Drinking (info thread)

[Loth Emnati]

Lately there has been some talk about what happens when you use the "drink" function at the various taverns throughot the DC realm. I have some notes from when we still had a fair acces to the code, which I'd like to share with you here. I have extended my old results and made some nice graphs.

Drinking in DC means that you go to one of the 3 taverns in the game. Either the Salamanders Township, the Goblin Mounds or the SeaSide tavern. There you pay a few marks and then you get a "rumor" back, which often is something silly or a bit of information for new players.
The game does a roll and gives you a small chance to gain a charm point from this action. There is also a slight risk that you'll get too drunk, lose a quest and all the money in your backpack.

Drinking is an option for new heroes to jump their charm in case they need to bribe their way into castle. That is now unnescesary with the introduction of castle permits and the Queens Folly quest, but the option is still there. It should be noted that you never lose quest or get robbed if you are below lvl 10, but for this discussion the character that want to drink his charm up is usually of much higher level.

Players that want to raise their charm can take advantage of drinking, because it happens, that when you have high charm, the risk of losing a quest is very little and the risk of getting robbed is dimishing. Fx. at 500 charm you will get robbed on average 1 time for every 456976 drinks you take and lose 1 quest for every 251 drinks you take. The low risk of casualties gives room for the small chance of gaining a charm point to get useful. People can click fast and furious on the drink buttom and slowly climb in charm without having to invest too many quests in it.

There are two things which are interesting. The amount of charm you gain per used quest, and the number of times you have to click the drink button to get one charm point. I have calculated average values for those two things.

The average amount of charm you get per used quest in the 3 taverns.
There is a slight difference in chance at the different taverns, but for those who are not afraid of berzerk clicking the mouse, then Salamanders tavern is always preferable



The average number of times you have to click the drink button to get 1 charm point.
The number of times one have to click the drink button rises almost linearly and it is clear that driving you charm up by drinking is a slow process. There is some curvatur around 10 charm points, but as seen in the first graph, drinking isn't so good before you have atleast 40 charm, where you can expect 1 charm point for 3 quests used




These results are purely theoratical, so please test them, and give me some feedback. There is always a possibility that I have forgotten something, or even made error

[Cheshire]

*sticky*

[Cheshire]

Would you happen to have the equations you plotted for each graph?

[Loth Emnati]

I can't give you a clean function to plot.. but I promised you the code:
First a quick introduction. The variable i is the difference between the 3 taverns. i=1 is Salamanders T, i=2 is the goblin Tavern and i=3 is the SeaSide T.
Tools.doFourTest(x,y) is Freds way of getting some binomial distribution into the game. You draw 4 times each time with x/(x+y) chance of succes
Balance.gainCharm(x) does a roll to see if you get a charm point. You chance of succes is x/your_charm

With these simple rules I made spreadsheet and plotted the probabilities, but I can give you an equation..

Code: Select all

    public static String doRumors(String s, int i)
    {
        itHero ithero = Screen.getHero();
        int j = ithero.getCharm();
        if(ithero.getQuests() < 1)
            return "\nYou are so tired that you nearly pass out trying to swallow your drink.\n";
        String s1 = "\tWhile sipping your brew you exchange lies and gossip with the locals.\n";
        int k = Tools.doFourTest(j, i * 20);
        if(ithero.getLevel() < 10 && k < 2)
            k++;
        switch(k)
        {
        case 0: // '\0'
            s1 = s1 + "\n\tSomeone slips you a mickey. You awake with a headache in the dark and stinking alley.\n\n*** You Have Missed One Quest ***\n\n*** " + ithero.getMoney() + " Marks Lost ***\n";
            ithero.addFatigue(1);
            ithero.subMoney(ithero.getMoney());
            break;

        case 1: // '\001'
            s1 = s1 + "\n\tYou drink heavily and pass outfor a couple hours.\n\n*** You Have Missed One Quest ***\n";
            ithero.addFatigue(1);
            break;

        case 2: // '\002'
            s1 = s1 + "\nNoone seems interested in you...\n";
            s1 = s1 + Balance.gainCharm(i);
            break;

        default:
            s1 = s1 + Tools.getRandStory(s);
            s1 = s1 + Balance.gainCharm(i * 2);
            break;
        }
        return s1;
    }


Example: You have x charm. Your chance to win the roll is p=x/(x+20). The average charm you get pr click in the Salamanders T is:
charm= B(2,4,p)*1/x+B(3,4,p)*2/x+B(4,4,p)*2/x

The average risk of losing a quest (above lvl 10) is =B(0,4,p)+B(1,4,p), so you charmgain pr used quest is
= { B(2,4,p)*1/x+B(3,4,p)*2/x+B(4,4,p)*2/x } / {B(0,4,p)+B(1,4,p)}

[izmrjayc]

sweet thnx. my java is so rusty. im screwed if i go compsci for a mjor