User:Dr ishmael/Treasure Hunting

Primary Reset
The treasure spots reset for individual characters on a timer of 30 days/1 month since the last time that character visited any treasure spot, regardless of whether the treasure was populated or not.
 * "Visiting" means actually interacting with the treasure, not simply walking past it.
 * If you take a character out and visit a treasure on the 29th day since you last checked, you will find the treasure empty and the 30 day wait will start over.
 * It is not certain whether the game calculates the reset based on 30 days (May 15 - June 14) or 1 month (May 15 - June 15).

Secondary Reset
There is also a secondary reset timer that determines the value of the treasure after the primary reset. Opening all treasures immediately after the primary reset will result in the character receiving only half the possible amount of gold, and a nearly 100% chance of receiving purple items instead of gold items. (The chance of getting gems does not appear to be affected by this.)

Waiting an extra 30 days will significantly increase the value of the treasures, although they will not be completely restored to full value (see tables below). The required wait time for a full secondary reset is as yet unknown, but it is at least 33 days. It is possible that the treasures will never fully reset, meaning that you can only get the full value out of the treasures once per character. (Research still needed.)

Gold
This table shows the minimum amounts of gold that you will receive from treasures in each region of Elona. Actual amounts will be larger than the listed minimums:

Variance

 * With an intermediate secondary reset, the amounts appear to vary up to the minimum for the next level of reset.
 * With a full secondary reset, the amounts will vary up to 10% above the fully-reset minimum; e.g., up to 550 in Istan, 2200 in Vabbi, etc.

Maximizing value
Based on the above data, we can determine whether it is more profitable to wait for the secondary reset or to ignore it. The table below shows the difference between opening the treasures immediately upon primary reset (Character 1 opens the treasures every 30 days) and waiting an extra month for the nearly-complete secondary reset (Character 2 opens them every 60 days). Thus, we see that it is slightly more profitable to ignore the secondary reset and open the treasures as often as possible.

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 follow the same principles as the gold amounts. For a character who has never opened the treasures before, the total merchant value of the items received will be around 3. Re-opening at primary reset will instead net around 2 in items.

Rarity
The rarity of the item received is mostly a function of the secondary reset, but also a function of the level of the area. The lower the level of the area and the shorter you wait for the secondary reset, the greater your chance of getting a purple item instead of a gold item or a gem.

Gemstones
(Research still needed.)

This table lists all gemstones I have received since May by region. Based on this very limited data:
 * gemstones never appear in Istan
 * gemstones seem to be most common in Vabbi

Speculation, Testing, Notes
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: All of these are incorrect. Takashi and Pedro were both able to open the Domain of Pain chest 31-32 days after their last treasure hunt, and both received a purple item and about the same amount of gold. Takashi has 50% of my playtime, has numerous titles including ranks in Wisdom, and has opened the treasures multiple times before. Pedro has 15% of my playtime, very few titles, and has opened the treasures once.
 * 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 June 3.
 * Kookaburra again checked the Issnur Isles spot, as well as the Mehtani Keys spot, on June 17, and both were empty. It is definitely a character-based reset of all treasure spots 30 days after the last time the character checked any treasure spot.  Kookaburra must now wait another month.

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.

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).

I have opened all treasures with Takashi on June 17. He received only 2 gold items, 1 gem, and half the usual amount of gold. I opened the Domain of Pain chest with Pedro, and he had similarly disappointing results. It would appear that even though the treasures reset at 30 days, they do not return to their full value at that time. I will wait another 15 days before collecting the treasures with Pedro, Suzume, and Scion, to see if they have fully reset by that time.
 * If the treasures are fully reset at 45 days, then over a period of 3 months, waiting for the full reset will allow you to open the treasures twice, resulting in ~40,000. If you open immediately after the primary reset, you will open them three times in three months, resulting in ~30,000 (assuming the first time in the 3 months was also immediately upon reset).  It would be greatly advantageous to wait for the full reset if this is the case.
 * Not fully reset at 45. If fully reset at 60, then over 4 months you would get the same amount of gold whether you checked every month or every 2 months.  Waiting 2 months would give better items, though.
 * Four characters have now opened all treasures again, with wait times of 30, 33, 44, and 46 days. All of them received approximately the same amount of treasure (~10,000).
 * Scion has now checked, with a delay of 62 days - still not fully reset! Guess it's not until 75 or even 90, which is not at all worth waiting for.

--- Well, screw all this - Takashi went to Gate of Pain today (reset + 5 days) and only got 776. WTF is with this diminishing returns crap?!? Dammit, I don't feel like trying to figure this out right now.