Drop rate early findings & suggestions

NOTE: Because of a comment from PF2K saying this only affects legendary gear, it may be possible that the drop rates of non legendary items being altered may very well be unintentional, and this is indirectly a bug report.

After the announcement that the drop rates of items in a given group could be altered individually, I knew that it would require a lot of fine tuning so that already expensive items don't skyrocket in price, items that provide a significant power boost don't become out of reach, and that a flood of Walls of the Architect doesn't suddenly appear.


Because of this, I decided that I would take note of what I get out of Moes and Skirmish farming, to get a glimpse of how it affects drops. After opening a good amount of moes chests and farming level 18 skirmish chests, I feel like I have a decent enough sample size to start having somewhat grounded opinions on this change. Of note are two things in particular - the amount of reinforced construction, construction additions, and the lack of work tools.
I counted 32 Reinforced Constructions, 40 construction additions out of the 424 total chests. In contrast, Work Tools are the rarest, with only three work tools appearing across all 424 chests. The sheer quantity of epic torcs and warpaints from level 15 Moes is because of the lack of any other epic item in that level range.

To their credit, there are some positives - far less useless scepters, belly bows, and banners appear that I would usually just vendor before the patch. Ramses and Ares manuals are also more common, letting newcomers gear up faster. That being said there are a few concerns I have with these changes as they currently are implemented.

Firstly is the lack of Work Tools. While every other item type in the game can inevitably be skipped on if a player does not like using the specific units they are tied to, Work Tools are essential for all players. As villagers are the backbone of the early game economy and are what the game recommends players to use (notably on a loading screen), having it so that it takes a huge quantity of chests before earning a level 40 work tool would be demotivating as a new player. Arguments could be made that a player could just craft or buy a Work Tool, and while these arguments are technically correct in that the store bought and crafted hammers are fairly cheap, it leaves a weird impression when the alternative of just looting chests is greatly inefficient for getting any level 40 work tool.
Furthermore, this could potentially result in Hammer of Kaveh and Divine Hammer of Construction becoming out of reach from the average player - these are significant power spikes for a player that would simply be out of reach if the same kind of drop rates noted applied onto legendary gear.

Secondly is the excess surplus of Reinforced Construction. The sheer amount of walls people get will practically replace scepters and other items only used by one-two units as the new item flooding the market. The vast majority of walls are not particularly useful as they increase building survivability, which most buildings will not take much advantage of. The main stats people then look on walls are cost reduction and build time, with damage/ignore armor only being used on guard towers and fortresses. Likewise, Construction Additions also have a greatly increased drop rate, but the wide majority of them have a much more substantial impact on gameplay, with training manuals letting you get units out faster, and construction blueprints letting you get up buildings noticeably faster.

Thus, if work tool drop rates are indeed as low as it has been for me, I think increasing their drop rate (by around twice as much?) would help newer players get eased into gearing up their villagers, and if any broad item type must have their drop rate reduced to accommodate drop rate changes/new item types, reinforced construction are currently a safe bet.

There could also be an argument for why other item types could use a higher drop rate, if you have any thoughts and suggestions on the drop rates feel free to leave them!

 

I've noticed that I have been earning an unusually large number of gear types that would be common in the legendary loot pool on non legendary gear drops, so I decided I would record a few drops so I can get an idea of if it truly is the case.

Once again I have taken note of the gear types I get from pre-40 chests. 72 level 18 chests were opened and the sheer amount of reinforced construction is immediately noticed.
11 of the total loot drops are reinforced construction - nearly 20% of all of these chests opened.
Unlike last time, this time saw only 5 construction additions.
I did further testing on level 25 moes chests:

Out of 288 level 25 moes chests, there are 16 cloth armor, 23 reinforced construction, and 22 construction additions. This is in contrast with only 2 warpaint, and this distribution matches what likely is based on the legendary item category distribution rates.

 

It seems that Celeste legendaries drop far, far less than classic legendaries, even in slots that should be equivalent. People have stated a lack of MAGs, Walls of the Architect, and Athenian Manuals because those are what people usually focus on. It was not until later that we thought more about the shortage being about an overall lack of celeste gear in celeste legendary chests. Here is the raw drops from Sonlux's questing containing around ~500 legendary chests, with only one marion in terms of classic chests.. Below that compilation is my attempt at singling out each legendary and counting the amount of classic against celeste legendaries.



And on top of that, my personal legendary findings across celeste chests:
Blueprints of Khufu,
Swift torc,
Walls of khufu,
Robes of Menes x3,
Wall joints of the Architect,
Oars of the Argo,
Medal of Lycurgus,
Scrolls of Gilgamesh,
Sword of Menes,
Merchant Log of Sinhue,
Hull of Khufu,
Slidings of the Argo,
Beams of Khnum
Horse Armor of Sargon
14 classics, 2 celeste from my personal experience.

So all in all, combining Sonlux's and my own findings, that is 67 classic, 13 celeste, across a total of 80 legendaries. And all that from Celeste legendary chests. It would be one thing if the ratio was around 60% classic: 40% celeste legendaries from a celeste legendary chest, but even in gear slots where Celeste gear choices are used equally or more than the classic options and have similar amounts of gear in that specific pool, there is still a notable difference.
Medium Armor has two solid classic options - Breastplate of Gilgamesh and Cuirass of Rostam. There are also three classic options, two are usable for most units - Breastplate of Alexander and Esfandiyar's Divine Breastplate, and Tyr's for a niche use. Despite this, the ratio of classic and celeste legendary medium armor is 5:1.

I think if the drop rates were made so that across a given item type, most items have similar drop rates, regardless of being classic or celeste, unless there is a good reason for reducing them, such as avoiding Tim619's meme of 20k mags, or an item literally being by design only usable on two niche units (Stone/Log Thrower and Scorpio are the only units that take advantage of Tyr's Magnificent Breastplate.) So having similar chances of each medium armor being dropped when a legendary will be a medium armor, excluding Tyr's Breastplate which is a fine choice to lower for its restrictive unit options.