Loot mechanics

The Loot mechanics page will outline the math behind drop rates, and can be used to better understand how drops are calculated for groups specifically.

For basic information on drop rates and for solo rates, see the Drop rate page.

To be clear, this system has never been a secret, but it has been poorly communicated in the past. So, this page was born.

Section 1: Rationale

Drop rates are different in August than you would expect to see in OSRS, and this is due to many factors. The primary factors are:

• Economy at scale
• Player power

The economy of August is inherently smaller than a game like OSRS, and the player in August does exponentially more damage to NPCs than you do in OSRS.
With these two things in mind, the drop rate of certain NPCs needs to be adjusted to balace out the game.

Drop rate is more than just the rate of the listed NPC. There are additional factors, outlined below;

• Assume a monster has a drop rate of 1/100
• On kill, regardless of party size or your damage contribution, each player has a chance to roll drops.
• Drop rolls are calculated by table first, THEN the item itself.
• Additionally, your damage contribution is factored into this rate.

Section 2: Examples

Example 1: World Boss

Let's say you are one of 500 people killing the World Boss, and an item on that table is 1/100, and none of them drop?
Surely, there should have been 5 dropped. If this were the case, the economy would collapse. This was thought of and intentially not how it works.

For this example, let's assume you had a 1% damage contribution

• All players receive a "bonus" 20% damage contribution for being in a grouped kill.
  • Total contribution is now 21%.
• With a 21% contribution, the 1/100 drop table becomes 4.761x rarer than the base rate.
• The 1/100 drop table is now 1/476

Example 2: Trio Grouping

Let's say instead of being 1 of 500 people, you're in a trio.

For this example, let's assume you had a 33% damage contribution

• All players receive a "bonus" 20% damage contribution for being in a grouped kill.
  • Total contribution is now 53%
• With a 53% contribution, the 1/100 drop table becomes 1.886x rarer than the base rate.
• The 1/100 drop table is now 1/189

Example 3: Duo Grouping

Let's say instead of a trio, you're in a duo.

For this example, let's assume you had a 66% damage contribution

• All players receive a "bonus" 20% damage contribution for being in a grouped kill.
  • Total contribution is now 86%
• With a 86% contribution, the 1/100 drop table becomes 1.163x rarer than the base rate.
• The 1/100 drop table is now 1/116

Example 4: Five Man Group

For this example, let's assume you are a 5 man team which all had equal damage contribution.

The drop table we will use is the Holy Elixir / Spirit Shield table, which is 1/64
Following the same structure as above, all players now have a 40% effective damage contribution, adjusting the drop rate from 1/64 to 1/160

This means that your team has 5 chances to roll the table at 1/160.
5 players rolling 1/160 is 5/160 == 1/32

Given these calculations:

• The expected kills to roll this drop table is 32 kills in a 5 man group at equal(20%) contribution.
• The expected kills to roll this drop table is 64 kills in a solo party at 100% contribution.

Section 3: Weighting

Weighting becomes a factor when a drop table contains more than 1 item in that table. As shown above in Example 4, the drop table discussed had 2 items. These two items are not guaranteed to have the same weighting, meaning the likelyhood for you to receive one or the other if you roll that drop rable.

Utilizing the Corporeal Beast again:

• In Oldschool RuneScape, you have a 1/585 chance to hit the "Sigil" drop table.
  • When you hit this table, you have a 1/7 chance of receiving an Elysian sigil, and a 3/7 chance of a Spectral or Arcane sigil.

A similar system exists within August, whereby some items in a specific loot table are weighted higher than others to keep item rarity in check.