Luck titles guide

Overview
The Unlucky and Lucky titles are account-based titles which are obtained through various in-game activities:


 * Playing the Shing Jea Boardwalk games Nine Rings and Rings of Fortune. These games last for certain special events and will return in the future.
 * Opening chests with a lockpick. Retaining the lockpick adds points to the Lucky title; breaking it adds points to the Unlucky title. This is a permanent feature of the game.
 * Using a Four-Leaf Clover and having 15% DP removed from the character awards 4 Lucky points. The clovers were part of the Lucky weekend event.
 * Participating and winning in the the ring game during the finale of the Wintersday 2006 event awarded Lucky points.

Detailed analyses for the two main activities, the Boardwalk games and treasure hunting, follow:

Boardwalk games analysis

 * Nine Rings
 * Corners win 55 tickets, while center only win 25 tickets and the edges 40 tickets.
 * The amount of tickets gained is statistically equal in every location, however more games are lost on corners (awarding more Unlucky points and the same amount of Lucky points), so the following analysis will be based on playing on a corner ring.
 * Rings of Fortune
 * All locations are equally advantageous.

Achieving one title only

 * If one wants to achieve the Unlucky title with the least amount of Gold spent, Rings of Fortune is optimal.
 * Otherwise, Nine Rings is better. Notably, it is faster for either title.

Achieving both titles at the same time

 * It is beneficial to play both games in order to reach both titles of the same tier at the same time.

Lockpick analysis
A Lockpick has a certain chance of breaking after opening a chest. If a lockpick breaks, it will add 25 points to the Unlucky title; otherwise it will add 250 points to the Lucky title. These numbers are the same in Normal and Hard Mode.

The rate at which (Un)Lucky points are gained depends on the chance of retaining lockpicks and the number of chests opened per hour. The latter depends on the difficulty of the area, the amount of chests there and the skill of the player/team. It cannot be quantified and will be omitted in this analysis.

The following formulas are relevant to the lockpick analysis:


 * Let R be the chance to retain a lockpick after use. (See Lockpick for details on how to calculate R). (1-R) is then the lockpick's chance of breaking. All numbers involving R have to be taken as statistical averages.


 * Number of lucky points gained per chest = 250 * R
 * Number of unlucky points gained per chest = 25 * (1 - R)

Note that all calculations of price are based on a lockpick price of 1,500. Lockpicks can be bought for 1,200 from Discount Merchants. For discounted lockpicks, all costs are to be reduced accordingly.


 * Price per chest = 1500*(1 - R)

As for the price of gold per (Un)Lucky point, we can calculate:


 * Price per Lucky point = 1500 * (1 - R) / (250 * R) = 6 * (1 - R) / R (Price per chest divided by number of lucky points per chest)
 * Price per Unlucky point = 1500 (1 - R) / (25 * (1 - R)) = 60 (Price per chest divided by number of unlucky points per chest)

These results mean the following:
 * The price of Unlucky points is constant for all values of R, because as R increases, the price of opening a chest and the unlucky points per chest drop at the same rate. At a presumed 500,000 Unlucky points requried for the maximum Unlucky title, this method would require spending 30,000. Progress in the Unlucky title would slow down as R increases.
 * The price of Lucky points decreases quadratically as R increases, because the price per chest drops and at the same time the number of Lucky points per chest increase.
 * Examples:
 * At the minimum R = 0.1, 1000 Lucky points cost 54,000 on average.
 * At R=0.5, 1000 points cost 6,000
 * At R=0.98, 1000 Lucky points cost 122 (Note that for R to equal .98, the Lucky title would already have to be maxed.)


 * For illustration, these are the most extreme prices to reach the maximum Lucky title (presumed 2,500,000 points), starting from zero Lucky points (these calculations take into account improving retention rates from increasing Lucky and Treasure hunter title rank):
 * At Treasure hunter rank 7 and only picking Ascalonian chests on Normal mode, on average 10,600 chests have to be opened and 887 have to be spent.
 * At Treasure hunter rank 0 and only picking Hard mode chests, on average 26,300 chests have to be opened and 24,450 have to be spent.

Comparison to Nine Rings
Assumption: a level 20 character with rank 0 Treasure Hunter wants to farm Lucky points. Which method is more favourable, playing Nine Rings or farming Ascalonian chests on Normal mode?


 * Nine Rings can be played while AFK and requires no user action whatsoever beyond buying tickets beforehand.
 * Nine Rings awards 3454 Lucky points per hour. At 65% base retention rate, this equals opening one chest every 60 minutes * 250 * 0.65 / 3454 = 2.8 minutes. This figure already includes breaking lockpicks.
 * At 3048 per hour and 3454 points per hour, each Lucky point costs 0.882 at Nine Rings, whereas at R=0.65, each point costs 6*(1-R)/R = 3.2 for chest farming. Chest farming for Lucky points becomes cheaper at R > 0.87, not considering chest drops and discounted lockpicks. Assuming discounted lockpicks and 100 value per drop, break-even occurs at R > 0.83.
 * Unlucky points cost 12.5 each for Nine Rings and 60 each for chest farming.
 * Chests can be run all the time, while Nine Rings is only available during special events.

The best method depends mostly on the chance to retain the lockpick and therefore mostly on the Treasure hunter and Lucky title track. Chest running is more cost-efficient at >85% retention rates and is available all year long but requires farming with all the tediousness involved, while Nine Rings awards a lot more points per day and can be played without interaction but is only rarely available.