Understanding the drop system

[Tsukihime]

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If you have ever looked at the Enemy tab in the RPG Maker database, you'll see that there is an option to set some drop items.

At the end of the battle, any enemies that have been defeated may drop some items.

The probability that an item is dropped is something you set up!
Now, the problem is, what exactly does the probability mean?

Fractions

The probabilities use a fraction system. If you look at the screenshot at the beginning of the article, you'll notice that you can change the value on the right-side of the /

So for example, if you take

1 / 1

That means you have 1 in 1 chance of obtaining the drop, or 100%.
If you take

1 / 2

Then you have 1 in 2 chances of obtaining the drop, or 50%
If you take

1 / 3

Then you have 1 in 3 chances of obtaining the drop, or 33.3333%

Hopefully, this is straightforward.

Limitations

One of the biggest limitations with this system is the inability to specify any percentages between the ones I provided, because the denominators are strictly integers, and you can't change the numerator.

This means if you wanted to say 60%, which is

3 / 5

You're out of luck, because the numerator is always 1.
So the drop system has a bit of a limitation. Let me proceed to fix that.

 

[eivl]

This would come in handy! =)

This article was originally published on my Patreon. For the latest articles, you may consider becoming a patron!

You write very good articles, anyone interesting in understanding how MV works should consider listening ;)

 

[HotfireLegend]

That thought never occured to me - you can only specify drop rates between 50% and 0%, 100% notwithstanding!

Please do make a fix :D

 

[eivl]

@Tsukihime have you thought about making it compatible with a probability function and not just a static probability?

I personally do not like the grind that is controlled by static drop chances, mostly because you can not affect the outcome yourself.
You could use Luck as an modifier, you could also use combat rating (like in tale of games) to affect item drop chance.

So if you had alot of luck, it would look like this.

In this way you control the drop chance at the end.

exponential functions are a great tool for this! ;)