Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Mathematics/2021 February 24

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February 24

Material Drop Chance

Hi there,

I am currently attemping to "farm"(mass-collect) resources in in a video game. I am currently attemping to collect a material that has a 2.5% of dropping when an enemy is killed. The enemy in question takes around 3-5 minutes to kill. On average, how long would it take before I get the material that I need?

Thanks for your help, 31.127.153.3 (talk) 13:00, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

If an event has a probability of 2.5% to succeed, it means that it succeeds on the average 25 times out of 1000 tries, or once on every 40 tries. If the events are independent (the outcomes of prior tries have no influence on those of a new try), and the time spent on vanquishing a hostile combatant also does not impact the drop chance, this will then require 40 times the average time of a single fight (not counting time spent on other things between fights). Estimating that at 4 minutes as the halfway between the estimate extremes, we arrive at 40 times 4 = 160 minutes.  --Lambiam 14:05, 24 February 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for your help! 31.127.153.3 (talk) 14:35, 24 February 2021 (UTC)