You've heard of the "Golden Ratio", but how about the "Platinum Ratio"?

Hi Everyone,

I decided to do a quick analysis of the chances of finding platinum in order to figure out what might be the best farming opportunity. The results weren't too surprising in most cases, but I figured I'd share.

CALCULATION
Obviously, I didn't have a list of how often a monster spawns, so I used monster maximum HP, since that is the second best determiner in how quickly you can plow through a bunch of the same monster. For discussion's sake, I call the number the 'platinum ratio'.

Basically, I took the percentage chance to find platinum on a corpse and divided it by the maximum HP a monster can have to determine worst case scenario.
For Example:
Balron:

Ranking: #145
Platinum Chance: 1/100
HP: 592-711
Platinum Ratio: 0.000014064697609001406​

Platinum Ratio = (1/100) / 711 = 0.000014064697609001406

So, worst case is that, when fighting Balrons, you have a 0.0014 % chance PER BALRON HP to find one platinum coin.
That doesn't mean much, but if you think about it in terms of how many Balrons you can squish in an hour, it makes a little bit more sense.
Say you can get through, maybe 15, in an hour .. and their average HP is 651.
15 * 651 * 0.000014064697609001406 = 0.13734177215189874, which means you have an almost 14% chance of finding 1 platinum in that hour.

Now, say you can get through 40 elder gazers in hour:
Elder Gazer:

Ranking: #105
Platinum Chance: 1/200
HP: 178-195
Platinum Ratio: 0.000025641025641025643​

Average HP = 187
40 * 187 * 0.000025641025641025643 = 0.1917948717948718, or about 19.18% chance per hour.

Now, just for kicks, let's take a look at your common rat:

Ranking: #18
HP: 6 - 6
Platinum Chance: 1/1000
Platinum Ratio: 0.00016666666666666666​

I have never attempted this, but we'll say you can get through 200 an hour:
200 * 6 * 0.00016666666666666666 = 0.19999999999999998 or about 20%.

Maybe we should just farm rats??

Anyway, here's what the top 20 looks like:


Note: Mongbats are actually in 21st place!

Now, the bottom 20:


DISCLAIMER:

• HP isn't 100% accurate in all cases.
• Assumes you can plow through monsters back to back

Happy hunting!

Interesting analysis. Can you make a list of non-bosses, and remove the mobs that arent gated behind instances?

I could remove the bosses, but removing the gated mobs would be totally manual ... so no dice on that one!

Nice work. I wonder if it would shift at all using average HP.

If anyone would like to see the complete list, here's a link to a Google Spreadsheet:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1GKBd87KDZjM4k6VY2G5ZBEHuk8eDAgGHpZ3sMXhAe34/edit?usp=sharing

Thanks for sharing your work! Checking it out.

Also, love your avatar pic, seriously one of the greatest movies.

Thanks! Big Trouble in Little China is definitely a classic.

This might be a good time to remind people I'll sell Plat @10k

Totally flawed analysis due to your assumption of killing monsters back to back


Edit: it also didnt take into account extra time spent looting corpses which is a significant time delay whrn going through 100s of corpses..

I think this was just a theoretical exercise. There's no way to take spawn time and amount into consideration.

Also, with a tamer you can loot and kill at the same time. This allows for overlap and with the restock looting macros the downtime would be minimal.

Why bust his balls over something he explicitly stated in his initial post?

Now factor in the gold per monster and the approximate market rate of platinum... i.e. if platinum goes for 8k, and balrons drop 1000gp, then ever balron effectively drops 1/8th of a platinum.

I suspect then the rankings will largely mimic the ranking in total kills of each monster. Players are pretty efficient at finding the best way to get what they want!

Found an old file I had:



That's with platinum at 6k. Doesn't change too much if you tinker it to 8 or 10.