LUCK: what it does and doesn't affect

[hexnessie]

Is there a specific, gamefile-based analysis of what is and isn't affected by daily luck, player luck, etc.? And if there isn't, could we make one?

I was recently made aware that ore node frequency is not affected by luck (at least not much). I still find that difficult to believe in the Mines!

So, what's +Luck actually GOOD for?

1. Fishing:
- fish behavior --> mixed behavior fishes seem to be calmer and easier to catch on good luck days; what about +luck items?
- treasure chest frequency is definitely affected; what about chest content?
- trash to fish ration - affected I think

2. Foraging:
- more chance to get tree seeds on good luck days
- more hazelnuts on good luck days
- anything else? maybe golden coconuts on the island?

3. Fighting:
- the chance to get a Prismatic Shard off a killed monster is NOT affected by daily/personal luck; I got most of my shards on worst luck days
- the amount of loses when you die (money, items) is definitely affected
- what about regular drop vs. no drop at all? Is this affected by personal luck / daily luck?

4. Mining
- chance to find ladders definitely strongly affected
- chance to find coal somewhat affected but not that much

Please comment / add more to the list!

 

[BlaDe]

UnsurpassableZ asked similar questions to the Dew Crew a while ago, then made this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHnacLNWYEY
You can also use my map predictor to play around with dailyLuck (As seen on TV!) and LuckLevel (Food/Ring Buffs) values and see how various things are affected: https://www.nexusmods.com/stardewvalley/mods/6614

To answer your specific questions:

1. Fishing:
- fish behavior --> mixed behavior fishes seem to be calmer and easier to catch on good luck days; what about +luck items?
- treasure chest frequency is definitely affected; what about chest content?
- trash to fish ration - affected I think

The only thing luck affects with fishing is the chance of getting treasure chests. It does not affect the contents

2. Foraging:
- more chance to get tree seeds on good luck days
- more hazelnuts on good luck days
- anything else? maybe golden coconuts on the island?

Nothing here is based on luck

3. Fighting:
- the chance to get a Prismatic Shard off a killed monster is NOT affected by daily/personal luck; I got most of my shards on worst luck days
- the amount of loses when you die (money, items) is definitely affected
- what about regular drop vs. no drop at all? Is this affected by personal luck / daily luck?

Yes, only the losses when you die is affected by luck

4. Mining
- chance to find ladders definitely strongly affected
- chance to find coal somewhat affected but not that much

Yes, dailyLuck and LuckLevel significantly affect ladder drops. They also very slightly affect ore/coal and geode drops.

 

[Ereo]

There's an extensive list on the wiki:

Daily Luck Effects

Daily luck affects the following:

Mining

• Chance of getting coal from rocks.
• Chance to discover ladders from breaking rocks while Mining.
• Geodedrop chance from rocks.
  • (Luck does not increase the chance to receive rare minerals and artifacts from geodes.)
• Chance that crates spawn in The Mines.
• Chance to find treasure rooms in the Skull Cavern.
• Amount of gold and items lost when dying in The Mines or Skull Cavern.
• Chance of finding gem nodes and mystic stones in The Mines or Skull Cavern.

Other

• Amount of wood dropped from trees.
• Chance to double the number of extra crops yielded at harvest, for crops that allow extra harvests (i.e., Coffee Bean, Potato, Tomato, Blueberry, Hot Pepper, Eggplant, Cranberry, and Strawberry).
• Drop chance of Duck Feather and Rabbit's Foot from animals.
• Chance of treasure chests appearing while Fishing.
  • Chance of getting special items (e.g., Neptune's Glaive, Prismatic Shard, Iridium Band).
• Quality and number of ores obtained from panning.
• Chance of getting a second item (in addition to ore) from panning.
• Chance of getting items from Garbage Cans and the chance the item is not trash.
• Chance the spouse will be jealous after giving a gift to another marriage candidate that the player is also currently dating.
• Results of playing slots at the Casino.
• Amount of lightning during a storm (higher luck = more lightning). [3]

Personally, I think most players overrate it. The only thing I do is favor mining over fishing on lucky days early game and do skull cavern runs on lucky days (especially in the beginning. When you can get magic rock candy and hundreds of staircases, it's less important).

 

[PoppyForPenny]

The things I notice most, after getting the permanent luck boost from the special charm: more berries & potatoes, more rabbit feet, more & better finds in the trash, more fishing treasure chests, more geodes, and much easier quicker finding a way down in the mines.

 

[kayden]

if i recall correctly it effects your chance of getting an extra crop from potatoes and other crops that allow a double harvest

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

I had a write-up on the old forums found here.

In brief, Luck isn't worth worrying about. With the sole exception of getting ladders from mining stones, and even then only if you start getting down to the last dozen or so, Luck has such a minimal impact on gameplay that it isn't worth investing in, at least in my experience and opinion. I ran some numbers in my post, if you want to go over it. There's some outdated content, it was written back in the 1.3 era I believe, but the basic underlying concept hasn't changed.

 

[BlaDe]

In brief, Luck isn't worth worrying about. With the sole exception of getting ladders from mining stones, and even then only if you start getting down to the last dozen or so.

