Lilith HTBF

Jeez, send some of that sword luck over here. Still never seen a single sword drop on any difficulty.

The thing is, if VD drop rates are around 50%, even if people are lotting different items unless you kill the spitewardens you statistically have a better chance of getting stuff soloing on VE. In the rare event that the armor drops you have a 1 in 5 chance of it being the armor YOU need versus what the others are lotting. Lets say on VD there's a 50% chance of the slot loading for brevity, and if the slot loads, there's a 10% chance of a malignance armor loading (seems about right) and of those armors the 5 pieces have equal distribution. That means there's only a 1% chance of getting your specific piece per run.

--50% chance to see a drop
--10% of that chance to see a Malignance Armor rather than a weapon or earring
--20% of that chance to see the specific armor slot you're after

Yeah, that's a 1% chance.

I'm sure the actual drop rates in game are going to be different than my example, but they're just baseball park figures to make a point. If you aren't killing spitewardens on the higher difficulies, the extra drop rate does NOT make up for the added lot competetion.




You must be joking right? That just means you've only done a few runs. I've thrown away so many swords the Sandorian Royal Knights could have opened up a brand new armory with them by now...

I'm not sure exactly what you're trying to say with the '10% of chance to see a malignance armor rather than a weapon or earring' and '20% chance to see the armor you're after'.. because the same should apply to VE or E.

The only difference is likely to be the initial chance to see a drop. Three times as likely is better, provided you are looking for different pieces than the people you're grouped with.

Unfortunately, if you're missing all 5 pieces, there isn't much logical reason to go with anyone else lotting any of them to attain a higher difficulty. Should be breakeven at 2/5, and any more than that is an advantage to grouping. Granted, this is assuming you see a shout or linkshell opportunity and hop on it. Spending time making a group will likely push the breakeven to 3/5.

The difference is that on VE there's no lot competetion. No matter which armor piece loads you're getting it. The ratio favors solo for the first 3 or 4 pieces that way. The last and final piece would eventually swing in favor of grouping on VD. But it's still highly ineffecient to do VD and NOT kill the spitewardens. That was more or less what I was getting at.

I've met people who hold the notion that on VD the higher drop rate alone is worth grouping up for under any circumstance. Some people prefer to do it when they only have 1 or 2 pieces. "Just bring a thief" they say. But treasure hunter only affects drop quantity, and not quality. Even if the slot loads all those weapons you end up farming aren't what you're after. Also VD has an increased risk of wiping. If your group ends up dead that's a factor that we haven't mentioned, but it does happen in practice. VE runs are pretty much impossible to wipe to.

Personally I think the most effeceint rout in all circumstances is to actually solo or duo on Easy rather than VE or group on VD, but maybe that's just me. Meh.

I still don't see where these statistics are coming from. Since my last Mali drop (I'm still only 1 out of 5). Since then im currently 0/97 on any more gear on VE with th8-9.

Assume you have a ~15% droprate on any equippable on VE, and a ~50% droprate on VD, and the runs are similar time(I've seen plenty of 2 minute VDs with less than 6, so seems reasonable).

If you are 2/5, and seacom one piece uncontested:
.15 * rateofgear * 3/5 = .09ROG on VE
.5 * rateofgear * 1/5 = .10ROG on VD

If you are 3/5, and seacom one piece uncontested:
.15 * rateofgear * 2/5 = .06ROG on VE
.5 * rateofgear * 1/5 = .10ROG on VD

If you are 4/5, and seacom one piece uncontested:
.15 * rateofgear * 2/5 = .03ROG on VE
.5 * rateofgear * 1/5 = .10ROG

Slots being weapons or earrings is entirely irrelevant. The slot distribution is the same across difficulties in all likelihood, meaning the rate of reward is only the #/slots over time and weapons are a proportionally equal inconvenience regardless of difficulty.

The more pieces you have, the more beneficial a group VD becomes, provided you can seacom any one piece you are missing without a competing lotter. There is a lot of reason people prefer solo, but even without spitewardens you can make a pretty strong case for VD being worthwhile after you've obtained your first 2-3 pieces.

Random is random. I went 0 for 100+ on Malignance Armor soloing VE. I got my first piece by around 120 runs. Then by 200 runs I was at 3/5 and by now at around 350 I'm up to 4/5. I was getting drops the whole time, just not the armor up to that point. I saw the earring drop in the first 10 runs, and had all the weapons well before 100. At that point i just stopped seeing duplicates, so stuff was probably dropping and I just didn't know about it. I've literally thrown away over a dozen swords, and I once got 2 swords in a 5 run span.


Very useful. I'd argue that the ease of soloing would put the breakeven point at around 3 or 4 pieces. Just because you can avoid having to form parties and deal with people's schedules. Between finding people with the right jobs and replacing people if they have to leave, alongside the entry lines it's convenient to be able to just queue up and afk until you enter and knock the fight out. But the final piece is definately best done in a group, provided you can lot uncontested. I can't argue that point.

