Guild Wars 2

IRL I’m a professional gambler and have supported my family with it for over a decade.

Being a gambler, once I found out about the mystic forge mechanic, my interest was piqued. I had to figure out how to make money with it.

It took me about an hour of thinking and perusing the TP to find a profitable combine. I made some money with it.

Then I read all the consternation here on this forum about the MF mechanic and how much some people hate it. Thus this post. I want you to enjoy the MF mechanic, for it can be both fun and profitable. So I will explain how to make money with it (and ultimately make yourself a precursor if you so desire).

The MF works by converting an item (four at a time of course) into a random item. This random item is taken from a defined set of items. That is, if you put blue rings in, you don’t receive vicious fangs or leather trousers in return. You get either blue or green rings out.

The set of outputs is strictly defined. For a given set of inputs, you will receive an item randomly from a list of items, and you could write down every possible item on that list if you liked.

So that’s what I did. I picked an item on the trading post. Let’s call it Item A, and let’s say that Item A has a high buy order of 1s and a low sell order of 1s 50c.

I wrote down every single item that Item A could turn into in the MF. For the item I chose that I started making money with, this worked out to between 100-200 possibilities. Let’s say for the sake of argument, Item A can turn into one of 100 different items.

Now 50 of these possibilities will be one color, and 50 will be the next higher color. Let’s say Item A is a blue item. It can turn into one of 50 blue items, and also one of 50 green items.

Now I made an assumption (sometimes you gotta make these and see where they lead). I assumed that each of the 50 blue outputs was equally likely, and each of the 50 green outputs was equally likely. And that any given blue output is exactly 4 times as likely as any given green output. (I.e., 20% of the time on average you will receive a green back and 80% of the time a blue.)

Then I went to the TP and wrote down the sell price of all 100 items into a spreadsheet. For the item I chose, most of the 100 outputs were essentially junk. Let’s assume that all 50 possible blue outputs list for 1s and 1.5s on the TP and therefore will simply be fed back into the MF. Most of the green outputs were also junk. But a few of the green outputs had TP value, and a very few of the green outputs were quite valuable. Let’s say that the top ten valued green outputs were valued at:

6g
4g
3g
2g
1.6g
1g
1g
60s
40s
40s

All the other greens are worth 2s. And all the blues are worth the 1s you can buy them for on the TP.

Next step is to find the AVERAGE VALUE of the item you will get from the MP. You simply take a weighted average of the values of all the outputs (weighted by how likely they are—blues 4x more likely than greens). For these 100 items, the weighted average value of the outputs is 4s 56c. (If I did my math right. )

It costs 4s in buy orders to input into the MF, and for every 4s you input, you get an item back that will ON AVERAGE be worth 4s 56c.

Profit.

Well, not exactly, since the TP fees would eat you on this particular combine and make it slightly unprofitable.

But the combine I found was much better than this one. Instead of a 4s combine being worth 4.56s, it is worth more like 11s on average. Even after fees, it’s nearly 6 silver per click as fast as I can buy items off the TP and click them away. (Hint: It beats 2g per hour farming Cursed Shore.)

Some notes. This is gambling. IRL, I have winning days and losing days. And sometimes I have long losing streaks. I need to have enough backup capital to absorb temporary losses. This is my bankroll, and you also need a GW2 bankroll to do this sort of MF gambling.

On average I make 6s per combine. But I can go hundreds of combines and still be down gold if I fail to catch my fair share of the top prizes (the 6g, 4g, and 3g items from the example above). Or I can catch more than my fair share of the top prizes and run my money up very quickly. It all averages out to roughly 6s per combine in the end, but I need enough gold in the tank to absorb the bad runs. Fortunately, this particular combine that I happened to find makes money so fast you don’t need much money behind.

Cliffs notes. Item A turns into one of 100 items. Take the weighted average value of these 100 items (remembering the 80/20 weight on improvement), and if the average value of the output is significantly greater than the cost of the inputs, you have a profitable combine. The bigger the profit margin, the less bankroll you need. (Also you need less bankroll the more the value is spread out among many items as opposed to the value being concentrated in one or two elite items.)

