit
64,03 805
64,04 806 64,02695

10 Hit (wasn't record the data because of triple hit on harness)
▬ ▬ ▬
▬ ▬ ▬

11 Hit (wasn't record the data because of triple hit on harness)
▬ ▬ ▬
▬ ▬ ▬

12 Hit
63,99 69
64,00 70 63,99431

13 Hit (wasn't record the data because of double hit on harness)
▬ ▬ ▬
▬ ▬ ▬

14 Hit
63,97 243
63,98 244 63,97257

15 Hit
63,96 329
63,97 330 63,96171


____________________________________________________________

V.U.8.3.2--------64,12501............Decay..........Average in 1 hit

0001------------64,11409---------0,01092-------0,01092
0002------------64,10320---------0,01089-------0,01089
0003------------▬▬▬▬▬--------▬▬▬▬--------0,01090
0004------------64,08139---------0,02181-------0,01091
0005------------64,07049---------0,01090-------0,01090

0006------------▬▬▬▬▬--------▬▬▬▬--------0,01089
0007------------▬▬▬▬▬--------▬▬▬▬--------0,01089
0008------------64,03782---------0,03267-------0,01089
0009------------64,02695---------0,01087-------0,01087
0010------------▬▬▬▬▬--------▬▬▬▬--------0,01088

0011------------▬▬▬▬▬--------▬▬▬▬--------0,01088
0012------------63,99431---------0,03264-------0,01088
0013------------▬▬▬▬▬--------▬▬▬▬--------0,01087
0014------------63,97257---------0,02174-------0,01087
0015------------63,96171---------0,01086-------0,01086

Or you can get the Excel file
At:
http://www.starbase.se/files/Nemesis (F).xls
[Thanks to e-lite for the storage space]

Which gots more data on Nemesis decay and will allow you an easier way to save your own data.
 
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Nice method.

Wondering i heard a lot of talk about keeping armor fully repaired because fully repaired armor gives the best protection. It should be possible to test this statement with this method.

Please continue the research. I look forward to the results.

Cheers
Richard
(ingame Siam)
 
Hmm thinking a bit more.

Does the repair terminal do a real full repair or only the real pecs you put in?

Regards
Richard
(ingame Siam)
 
rhogenbe said:
Nice method.

Wondering i heard a lot of talk about keeping armor fully repaired because fully repaired armor gives the best protection. It should be possible to test this statement with this method.

Please continue the research. I look forward to the results.

Cheers
Richard
(ingame Siam)

Fully repaired armor gives better protection, this is correct but you don't need and won't use any of the above to find it out ;)
It requires an other approach to get that conclusion, and unfortunatly we can be trully sure of the results.
I might try to determine the decay of a non fully repaired armor taking non full hits (1 damage remaining) but it will be besides extremelly boring it shall be a little expensive, so I prefer to see the overall picture of all armors before entering such test.
 
rhogenbe said:
Hmm thinking a bit more.

Does the repair terminal do a real full repair or only the real pecs you put in?

Regards
Richard
(ingame Siam)

I don't know what you mean by this.

You never put PECs in the repair terminal.
You slide the bar to a certain %, and at 100% the item shall be fully repaired (if it isn't limited used and can be repaired)
About the PED card it is know for a while that it saves more data than what it displays, to test it you might try to sell standard dampers to TT one by one (warning it shall be boring and very time consuming)
Basically the game rounds to the nearest PEC when displaying it value in the terminal.
And the this method doesn't require the repair terminal at all.
Just the Trade Terminal.
 
What i mean is say the damage on an armor part is 4.9333 ped just proved with your method. Will the repair terminal repair all of it for a mere 4.93 ped or will there be 0.0033 ped of damage left on the armor part.

Cheers
Richard
(ingame Siam)
 
rhogenbe said:
What i mean is say the damage on an armor part is 4.9333 ped just proved with your method. Will the repair terminal repair all of it for a mere 4.93 ped or will there be 0.0033 ped of damage left on the armor part.

Cheers
Richard
(ingame Siam)

The repair terminal will repair it all.
And you shall pay it all also ;)
Besides you can test the value of any item with my method so if you have doubts you can test the value of the full tt armor piece as well.
 
Excelent tests. I think we have enough data now to determine the rate that the protection reduces. And when we know the rate, we also know if it is dependent on TT value or the durability, given is a straightline ratio.

