Meaning of Gemstones Part 1

It's been a while since I lost posted. Having a full-time job really impacts the time I can spend on my research, blog posts, and everything. Thus I have to make major changes but don't worry. If I'm not posting anything check out the "Other Content" on the right side menu. There's always something I'll be doing and I'm active in some kind of way every week.

Gemstone Magic

Many types of magic exist. Today I'm going to go into the topic of gemstone magic. So what is gemstone magic? The basic idea behind this is to use gems, stones or gemstones for different rituals. To do this we figure out what role each gem has or is said to have. Again this depends all on what the common belief is as well as the way they impact you.

Without further ado let's get into the first few gemstones.

List of Gemstones

Without having the post to get too big again I'm gonna go into ten gemstones for this and probably all the following posts. So the gems I'm going to talk about will be these in the given order.

• Berg Crystal
• Rose Quartz
• Amethyst
• Jaspis
• Hematite
• Jade
• Shungite
• Pyrit
• Salt Crystal
• Tiger Eye

Berg Crystal by GreenyNeko

Berg Crystal

The Berg Crystal acts as an energy converter as well as a container to save energy. It is said that Berg Crystals contain up to the 1000-year-old information about the world. It is most effective on the crown chakra. Since it stands for clearness and cleanness it can be used for bringing back order, for things to make sense. It can also be used to convert energy or store information and energy. It makes sense to use a Berg Crystal when trying to learn something or trying to remember something but also to meditate or solve a mystery or problem you can't figure out.

Rose Quartz

Rose Quartz by GreenyNeko

Rose Quartz represents affinity and peace. They're strongest on the heart chakra. They act on the layer of feelings, harmonizing and feeling good. As such they're often used to improve the atmosphere in a room. They can be used to solve issues in relations or to calm oneself or others down.

Amethyst by GreenyNeko

Amethyst

The purple gemstone is said to be connected with clairvoyance and the communication with higher forces, however, it's also known as the stone of peace and as such acts calming. It is most effective on the crown chakra. With all these attributes it can be used the best for meditation.

Jasper

Three Jasper types by GreenyNeko

Jasper is a stone that brings protection and grounding. They act as an energizer, strengthening while still grounding. The red Jaspis has the best effects on the root chakra. These stones can be used if you don't feel well at the start of illness for example or if you want to protect yourself from something stronger than you.

Hematite by GreenyNeko

Hematite

When working with gemstones you usually practice discharge and charging them. Especially if you get a new stone. Hematite is said to be good for discharging. So make sure not to let it lie next to a charged object you want to use. If you have too much energy, yin, yang or anything else you want to discharge this stone works most effectively on the root chakra.

Jade

Jade by GreenyNeko

As I already mentioned this in my Chinese new year post, Jade is often used for protection against bad luck, bad energies or generally to protect, but it is also said to bring and attract good luck, success and prosperity. Like this it can be used as a go lucky charm for your life and work. The green jade works most efficiently on the heart chakra. For this, a necklace would do great, especially when carried below the clothes. The yellow jade is more effective on the solar plexus chakra.

Natural and modified Shungite
by GreenyNeko

Shungite

This black crystal is believed to have similar attributes to obsidian. It protects generally but also against bad energies like demons and attracts wealth and prosperity just like Jade. It can be used by placing it around the house or by wearing it as an accessory. It is also said to convert unhealthy energy, radiation or waves from radios and modern technology. It acts the strongest on the root chakra.

Pyrit

Pyrit by GreenyNeko

This silver cube is said to help to overcome fears and can be used for cleaning. It cleanses itself and is healthy for both the liver and the gall bladder. Its effects are the strongest when used on the root chakra. Thanks to these properties it can be used when attempting to clean the body or to get over your phobias like arachnophobia, acrophobia and more. it's February currently, how about cleaning your body regime?

Salt crystal lamp by GreenyNeko

Salt Crystal

Salt Crystals act as cleaners, magically and not. It's strongest effects are on the sacral chakra. Do you remember the last time you stood at the beach or near the sea smelling the salty fresh air? Or do you remember those nose sprays that say they use saltwater? There's a reason for this. Having a salt crystal or salt stone in your room or house allows it to magically clean the air but clean the air keeping it fresh as well. Though this might not work to keep the air fresh against smelly gases.

Tiger eye

Tiger Eye by GreenyNeko

Our last gem on this list is the tiger eye. This stone is associated with a strong will strong abilities and concentration. It is also believed to improve your courage. Thanks to these attributes it can be used to strengthen yourself as well as your courage when standing in front of a challenge. It doesn't matter if that challenge is a new job, traveling to a foreign place or going to an exam. Especially thanks to it supporting your concentration it is very good when having a new project or an exam standing in front of the door. It also helps when doing meditation. The associated chakra is the solar plexus chakra.

Conclusion

As you can see each of the stones has properties given to them throughout history or thanks to their association with certain things. We can use these to understand how to best use them for our rituals and it really depends on what we want to achieve or do.

Well, that's it for today's post. I'm sorry I can't keep up with a post every day anymore but I still hope to provide as much content as I can and feel well doing so. 

Guild Wars 2: Danger Level at Desmina's Platform - Part 1

If you didn't know, I have a Youtube channel. If you also didn't know I store my streams on it. Additionally, if you didn't know I have several Guild Wars 2 Desmina or Soulless Horror boss tries and kills on this channel.

Progressing Soulless Horror

A few weeks ago, or a month or.. I don't actually remember. Either way back when we were progressing soulless horror we often heard rumors about the big walls appearing when the soulless horror, the boss, is pulled out of the middle. Actually watching this behavior and having the tanks play around with it I can say with 70% certainty, myth busted. 

With this myth busted the next question is how it actually works. What's the chance of a wall forming in a certain constellation? Is there a safe or safer spot on the platform?

Analyzing and Assumption

From a game developer perspective and taking into consideration that it can't be scripted as it's too random. Additionally, walls form using pieces. The fight starts out with two pieces. Once the platform shrinks the first time the wall increases by one piece having three now. Once the soulless horror reaches 30% health the platform shrinks again and now the wall consists of up to four pieces. Additionally, the walls can only cover a certain row or column of the field. Another thing you might have noticed is that the walls snap.

Using all this information we can assume that the walls spawn in a grid. Further analyzing this assumption we notice that the grid has a size of five times five. In this grid, the walls spawn either horizontally or vertically and run down to the opposite side of their spawn point.

Combinations

So in the first phase, the walls consist of two pieces filling out five fields on four different sides.

This allows there to be 2 out of 5 possibilities for four sides with a maximum of two waves being active at the same time. This allows there to be C(5, 2) = 10 possibilities for each side. So that should be 10 * 4 = 40 possible spawn combinations.

However, as I already mentioned before the amount of wall pieces increases. For the most time of the fight, it will be three pieces. With three pieces we have C(5, 3) = 10 possibilities. Okay yeah, times four get 40 okay.

At the end of the fight, it will be four pieces.  So now it's C(5, 4) * 4 = 5 * 4 = 20 possible spawns.

Worst Case Scenario

The worst-case scenario would be a big wall spawning in the middle. If we map the spawns on the grid to numbers from one to five our worst case would be two-three and three-four in the first case. These are two cases and can happen on all four sides. So 8 cases that would.. suck. So 8 out of 40 possibilities would be unfortunate in the first phase. This means it has a chance of 8 / 40 = 0.2 or 20% if we assume each possible combination has the same spawn chance.

Moving on in the second phase the absolute worst case would be two, three and four. So there are 4 in 40 chances to get a wall through the whole middle. The chance on an evenly distributed system would be 4 / 40 = 0.1 or 10%.

