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Mod Timbo

Mod Timbo

Jagex Moderator Forum Profile Posts by user
Hello everyone!

Welcome to the Skilling Pets drop formula development blog. Today, we're going to be revealing how we calculate the chance to obtain a Skilling Pet. We'll do our best to explain as accurately and clearly as we can so that this info can aid you in your pet hunting.

With each method explanation, we'll give one example of a skill within that method to better explain the working out in action. What we will not be doing is listing every single method for every single skill; the only cases in which we explicitly prohibit Skilling Pets from being obtained are typically temporary events and Treasure Hunter items such as proteans and dummies (although sometimes exceptions are made, like with 2017 Christmas XP activities).

How Skilling Pets work

There are two different methods of awarding Skilling Pets: the time-based method and the XP-based method.

Skills which fall under the time-based method are: Agility, Divination, Firemaking, Fishing, Hunter, Mining, Thieving, Woodcutting.

Skills which fall under the XP-based method are: Construction, Cooking, Crafting, Dungeoneering, Farming, Fletching, Herblore, Invention, Runecrafting, Smithing.

Time-based Method

As it says in the title, the skills in this method are based on the amount of time it takes to do something, rather than the amount of XP you get. We measure this in server cycles -
or ticks. For example, when cutting Ivy, it always takes four server cycles for you to attempt to 'chop', so your time value in the formula would be four for Woodcutting on Ivy.

We take the time value and then multiply it by your virtual level in the skill, then divide it by 50,000,000. If you have 200m total XP in the skill, we add a flat 50 to your virtual level whilst doing the calculation. Our example with Woodcutting and Ivy at level 99 would then continue to be:

4 x 99 / 50,000,000 = 99/12,500,000 chance every time you swing your hatchet at Ivy with a Rune Hatchet at level 99.

There is one difference and that is for Agility Courses. Skilling Pets are not rolled for every individual step of an Agility Course, and are instead only (possibly) obtained when completing a lap. The time value for this is the expected time to complete the lap.

XP-based Method

For the XP-based method, we care about the amount of XP you earn when rolling for a Skilling Pet. The value that we use in the formula is the absolute base value of XP BEFORE ANY bonuses are applied. Bonuses include, but are not limited to, skill outfits, bonus XP, clan avatars, Invention perks, potion effects, auras or equipment etc.

Once we have the skill and the base XP that you've earned in that skill, we then look at pre-assigned modifiers for the skill which, during development, were determined to try and take into account the potential XP per hour players could earn in that skill. Here are the modifiers in full:

Construction: 30
Cooking: 25
Crafting: 20
Dungeoneering: 25
Farming: 12
Fletching: 20
Herblore: 45
Invention: 180
Runecrafting: 28
Smithing: 20

Once we have the skill, base XP earned and the right modifier, we can look at the formula. What we do is divide the base XP by the modifier, then multiply it by your virtual level (this time, we add 200 if you have 200m XP in the skill for XP-based methods) to get your chance out of 50,000,000. Here's what I'd get if I was 200m in Construction and I had just built a Mahogany table:

(840 / 30) * (120 + 200) / 50,000,000 = 14/78,125 chance when constructing a Mahogany table at 200m XP in Construction.

There is a slight difference when it comes to Dungeoneering, however. We divide the base XP amount that you get at the end of a dungeon by the party size difficulty that you, or your party leader, selected at the beginning of the dungeon, or dungeon run. So for example, if you had selected a five player size dungeon at the start and earned 100,000xp before bonuses, the base XP value in the formula would actually be 20,000.

We hope that you've enjoyed this blog, and please remember that it will be the last for the time being. We've had a fun time going through all of the bosses, a lot of Slayer creatures, oddities and areas over the past couple of months and we hope that you've enjoyed an insight in to the drop rates of the game.

Please do continue to request information either here on the forums, Reddit or Twitter. If there are enough topics for a blog, we'll make sure to publish one again in the future.

Thanks,
Mod Timbo and the RuneScape Team
Mod Timbo
| Senior Game Designer & Balancer
@JagexTimbo
on Twitter!

15-Dec-2017 10:03:45 - Last edited on 15-Dec-2017 10:23:58 by Mod Timbo

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15-Dec-2017 10:19:32

Big Storms

Big Storms

Posts: 3,932Adamant Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Hmmm very interesting,

First of all it seems that it would take one on average 84 hours of continuous skilling at level 99 to get the time based skill pets.

As construction is an interesting gp/hr vs exp/hr case, I compared how at 99 construction the time and costs differ to get a pet using either the mahogany table method or oak door method.

Mahogany tables would have you make about 18000 tables on average to get the pet, costing 180m and yielding 15.1m experience. This would take about 30 hours assuming you gain 500k exp an hour.

Oak doors on the other hand would have you make around 25000 on average for the pet, costing 118m and taking 59 hours assuming an experience rate of 360k an hour.

So you could either invest about 53% more gp or spend double the time (94% more time) on construction to get the pet (Note: on average! Praise RNGesus!). Note that this relationship is independent of your construction level and cost is the only variable that changes with the GE prices.
"One should not mindlessly follow gods or the godless:
follow
your
own
path
"
~Big Storms

15-Dec-2017 10:47:17 - Last edited on 15-Dec-2017 15:19:37 by Big Storms

barge
Feb Member 2013

barge

Posts: 48Bronze Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
Can we get better clarification on how the hunter pet works. Other "time based skills" have set tick rates, but hunter does not, so it's very hard to figure out what the rate would actually be. Also what interaction does tick manipulation actually have on these skills

15-Dec-2017 10:48:02

Evil Mark
Feb Member 2009

Evil Mark

Posts: 617Steel Posts by user Forum Profile RuneMetrics Profile
50000000 divide by 78125 is 640

So whatever fraction you get, for example: 1554 / 50000000
Just divide both by 640.
For this it will mean 2 / 78125
I calculated this for the chance of getting Gemi doing Royal Dragonhide Bodies at 111 crafting
Mark
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15-Dec-2017 10:51:29

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