I agree with your write up.

Though I want to discuss your statement that it only affects the mines when you get down to the last few stones.

Luck shines in the mines most when there are loads of rocks.

For the chance of a rock containing a ladder:

Base chance - +0.02 (2%)
Daily luck - Range of -0.02 to +0.02 (-2% to +2%)
Luck Buff - +0.01 (+1%) per luck point
No monsters - +0.04 (+4%)
Rocks remaining - +1/Rocks remaining

If a floor spawns with 100 rocks on it, 1 luck point gives the same chance for ladders that you would get after breaking 50 rocks.
If a floor spawns with 10 rocks on it, 1 luck point give the same chance for ladders that you would get after breaking 5 rocks.

 

[hexnessie]

The only thing luck affects with fishing is the chance of getting treasure chests.

Thank you! That's a lot of precious info.

Do you happen to know what affects fish behavior? I.e. why some catfish are very easy to catch but others just go wild?

Another Q, if wearing +luck rings, does the ring have to be worn at night to improve chances of spawning rabbit feet? Or is it based on preceding day's luck / not affected by personal luck?

 

[Lew Zealand]

Do you happen to know what affects fish behavior? I.e. why some catfish are very easy to catch but others just go wild?

Catching behavior differences between 2 of the same type of Fish seems just to be random, especially when it comes to the Fish which are marginally catchable without Fishing Buffs, like the Octopus. Why no Fishing Buffs? Because I play without planning buffs, like a usable short-term memory.

I got the 'pus on the 3rd try as the first 2 times it just squiggled and squirmed away very quickly, I had no chance. But on the third, it was marginally slower at the beginning and I held on to at least a decent amount of the catch bar until it slowed a bit and I was able to mostly almost keep up with it. But the same goes for some lazy fish like the Flounder or Carp. Sometimes you don't even need to raise your rod, just let it sit at the bottom. Catch 10 Fish and maybe 2 of them simply couldn't be bothered to give up any kind of a fight. Probably afraid of heights.

 

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Thank you! That's a lot of precious info.

Do you happen to know what affects fish behavior? I.e. why some catfish are very easy to catch but others just go wild?

The only thing that affects fish behavior is found in .../Content/Data/Fish.xnb.

I have a mod on Nexus that exposes the functionality of this file using Content Patcher. You can edit the number (how dramatic/fast the movement is) and the type of movement.

 

[Baconfry]

if i recall correctly it effects your chance of getting an extra crop from potatoes and other crops that allow a double harvest

I strongly suspect that luck affects more than just potatoes and berries. Sometimes I've been picking hops and starfruit and I randomly get an extra one that pops out of the plant I just harvested, then goes into the inventory.

 

[BlaDe]

There is a very very small chance that any harvest will double the crop yield. So 1 hop will give 2 hops. 3 blueberries will give 6 blueberries.

This is affected by dailyLuck and LuckLevel.

 

[Hill Myna]

Sometimes food will give one less Energy than it is "supposed" to. It drives me crazy because a second message pops up in the bottom left. It notice it most/only when eating Green Algae and Salmonberries, and drinking Joja Cola.

Does anyone know whether this is affected by luck?

 

[hexnessie]

Sometimes food will give one less Energy than it is "supposed" to.

I noticed that too. I was wondering if it's maybe caused by integer rounding - you use up non-integer amounts of energy, but it's rounded up / down.

 

[Giant Octopodes]

As far as when I consider Luck important, it's in general when going into the Skull Cavern, and in specific when hunting for treasure chests in there.

The rocks are nice; very nice. Let's pretend a floor has infinite rocks and set aside the 'completion percentage' element of the calculations. We'll assume it's a very lucky day:
No luck - 4% chance of drop. On average you break 17 rocks before you find a staircase. 25% of the time you break 34 rocks. 10% of the time you break 57.
+3 Luck (2 lucky rings and a spicy eel) - 7% chance of drop. On average you break 10 rocks before you find a staircase. 25% of the time you break 20 rocks. 10% of the time you break 32 rocks.
+7 Luck (2 lucky rings, Enhanced Pumpkin Soup or Regular Lucky Lunch, and Enhanced Ginger Ale) - 11% chance of drop. On average you break 6 rocks before you find a staircase. 25% of the time you break 12 rocks. 10% of the time you break 20 rocks.

On top of that though, it's also a +1% chance per luck boost of skipping a floor Entirely and replacing it with a treasure floor. This gives you a treasure chest (if you're looking for that) and also a floor with a guaranteed staircase drop just feet away from the entrance without spending another staircase yourself.

Put those together and that alone would be enough to more than double your rate of descent if you're primarily relying on bombs rather than staircases. Especially for getting Qi's challenge done 'honorably', the more luck the better. However this also neglects another tangental benefit - more shafts. Sometimes you have lots of rocks around. Normally getting multiple staircases doesn't matter. But each staircase has a 20% chance to be a shaft instead. Baseline that's only a .5% chance to be one, meaning you'll see one on average for every 130ish rocks you break. With 7 luck in your pocket, you're instead looking at getting them 2.2% of the time, which means on average you find them for every 34 rocks you break.