No I won’t tell you the item I found, but there are many profitable combines. Think about relatively cheap things that can turn into very valuable things, albeit at rare occurrence. This is where you will likely find profitable combines.

I appreciate the effort you’ve put forth in these these posts… I think of the Mystic Forge to be similar to a casino.

It’s been designed to take your money…. and in the long term you won’t be beating the house. If you win and leave it at that then perhaps you have…. but the allure is far too strong for most.

“There is no profit in the eternal alchemy” I believe this quote is a message from the developers, trying to subtly mention this to the players. Just my 2c worth.

Yup it is all about the average return and its quite possible to profit over the long term. Be prepared to bite into some heavy losses somedays.

An other thread where math is attempting to restrain randomization, omg lol

I appreciate your effort to suggest a profitable way to use Mystic Forge. Sadly, all your maths and theory falls when you truly attempt to play with it. 80 20 is a pure senseless theory, absolutely not realistic. IF you truly are a gambler, you would know play casinos leads yourself to nothing, and that magic 23 is not coming back, as much you can attempt to type how many times that kitten number is back, so you can put money when is coming

80/20 is very realistic, actually. As has been demonstrated in multiple sufficiently large samples. Randomness like this can still be predicted very accurately over the long run, which is exactly what Morphemass is doing. Short run samples will vary wildly, but in the long run the sample mean will approach the true rate.

Hint: look up the Central Limit Theorem.

Edit: typos, thanks to my phone.

I got some good luck Sunday morning and made ~20g in the MF.

I didn’t realize that the Mystic Clover recipe can drop 10 lodestones. I also put some rare crafted weapons into the MF and got back 1 rare exotic. I don’t quite understand the mechanic of the mystic stones yet, but I am starting to believe they serve a higher function.

majorkong.9073 : IRL I’m a professional gambler and have supported my family with it for over a decade.

( Sorry since website functions not working again like quote )

Just look from different perspective..

This is online game and we are playing this game with some underage children

“First you must not caused them to try to online gambling for any reason”

Maybe just maybe gambling can be a fun pastime and a thrill for responsible adults, as long as it is kept under control.

However, gambling can lead to addiction or financial ruin if you don’t have your gambling under control and if you don’t have the financial resources to support your gambling activities.

According to Consumer Fraud Reporting.org, gambling is legal in certain forms—such as lotteries—in most states, and other types of gambling are legal in parts of Nevada and other parts of the U.S., but there are laws in place that declare gambling as an adult activity only.

Rules are in place to help keep underage children from gambling.

The minimum allowable age of a patron in a gaming ( online or not ) establishment is different in each state. While some states stipulate that patrons have to be at least 21 years of age to play, others have a minimum age requirement as low as 17 or 18 years of age.

The Gambling Commission did an extensive study in 2008 and they found a great deal of important information in regards in regards to children and gambling:

~Introduction to gambling early on in life can increase the likelihood of becoming an addictive gambler later in life.

~Children of parents who are heavy gamblers are more likely to become problem gamblers themselves.

~Boys are more likely than girls to develop gambling problems.

~Children with gambling problems are more likely to use drugs and alcohol.

~Children with gambling problems are more likely to experience depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts and or attempts.

~Children with gambling problems are more likely to perform poorly at school.

Anyways, there is a law against it in every country.

And if this Mystic Forge is related with online gambling it’s against law.

You must be 18 years or older to gamble ( online or not ) in Washington State and ArenaNet located in Bellevue, Washington.

Since this game ESRB rate is Teen.

TEEN
Titles rated T (Teen) have content that may be suitable for ages 13 and older. Titles in this category may contain violence, suggestive themes, crude humor, minimal blood, simulated gambling, and/or infrequent use of strong language.

Simulated Gambling : Player can gamble without betting or wagering real cash or currency

But since in this game you can buy anything with real cash.

So it is our responsibility to keep our children safe and share the affects of gambling and it’s addictiveness of any kind gambling.