Last but not least with four pieces our worst-case scenarios would be any combination that contains two three and four. We have two of these for each side. So that's 2 * 4 = 8 worst-case scenarios. Again with even chances that would be an 8 / 20 = 0.4 or 40% encounter rate.

Cover Chances Concept 

We don't know if it's evenly distributed though. So it leads to the following research. We have a 5x5 grid like the following table.

Now we do this. We look at any footage we can find, in my case my past streams on Youtube. We'll use the mini-map with the fixed option - which means north will stay north regardless of how our character or our camera changes - and check where the walls spawn. Each time the walls spawn we're gonna count each field that will or has been covered by these wall pieces. We're going to continue this until we've summed up all cases.

For example, this might be the table after the first wall spawn.

	1	1
	1	1
	1	1
	1	1
	1	1

And this after the second wall spawn so you should get the idea now.

	1	1
	1	1
1	2	2	1	1
	1	1
1	2	2	1	1

By doing this procedure for every case we get the following result.

	1	1
	1	1
1	2	2	1	1
	1	1
1	2	2	1	1

Great! A five times five grid with numbers in it and now? The concept behind this is simple. In the end, we get a heat map with the highest numbers showing the most dangerous positions and the smallest numbers showing the least dangerous positions. At the same time counting the number of waves we can divide each field number through the total amount of death walls to get the chance of the wall moving over this field rendering it more dangerous.

To Be Continued...

This is enough for today. I have to work tomorrow. So meanwhile I'm gonna use what time I have to analyze the wall spawns in my videos in the next days. So wait for the next post in the next weeks. Yeah, sorry it takes a whole week... but with me losing a lot of my spare time due to work and everything I can't afford to spend as much time on theorycrafting and blog writing anymore. :(

WildStar: Most Advanced Housing I've Seen

As I already hinted at it in my previous post. WildStars housing is its own thing.

Other Games

I've seen and heard about housing in several games. Though I must admit I'm not such a housing freak as other people may be. Yet I still enjoy one or two projects doing some remakes. So back when people heard about housing being customization in Guild Wars 2 the hype was great. Equally great - at least in amount - was the disappointment when the customization provided consisted of fixed nodes you get resources from as well as chests and some special non-playable-characters.

Of course, if you hear customization you imagine being able to place things wherever you want. Well, at least their guild halls implemented that feature. It's like Minecraft, but without snapping. You can do enough with it. Though you're stuck with the size and the rotation of the objects, which really limits one in their capability to let their creativity flow.

This is the same in Minecraft, though even worse. Of course, you can combine different blocks to make them look like something and there are mods out there to allow you to do much more you're yet still limited heavily. The blocks snap and building something huge would require a lot of time setting miniature blocks via an add on. I guess there's copy and paste for that?

Kudos, Carbine, Kudos

WildStar did it. I don't know how many games implement such an item but WildStar gives you enough tools to do your thing. You're fully able to change the x, y, z coordinates of the position, rotation and size. This allows you to freely customize your housing without restrictions like snapping or only being capable of placing objects next to a solid object. The funny part is it's not even limited to the UI objects you have. Entering your own numbers gives you even more options like making objects smaller than one or greater than whatever the cap was which I forgot. Of course, it's still limited as you can't place many animated or objects to interact with and yet it's enough for nearly anything.

It's amazing what people have made. From mosaic-like 3D statues to actual adventure like housings, jumping puzzles, labyrinths, etc. etc.. Or maybe the obligatory level remake from another game like Whomp King's Fortress from Super Mario 64 (yup, that's one of my projects check out my twink Whomp King to see it).

Next Level Housing

So if you ever come across an engine like housing system or.. let's call it housing engine you know what's coming upon you housing freaks. Besides a level editor in an MMORPG? I think that's something totally new and innovative no one has come up yet. Though how much work must it be?

But honestly.. it might just be worth it. 

WildStar: Train Level Designers Without Them Knowing

WildStar's housing is amazing. No seriously. It's amazing how much you can do with it. It technically is an Engine.

Game Engines

Back in the old days level designing was probably a pain in the ass. Nowadays it's completely different. Thanks to game engines there isn't much you have to do for level designing except the design and placement of objects. This makes it a lot easier and faster to design levels.

Okay, that's great but game engines are only used by people who know what they're doing. Designing games.

Modding

Some games like Amnesia the Dark Descent allow the player to use the game's assets to make custom story packs. These consist of own levels, own models, own graphics, custom scripts, sounds and more. So basically you can use the existing engine of the game to create your own game out of it but you can also use all the assets that are already there to design your own levels. Now the people we're talking about don't have the goal to design games but to make their own levels. Still, they are taught the basic principle behind creating games. It's nothing new that people have to send in their own designed levels to get a job as a level designer at Frictional Games. At least back in the days, I don't know if it's still that way. Minecraft added Nathan Adams to their team, who formerly developed Bukkit, free software that extends the Minecraft server. This is not a level design example but I think you get the idea.

Level Editors

There are games out there that provide level editors. Level editors allow the player to design levels themselves in an extremely easy and simple to understand fashion. There isn't any programming and it isn't hard to work with. However, they are limiting the things you can do at the same time. Stepping from creating levels in these up to a level designer won't work as easy. Especially as you have to learn a lot more on top of it.

Advance To The Next Level

Something that blew my mind is the housing editor in the game WildStar. I want to write a post later on this topic but basically, it has all you need as a level designer. You can modify the position, rotation, size of objects, you have a handful of assets given. The only thing that's missing is writing scripts, placing enemies and getting some events and sounds to occur. Hey, you can't have everything. It's not a game engine after all.

Conclusion

Taking all these examples into consideration you can see that it's definitely possible to train gamers to level designers without them knowing. One step further you can detect talent via competitive events in your community. So what do you get doing this? A person that enjoys your game, that has enough talent or experience to win versus all the other participants and provides the skills you enable them to have in your level editor or modding.  That's better than going by plain paper, isn't it?

Chinese New Year - Year of the Dog and Zodiac Animals

This post was planned for today but since I wasn't able to write on Wednesday I would've shifted this one back to go my order. However, it makes less sense to do a topic about the Chinese new year a day after the Chinese new year. So here you go.

Chinese New Year and Zodiac Signs

I don't know how many people reading this know their Chinese zodiac but those who do and are interested in it should definitely look out for the Chinese new year. In total there are 12 zodiac animals. Every year it's time for the next one and in the end, it repeats. They iterate through and restart with the first one. If we start with our current year it looks like this:

• Dog
• Pig
• Rat
• Ox
• Tiger
• Rabbit
• Dragon
• Snake
• Horse
• Goat
• Monkey
• Rooster

Since this repeats over and over we can even lookup future years as well as previous years. Here's a small table.

	xxx0	xxx1	xxx2	xxx3	xxx4	xxx5	xxx6	xxx7	xxx8	xxx9
196x	Rat	Ox	Tiger	Rabbit	Dragon	Snake	Horse	Goat	Monkey	Rooster
197x	Dog	Pig	Rat	Ox	Tiger	Rabbit	Dragon	Snake	Horse	Goat
198x	Monkey	Rooster	Dog	Pig	Rat	Ox	Tiger	Rabbit	Dragon	Snake
199x	Horse	Goat	Monkey	Rooster	Dog	Pig*	Rat	Ox	Tiger	Rabbit
200x	Dragon	Snake	Horse	Goat	Monkey	Rooster	Dog	Pig	Rat	Ox
201x	Tiger	Rabbit	Dragon	Snake	Horse	Goat	Monkey	Rooster	Dog	Pig
202x	Rat	Ox	Tiger	Rabbit	Dragon	Snake	Horse	Goat	Monkey	Rooster
203x	Dog	Pig	Rat	Ox	Tiger	Rabbit	Dragon	Snake	Horse	Goat

I Don't Know My Sign

It's not as complicated as with the zodiac signs you may know. If you're born in the year or the animal you are that animal. So, for example, I was born in 1995. Going back to 1995 in the table tells us I'm a pig. So basically all you need to know is when you were born (only the year) and which zodiac animal matches the same year. Well... basically. It gets a bit tricky since the Chinese new year is on the 16th of February. This means if you were born before this date it's the previous zodiac animal. For example, if a child was born before the 16th of February this year that child would be a rooster, not a dog. If the child is born tomorrow, for example, it's zodiac animal would be the dog.

