Guild Wars 2

Is it possible to get a precursor when opening bags with a LV 53 toon? I’ve heard ppl say yes, and I’ve heard no.

So I’ll ask here.

umskiptar.5641:

Is it possible to get a precursor when opening bags with a LV 53 toon? I’ve heard ppl say yes, and I’ve heard no.

So I’ll ask here.

From the wiki:

“Precursor weapons can be obtained from almost any item source. This includes loot, chests, containers, reward chests, etc. that can be characterized by the possibility of receiving a weapon. The possibility of receiving a precursor weapon is not dependent on level or area, as players have reported receiving precursors on low-level characters in low-level areas as well as high-level character in high-level areas. To note, only high level players (62 – 80) can receive exotic quality weapons and may be more likely to receive precursor weapons from loot as loot often scales with level.”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Precursor_weapon

~EW

Thank you! 15 characters

What Level 53 does is get you access to items that salvage into T3/4 mats which are in high demand and short supply, because it’s so easy to level right past these to the level cap and that drops scale to your actual level, not the level you are playing in.

Actually, no — an L53 character is never going to see precursors from champ bags. The wiki is “probably” incorrect about this and it’s likely because the “proof” is circumstantial rather than direct.

The analysis below applies to champion bags; I don’t have any opinion about precursors dropping for mid-tier characters in other circumstances (since there’s no data).
—————————————————
Short version: there’s no evidence that I’ve seen showing that arbitrary L80 exotics drop from any champ bags and therefore precursors can’t drop for sub ~L75 characters. On the contrary, all the evidence shows that mid-tier toons have a lower chance of getting any exotics; in particular: they have no chance to get random exotics and only see the named exotics tied to each particular bag.

Longer version:
Comparing data from 20k bags opened by an L52 and 10,401 bags by an L80, we can see that

• The L52 sees only L80 exotics named on the wiki as specific to the particular bag
• The L80 sees those exotics + a variety of others.

This translates to an exotic drop rate of 0.31% for the L52 and 0.57% for the L80, i.e. the L80 had nearly twice as many exotics drop. There are a couple of different ways to consider whether this was just a matter of bad luck or whether there’s a fundamental difference in exotic rates for L52 vs L80. Among them:

• Presume the true chance is 0.31% of any exotic and estimate the chance that someone could open 10k bags and get 0.57%. Odds: 14 chances in one million.
• Presume the true chance is 0.57%, what are the chances of getting only 0.31% from 20k. Odds: 1 in one million.
• Presume that the true chances for a special exotic is 0.31% and for a random is 0.26%. How likely is it that you wouldn’t get a single random from 20k bags? Odds: 1 in one million.

In other words, this data shows there’s at best only a few chances in a million that mid-tier toons might sometimes see random exotics — the chance of seeing a precursor within that is much, much less.

Accordingly, even if precursors might drop for L52 toons while opening bags, the odds are so astronomically low that it shouldn’t affect anyone’s choice as to which toon they use to open bags.

Given the sheer amount of data we’ve seen (not just from above), I think it’s safe to reject the hypothesis that precursors can drop for sub ~L75 characters opening standard champ bags. (Since ANet loves to use similar icons and mechanics for dissimilar items, it’s possible there’s some existing box/bag out there for which this isn’t true.)

I am indebted to redditors such as colbymg for collating results as well as others for posting their research from tens of thousands of bags:

• https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3idext (collating two other data sources, linked in the original post)
• https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3pocs4

among others

Based on the data, I’ll stick to my existing rule of thumb:

• If I want coin, to avoid bloodstone dust, or need mid-tier basic mats, I’ll use a mid-tier toon.
• If I want the dust, tier 5 basic mats, can’t be bothered selling-X-to-buy-Y, or just want the excitement of maybe seeing some random exotics, I’ll use an L80.