@majorkong – thanks also for suggesting the math behind this and how to calculate profitable combines, that is very interesting and should save some experimentation. I sadly rely on gut instinct a little too much.

To add to the picture, I usually lose money per combine BUT the average sale value of the “upconverted” items are such that the loss is totally mitigated. i.e. it isn’t necessary to make a profit from every combine in order to make a profit on average. Actually reading your post it sounds like you also make a loss – we’re probably competing in the same market!

Its also worth noting that the “upconvert” rate for me has averaged @16% thus your weighting may be somewhat off but then again, so may my records

If there was a like button for the thread i’d click it.

I didn’t take any time yet to run through the math, but I respect those who think carefully about what they do.

Azazil, that argument is generally thin at best. Supposing there was an output of real money, then I could see where you were coming from, and note your point.

As it stands though, the only means of extracting money from this game is through selling in a 3rd party manner, which ANet does not condone.

What it equates to then, is that you can put money in, but 100% never get any out. There is no circuit. For it to be gambling, there MUST be a circuit.

Money in -> Simulated Items —probability-—> Money out.

Currently the system is:

Money in -> Simulated Items --—X-> Money out

This is what we would call a purchase. You do this every so often at the supermarket, for example, the action of exchanging money for goods with the full understanding that there will be no money in return.

You will never, ever make $1 from this game, and anything ‘gambling’ related is simply in the realm of simulated items.

I do appreciate your concern, but this isn’t even an opinion. By every definition of the law, this cannot be regarded as gambling, until there is a legal means of (potentially) making money.

@morphemass

Most combines are duds. But for the combines I do, the average value of all products after, say, 1000 combines is much, much greater than the cost of the 4000 inputs. It’s about 6 silver profit per click.

Also you have to be careful about looking at your records to determine the percentage of upconverts. There’s lots of randomness, so in one sample you’ll get 15% and in another you’ll get 25%. There’s statistical methods to help you figure out what the "true"percentage is from observed data, but right now there are so many combines where the profit margin is so huge that it’s profitable even if the rate were only 10%. So I don’t really care to take the time to try to get a more accurate number than 20%.

I placed a bunch of buy orders last night after starting this thread. I spent 30 minutes this morning clicking away the purchases, and I made about 10g or so.

@LFk I agree. Legally there’s nothing about this game that can fairly be considered gambling.

I think @azazil has a point that placing gambling mechanics like MF in a kids game raises some ethical questions. If I were designing a game that children would play I likely wouldn’t have something like MF in the game.

But I also think that educating people about how gambling works-the math behind it and so forth-helps to prevent problem gambling. In general the problem gamblers I’ve met are the ones with the most ignorance about gambling and how it works.

Thank you for your post.
but you lost me at “I used a spreadsheet”.

And here is why.
I want to play and enjoy the game, not turn it into a career.

So we want to talk about gambling and if Mystic Forge can lead minors to gambling issue. Fine. I’ll begin with a question. Do you all know what a poker room or a casino online room is? They are mostly used to play cards or other casino games online. And ye, all of them support real cash. If you win, you withdraw real money. This is gambling, and it’s illegal on some countries, and illegal worldwide about minors.

Now. Some of those gambling rooms offer virtual coins. Basically, creating an account, your account is able to use virtual fake dollars to be used ingame for gamble. What you win, are other virtual dollars. You don’t withdraw real money. This kind of game is allowed worldwide. It’s a gambling videogame after all. Now guess what.
Even fake money gambling room have all in common one main rule: no minors.
Guess why? azazil’ post explained it perfectly.
So, this game is actually using an illegal system, who can even be persecuted by a class action, because allow minors to understand and learn what is a gamble. Not enough , the game allow the player to use real money ( who can easily reach the bank credit card limit and go over till lead the player to suicide) just to buy ingame golds to be used to gamble and gamble attempting a precursor. Till sickness.
I would make a call to your lawyer if you think my post is a lie, he can enlight you all of what i’m talking about, and if i’m wrong

I would strongly suggest to Arenanet ( before some legal problems will sooner or later begins) to remove completely from this game the aleatory system , and allow the mystic forge to be just a big forge to create special components with a predetermined formula.