Great! I'm a Dog! This Is My Year!

Well according to Chinese superstition, it's great not at all. It is said that you will offend the god of age every time your zodiac animals year comes which in return brings bad luck. Aside from the year of your birth, this happens every 12 years. So with the ages of 12, 24, 36, 48, 60, 72, 84, 96, 108, 120 and last but not least 132. No, I did not count this high for fun. In Qi Gong it is told that it is saved in our body that we can get 135 years old - just a small side note.

So I'm basically telling you that every 12 years you're gonna have a bad year? No, don't worry, there's a solution to it.

Preventing Bad Luck In Your Year

Some Chinese traditions are said to prevent bad luck from happening. So without holding you have any longer from averting your misfortune here you go.

Wear Red

In Chinese culture, red is believed to avert misfortune and bring luck, prosperity and drive bad spirits away. The downside to this is it can't be something red you bought yourself it must be from someone else. Even better if it's a family member or friend.

Wear Jade Accessories

I haven't gotten into gemstones yet, but jade is one of the gemstones whose purpose is said to be protecting one as well as bringing you good luck. So obviously that's a good choice then.

Turn Away From The God of Age

The god of age is said to be an imaginary star as well. This star moves 30° every year. So it's wise to look into the opposite direction of it in your year. Since the rotation starts with the year of the Rat you'll get these positions.

Zodiac Animal	God of Age position	Approximate direction	Opposite position	Approximate opposing direction
Rat	0°	North	180°	South
Ox	30°	Northeast	210°	Southwest
Tiger	60°	Northeast	240°	Southwest
Rabbit	90°	East	270°	West
Dragon	120°	Southeast	300°	Northwest
Snake	150°	Southeast	330°	Northwest
Horse	180°	South	0°	North
Goat	210°	Southwest	30°	Northeast
Monkey	240°	Southwest	60°	Northeast
Rooster	270°	West	90°	East
Dog	300°	Northwest	120°	Southeast
Pig	330°	Northwest	150°	Southeast

By the way, there is another way to prevent this from being your unlucky but that one takes more time to write and it's a bit of another story. So some other day, sorry.

Cursing and Free Speech

Alright, this is something completely different than all the other posts. This time I'm actually gonna write down my own opinion about something and that thing is free speech and cursing.

Youtube Demonetization

I don't get any of my videos monetized but that's not my fault. It's someone's fault thanks to who the monetization requirements were made more strictly. Though I can definitely say if my videos would get monetized I know exactly which ones wouldn't. Which ones it would be? Some of my streams and there's a simple reason behind it. I don't know about other people but I'm all Christian channel as PewDiePie would say it but - huge but - I may not be the calmest player. If some difficult part in a game gets me stuck or I'm close to losing something (Loss Aversion) or under stress due to the level design preventing you to find a safe place to calm down at some point with varying amounts of replays and tries I might start to get bumped and later quite angry. Up to the point that I start cursing.

Cursing Through Anger

There are many people worldwide who curse when angry. At the same time, you actually should differ between cursing meaning it as an insult and cursing to just let your anger out not addressing something or someone. An example for the first one would most often be at the game, the situation, yourself or even a character you identify yourself with. The second one would be the random unaddressed F-Word or some kind of trial to make it light weighted like seen on the GTLive streams on Youtube.

"Poop on a bisuit" 

~ Matthew Patrick

Can It Be Avoided?

Though can you avoid cursing even if you lose control of your body due to rage? I actually think it is possible. I'm also planning on experimenting with this too. My goal is to make my brain to jump to a random word instead of a curse or insult. However, I think it's rather hard. Basically, we're talking about breaking your habit. This is on the level of stopping something you unconsciously do.

"I'm breaking the habit, I'm breaking the habit tonight!" 

~ Linkin Park

Unconsciously is the right word here. Unfortunately, people are judged for being a bad influence because of their habits. Imagine someone getting no money for a whole day working because they picked their nose. I know this example is ridiculous but it perfectly displays the issue here.

Are Curses Really That Bad?

Maybe we should just accept that people curse and curses exist. At the end protecting our children from not learning these is very unlikely. I mean. Curses aren't that bad, are they? Well, aside from it being proven that letting your anger out is actually healthy we need to take a good look at curses.

So the interesting part here is.. what are curses? Basically, they are words that are frowned upon and sometimes used to insult someone. At the lowest level they're just words though. Imagine the word "Unicorn" was a curse. People would be like

• "What the unicorn"
• "Your moms a unicorn"
• "For unicorn's sake"

Words Are Meaningless And Forgettable

Words themselves are meaningless. It's the meaning we give them and apply to them. Though doesn't this mean if you use words without a meaning behind them whatever you're saying is meaningless? It seems logical at least. Well if I curse due to being mad I didn't mean it or intend to use them in a bad way, it means these have no meaning - aside from the context which would result in the meaning "I'm angry and letting my anger out". In the end context matters.

"Words are trivial
Pleasures remain
So does the pain
Words are meaningless
And forgettable" 

~ Depeche Mode

Moving On

So what happens if we prevent people from experiencing these words and such versus what happens if we remove censorship for free speech. I'm not a psychologist and yet I would assume that in either case, nothing much is going to change. Children will learn to cuss either way.

But hey, we're living in 2018 after all. Shouldn't we stop caring about curse words and actually try to further our science and technology? Why spend all our time and power on such an actually irrelevant topic?

Then again.. same applies to people still trying to compete with their land against other lands keeping prejudice high instead of actually working together to solve world problems and issues - eh whatever.

Update Note

This has nothing to do with this topic but yesterday I was celebrating my start at my new company so I had no time to write a post yesterday. What does that mean for the posts? Nothing. Today's post was yesterday's post. Tomorrow's post is today's post etc.

"Save TonightFight the break of dawnCome TomorrowTomorrow I'll be gone" 

~ Eagle-Eye Cherry

Economy: What Is Flipping?

If you know what flipping is already then this post will not contain anything for you. But maybe you can use this content to sell it?

What's Flipping?

Flipping is a word that is used to describe the act of buying an item and selling it to a higher price. Why would one buy something if they plan to sell it right afterward? It's quite simple actually. If there are items that have the right demand, making a small offer to buy them allows you to sell to a higher price. 

An example would be buying an item for 10 gold and selling it for 16 gold. Now of course, in most games you have to pay a fee for selling items. Depending on the game this amount differs. So let's assume 15%. If we have to pay 15% for selling our item we get only 16 * (1 - 0.15) = 13.6 or 13 gold and 60 silver. Since we paid 10 gold for buying this item we still made 13.6 - 10 = 3.6 or 3 gold and 60 silver.

Why Is It Called Flipping?

So I actually didn't find anything about this so I'm gonna try to make sense of it with the information I have. Hey, that's also something interesting for once. So let's see. The term flipping is used to describe the action of buying items or objects at a low price and selling them at a higher price that results in us gaining currency or money. The term flipping also seems to come from the word flip, which means to turn something, like a coin, meat or a chip. So without thinking too complicated one would assume the term refers to us buying items cheaply and then turn to sell the item. So it's basically flipping between buying and selling items.