It really depends on your social abilities, friend list, etc. If you have a few competent people in your linkshell that play around the same time, you can often form a functional group in 10 minutes or less. If I weren't a multiboxer, I'd be grouping as soon as I got 2 pieces. Not only is it slightly more value per run, it's more interesting to see other people get gear and have people to talk to and share your droprate woes with than to blindly solo. It probably is not technically faster until 3/5.

It sounds to me like you don't want to feel like you're doing it wrong by spending as much time as you are on VE, but are intimidated at the aspect of trying a harder difficulty. There's nothing saying you can't do both, maybe solo VE while waiting for linkshell members to get on to form a coherent VD group? Tons of options out there.

Keep in mind, the more people who are willing to do VD, the less queues everyone else will have. It's not only better for you, it's better for the server, and it's a disservice to everyone to downplay it.

I lost track but was spamming it over the last 6 days, mastered THF/WAR solo on VE, averaging 4x7 per day (i.e. 4 rounds of farming merits and spending them on fights) and more on weekends.

Am 3/3 weapons 5/5 armor (last piece hands took exceptionally long, 2 days) and still missing earring. Was getting 1-2 pieces per day. First 3 pieces within 30 runs I think.

Didn't really focus on proc TH but usually get it up to 10 with SA TA Feint etc.

I mean I haven't done hundreds, but certainly > 30, and others I go with have done more and it's been extremely rare for them too. However, we have gotten a few Daybreaks, a couple greatswords, a ton of earrings, and several pieces of armor just on the runs I've been on, so I think these assumptions of drop rates for individual non-armor items are probably no more than speculation and confirmation bias unless we have solid data.

You can feel super lucky. I went 4/5 first 2 days doing like 100 runs. Since then I did at least another 100, but probably more and I'm still 4/5.

That is the sword we're talking about. There isn't a 1 handed sword, if that's what you're expecting to see.

Actually there is only a 1 handed sword lol

https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Zantetsuken
https://www.bg-wiki.com/bg/Zantetsuken_X

Those are from Odin, not Lilith.

Doh, brainfart! My bad!

Our last 11 VDs with 3/3 Spitewardens killed:
Legs, Sword
Club
Body
Gloves
Nothing
Body
Hat
Legs, Body, Sword
Nothing
Legs, Sword x2
Legs, Sword

Decent drops.

What setup you guys using if you don't mind me asking? My current setup for D or VD spitewarden killing is: RUN MNK RDM BRD COR WHM. RDM to cripple her for 2-3 silences be4 she becomes more resistant along other enfeebles which gives us like 10mins safety window be4 she becomes unmanageable and have to kill her asap. Hume fomor dies fast to mnk attacking it. Galka fomor usually goes fast with shijin spiral > Leaden Salute spam. Elvaan one is more toublesome so we just all engage it and try to pool in our dps since only last stand can take a while to kill it. Our runs on D usually take 10-12 mins. VD is a little bit more tricky since sometimes she spawns the fomors back to back and things can get messy in no time :/

Spitewardens are supposed to open a slot but that looks like a straight increase to armor drops too. Unless VD increases odds of that as well

There is a video of it on youtube. I checked briefly seemed like RNG strat

RUN/DRK RNG SMN COR WHM/DRK GEO/DRK, our average run is 15~19 min w/o SPs. Are you using Absorb-TP? Casting Absorb-TP on Lilith while people are killing gyves/wardens makes things more manageable. I'm not sure if you can really cap attack with just non-SV Minuets, Chaos and Dia on VD.

Never thought about using absorb tp as a strategy. Gonna have to give it a try. Yeah it's pretty doubtful you can cap attack on VD without a geo. Only Haudrale is the troublesome guy if only the cor attacks it, so we just have everyone engage it to bring it down faster. The clear time seems about the same for us also lol. So yeah it can take a while to kill Lilith.

Minor update, after grinding for the past few days, I finally got my last piece, the earring. Had been fighting as VE solo thief only.

Probably will be back for my two mules though, had to get them through the missions first.

I very much dislike Lilith now. I'm 0/~300 on solo runs (TH4, E, only 1 piece owned). Fie on thee!

Swap back to VE using thief. That's what I'm about to do and I'm right around the same numbers as you on E for my last piece.

3/70ish on VD for armor.. drop rate is just plain terrible

I've capped my chapters from running this fight, got Sword/Pole/Earring/Body so far. I'll never need to farm Chapters 6-10 again!

Got the entire set in roughly 50 runs minus the sword a few days ago. I kept dropping the sword to keep an extra slot open.

In the 80 runs I've done solo or duo with th4 (cor/thf) on easy:
4x Sword
4x Staff
4x Club
3x Earring
2x Hat
2x Legs
2x Feet
1x Hands
1x Body

I'm still helping friends. I have no clue if dropping the sword helps. I have no use for the sword on the jobs that can use it. What has helped getting that last piece to drop was partnering with friends who still needed several pieces. I called dibs on the feet.