Magick Chest at the Crash Site

As far as I know it still hasn't been figured out how the contents of the chest are generated.

So, I did some testing today.
__________________________________________
Human - Male - Barbarian
Name: Conan

gets this
- 119 Gold
- Heal Lesser Wounds Potion
- Light Fatigue Restore Potion
- Kathorn Crystal
- Minura Coin
- Magick Leather Armour
- Charmed Chainmail
- Small Charmed Leather Armour
- Small Charmed Traveler's Cloak
__________________________________________

Human - Male - No Significant Background
Name: Conan
gets the same stuff. Actually a character named Conan gets this stuff regardless of race as long as he is male and has no significant background.

BUT: A halfling, male named Conan with the Mad Doctor background gets only crap (some jewels and potions). A human, male named Conan with the Mad Doctor background still gets the awesome stuff listed above.

So it is apparently neither the name, nor the race, nor the background alone. The race doesn't seem to play a role as long as you stay away from backgrounds. If you take a background it might interfere with your race.

Then I thought: maybe it is not the background/race interference. Maybe it is the change in the stats that goes along with some backgrounds. A Mad Doctor halfling has quite a low strength and constitution. So I made a Miracle Operation human who is even more of a weakling. He still got the items listed above.

Conclusion: I don't get it!

Please post your best results with the Magick Chest. I think this one is the best I ever got. I remember getting some cool stuff with a human, male named Connor MacLeod, but I tried this one today and got only crap. Maybe I remember this one wrong.

Anyway, please post anything you have regarding this topic.

 

You have to be careful here as it's still randomly generated - the name/background/race may have something to with the generation but it's still going to be atleast semi-random..

To get accurate results you'd need a list of all possible content (by forcing the chest to restock for the same race/name/background combo) and subsequent lists each time you change something. Even then it might not be entirely accurate as it could be because from an ingame stand point, you'll never really know if you've got a full list of items that could be in the chest.

And, Conan! Last I called a character that it was in Ishar 3, sadly after walking into a pub he got kidnapped and disappeared for the game. Shame that.

 

I decided to try this a couple of times.

Name: Conan
Race: Elf
Background: Raised By Monks

chest contents:
-magick chain mail
-charmed gauntlets
-magick dagger

... not bad to start with, but not as good as what you got...

Name: Conan
Race: Elf
Background: Army Training

chest contents:
-16 gold
-light fatigue potion

... don't use that one...

 

If I recall correctly, aside from race/background/name factors, the current date also makes a difference. If you will create your new barberic human Conan several times in a row, he will always get the same items in the chest, yet if you create a new one tomorrow or next week, you will get different stuff. Go ahead and try it out.

This also means that there will never be a list containing things like "You will get incredibly good stuff at the Crash Site chest if your name/background/race is...".

 

That's logical Muro - it's fairly common in programming to seed the RNG with the current time (in seconds) since the unix epoch. It's usually only ever done once, though, so all random chests probably use the same seed - that is the current time in seconds +(race/background/name) converted into some sort of integer modifier.

 

I actually think it's current time as a date, not in seconds. I recall lurking an old thread in which this in-game "name+background+race+date" factor was discussed over, and I seem to remember someone (with something in my brain telling me it was DE) wondering why Troika went through all that effort of creating the "name+background+race+time-as-a-date" factor instead of simplifying in into a "time-in-seconds" one.

It's quite easy to prove that's it's not a "time-in-seconds" factor - two identical name+race+background characters will find the same stuff in the Crash Site chest if they were both created within, say, a few minutes, yet they will find different equipment if they were created in the space of a day or more.

I once wanted to check if this is how it works in Arcanum. By this I mean that I planned to get to a new location and check the inventory of a few chests, write it down and after a week or so reload, repeat it and compare the results. My zeal never lasted long enough to complete this task, though.

 

That wouldn't work, the RNG needs to be re-seeded every time the program is run. Unless they store the seed somewhere, loading would reinitialise the RNG and void any results. You'd need to reload and leave the program running for week/day/month opening the chest again after that.

Just because results are the same over a couple of minutes doesn't mean it isn't in seconds -- its still randomly generated, and even then the seed only acts as a base. Way back when I started programming, I seeded a RNG with the time (in seconds) and had it generate a number. Ran it for a couple of minutes, the results were very, very similar differing very little (something like 100 out of 1,000,000). Having a finite source like a list of items would make it appear the same as before because the number would have to be rounded to the nearest integer that's in the list, and presumably not already declared 'in-chest' so you don't get duplicate magick chainmail or whatever.

Still, it could just as well be a date instead of seconds. Weirder things have happened.

 

Great, now we'll have bad loot and good loot days... Like bad hair days of some weird sort.

 

Didn't somebody do a bunch of tests like this a couple months ago? He had results from using different names on different days. So it involves your name, plus the date.

 

I just got the exact same stuff with Conan - human - male - no significant background.

I don't buy the date-theory. Maybe the date is important, but then it would be something like the current month or year. Just make this char and see for yourself. The race is not important as long as you stay male and pick no significant background.

 

What's wrong with the date theory for it not to be possible?
I don't take that for granted, I know however, that I did once run as a experiment several copy+paste characters in a short time and recieved the same stuff in the Crash Site chest, while several months later the same character resulted in different equipment. Some random factor exists, it may be the date, I brought it up since, like I said, I read about it in some old thread.

Well how often does that happen.