Where Is Flipping Used?

The term is mainly used in the US but also online in video games often in multi massive online role-playing games. I'm not even kidding there are like tons of online players that do nothing more than login and spend their time making money with the trading posts. You could say they're playing the trading post.





So yeah, relatively short post for once it's a small topic and secondly, I'm having connection issues but I think this pretty much suffices everyone who never heard or didn't know about flipping and what it is.

My Experience With Imbuing

A huge part of the magical path is to imbue yourself. It is important to learn to know or experience all kinds of energies.

Why Care About Imbuing?

If you plan to be a wizard, witch, shaman or anything similar it is very important to have experienced or even imbued yourself with all kinds of energies. The reason for this is quite simple. Magic is working with energies. So if you have experienced different types of energies you can distinguish them from each other, feel their qualities and use them in the most efficient way possible.

How To Imbue Yourself?

You might have heard before that if you think about fire you might feel warmer. Doing so allows you to feel the warm energy this thought produces but that's not the only way. There are many ways. For example, you could try to be the fire. Imagine you are the fire or you being one with the fire. Another way would be to experience the fire by touching it - though I'd discourage this. Maybe I should've chosen a different example.

Our body has tons of sense build in, from touch to temperature to time to pain. Just like scientists we don't have a sense of magical energies. So what we're trying to achieve is to use the senses that are given to detect the energies and categorize their type.

My Experience With Imbuement

I've made multiple experiences but these are the most elemental. For the first one, I did a simple experiment. I love to take a bath every Sunday. I do this one to two hours long removing any stress and preparing for the next week. What I tried this time is, as the water-filled bathtub I imagined myself being water, just like the water that filled the tub. At some point, I actually did feel like I was part of the water like I was water. I was able to achieve a deep meditative state in which I was convinced that I could breathe underwater. I didn't try it and I regret the decision.

I've experienced the other one when I worked in north Germany for a few days. Since I shower every Wednesday I showered there too. To my surprise, the water had a smell of clay to it and also felt a little bit different. 

Currently, I'm in France, Nantes. I plan to do the same experiment on Wednesday again and I'm excited about the results.

Conclusion

It's often said that knowledge is power. This does not only mean pure knowledge but also the experience we've gathered through our lives. Technically you can fill 20 years of your life learning something new in magic every day. The amount of content to learn is incredibly high. It's the same with the energies available to work with. However the more you know, the more you can use and with enough practice and experience, you know when using which results in the best effectiveness reaching the goals. So get going and imbue yourself and experience as many energies as possible! It will help in the future.

WildStar: Expedition Prime Scaling Data

Knowing how items scale is helpful, but you need to get the items from somewhere. One place you can get items from are the expeditions. However to get items with high item levels you will need to run high prime content. Thus it's interesting to know how this content scales.

How To Go About This

So, for now, I'm gonna ignore the influence of hero into this by expecting you to have at least the amount or more hero than the prime level of choice. So what we want to know now is how the prime levels scale. For this, we just go into the prime levels at different difficulties and look for changes. I think many people already know that you'll notice two big changes.

• The enemies take longer to defeat
• You die faster

These two aspects should instantly bring up a few questions in our minds. The simplest of all those questions is the why. If the enemies take longer to defeat it means one or several things. For example, they could have more health or we do less damage. It could also be both. For the second aspect, it's most likely because the enemies deal more damage.

So let's compare the health and damage of the enemies on the different prime levels starting with prime level zero. Once we got our data we start to compare it to prime level zero and additionally we could also look at the steps between each prime level.

Collecting Data

Okay, so no joke. I literally went into the infestation expedition on prime level zero to 15 and checked the health of the same mob over and over again and let myself getting hit by the same attack of this enemy over and over. The enemy of my choice was the Lashing Terror. I noted down all the values in a spreadsheet. So you get two tables, one of the

Enemy Health

Prime Level	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Health	36533	41648	45302	49320	56627	61742	67222	73433	84024	91700	100102
Prime Level	11	12	13	14	15
Health	109236	124946	136271	148693	162210

and one of the

Enemy Damage

Prime Lvl	Avg. Dmg	Damage...
0	1231.4	1298	1212	1284	1270	1278	1196	1206	1170	1143	1257
1	1430.8	1388	1443	1369	1370	1456	1488	1440	1447	1427	1480
2	1531.5	1623	1561	1552	1563	1542	1528	1455	1428
3	1652.82	1715	1622	1722	1652	1614	1716	1652	1694	1589	1599	1606
4	1910.92	2002	1955	1884	1997	1911	1977	1902	1917	1815	1873	1852	1846

A bit weird that I only collected data on the damage from prime 0 to prime 4. Well, it's not just random but more on that later.

Evaluation of Data

So the next step is to evaluate our data. So we want to know how the prime levels scale. To figure this out we assume prime level zero is our base health and damage. So 100%. To determine how prime level 1 scaled we divide its health through the base health. We do the same with the damage.

This means in prime level 1 the enemies have 41648 / 36533 = 1.1400 or 114.00% the health.

Doing the same with the average damage we get 1430.8 / 1231.4 = 1.1619 or 116.19% damage.

So let's do this for every case we divide its health and average damage through the health and average damage on prime level zero. Now we get the following table.

Prime Level	Health	Percentage	Average Damage	Percentage
0	36533	100%	1231.4	100%
1	41648	114.00%	1430.8	116.19%
2	45302	124.00%	1531.5	124.37%
3	49320	135.00%	1652.82	134.22%
4	56627	155.00%	1910.92	155.18%
5	61742	169.00%
6	67222	184.00%
7	73433	201.00%
8	84024	229.99%
9	91700	251.01%
10	100102	274.00%
11	109236	299.01%
12	124946	342.01%
13	136271	373.01%
14	148693	407.01%
15	162210	444.01%

You may notice that I realized after prime level four that the damage most likely scales just like the health of the enemies do. It's too similar to be a coincidence. Even though to be certain one should've done it through this is enough evidence to me. Aside from knowing now that on prime level 13 the enemies do almost 4 times the damage and have almost 4 times the health.

Next, let's see if it scales linearly. We can do this by dividing the current enemy's health on the prime level through the previous one. So for prime level 2, it would be 45302 / 41648 = 1.0877 or 108.77%. We want the increase between the first and the second unrelated to the previous one. So we need to get 100% out of it. We can simply do this by subtracting one. Which means we get 1.0877 - 1 = 0.0877 or 8.77%

Prime Level	0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
Health	36533	41648	45302	49320	56627	61742	67222	73433	84024	91700	100102
%	-	14.00%	8.77%	8.89%	14.82%	9.03%	8.88%	9.24%	14.42%	9.14%	9.16%
Prime Level	11	12	13	14	15
Health	109236	124946	136271	148693	162210
%	9.12%	14.38%	9.06%	9.12%	9.09%

As you can see the increase is not linear. Now the question is raised whether or not this is fixed percentages set by the developers or if they use a non-linear function. To figure this out we need to find a pattern. Though that's not something I'm gonna do today, because I have to get ready for the flight to Paris and stuff.

"So hope you enjoy the data, GreenyNeko out!"

~GreenyNeko 

WildStar: Calculation of the Maximum Shield Stat

Note: There are low, mid and high maximum shield capacity shields. This calculation only applies to one of those.

Another post about WildStar stats and how they scale! At some point, we're through all of the stats available on items. You could technically use this for a building creator or something. Reminds me that I made such a web-app for WildStar builds. I don't think I have the resource though been over a year.