I have not one, but several friends who are lawyers by trade. Government, corporate, and civil. I imagine even if I was dumb enough to approach my company’s lawyer to ask, I’d probably get the same response: You’re lying.

I don’t know which lawyer decided to tell you this horrible lie.
I don’t know if you think that ANet does not have lawyers, and they just overlooked this, or let it slide “just to see what happens”.

Suing for for this kind of thing is like suing Coca Cola for putting random prizes under the bottlecap, or McDonald’s for running their annual monopoly game (both of which a 10 year old can buy, incidentally). It is the grossest exaggeration of “illegal gambling” I can think of. If this kind of class action lawsuit is advice you managed to get from a lawyer in your employ, I would suggest you let him go immediately.

Majorkong is right. The issue here is not at all legal, and far more with ethics. Whether or not you believe this is ethical, that’s your own opinion.

It’s also distracting from the topic, sadly, because the OP is one of the more sensible people who tried to turn the MF into an opportunity instead of another thread about how much he threw in and lost.

Would probably. And eventually it’s his opinion, not a judge sentence.
My explanation is pretty clear and can work well enough to sue.
I don’t get how you compare a gambling game with a coca cola prize under the bottlecap, meh
But ye, let’s put the head back in the hole like the ostrich and let’s go back to talk about the funny 80 20 theory and how to make money with a random reward.

p.s. Cigarette companies had lawyers too. Ended up paying loads , and now we have that tag on the box about how dangerous are cigarettes for your health worldwide on every language

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Would probably. And eventually it’s his opinion, not a judge sentence.
My explanation is pretty clear and can work well enough to sue.
I don’t get how you compare a gambling game with a coca cola prize under the bottlecap, meh
But ye, let’s put the head back in the hole like the ostrich and let’s go back to talk about the funny 80 20 theory and how to make money with a random reward.

p.s. Cigarette companies had lawyers too. Ended up paying loads , and now we have that tag on the box about how dangerous are cigarettes for your health worldwide on every language

The cap prize can be considered gambling if it worth more than the cost of a bottle, ie you pay for a bottle and have the chance at winning more. That is also by definition gambling and so you could use the same argument to sue Coca-Cola, and it’s even a more valid argument since there is actual monetary gain there.

In either case you’d be laughed out of court.

MajorKong, thanks for putting up this thread, maybe I’ll spend some time working on this myself as I have a lot of dead time waiting for flights over the next couple of days

Not same issue but for example just remember Craig Smallwood’s case.

http://ia600507.us.archive.org/15/items/gov.uscourts.hid.87427/gov.uscourts.hid.87427.36.0.pdf

azazil.9541:

Not same issue but for example just remember Craig Smallwood’s case.

http://ia600507.us.archive.org/15/items/gov.uscourts.hid.87427/gov.uscourts.hid.87427.36.0.pdf

Can someone sum this up for me plz?… I don’t really get heavy court related documents v.v

The reason he added that article is because gambling is seen to be addicting and people can gain a dependence on it. The case that he presented shows a person that was playing Lineage II which is a game that NCSoft produced long ago and the plaintiff had a mental dependence to the game. Lineage II had a subscription fee and when AIon was released by NCSoft his count was banned, and the plaintiff thinks these two events were linked. When he was banned he was still dependent on the game and had prepaid time still for lineage II. He sued on the means of being dependent and not getting his money back that he had already charged to his card ( approximately 65 dollars). the case was dismissed because of lack of evidence and lack of jurisdiction.

This case is interesting in terms of how games can create a dependence and cause issues for people. I don’t think any case can be created in terms of the one listed in the court case above or for Guild Wars 2 itself, Guild Wars is not a subscription based game so you are not required to pay a reoccurring fee to have enjoyment. The model that Guild Wars 2 has tho can present an ethic issue because if you do have access to a credit card you can purchase in game gold resulting in continues gambling. This is different than the person above mentioned with the McDonald’s Monopoly game or the soda giveaways. With those games you are buying the food and are not required to buy for the game, Guild Wars 2 is the same and you do not have to purchase gems/ gold. the thing that is different is the fact that if you purchase gold in Guild Wars 2 you are only getting that product, if you use it to gamble in the mystic forge and see a good profit gain, you might be more likely to purchase the again. Yes with the food giveaways you are more likely to purchase but you are getting that food product, which in turn is different than just purchasing the monopoly pieces, and also makes the mystic forge more closely associated with gambling than other things implemented in games.

