Drop rate

Drop rate is a term defined in this wiki (not by ANet) to refer to the patterns that govern how drops occur. There are two sides to studying drop rates in Guild Wars:
 * How often does a certain type of loot drop?
 * What kind of drops does a certain creature drop and what is the rate of each?

The main focus of studying drop rates of loot is obviously farming. Successful farming is not just based on having the best build to successfully kill and survive, but also, killing the right monsters that produce the desired loot as quickly as possible.

An example of this, is farming Ecto. Most farming groups farm the Smite Crawlers, while actual statistical data shows that the Bladed Aatxe drop Ectos at twice the rate.

The specifics of how a drop rate is determined in-game are unknown. ANet has not published any statistics on any item or monster. Still, basic data can be collected on each monster to record the kind of drops that they leave behind. This data compiled in large amounts can show the rough percentages of the different kinds of loot that a monster drops.

Types of Drops
In general, there are several types of loot that a monster can drop:
 * 1) Gold: This actually varies based on the level of monster rather than the type of monster. The higher the level, the higher the amount of gold. Data gathered in high-level areas like the Fissure of Woe, show that the gold dropped varies between 98 gold and 128 gold in those areas. For most creatures, the percentage of dropping gold varies between 25% to 30%.
 * 2) Equippable Items: This refers to weapons, shields and focus items. For each species or faction in the game, they will usually have a pattern of dropping items specific to their area (like Shadow Bows in the Fissure or Summit Axes in the Shiverpeaks) and items more general. In addition, a creature will drop items in its own profession fairly often. For example, Smite Crawlers drop a lot of Holy Rods and Smiting Staves while Shadow Beasts drop a lot of Grim Cestas and Deadly Cestas.
 * 3) Salvage Armor: More technologically advanced creatures will drop pieces of armor that can be salvaged for crafting material or runes. Examples include the White Mantle, the Charr and Ettins. If a creatures drops salvage armor, it will actually drop it at a fairly high rate . It will drop any type of armor that the species wears (for example, a White Mantle Abbot can drop Knight's Armor). Notable exceptions include the Shadow Army and the Skeleton Army.
 * 4) Crafting Material: Creatures that do not drop salvage armor will instead drop crafting material. The majority of the materials dropping will be common crafting material but there is a small chance that a creature will drop rare crafting material. This chance apparently increases as the creature's level increases. Some groups drop both crafting materials and salvage armor; such as Avicara and the Undead found in Kryta.
 * 5) Collectable Drops: Almost all creatures in the game have a collectable drop that they leave behind at a fairly consistent rate. Examples include Mursaat Tokens, Hardened Humps and Charr Carvings. This rate is found to be around 20% for most creatures that do have collectable drops. Creatures that do not drop collectable drops include Ancient Skales and Doubter's Dryders.
 * 6) Hides:: Some races will drop hides. Hides are different than Salvage armor and Collectable drops. They stack like collectable drops though. For example, the Charr drop Charr Carvings, Stalker Armor and Charr Hides.
 * 7) Keys: Each creature has a very small chance of dropping a key. The key the creature drops is the key of the area that creature is originally from. Thus, Banshees in the Fissure of Woe drop Phantom Keys because they are originally from the Underworld.
 * 8) Dyes:: All creatures have a chance of dropping dye. The chance of a specific dye dropping varies depending on color with black being very rare and orange being very common.
 * 9) Nothing:: There is a chance that a creature will drop nothing. The probability of this happening early on in an outing into an explorable area is high and drops quickly as players spend more time in the area.

The Project
This article is the cover page of a project to document each and every creature in Guild Wars in term of their Drop Rates. Users who wish to contribute to this project should follow the following steps:
 * 1) Please, create a user name as it will make tracking the sources of the data much more efficient.
 * 2) Create a spreadsheet for monitoring the creature you wish to gather Drop Rate data about. The format should be something like this:

!Creature!!Gold!!Equippable Item!!Salvage Armor!!Common Materials!!Rare Materials!!Keys!!Collectables!!Dyes!!Other!!Nothing
 * Bladed Aatxe || 102 || 74 || 0 || 43 || 14 || 0 || 72 || 1 || 0 || 12
 * }
 * 1) Record the drops after each kill of this specific monster. If the monster appears at different levels (like Charr and Grawl), then record the data of each level separaterly.
 * 2) Do not record drops from bosses. Their drops and the drops of their species/factions are not always the same.
 * 3) Create (or edit) the page for the monster as a sub-article of this article. For example, for the Aatxe above, the data article would be: Drop rate/Bladed Aatxe. Use the notes section to record any anomalies in the drops of the monster. If you created the article, please list add it to the list below.
 * 4) If a sub-article already exists for a monster then do not overwrite the numbers. Instead add your numbers to the existing ones. This will increase the data available.
 * 5) Once enough data has been collected (say 200+ total drops), then the monster's page can be updated with a section titled Drop Rates that lists the percentages of each drop. For examples, see Bladed Aatxe and Smite Crawler.
 * 6) If more precise data is to be stored, it should be stored in a separate table below the main one. For example, a break down of each of the weapon types the monster drops, or the frequency of dropping gold, purple and blue items.
 * 1) If more precise data is to be stored, it should be stored in a separate table below the main one. For example, a break down of each of the weapon types the monster drops, or the frequency of dropping gold, purple and blue items.

The hope is that with this project, players can make informed decisions instead of following rumors about drops.

Currently Compiled Data
This is a list of sub-articles containing data collected so far:
 * Drop rate/Bladed Aatxe
 * Drop rate/Smite Crawler