Steps to Determining the Calculation

So let's think this all through. We want to know how the maximum shield is calculated. For this, we need to determine all the related factors that could play in. To figure these out we compare items that exist with each other changing certain parameters. If we look at two different instances of the same item we will see the stat to be equal. However, if certain parameters differ the stats differ. Seeing this we can determine which factors affect the stat.

Looking at two different shields we see that the shield can be the same. So this plays no role. If we compare two equally named shields with a different quality we can see the maximum shield being equal. Keep in mind we want two shields with different qualities but everything else should stay the same. Next, if we compare two shields with different item levels we notice that the maximum shield changes.

So doing these tests and comparisons we now know that the maximum shield is dependent on the item level. So what do we do next? We're going to get as many shield items with different item levels as possible. Then we're going to compare each value with the others. We're gonna determine the increase between them and use it to calculate the increase for each item level. Next, we'll check whether or not it starts at zero and after that, we're able to calculate the shield stat with any item level by ourselves.

Collecting Samples

I've already collected a few samples via the infestation expedition. So here's a table with the item names, prime level, quality, item levels, and the maximum shield.

Item Name	Prime Level	Quality	Item Level	Maximum Shield
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Prime	Blue	65	14625
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Eldan Prime	Purple	70	15750
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Prime Tier 2	Blue	75	16875
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Prime Tier 3	Blue	80	18000
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Prime Tier 4	Blue	85	19125
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Eldan Prime Tier 4	Purple	90	20250
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Eldan Prime Tier 5	Purple	95	21375
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Eldan Prime Tier 6	Purple	100	22500
Chua Tighty-Whitey Deflector	Ancient Eldan Prime Tier 5	Orange	110	24750
Three-Sixty 0G Aegis	Eldan Prime	Purple	135	30375

Analyzing

So looking at the increase we start off with 14625 and have a step of 1125 with each example except from 22500 to 24750 but that's an increase of 10 item levels and the last jump from 24750 to 30375 but that's 25 item levels. Even if we subtract the older one from the newer one we will always get the same step. Going through our samples:

15750 - 14625 = 1125		16875 - 15750 = 1125
18000 - 16875 = 1125		19125 - 18000 = 1125
20250 - 19125 = 1125		21375 - 20250 = 1125
22500 - 21375 = 1125

For these, the item level always increases by 5. So if we get 1125 maximum shield for 5 item levels that means we get 1125 / 5 = 225 for each item level.

For our higher examples let's see if they fit into this. The difference is 24750 - 22500 = 2250 and it increases by 110 - 100 = 10 item levels. 10 item levels should be 10 * 225 = 2250. So this matches.

The other one has a difference from 30375 - 24750 = 5625 and has an item level difference of 135 - 110 = 25. So the increase should be 25 * 225 = 5625.

Great!

Start Value

So we know that the increase is constant. This means we can represent our shield via a linear function.

Mathematically a linear function has this basic formula:

f(x): y = mx + t

Since our function is dependent on the item level, which means the value changes if the item level changes. We can replace x with our item level. m is the increase which is our 225 for each item level.

f(itemLevel): shieldStat = shieldIncrease * itemLevel + startValue

f(itemLevel): shieldStat =  225 * itemLevel + startValue

Using a random shield - I like to use items with item levels like 100 so let's take that one. We have a 22500 maximum shield on it. If we assume the value for our formula is 22500 and the item level is 100 we can simply calculate the start value by inserting our data into the function.

f(100): 22500 = 225 * 100 + startValue

f(100): 22500 = 22500 + startValue | -22500

 f(100): 22500 - 22500 = startValue

f(100): startValue = 0 

So we've mathematically shown that there is no start value. What does this mean? It means if we multiply the item level with the shield increase of 225 we get the shield on our prime shield item.

It also means that if we had a shield with item level zero it wouldn't have any maximum shield.

Item Level 170 Shield

So for example, if we were to wonder what an item level 170 shield would just have to insert it into the formula:

f(itemLevel): shield = 225 * itemLevel

f(170): shield = 225 * 170

225 * 170 = 38250

So now we know an item level 170 shield has a 38250 maximum shield.

Guild Wars 2: Damage Increase Part 4: Infusions

For now the last part. You might remember that we've calculated the damage increase via upgrading from exotic to ascended gear. Now we have our ascended gear we can fill it with infusions.

Infusions and Infusion Slots

There are six armor pieces, one to two weapon slots, two accessories, a backpack, two rings, and an amulet. The armors each have one infusion slot the weapons if it's one hand will have only one slot else it will have two slots. The backpack has two slots, accessories only one but the rings have three. The amulet also has an infusion slot but this one can't be used for our purpose.

Summing it all up we get 6 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 6 = 18 slots to fill up with infusions. Now the next question is which infusions do we have available.

Currently, eight infusions types differ in stats.

Mighty

Increases your power by 5. Power increases your damage.

Precise

Increases your precision by 5. Precision increases your chance to critical hit dealing increased damage.

Malign

Increases your condition damage by 5. Condition damage increases the damage of your damage over time effects or conditions.

Resilient

Increases your toughness by 5. Toughness increases your armor, thus reduces incoming damage.

Vital

Increases your vitality by 5. Vitality increases your health.

Healing

Increases your healing power by 5. Healing power increases your healing.

Mystical

Increases your concentration by 5. Concentration increases your boon duration.

Spiteful

Increases your expertise by 5. Expertise increases your condition's duration.

Since we calculated our damage only with Berserker so far the only interesting infusion out of these are mighty and precise. Though technically there are no ferocity infusion we can still check out the damage increase if they exist.

Recapping Damage Calculation and Ascended Stats

For us to do our calculation we need to use the damage formula, the formula to get the damage increase in percentage and the stats we have with ascended gear. To get them we just have to check-in without the previous part as I kept recapping whatever we needed.

So our damage formula is this one:

avgdmg = weaponStrengthAvg * power * (1 + ((prec / 21 / 100) + 0.05) * ((fero / 15 / 100) + 0.5))

dmg stands for damage; weaponStrengthAvg stands for the average weapon strength; prec stands for precision; fero stands for ferocity;

For the damage increase, we divide the new value through the prior value and subtract one.

The ascended gear gave us 1381 power, 961 precision, and 961 ferocity. Our ascended weapon, we used an axe all the time to keep this factor equal as the weapon damage changes respective to the weapon you use. The ascended axe deals between 900 and 1100 weapon damage. We've already calculated the average but it's basically (1100 - 900) / 2 + 900 = 1000.

Damage Calculation

Alright, here we go. We have already clarified that there are 18 infusion slots. So let's fill all of them with the infusions. This mean we get 5 * 18 = 90 stats. In our first example that's 90 power.

So let's compare the stats.

Base

Avg. Weapon Damage: 1000

Power: 2381

Precision: 961

Ferocity: 961

Damage:

1000 * 2381 * (1 + ((961 / 21 / 100) + 0.05) * ((961 / 15 / 100) + 0.5)) = 3759656.45

Mighty Infusions

Avg. Weapon Damage: 1000

Power: 2471

Precision: 961

Ferocity: 961

Damage:

1000 * 2471 * (1 + ((961 / 21 / 100) + 0.05) * ((961 / 15 / 100) + 0.5)) = 3901768.62

So the damage increase is (3901768.62 / 3759656.45) - 1 = 0.0377 or 3.78%.