The Model that Guild Wars 2 has is also really bad for those that are susceptible to addiction. The brain highly enjoys flashing colors lights, instant gratification, and high risk high reward situations. This is why slot machines and video machines in casinos are popular. The Mystic forge essentially has all these things. Is it a legal issue no, are their some ethic dilemmas, but really a lot of games have similar things like this that keep you playing the game, the only difference that ArenaNet has with this is you can use real money in game to supply these risks. The one thing they have that makes it less of an ethics issue is the fact that their is no profit that can be gained from selling the items outside of Guild Wars 2, unless the person is selling the items on a third party website for real currency, which is against the user agreement and would result in being banned.

Vayra.3290:

The cap prize can be considered gambling if it worth more than the cost of a bottle, ie you pay for a bottle and have the chance at winning more. That is also by definition gambling and so you could use the same argument to sue Coca-Cola, and it’s even a more valid argument since there is actual monetary gain there.

In either case you’d be laughed out of court.

Like Dezerved explained, there is a big difference between a bottlecap prize and gambling. And just so you know, if the winner of the bottlecap game is a minor and interested to cashout his reward, needs an adult
Gambling is proved enough as a dependency sickness who can lead to pure needing of it like a drug, and worldwide recognized as extremely dangerous on minors.
And this game allow real money used for gamble the mystic forge.
Just bring a documented proof of your bank account drained away to anet purchasing Arenanet gems, and a medical document proving the game made your underage son gamble dependant and trust me, no court will laugh.
Add an adult ruined with bank troubles (proved again) gambling the Arenanet forge, suicide , with his family asking someone to pay back the loss of his son. Guess who pay
And noone laugh.

The Model that Guild Wars 2 has is also really bad for those that are susceptible to addiction. The brain highly enjoys flashing colors lights, instant gratification, and high risk high reward situations. This is why slot machines and video machines in casinos are popular. The Mystic forge essentially has all these things.

Perfectly true. The flashing blue fast flux of the mystic forge while using the forge, gambling, is exactly configured like slot machines and any other gambling dependant game.

Lucas Ashrock stop derailing the thread with your paranoid “sue everyone” american way of thinking.
Majorkong have tried to put the MF in perspective for the casual gamer, who just keep chucking in exotics and at the end of the day is sitting with a net loss.

Keep up the good work

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

So we want to talk about gambling and if Mystic Forge can lead minors to gambling issue. Fine. I’ll begin with a question. Do you all know what a poker room or a casino online room is? They are mostly used to play cards or other casino games online. And ye, all of them support real cash. If you win, you withdraw real money. This is gambling, and it’s illegal on some countries, and illegal worldwide about minors.

Now. Some of those gambling rooms offer virtual coins. Basically, creating an account, your account is able to use virtual fake dollars to be used ingame for gamble. What you win, are other virtual dollars. You don’t withdraw real money. This kind of game is allowed worldwide. It’s a gambling videogame after all. Now guess what.
Even fake money gambling room have all in common one main rule: no minors.
Guess why? azazil’ post explained it perfectly.
So, this game is actually using an illegal system, who can even be persecuted by a class action, because allow minors to understand and learn what is a gamble. Not enough , the game allow the player to use real money ( who can easily reach the bank credit card limit and go over till lead the player to suicide) just to buy ingame golds to be used to gamble and gamble attempting a precursor. Till sickness.
I would make a call to your lawyer if you think my post is a lie, he can enlight you all of what i’m talking about, and if i’m wrong

I would strongly suggest to Arenanet ( before some legal problems will sooner or later begins) to remove completely from this game the aleatory system , and allow the mystic forge to be just a big forge to create special components with a predetermined formula.

