Are Archaeology Caches Bugged?

[Hailiah 489]

We touched on the subject here - A Guide to Archaeology Fragments - Game Guides - Wurm Online Forum but i think i need to outline my suspicions here too.

 

I have been doing a cache spreadsheet partly for the guide and partly for my own interest, to see what conditions produce the bigger caches, but while doing this i noticed a pattern.

The trouble is with finding archaeology caches and recording the data it takes a lot of time and I'm still not 100% sure its a bug.

The bare bones of it is this, Caches with 10 fragments can have, container fragments, planter fragments, flowerpot fragments and other things you don't seem to see in bigger size caches.

I haven't seen a, blade frag, head frag, container frag, planter frag, flowerpot frag or a lump frag in the bigger caches, while I've been doing the spreadsheet.

 

 

This was, Swoll Hill on Celebration, inhabited 1 year, 11 months and disbanded for 4 years, 11 months, so 10 fragment cache. It makes sense that such a short duration would produce this stuff.

I got 5 caches from here on the same day.

 

 

Kestrel's Nest Xanadu, inhabited 5 years 4 months, disbanded for 5 years 3 months, so another 10 fragment cache, container fragments and one of the metal ones was a steel lump frag.

 

However my concern is with the caches that are bigger than this, the 12,14,16,18,20 & 24 fragment caches (Yes i can count and yes 22 is missing I have never seen a 22 fragment cache. bug?)

 

With bigger caches you always get 50% or more of the fragments being statue ones and that's great, but its different from the 10 fragment ones see pic above, which can have 60% statue fragments or Less, lowest I've seen is 3 statue frag.

 

I think its buggy because if you have a 'metal' fragment or fragments in the cache that is over 10 fragments, in my experience it is always a large or small shield fragment. (So no blade fragments, head fragments or lump fragments)

 

 

These are cut and pasted from the spreadsheet but you can see the pattern, if it has a 'metal' fragment and is in a cache over 10 frags then it will be a large or small shield.

 

Why is this a problem?

One would assume that a bigger cache is better.

Well if we go for the bigger caches then we wont be getting all the blade or head fragments, in metal, alloy or moonmetal. (which i assume exist) but we will be getting more statue and armour fragments with the chance of alloy and moonmetal.

Our ideal atm is to go for 10 fragment caches if we want blade or head fragments, in metal, alloy or moonmetal, meaning it could be an exploit, (but one you would have to spend an awful lot of time to exploit?)

Of course we could maybe force 10 fragment caches by using the lowest possible ql paper/report.

Or make our own short inhabitation/disband duration deeds to search...

 

so

1. no 22 frag cache is it a bug?

2. Missing frags from bigger caches, is it a bug?

3. Is 10 frag cache exploitable?

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 24, 2023 by Hailiah

[jaytoo 702]

Hey all, no bugs here but it's a bit confusing so let me explain the mechanics.

 

1. It is possible to get a 22 fragment cache but the window to do so is small because of the way the math works.

 

2 and 3: This is a bit longer winded but here it goes. Let me lay out a couple concepts. 

First, fragments are sorted into tiers. Your arch skill and the "dead deed value" of the deed you are digging on are combined to figure out how high up the tiers list you can draw from.

There are 8 tiers and i've vaguely sorted them here:

Trash - bricks, ore, wood

0 - lump, arrow head

15 - crude tools, better lumps, some statues

30 - pottery, tool heads, some statues

40 - good pottery, weapon heads, some statues

50 - full tools, statues

60 - full weapons, chain armor, god statues

70 - masks, plate armor, shields

 

Secondly, Caches can't be smaller than 10 fragments but when they want to be smaller than 10 they will draw from lower tiers to fill out to 10. There are good fragments and fillers. Of the good fragments half will be statues and half will be from tier 50 or above. Filler fragments will be selected from 15, 30 or 40.

 

Lets say a deed was founded and disbanded today and you get a cache from it. You have 100 arch and use 100ql paper but you will still only get 2 good fragments because of the deed and it will be filled with 8 fillers. However if a deed is old enough for you to get 10 good fragments you will get 0 fillers. And no fillers for any number above that. Shields happen to be the only item in tiers 50 or above that are classified as a metal fragment. However there are many items in filler tiers that are metal fragments.