Precise Infusions

Avg. Weapon Damage: 1000

Power: 2381

Precision: 1051

Ferocity: 961

Damage:

1000 * 2381 * (1 + ((1051 / 21 / 100) + 0.05) * ((961 / 15 / 100) + 0.5)) = 3876053.33

So the damage increase here is (3876053.33 / 3759656.45) - 1 = 0.0309 or 3.1%

Ferocity Infusions

Avg. Weapon Damage: 1000

Power: 2381

Precision: 961

Ferocity: 1051

Damage:

1000 * 2381 * (1 + ((961 / 21 / 100) + 0.05) * ((1051 / 15 / 100) + 0.5)) = 3832174.90

So the damage increase with ferocity infusions would be (3832174.90 / 3759656.45) - 1 = 0.0192 or 1.92%.

Recalculation With 25 Stacks of Might

I talked about the damage increase being affected by other buffs. So I'm going to actually show you and proved mathematically that this is the case. It's easy to do. We're going to apply the might stacks to our calculation for our base and new damage. Might can stack up to 25 stacks each stack increases our power and condition power by 10 for each. So it's 25 * 10 = 250 power and condition power. Using this for our calculation with power stats we get the following results:

Base:

1000 * 2631 * (1 + ((961 / 21 / 100) + 0.05) * ((961 / 15 / 100) + 0.5)) = 4154412.48

With Infusions:

1000 * 2721 * (1 + ((961 / 21 / 100) + 0.05) * ((961 / 15 / 100) + 0.5)) = 4296524.65

Calculating the damage increase we get (4296524.65 / 4154412.48) - 1 = 0.0342 or 3.42%.

So as you can see the damage increase is lower than in our previous calculation. This has to do with the natural diminishing returns. You can look up part 3 on this.

Conclusion

So seeing these numbers we now know that the best infusions are and would be the mighty infusions.

This is quite surprising. I mean, of course, without the buffs the mighty infusions are better than the others but I didn't expect the ferocity infusions to be this bad.

What's Behind the ABRACADABRA?

You may know this magical word people use when doing a magic trick in show business.

ABRACADABRA

It's not actually something someone made up it actually does have to do something with magic and it actually explains a concept or a type of magic. You might wonder which one but we're getting to that in due time. Most often you will find it in a fashion similar to this:

ABRACADABRA

  ABRACADABR

   ABRACADAB

     ABRACADA

      ABRACAD

       ABRACA

        ABRAC

         ABRA

          ABR

           AB

            A

Analyzing this construct we notice 3 things. First of all, each line loses one letter of the word. Each line is then moved to the right by a little. And last, this produces a triangle form. The upside-down triangle is a symbol of the female principle, the actual meaning of the word abracadabra is unknown.

And that's all the information we can get out of it so far.

The Concept of ABRACADABRA

The concept of this magical construct, if we may it call such is quite simple. You can see that with each new line one letter is gone. The idea behind this is to weaken the construct with each new line. For example, you could say you're scared of an exam in mathematics. Now you could technically do the same as with the ABRACADABRA:

MATHEMATICS

 MATHEMATIC

  MATHEMATI

   MATHEMAT

    MATHEMA

     MATHEM

      MATHE

       MATH

        MAT

         MA

           A

If you write each line with the intent to weaken the power of math if used correctly in a ritual it should take any fear or worry from you. Aside from that saying math instead of mathematics also makes it sound more casual after all, doesn't it? Though keep in mind since English is a common language and I assume people who visit my blog as of now speak English it wouldn't be the right choice to use the English word. It would be better to use a less commonly spoken language like Latin, Greek or Hebrew or any other for that matter but you get the idea.

Historical Usage

Appearances of the ABRACADABRA have it often connected with usage in medical environments. This is understandable. The idea of it is to weaken something. If you use it to weaken an illness or a medical issue such as the severity of an injury it's easier for the body to fix itself and regenerate. Something weak is easier to beat.

Conclusion

So technically whenever we want to weaken something or make something big and or strong small and insignificant this concept can help us. Aside from that, it's just another example of how magic works and something one should know or have heard of.

So don't make a big deal out of it.

Oh god, that was bad... I'm already starting to bring bad jokes and puns like Matpat from Game Theory... 

Guild Wars 2: Lunar New Year Without Procrastination

Let's celebrate the new year in Guild Wars 2. This time the year of the dog inspired by the Chinese new year on the 16th of February. As I already told you that I check out what I have to do every day to finish the achievements in the time given by the event I, of course, did the same with this year's lunar new year too.

Which Achievements Interest Us

So first we need to know which achievements are of interest. To me, an achievement that gives achievement points is interesting as long it rewards me with such. We can get 105 achievements points if we haven't completed any.

This year the lunar new year event is split into three achievement categories. Lunar New Year is the first category, it contains achievements that are one time. There are six achievements in this category and all six give us achievements. So the ones we want are

• Celestial Companion
• Celestial Racer
• Firecracker Finder
• Golden Firestarter
• Light Up The Sky
• Sparkling Celebration

For the Celestial Companion achievement, we only need to soul bind an exotic great backpack.

For the Celestial Racer, we need to finish the race in 3 minutes and 30 seconds. 

The Firecracker Finder achievement requires us to find the ten hidden firecrackers in the city.

Golden Firestarter expects us to finish the new adventure with a gold reward, which means we need to do it in 4 minutes and 30 seconds.

Light Up The Sky wants us to use 88 firework items and last but not least

Sparking Celebration requires setting off eight great fireworks.

The next category New Year's Customs consists of repeatable and annual achievements that are doable once a year. There are 3 achievements in this category that reward achievement points.

• Celestial Messenger
• Firework Festival
• New Year's Benevolence

The first achievement requires us to complete the race. It's an achievement that rewards 25 achievement points in total, 5 for each repetition and requires 3 races per repetition. This means we'll have to do 25 / 5 * 3 = 15 races in total. 

The next one, Firework Festival, wants us to set off 300 lunar new year fireworks. Again this is a repeatable achievement that rewards 25 in total. There are 5 achievement points for every repetition. So we need 25 / 5 = 5 repetitions, which requires to set off 300 * 5  = 1500 fireworks.

The last one New Year's Benevolence is another repeatable achievement that rewards 25 achievement points in total and again 5 for each repetition and requires 100 per repetition. This means we'll need to feed Drooburt 100 * 5 = 500 steamed red dumplings.

Daily Ratio 

Thanks to the patch notes we know the event goes two weeks and a few days. It started yesterday on the 6th of February and ends on the 22nd of February. That's 17 days though if you work it will most likely be 16 days. This means we know the event length and the amount we need. So let's see how much we need to do every day.

Most achievements like Celestial Companion, Celestial Racer, and Golden Firestarter aren't worth calculating as it's only one item required. Obviously, that's 1 item in 16 days. So yeah the calculation is ridiculous for those. Let's look at the others though.

The Firecracker Finder are 10 unique firecrackers. You could technically do 10 / 16 = 0.625 or about one every two to three days though I'd suggest doing all in one run as you can't interact with the same ones that way. They're all around the crown pavilion, so not hard to find. The hardest was probably the one near the hole.

Light Up The Sky was 88 firecrackers. You'll most likely get this while doing the other one. Though if interested it'd be 88 / 16 = 5.5 or five to six crackers each day.

Sparking Celebration requires us to do 8 great fireworks. Since we have 16 days that's one every two days. In case you weren't so fast the calculation is 8 / 16 = 0.5. You might notice that 8 doubled equals 16 which allows this one to be calculated swiftly in the head.

Now We Get to the Fun Part

These are real achievements. The ones that are the most fun.

The first one of these is the Celestial Messenger achievement. It's the racing event that we have to do 15 times. Well, it's almost 16 so except for one day if we do it every day we're fine. Mathematically we'd need to do 15 / 16 = 0.9375 a day.

The next one Firework Festival was 1500 firecrackers. That's 1500 / 16 = 93.75 or between 93 and 94 firecrackers every day. That's quite a bunch but doable I suppose.