Dude…you serious?
You really believe that a minor can get addicted to gambling through Mystic Forge?
REAL LIFE GAMBLING?With real money?God…..i don’t know what to say….

Why don’t you sue then Facebook then,that have hundreds of gambling games free and are actual casino games?
Hell…why don’t you sue all the Internet and all the gaming companies?

If someone gets addicted to real life gambling cause of Mystic Forge then he have some serious issues…and i don’t recommend a lawyer but a psychologist..

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

An other thread where math is attempting to restrain randomization, omg lol

Math doesn’t restrain randomization, it just describes it. So there’s no reason to “omg lol”.

I appreciate your effort to suggest a profitable way to use Mystic Forge. Sadly, all your maths and theory falls when you truly attempt to play with it. 80 20 is a pure senseless theory, absolutely not realistic. IF you truly are a gambler, you would know play casinos leads yourself to nothing, and that magic 23 is not coming back, as much you can attempt to type how many times that kitten number is back, so you can put money when is coming

It’s clear that you don’t know what Expected Value is, which is the only way to calculate the possible profit/loss in the long term when approaching to any game that has randomness.

You cite casino games, which have clearly a negative EV for the player (and thus a positive one for the casino, without rake/commission these games are all a zero sum game), because the payout is well defined and in favour of the casino.

In the case that OP posted about, the pay out is not defined by the casino (A.net), A.net itself just defined the probabilities (which can be inferred with a good sample of trials, let’s say at least 10k trials, even if 10k isn’t obv a huge sample, but I don’t think the error will be more than 5%), the EV of this game is defined by these probabilites and the actual prices on the TP, so there can be a profit margin in the long term, if the prices are such and they don’t slide down for the higher demanded items that can be obtained by the MF.

I’m a professional gambler too (poker player here), and I’m always baffled by all the ignorance surrounding a simple math concept like EV. And, even if I shouldn’t, I’m always happy to see that someone, like OP, uses it in a smart way and understands it.

@OP: what is your sample size to calculate the actual probs to get a green item instead of a blue item out of the MF? The real problem to me lies in the fact that since you have to get very few specific items to raise the EV on the positive side, and to just calculate it you need a lot of trials, even if you reach the conclusion that you can have a positive EV, I dunno if you can ever overcome the initial cost of the trials themselves.

I can vouch for the general idea the OP is putting forth. I used to do it with sigils; I made a couple of hundred gold or so doing that before I got bored of it.

This was over tens of thousands of trials, too, so variance shouldn’t have played too large a role in it.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

Expected Value.. Yes it can work playing texas poker. Not so much playing roulette and slot machines. Which is the behaviour of the mystic forge.

The idea of expected value is just as applicable (and easier to apply) to roulette and slot machines as it is to poker – it simply tells you that the EV is negative, and so you don’t play those.

On the other hand, while quite a lot of Mystic Forge gambles may be negative EV, there are some that are not. Of course, you need three things to do this properly:
1) Knowledge of which items to buy and combine, and at what prices.
2) Knowledge of which items to sell, and at what prices.
3) A large enough bankroll to weather the variance.

@Galandil

I didn’t do any trials. I used information posted by others who have used the MF regarding the 80/20 split and then made the assumptions that the MF would be designed in a simple way (80/20 splits across different item types, no favoritism for or against any particular item).

Of course it’s possible that the MF is designed with different splits for every item type and with biases toward or away from certain outputs. I just made the guess it wasn’t the case, that the rules would be simple and relatively consistent across item classes.

I also only pursued combines with a large profit margin and therefore a margin for error. On the combine I’m doing now, the true split could be 90/10 instead of 80/20 and I’d still be roughly breaking even. So if my assumptions turned out wrong, I hopefully wouldn’t get burned too hard.

IRL you can find profitable plays on slot machines using this process. You make a guess about some of the internal rules about how the thing works and then you can calculate EV. If you have experience with slots, your guesses will usually be right and you’ll usually be correct that you’ve found a good play. And if you are wrong and walk into a bad play, hopefully experience will tell you relatively quickly that you might have goofed before you burn too much $.

