User:Dr ishmael/Treasure Hunting

Gold
On average, a character will receive 19904 &plusmn; 507 in cash by opening all treasure in Elona.

The number of treasures already opened by a character seems to weigh the gold drop towards the low end of the range. In all regions, Takashi's gold drops were the lowest of all my characters, and he had the most treasures previously opened. Scion proved this wrong - she had the exact same treasures already open as Takashi, yet her drops were always higher (not to mention she got the highest overall drops for May in both Kourna and Vabbi).

Items
Item values vary widely, and can be further varied by receiving gemstones, items with "Show Me The Money!" inscriptions, or items with rare skins or max modifiers that are marketable to other players. Generally, though, item values are proportional to the amount of gold you can receive in the region. On average, a character will receive items with a total merchant value of ~2500-3500.

Rarity
All characters started from the Realm of Torment and worked backwards to Istan.
 * Purples will only drop in Istan and Kourna
 * The high frequency of purple items in these areas may be a result of either:
 * the low level of the areas
 * the number of treasures already opened by a character

Gemstones
Probably too few data to work with, but:
 * gemstones never appear in Istan or Kourna
 * gemstones seem to be most common in Vabbi

Reset
The general speculation is that treasure spots reset for each character 30 days/1 month after the character last opened a treasure spot, whether the spot had previously been opened by that character (in other words, it was empty) or not. Some have mentioned other factors that may affect this, including:
 * how many times the treasures have already reset for a character
 * I doubt this is the case, as Takashi and Kookaburra have both made 3 runs through most of the treasures previously, and while Takashi got the short stick this time (possibly due to opening too many low-level treasures first), Kookaburra usually got above-average gold drops.
 * the character's /age (maybe as a factor of the account's /age)
 * Possible. 50% of my playtime has been on Takashi (800 hours), while of the rest, only Pedro and Kookaburra have over 100 hours.
 * the character's rank in the Wisdom and/or Treasure Hunter title tracks, or how many keys or gold items the character has found (but not necessarily used/identified by that character)
 * Possible. Takashi has Collector of Wisdom (2), while no one else has anything.  Also, based on playtime alone, it's obvious that he would have found the most golds/keys of all my characters.

To test the main theory, none of my characters except Kookaburra will so much as look at a treasure spot until 1 month + 1 day has passed for them. I will have Kookaburra re-open a treasure on May 20, then have him check again on June 16.
 * Bah, forgot about this until now: Kookaburra opened the Issnur Isles spot (empty) on 21:30, 3 June 2007 (CDT)

To test the sub-theories, Takashi will check the treasures on June 16. If he can open them, then it's definitely a 30-days-since-touching-any-treasure reset. If his drops continue to be lower than everyone else's, then at least one of the theories would seem to apply instead to the drop value.