This means that on average, for every 2 floor's worth of rocks you would have cleared Without the luck boosts, if your luck is near max, you're clearing 5 floors from ladders you're finding, and finding a shaft which gets you another 5.5 floors. So all told you can move downwards at 5x the pace you would otherwise go down.

As far as hunting for treasure chests in particular (such as for Auto Petters), the baseline chance is even lower and the impact even more significant, so of course that benefits even more.

As a note +9 is the max luck boost you can get to my knowledge (Magic Rock Candy, Enhanced Ginger Ale, and 2 Lucky Rings), I just went with +7 for calculations since it's close to the highest you can get without consuming extremely limited resources. But yeah if you're not in the Skull Cavern then Luck isn't worth much at all.

 

[Hill Myna]

I noticed that too. I was wondering if it's maybe caused by integer rounding - you use up non-integer amounts of energy, but it's rounded up / down.

Yes, that could be true! Once you've levelled up in a certain Profession, you use up 0.1 less Energy per use of the respective tool, which could get you to a non-integer Energy value.

So maybe if you eat a Salmonberry (+25 Energy) when you have 5.5 Energy, you only get +24.5 (ending on 30) which is represented as 24 in the pop up rather than 25?

That doesn't explain when you eat 3 Salmonberries and the 2nd gives you weird number.

But yes, it could be something along those lines, good point!

 

[FairyRing]

oh so much math....

 

[hexnessie]

But yeah if you're not in the Skull Cavern then Luck isn't worth much at all.

I do like Luck in the mines too. I often farm monsters for items - anything from Ancient Seeds early on through coal to Qi gems and fancy end-game items in the dangerous mines.

Having more Luck means I get to descend to the next mine level without any effort - 1-hit-kill a monster, it drops its thing, it explodes (napalm ring) and reveals staircase down.

It's efficient and it makes me happy. KABOOM.

 

[FilthyGorilla]

As far as when I consider Luck important, it's in general when going into the Skull Cavern, and in specific when hunting for treasure chests in there.

The rocks are nice; very nice. Let's pretend a floor has infinite rocks and set aside the 'completion percentage' element of the calculations. We'll assume it's a very lucky day:
No luck - 4% chance of drop. On average you break 17 rocks before you find a staircase. 25% of the time you break 34 rocks. 10% of the time you break 57.
+3 Luck (2 lucky rings and a spicy eel) - 7% chance of drop. On average you break 10 rocks before you find a staircase. 25% of the time you break 20 rocks. 10% of the time you break 32 rocks.
+7 Luck (2 lucky rings, Enhanced Pumpkin Soup or Regular Lucky Lunch, and Enhanced Ginger Ale) - 11% chance of drop. On average you break 6 rocks before you find a staircase. 25% of the time you break 12 rocks. 10% of the time you break 20 rocks.

On top of that though, it's also a +1% chance per luck boost of skipping a floor Entirely and replacing it with a treasure floor. This gives you a treasure chest (if you're looking for that) and also a floor with a guaranteed staircase drop just feet away from the entrance without spending another staircase yourself.

Put those together and that alone would be enough to more than double your rate of descent if you're primarily relying on bombs rather than staircases. Especially for getting Qi's challenge done 'honorably', the more luck the better. However this also neglects another tangental benefit - more shafts. Sometimes you have lots of rocks around. Normally getting multiple staircases doesn't matter. But each staircase has a 20% chance to be a shaft instead. Baseline that's only a .5% chance to be one, meaning you'll see one on average for every 130ish rocks you break. With 7 luck in your pocket, you're instead looking at getting them 2.2% of the time, which means on average you find them for every 34 rocks you break.

This means that on average, for every 2 floor's worth of rocks you would have cleared Without the luck boosts, if your luck is near max, you're clearing 5 floors from ladders you're finding, and finding a shaft which gets you another 5.5 floors. So all told you can move downwards at 5x the pace you would otherwise go down.

As far as hunting for treasure chests in particular (such as for Auto Petters), the baseline chance is even lower and the impact even more significant, so of course that benefits even more.

As a note +9 is the max luck boost you can get to my knowledge (Magic Rock Candy, Enhanced Ginger Ale, and 2 Lucky Rings), I just went with +7 for calculations since it's close to the highest you can get without consuming extremely limited resources. But yeah if you're not in the Skull Cavern then Luck isn't worth much at all.

Nice, thanks for the calculations, what source do you get the base rock drop chance for ladders? Just wondering for some self research.
You can get 10+ luck as you can have a daily luck of 0.075 and the special charms 0.025 for an extra 1+ luck.
Luck also influences some aspects of crop harvests and how many fishing chests per cast on average you will get so early game it can help a considerate amount with mass fishing.
7+ luck is a pretty good standard though I think that 5-6 is more common as many would regard the tse as better than 2+ luck and gold lucky lunch as a subsetute to pumpkin soup as you are already using qi seasoning.

 

[BlaDe]

DailyLuck (what is shown on the TV, and what the Lucky Charm adds to) is distinct from LuckLevel (food/drink and ring buffs).

See my earlier post as to how each of these affect the chances for ladders drops from rocks.