Nightmare unique drop rates have always been infamously low, and the Summer Sweep-Up blog outlined updates that are supposed to fix that. Jagex says it wants the boss to be “'the place that you go to get Inquisitor,” so do the drop rate increases as-proposed do the job? In short: no, not really, though there are positive secondary effects. Currently, Nightmare drops have a pretty funky system. I’m mostly going to reference Phosani’s, as it’s the quicker method of getting uniques. She has an approximate 1/111 unique rate in the live game according to the wiki, which is a compound of the 1/140 gear table (all Inq pieces + Nightmare staff) and ~1/533 orb table (volatile, harmonised, eldritch). You can roll both tables at once, as that recent post demonstrated. The gear table is kinda wonky, with a reroll mechanic that effects the odds of the mace. Basically, the uniques’ different weightings add up to 10, with the nightmare staff being a 3/10 chance, Inquisitor pieces being 1/5 each and 3/5 combined, and finally the 1/10 mace. But not quite, because the 3/10 staff roll makes another 1/10 reroll that can flip it to a mace. So, its effective odds are more like 1/8, while keeping just enough staffs coming in that they statistically outnumber orbs by a narrow margin. The Summer Sweep-Up, however, with its projection of Nightmare as “the place that you go to get Inquisitor,” is fiddling with the formula in a way that has some surprisingly positive effects–but not for Inquisitor armor rates. Let’s explore. Jagex proposes two tweaks: boosting gear drop rates ~10%, but also increasing staff weighting from 3 to 4. To calculate these effects, we’ll assume a 1/126 gear table and that the other uniques’ weights are not adjusted, making it a 4/11 and slightly shrinking other uniques’ odds per roll. But does the increased volume of uniques translate to more Inquisitor pieces? The short answer is yes, but the long answer is not really. The biggest winners here are the staff and, by nature of its reroll mechanic that Jagex hasn’t mentioned changing, the mace. The staff goes from a ~1/507 to ~1/347, amounting to an almost 50% increase in the number entering the game. (That’d be kinda cool, it’s a +15% staff that works with all spellbooks.) The odds for a reroll in turn elevate the mace’s chances from ~1/1129 to ~1/990, or a 14% increase. Not bad. What’s more underwhelming is where Inquisitor lands. It’s pretty much 1/233 at the moment, and the increased table rate is almost totally offset by the relative loss in item weight. Sure, 6/11 is still better than 50-50 odds of getting armor, but it culminates in a <1% increase in rate at just 1/231. If Jagex wants to really bring Inquisitor into parity with Oathplate, then this doesn’t quite work as a means of buffing its drop rate. The extra uniques will surely tempt a few people, but the long run there and bad regular drops turn people away. I’ve made peace with the bad regular drops at >450 combined KC, but the Slepey tablet should be on the regular Nightmare table, and I say that as a 1kc Phosani spoon beneficiary. A wholesale buff to the table by 10% or more would also boost the supply of uniques entering the game, which is mandatory for the viability of the “fortified Inquisitor” concept. (ATM this is economically constrained by the extremely low rate of Inquisitor entering the game.) I can’t say that Jagex’s proposal is bad on the whole, just that it doesn’t fulfill its stated purpose. It’d be nice to see another pass made at this so their objectives are fulfilled and Nightmare is refreshed. Hopefully they’ve already figured this out for themselves, though. submitted by /u/jamesgilboy
Originally posted by u/jamesgilboy on r/2007scape