I will try to come with some sort of conclusion later ;)
 
Witte said:
Excelent tests. I think we have enough data now to determine the rate that the protection reduces. And when we know the rate, we also know if it is dependent on TT value or the durability, given is a straightline ratio.

I will try to come with some sort of conclusion later ;)

Well you must be a lot more patient than me.
And I consider myself a very patient person.
To that you'd need thousands of hits with the current situation in which you don't know how much a Mob Hits therefore you can't trully estimate what the armor protects, I accept that there is a method, the only one I've been told is trully beyond my available PEDs and time.
And if you think I don't do some testings if my friends request me (And pay the costs) just look below ...
 
Nemesis Impact Decay Study

As promissed here is what I think the decay tests would look like if done by a more accurate method (comparing to what was public known last month)

I'm just posting a link to the Excel file.

In it you'll see the decay of Nemesis Armor
Tested on Ambulimax [So it was only protecting Impact and it was absorving as much as it possible could every time, 15 Damage impact at first when it was fully repaired, later on I assume that the protection decreased but I saw no evidences to support this at all]

http://www.starbase.se/files/Nemesis-F-8.4.xls

It contains data from a tested conducted near Nea's Place.
In the day previous and on the day of the release of VU 8.4
 
-Archangel- said:
Well you must be a lot more patient than me.
And I consider myself a very patient person.
To that you'd need thousands of hits with the current situation in which you don't know how much a Mob Hits therefore you can't trully estimate what the armor protects, I accept that there is a method, the only one I've been told is trully beyond my available PEDs and time.
And if you think I don't do some testings if my friends request me (And pay the costs) just look below ...

Nah i dont mean to test it all the way hehe.

But since we can see now that the decay per hit gets less when the armor gets more decayed, and we also know that decay is proportional to the amount of absorbed damage, we can acutally calculate the protection offered at each point of the TT value.

A good armor to test this is pixie. Just loot a couple parts from snables, and repair them to a desired couple of steps in TT value, then test the decay at those TT levels, and calculate the corresponding protection. Then you plot it in a diagram. And most likely you can draw some conclustions from it. For example if its a straigt line, and what the decicive factor is for the offered protection, ttvalue or durability.

Maybe I will do that when I have some time ;)
 
Excellent find Mighty +rep

I'm no statistician, but from the figures produced so far does there appear to be any link between decay reduction and durability? I would suspect this may be the hidden 'durability factor' that many have been searching for.
 
Ironheart said:
Excellent find Mighty +rep

I'm no statistician, but from the figures produced so far does there appear to be any link between decay reduction and durability? I would suspect this may be the hidden 'durability factor' that many have been searching for.

Very hard to say since mobs do variable damage so the tests can't be done the way I trully wished.

Anyway look at the following examples:
Knight Impact Protection 12 Damage Decay= 0,776 PEC
Goblin Impact Protection 12 Damage Decay= 0,782 PEC
Pixie Impact+Cut Protection 12 Damage Decay= 0,781 PEC

In them the damage was 12
Several durability, even different types of damage,
Still the variation between them isn't high enough for me to establish any relation besides that total damage might be the most important factor in determining the decay.
 
MG Mighty said:
Very hard to say since mobs do variable damage so the tests can't be done the way I trully wished.

Anyway look at the following examples:
Knight Impact Protection 12 Damage Decay= 0,776 PEC
Goblin Impact Protection 12 Damage Decay= 0,782 PEC
Pixie Impact+Cut Protection 12 Damage Decay= 0,781 PEC

In them the damage was 12
Several durability, even different types of damage,
Still the variation between them isn't high enough for me to establish any relation besides that total damage might be the most important factor in determining the decay.

It seems the more is found out, the more confusing it gets :S.

I always was under the impression that each damage type decay on its own so to speak. But it seem now we can add all damages and then calculate total decay. It does explain some irregular testresults I had.

And I also cant figure out a relation between durability and the decay. However, armors with high durability seem to decay abit less. Although its hardly noticable.
 
MG Mighty said:
All posts

OK, when I opened the thread I was half hoping for (but not expecting) the way to tell the decay of any item from looking at the description & data in the auction. I always keep thinking it must be possible but I'm always too lazy to try figure it out....not enough time....must get more skills :D

But your trick is really neat - finally a use for all that dung! Nice one, thanks for sharing. I like little tricks like that, gutted i didn't think of it myself!
 
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