So.... This first time a day drop rate....

[Ebil]

You are basing your math off of your own personal findings which is a sample size too small to be 100% sure about. I go to wowhead alot and unless they have added a way to track the pets that drop from the first kill of the day there is no data there to support that idea. Now I will go on wowhead to read about the 10% first kill chance because it may be on the seprate pet pages and not on the large Timeless Isle pet guides.

[Azrile]

It is based off of account, not character. I now have 5 days of data of doing all the pet spawns on the island with > 5 characters each day. It is a bit of a pain because most of my characters can´t solo many of the rares.

I have now collected 14 pets, 12 of them coming on the first kill of the day. Excluding forebodings and dancers. that is 12 pets, 11 coming from first kill of the day. Mathematically, we know the overall drop rate as reported on wowhead for these pets is about 3%. But from my data over the last two weeks, you are 10 times more likely to get the pet on the first kill of the day. That is why I am putting it at 10% for first kill, and 1% other kills... it would make an average close to the 3% showing on wowhead.

For the ominus and dancer, I have about 200 kills that I tracked using an add-on, and probably another 400 unrecorded of the dancers and forebodings and got 2 drops from them, 1 on first kill of the day.. Statistically, this one is iffy. I am leaning on them having just a flat drop rate, not affected by first kill of the day tracking and I just got lucky on that one pet. Overall, I have terrible RNG on these pets as wowhead shows a much higher drop rate than I am seeing.

What is the point of all this? Simple.. you are better off killing 5 different bosses 1 time, then camping the same boss and killing it 5 times. Aside from Jadefire and Ruby.. all of these pets are selling for nearly the same amount..so even if you don´t need Ale, but need Grup, you would be better off killing Ale and Grup, rather than Grup twice.(and selling Ale if you get it and buying Grup).

The other good news.. i have now amassed 200k gold on Illidian selling all these pets.. Big shopping spree coming next week after prices continue to plummet. I may be able to push getting into the top 100 overall!!

[Azrile]

You are basing your math off of your own personal findings which is a sample size too small to be 100% sure about. I go to wowhead alot and unless they have added a way to track the pets that drop from the first kill of the day there is no data there to support that idea. Now I will go on wowhead to read about the 10% first kill chance because it may be on the seprate pet pages and not on the large Timeless Isle pet guides.

The article that I read was on MMO-Champion that stated that the first drop of the day had a much higher chance of dropping rare items. It was published a few days before 5.4 and it certainly ( but I could be mistaken) had the air of a person who had talked to the devs about it and was sure of their facts.

Nothing says ´10%´ except me. As I showed above, it is based on a roughly 10 times more likely chance to get the pet on the first kill of the day combined with the 3% drop rate reported on wowhead. The math works out to it being close to 10% and 1%... but it could just as easily be 5% and .5% with the overall 3% skewed high because most people are only killing rares 1 time per day, but I don´t think that is the case. If my 10% and 1% are accurate, the actual wowhead % should drift higher over the coming weeks as less people spend hours on the island killing the same stuff multiple times. A higher percentage of kills will be first kills, which means the overall average % will move closer to 10%, but never actually get there.

[Ebil]

Those rare items may more be about gear than pets. I have been doing the isle since came out everyday on at least two characters. I have four over there, three horde and one alliance, not one pet has drop for me on the first try. I don't know if it is because I play on a high and medium pop servers where the spawns are killed in a minute or less. But what I hope is that if I complain enough about not getting a pet on the first kill of the day the Gods of RNG will bless me with a pet from Bufo just to prove me wrong.

[Sanzul]

Sorry to debunk the theories here...

Nothing is debunked. The theory isn't that you can only get things on the first kill, but that the drop chance is increased on the first kill. Even if you got all pets on the second kill, that's still not enough data to really say much about the actual drop rates because the sample size is too small.

[Gilneas]

They have the same drop rate on the first kill or the second or the 10th or the 100th. The "evidence" to the contrary is purely based off of people's reactions to the "got it on my first kill" posts that people ALWAYS make and the existence of a set of tracking quests which give absolutely no indication that they have anything to do with pet drops (or that they do anything at all -- there's a lot of stuff in the game files that is nothing). People are just always looking for explanations for why others may be more lucky then them. But that is all it is -- luck. The fact is, what we see from these pets its exactly what you'd expect to see from the drop rate shown on WoWhead. If you want to think you have some special drop rate on the first kill then knock yourself out, but in the absence of any real evidence (or much more convincingly Blizzard actually saying it is the case) its not true.