The last one is... the one that tops them all. The ultimate achievement. The unbelievable, most demanding of them all. Drooburt, the ghost we gave 5000 candy corn and 5000 snowflakes, he now wants us to give him 500 steamed red dumplings. That's 500 / 16 = 31.25 or 31 to 32 every day if we wanted to finish it in one event. No wonder the prices shot up. These items are rare after all.

One might think calling this fun was sarcastic. Well, who knows. I did my job calculating my daily needs for this event and shared it with you all now all I have to do is work on it and wrap everything up for myself.

Theory Friendly Games

Since I spend most of my time currently theorycrafting games at some point I figured out that in some games it's easier to find theorycrafting material and in other games, it's harder. Same for theories. But why?

Theory-Friendly Design

Theories fill up the space of the unknown with a logical concept or an idea. Back in the old days, people didn't know how the weather worked so they assumed some gods took care of that. A weird theory. Many years later people figured out how it actually works. The old hypothesis was disproven. Nowadays we don't know how things in quantum physics work exactly. So theories were created, like the string theory or the many-worlds theory. Anyways it's the same in games.

If you tell your game's story and leave out interesting parts that are not important to progress the story people start to think about it. A good example of this is Scott Cawthon's Five Nights At Freddie's series. Throughout the whole series, he kept what's been happening in the background and what's going on a mystery. Even though he gave hints throughout all the games it was still the gamers, community or player's job to figure everything out.

So for theories, in the end, it comes to telling the story but keeping interesting parts that raise curiosity out to leave it to the player base to figure it out.

Theorycrafting-Friendly Design

There's a huge difference between making theories about games and theorycrafting. Theorycrafting has a lot to do with calculation and how we perceive it but it basically comes to the same principle as with theory-friendly design. Again you want to keep details or information secret. Though this time it's more about technical details. A common example is how damage is calculated. Also the more technical content like stats, physics, point system, etc. there is the more theorycrafting is possible.

This is something I noticed in WildStar. WildStar allows a lot of theorycrafting about the item system the gear progression to be exact as well as the prime system. Aside from that, there's a little currency conversion but all in all, that's it already. In Guild Wars 2 there's not much to theorycraft about gear progression but there are many more currency systems, PvP and WvW point systems. How much the infinite items in the shop are worth it or how long it takes until they were worth their buy price and much, much more. Though I guess, it could be just me too.

Anyways the goal again is to keep the calculation behind stuff hidden and add a lot of things you can calculate. Yet this is harder to design than a theory-friendly design.

Why Bother?

First of all, you don't have to. Aside from that theory-friendly games may be picked up by theorists to create theories and solve problems, Youtube channels like Game Theory or Reddit posts about games may lead other or more people to your product resulting in your product getting more interested people. It's the same with my blog. There is a chance, even if it's not too big for people who play Guild Wars 2 to pick up WildStar and people who play WildStar might check out Guild Wars 2 and it doesn't stop there. When I switch games or play other games making theories about those people may pick those up as well. In the end, it's publicity.

Especially since Guild Wars 2 and WildStar are free to play even though there are certain limits this does anything but discouraging people to take a look or check it out.

So, in the end, I do something good for all the games I write posts about while enjoying living my inner researcher analyzing games mathematically.

Guild Wars 2: Damage Increase Part 3: Ascended Gear

We've reached the third step of our adventure through the mathematical comparing of different qualities. This is most likely the most interesting one as the question of how much better the ascended gear is than the exotic gear.

The Plan

So first we'll compare the exotic gear, stats and damage to the ascended stats and damage. Simple so far. Next, we're going to place jewels into the exotic gear and compare it to the ascended gear again. The reason we do this is that you can't place jewels in ascended gear. It is commonly known that the damage increase from exotic with jewels to ascended is 5%. So we'll check this number and bust it if it's not.

How To?

Just like in the first and second post we do the same procedure. To recap it we're calculating the increase by comparing the updated, new or the value after the change with the older, previous or value before the change via division. The result from this is a percentage that tells us the new damage we do. So basically the old damage summed up with the damage increase. If we want the damage increase we have to subtract the old damage. Since this percentage relates to the old damage in a way that the old damage is 100% we just have to subtract this 100%.

For example, if we do 2000 damage and after the change, we do 3000 damage. By how much did it increase? Of course, we can see it's 1000, but what's the percentage?
Calculating 3000 / 2000 = 1.5 or 150%. If we do 2000 multiplied by 1.5 we get our 3000 again.
So if the old damage of 2000 is 100%, the new damage of 3000 is 150% and we get the damage increase by subtracting the old value from the new value (to get the difference or the delta) we get 3000 - 2000 = 1000 which is then 150% - 100% = 50%.

That's a lot of steps so let's shorten it. We calculate 150% minus 100%. The 150% has been calculated by dividing the new value through the old value. So we get (3000 / 2000) - 100%.
That's the formula I use to calculate it.

Exotic Stats Recap

We don't want to jump between both posts so I'm gonna recap the exotic gear data from the last post here.

Our exotic gear with backpack gave us 1139 power, 809 precision, and 809 ferocity. The average weapon damage was 952.5. The formula to calculate the damage we used in the last posts was the following.

avgdmg = weaponStrengthAvg * power * (1 + ((prec / 21 / 100) + 0.05) * ((fero / 15 / 100) + 0.5))
dmg stands for damage; weaponStrengthAvg stands for the average weapon strength; prec stands for precision; fero stands for ferocity;

With all this set up and clarified let's jump into gathering our ascended data.

Ascended Stats

Of course, we'll use a table to simplify the summing of the items for us.

Item	Power	Precision	Ferocity
Zojja's Masque	63	45	45
Zojja's Epaulets	47	34	34
Zojja's Doublet	141	101	101
Zojja's Wristguards	47	34	34
Zojja's Breeches	94	67	67
Zojja's Footwear	47	34	34
Zojja's Reaver	125	90	90
Zojja's Reaver	125	90	90
Fractal Capacitor (Infused)	63	40	40
Althea's Ashes	110	74	74
Magister's Field	110	74	74
Mark of the Tethyos Houses	157	108	108
Attuned Ring of Red Death (Infused)	126	85	85
Attuned Crystalline Band (Infused)	126	85	85
Total	1381	961	961

Great! The last thing is the weapon damage which is between 900 and 1100 for axes. This means our average damage is (1100 - 900) / 2 + 900 = 1000.
So we have everything set up to start our comparison.

The Moment of Truth: Ascended vs Exotic

The moment has come let's get it done. 

Our exotic damage is:

952.5 * 2139 * (1 + ((809 / 21 / 100) + 0.05) * ((809 / 15 / 100) + 0.5)) = 2959029.46

Next our ascended damage is:

1000 * 2381 * (1 + ((961 / 21 / 100) + 0.05) * ((961 / 15 / 100) + 0.5)) = 3759656.45

Calculating the damage increase we get:

(3759656.45 / 2959029.46) - 1 = 0.2706

So there you have it. The last jump from exotic gear to ascended gear is actually 27.06%. But wait! We're not done it. Oh, no, no, no. There's a difference between ascended and exotic rings, accessories, amulets, and backpack we haven't taken into account. Our weapons and armor will most likely have runes and sigils in it. Our ascended trinkets can only be filled with infusions. Our exotic trinkets can be filled with jewels though. Even better there is Berserker jewelry. So what's the damage increase if we have the best of the best?

The best available Berserker jewels are the Exquisite Ruby Jewel which gives us a boost of 25 power, 15 precision, and 15 ferocity. We have six slots that can be equipped with this. So we get 6 * 25 = 125 power, 6 * 15 = 90 precision and 6 * 15 = 90 ferocity. This means our new numbers for exotic gear are 1139 + 125 = 1264 power, 809 + 90 = 899 precision and 809 + 90 = 899 ferocity.