Other point is that the upside when you find a play is often much greater than the downside if you goof, because when you’ve found a good one you can run it as long as you want until it’s burned while when you find a bad one, you stop.

Quick question here: how much money do you need to fund the initial search for good combines? I’m guessing you need a pretty high amount of tries just to compile that spreadsheet in the first place…

You don’t need to make any combines to compile the spreadsheet for many items if you understand what the MF is going to give you.

Take green dyes, for instance. There are a fixed number of green dyes in the game and a fixed number of yellow dyes. If you put four green dyes into the MF, you will get back either a green dye or a yellow dye. Just filter the TP for green dyes and write down all the selling prices. Then filter the TP for yellow dyes and write down the selling prices. Take a weighted average of the two, and voila, you have a pretty good (though not 100% perfect) estimate for the average value dye you’ll receive from the MF for combining four green dyes.

I have no idea if green dyes are profitable or not b/c I haven’t run the numbers. But that’s how you’d do it.

If you did lvl 80 weapons or armor, it should be relatively similar. If you did lower level weapons/armor, you’d probably have to do a few combines to figure out what level range you’ll get back out.

Gotcha, thanks.

Now if only I had the willpower to start working on that spreadsheet… :P

Honestly it takes me <5 minutes to do one. You just filter, type in all the numbers, write the averaging equation, and you have your answer.

MagnusLL.8473:

Quick question here: how much money do you need to fund the initial search for good combines? I’m guessing you need a pretty high amount of tries just to compile that spreadsheet in the first place…

As majorkong says, you shouldn’t need to spend anything to find out what to combine; it’s mostly just research. However, I’d recommend having a reasonable amount of money so that you’re not at significant risk of losing it all due to bad luck. Also, note that the kind of amount you ought to have will depend on the specific gamble you choose to make.

If you want to be especially mathsy about it, you could use the Kelly criterion.

Lucas Ashrock.8675:

An other thread where math is attempting to restrain randomization, omg lol

I appreciate your effort to suggest a profitable way to use Mystic Forge. Sadly, all your maths and theory falls when you truly attempt to play with it. 80 20 is a pure senseless theory, absolutely not realistic. IF you truly are a gambler, you would know play casinos leads yourself to nothing, and that magic 23 is not coming back, as much you can attempt to type how many times that kitten ed number is back, so you can put money when is coming

Chance can be constrained. Constrained chance is called “statistics”, and whole industries and technologies – including the microchips in the devices we’re all using to read this – are built upon the fact that it behaves itself.

The OP has taken the same sort of actuarial approach that, say, an insurance company does: looking at the distribution of real data, making reasonable assumptions based on that, and calculating the financial impacts if future data broadly matches. Then he’s looked for cases where, on average, the yields are positive. He claims that he’s done the leg-work and that many such cases exist; I see no mathematical or game reason to doubt him. It could be valid to challenge his assumptions as inaccurate, if the data didn’t bear him out, but I see nothing obviously wrong with the way he’s using them.

As to the associated risk, though. He mentions it, but doesn’t dwell. An important question is what the distribution of profit and loss is. Ideally, you want lots of modest potential profits, rather than a few big ones – because the fewer results the potential profit is wrapped up in, the bigger the chance of a long run of losses, that will eat into your capital and could wipe you out. And chance doesn’t have a memory, so you can’t count on a few “extra” good results to come along and balance out the bad ones (in retrospect – the so-called “Gambler’s Fallacy”) – if you take big loses, you just have to suck up them up, and start again from wherever they leave you. I get the impression that the OP is relying quite a bit on high-return, low-probability gains, plus deep pockets to ride out the inevitable fallow patches – not a strategy for everyone. But to understand the real risk of this approach, frankly you need the data – and effectively that means spending the time and money throwing stuff yourself into the Mystic Toilet and recording the results (with no guarantee you’ll like the answer when you get it).

Will I be trying it? Probably not any time soon.

nothing like necro’ing a fascinating 7-month-old post