[Azrile]

They have the same drop rate on the first kill or the second or the 10th or the 100th. The "evidence" to the contrary is purely based off of people's reactions to the "got it on my first kill" posts that people ALWAYS make and the existence of a set of tracking quests which give absolutely no indication that they have anything to do with pet drops (or that they do anything at all -- there's a lot of stuff in the game files that is nothing). People are just always looking for explanations for why others may be more lucky then them. But that is all it is -- luck. The fact is, what we see from these pets its exactly what you'd expect to see from the drop rate shown on WoWhead. If you want to think you have some special drop rate on the first kill then knock yourself out, but in the absence of any real evidence (or much more convincingly Blizzard actually saying it is the case) its not true.

Evidence. 6 days of tracking 17 pets dropped from rare spawns. 15 came on the first kill of the day. This is my personal data, not going from ´first kill got pet´ posts on wowhead.

Also, Blizzard definitely does something with that tracking, anyone can tell it just from the coins you get. Kill the ship twice in the same day and tell me you can´t see that it uses different loot tables. If you haven´t figured at least that much out by now then you really shouldn´t be commenting on threads that involve a lot of math. Most people had that part figured out the first day. First kill has a much better loot table.

[Luciandk]

First jademist dancer kill after daily reset, pops an SS breed jademist dancer.

[Gilneas]

Evidence. 6 days of tracking 17 pets dropped from rare spawns. 15 came on the first kill of the day. This is my personal data, not going from ´first kill got pet´ posts on wowhead.

Which is a tiny sample size and is purely anecdotal. That is not evidence, as it is fully within the realm of possibility of the listed drop rate. If I wanted to be as equally anecdotal, I'd reply that I've had a similar number drop this week, and absolutely NONE of them were on first kills for the day. But that means about as much as your claim so I won't try to present it that way.

If you haven´t figured at least that much out by now then you really shouldn´t be commenting on threads that involve a lot of math

This thread has nothing to do with math. It is pure conjecture based on feeling and a desire to place some sort of rule on purely random drops when there is none.

But you've made up your mind to spread this false rumor as fact.

[Azrile]

Anecdotal is the post above you.

Statistical accuracy is recording almost 400 rare spawn kills, and finding out that the ones that were first kills of the day had a 10x more likely chance to drop a pet. A data set of 400 is far from anecdotal. Collecting close to 20 pets is far from anecdotal. Maybe that word doesn´t mean what you think it means.

Smart players - make sure you are killing every pet-rare every day. Let the math-impaired people kill the same rare 20x´s per day for their 1% chance.

[Quintessence]

In the end, I think everyone needs to interpret the information in a way that best suits them.

Unless Blizzard makes an official statement that the "first time a day" mechanic is in place, we'll never truly know what is going on. It's entirely possible that it exists, and entirely possible that it doesn't. The debate will just go on and on since Blizzard isn't going to spill the beans.

For me, I need to take all of this information with a grain of salt. If not, I'll only end up stressing out more than necessary when the "first time a day" drop rate doesn't seem to "work" for me, but does for others.

And boy does it not work for me. =\ I've been making it a point to focus only on rares that drop pets as my first kills each day (going so far as to avoid killing anything at all until a rare pops up), yet RNG seems to be against me.

But from here on out, I've made a resolution to not worry about the droprate, and just be stubborn and persistent until RNG eventually rolls in my favor. Or yenno, maybe I'll find a great deal on the AH.


Edit - I Tweeted Mumper and TheCrafticus about this, and I honestly didn't expect a reply, but they answered. Here's what the devs had to say about the "first kill per day":

• Q: Do you have a significantly increased chance to receive a pet from your first Timeless Isle rare/mob kill of the day?
• TheCrafticus: I don't believe so, but I'm including @nite_moogle for Ultimate Verification.
• nite_moogle: there are no times in which you have a higher than normal chance to get a battle pet on timeless isle

[Azrile]

you have the ears of the devs!!! And apparently I was wrong.

[Sanzul]

In the end, I think everyone needs to interpret the information in a way that best suits them.

I think interpreting the information correctly and then using it in a way that best suits you is more useful. Since we're talking mathematical drop chances in a computer program, there is going to be a correct interpretation and every other interpretation will be wrong.