Now our exotic damage changes to this value:

952.5 * 2264 * (1 + ((899 / 21 / 100) + 0.05) * ((899 / 15 / 100) + 0.5)) = 3289865.25

If we recalculate the damage increase we get:

(3759656.45 / 3289865.25) - 1 = 0.1428

Even with the best, we have available, ascended allows us to deal with 14.28% more damage on average.

Conclusion

So where did the 5% come from? What we did here was comparing the gear itself. Unfortunately, the damage increase changes respective to the amount of power you have. If you get buffs or use food or your power changes in any other way the 14.28% may change respectively. The question here is the order in which the damage increase is calculated. Do we expect the person to have the gear on it and then decide to use buff food and buffs and their build? Or do we expect the person to play a certain build in a predetermined raid group and then change their equipment respectively? This plays a huge role. In the case of these blog posts, I expect the person to get the equip and then change their build accordingly. Another reason I like to do it this way is that it makes more sense to me. First I have the stats from me just being level 80, the base stats. Then I equip myself with gear. Next, I'm gonna take a build and then I'm gonna get temporal buffs on me even if they have a 100% guaranteed uptime. Another reason I do it this way is to make it easier to change your build, buffs, foo,d and traits than changing your gear (- at least without full legendary). So what happens here is.. my build, traits, buffs and buff food have now a lower damage increase since I considered my gear prior. This is because of the natural diminishing returns.

Natural Diminishing Returns

So how does natural diminishing returns work? Easy. You start in Guild Wars 2 with 1000 power. If we take all other variables out of the way we can say we deal 1000 damage. If we double our power we deal twice the damage. 2000 power = 2000 damage. Now if we add the same amount of power to us we get 3000 power and 3000 damage. We added the same amount but the damage wasn't doubled. We got only a 50% damage increase. If we repeat the procedure the same amount of power is worth even less damage increase, only 25% now. So what does that mean? If we want to keep on double our damage we also need more power. However games, especially those which don't have a power creep (gear progression for example) only allow a limited amount of power. So doubling our damage gets harder and harder as we reach the maximum available damage. This means our need to double the damage increases and the supply decreases. This phenomenon can be called natural diminishing returns with diminishing returns meaning if you put something in you get less and the natural comes from this being mathematically given

Fun Part: Damage Against Armored Foes

To end this post on a good note though let's check out those damage numbers against foes with 2597 armor.

Our exotic damage was 2959029.46 / 2597 = 1139.41.

 Using the jewelry we get 3289865.25 / 2597 = 1266.79.

 Last but not least our ascended gear allows 3759656.45 / 2597 = 1447.69.

The next part will be on the infusions.

WildStar: Proc Chance of Prime Drops Result Update

This was a bad idea and I'm kinda running out of time to write this post so here we go in three, two, one...

Recap

So you might or might not remember that I was wondering about the proc rate of items in prime expeditions, or any prime content for that matter, in WildStar. So to check whether or not the myth of it being 25% is correct I started my drop research. Of course, starting off the sample size is small so the values are anything but accurate. I've now continued for another week to get more samples and that's why I'm here now.

Research State

So the current state is almost as I planned it. My goal was to reach a total of 100 samples. I've... reached 96 samples. I know, I know, 100 samples are still like nothing. However, it's at least a number I have proof of and that's something that matters to me. Well without further ado let's look up my old research and start the comparison! That's something I haven't done yet on my blog.

So back in my first research, I had

• 44 samples
• 35 without a proc
• 5 with only one proc
• 4 with a double proc

The current state is 

• 96 samples
• 68 without a proc
• 19 with only one proc
• 8 with double proc
• 1 with quadruple proc

Calculating the Chances

It's nice looking at those numbers but we want to see chances so let's go calculate the chances. The only interesting values are how many items of these samples had at least one proc and how many didn't.

In our first example it were 4 + 5 = 9 items so 9 / 44 = 0.204545 or 20.45%.

Currently we've got 19 + 8 + 1 = 28 items with at least one proc from 96 samples so 28 / 96 = 0.2917 or 29.17%.

As you can see our proc rate jumped by about 8.7% and is now far above the 25% people believe it to be. Well with only 96 samples the number still fluctuates a lot.

Concept of Checking

We use math to check if everything went as it's supposed to be and whether or not we've made mistakes. We can use this checking to see if our number is accurate and how far it might be off.

If we assume to have a 25% chance to proc an item and the chance does not change, additionally we can proc an item multiple times, it's safe to say that our chance to get two procs is the chance for the proc to occur and then the same chance again. This means our chances in this scenario are the following:

The chance for no proc: 75%

Chance to proc: 25%

Chance for two procs: 25% * 25% = 6.25%

Chance for three procs: 25% * 25% * 25% = 1.5625%

Chance for four procs: 25% * 25% * 25% * 25% = 0.390625%

and so on. This means if we calculate the chance on how many items at least proc'd twice the chance we get here must equal the chance for one proc multiplied by itself. We can continue this throughout all our occasions. You can call this forward checking.

In our example: 

25% * 25% should equal 6.25%. If not our check fails. If it does, perfect.

Well obviously if I'm naming this "forward checking" there must be another type of checking. Not hard to guess, the opposite I'll call it backward checking. Backward checking works by doing what we just did backward. We take the chance of for example two procs and divide it through the chance to proc at least once. The result should be the lower value.

In our example:

6.25% / 25% should equal 25%. If not our check fails. If it does, perfect.

Forward Check

So let's apply this forward check to our newest numbers.

Our chance for one proc is 29.17%. So the chance for two procs should be 29.17% * 29.17% = 8.51%. So let's check out what the chance actually is. We got nine items that have at least a double procs from 96 samples, that's a chance of 9 / 96 = 0.09375 or 9.375%. So as you can see our chance for double procs isn't too far off from the chance for only one proc. Of course with our sample size, this could just be a coincidence.

We can do the same with the quadruple proc. The chance for this one should be our chance for at least one proc multiplied by itself four times.

29.17% * 29.17% * 29.17% * 29.17% = 0.7240%

With us having only one such proc from 96 samples that's a chance of 1 / 96 = 0.0104 or 1.04%. This one is a bit too high. Now let's do the other check.

Backward Check

Without chance being 9.375% for at least a double proc if we divide this through our chance of at least getting one proc the result should be the same chance we divide through. If not our numbers are still off of what they should be. It's important for them to match up but more to this later.

9.375% / 29.17% = 32.14%

Now that's off by about 3%.

Conclusion

So as you can see all our checks failed forward and backward. This was to be expected though. A sample size of 96 is still not enough. So what do these checks tell us? If the numbers don't match up we can assume one of two things.

• The system does not work as we assumed (the chances change)
• Our chances are off, wrong or incorrect

So what went wrong? In our first forward check, the chance we've calculated was 8.51% but we got 9.375%. This means we've gotten more at least two times procs than we were supposed to if we assume the at least one proc chance of 29.17% to be correct. Same with our second forward check. We've got more quadruple procs than our proc chance of 29.17% for at least one proc allowed. So we can say 29.17% is wrong. So what must change for our number to get accurate? We need to get either

• less at least double procs
• more at least one procs and more without any proc

Our backward check more or less tells the same. The resulting chance from our calculation is slightly higher. This is the result of our at least double proc being too high or our at least one proc being too low.

So what can we take from this? The research kicks us in the face with a "keep on researching".

and with this, I'll leave for now. If I make another post on this it's most likely going to be a test of significance.