Instinct and item find

well this was in the forums in a different spot, written by the all knowing dreadlock 
short answer is i think it does not affect it in getting more muddy gem stone and few no items found. seems like that is an undified d100 and  each number can give something.

The game then:

1. If gold exploring is still around, it would make a check for if you find gold. This is NOT attached to your seeking skill at all, just whatever replaced intuition. Again, IF gold exploring is still in code. Don't clamor about it, the most powerful people in intuition could only get 800 gold at best. Most players would find under either under 10 gold or 50 gold.
2. Rolls a 1d100 die (random generation from 1 to 100, including both 1 and 100).
3. Multiplies your Seeking skill by Fertility in percent. Meaning 90 fertility is seeking * .9, 80 fertility is seeking * .8, and so forth. This translates into the less fertile the land is, the harder it is to find something. Unless your really skilled in seeking.
4. Compares the number from step 2 to that of step 3. If the dice roll is less than your seeking math, you win an explore and the fertility is reduced by 10! Yay! If you failed to pass the check, that tile's fertility is unmoved. Aww! Try again.
5. Checks the explore table assigned to that tile and rolls a 1d100 die. The game admins build explore tables with various items in it. They CAN and PROBABLY DO leave holes in those tables. If you know that explore table #1 is assigned to tile A and tile B, then your chances of finding anything in it are the exact same because it would be really sucky to build a unique explore table for each tile in the game. There may only be like 50 tables assigned across the map (I made that number up because I don't know current layouts). This means, unless the admins decide to place a unique explore table in just one part of a forest (roleplay of "the deepest depths of the forest"), odds are that the entire forest in a given location is all the same items. Here's an example:

Table Bobs-your-uncle
1 - 20 common comfrey, item count 1-3
21-40 mistletoe, item count 2-5
41-99 absolutely nothing
100-100 4 leaf clover, item count 1-1

That 1d100 die rolled in step 5 is what picks the item you get. The game then rolls a random number between the item counts. Comfrey will find you 1 to 3 items, Mistletoe will find you 2-5 of that, and the 4 leaf clover will find just 1 no matter what. Note that you have a 20% chance of finding two different common items, over half of that table is empty, and there's a pretty item at a 1% find rate. Disclaimer: I have no idea if that item is in-game, it's an example.

6. The game figures out if you picked a fight with a creature native to that tile. This is also separate from seeking skill.

So, if you want to figure out how many turns to spend based upon your seeking skill?

Download this antique Excel spreadsheet and open it. To come up with these numbers, I ran 10,000 simulations at each skill and fertility combination, so I'd say it's quite accurate in regards to turn cost.

Fertility chart.xls (38.5 KB)

Across the top, you will see "To go from 100 Fertility To...". Seeking skill of your character is down the left side. Each successful exploration reduces fertility by 10 points, so the most powerful seeker would only need 10 turns to go from 100 fertility to 0.

You'll note in the top left that it says it will take basically 5 turns to go from 100 fertility to 90 fertility with only 20 seeking. The worst case scenario in 10000 simulations was 67 turns to get 1 successful exploration. At the far end of the chart, 20 seeking skill takes an average of 146.4 turns to go from 100 fertility to 0, with a worst case scenario of "yeah, that's going to take several characters at that level" for 932 turns to zero out that tile.


There's obviously diminishing returns. A seeking skill above 500 hits 11 turns average to hit 0 fertility (nice!), and hitting 1000 seeking is the point where you have a guaranteed 10 turns to 0 fertility. The amount of time between 500 and 1000 skill is.... big.