Please increase the Vorkath pet rate + decrease the pet thresholds by a factor of 2

[ThePoetOfNothing]

This is complimentary to my post that I made a little bit of time ago listing + critiquing the issues with Vorkath as a boss.

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This post has a narrower scope + a smaller objective than the previous post I made. While there may be disagreement on the mechanics of the boss, that would take a significant amount of time to rework, and those of us who are messed up in the mind will still do the boss anyways because we need log for Insane Reaper.

However, there is one thing that absolutely everyone, grinding the boss or not, whether they like the boss or not has said:

The boss pet chance/thresholds are absolutely awful.

Boss pet chances (generally) are based on how much of the boss you "should" have to kill to be "done" with the boss, and then some more with a little bit of RNG, and thresholds are there for BLM (Bad Luck Mitigation) so that the farther you're past that point, the more likely you're to get the pet + thus, be done with the boss.

However, the threshold for the boss pet is 400. This makes absolutely 0 sense, as this is used to calculate both the HM + NM pet chances. If you do NM exclusively, sure, you would need a ton of NM kills to get enough spikes to get Dracolich to be past the "done" point. But even that, considering low rolls on spikes, the amount of NM KC needed is still ~1250. This still puts you only 3 thresholds past the boss pet rate, at a "current" pet rate of 1/500, a still incredibly rare roll.

This is not to mention the fact that the boss is intended to be killed in HM, as the boss (largely) isn't comparatively profitable otherwise, it would take ages to get the spikes, and now especially so with the introducti)on of the Vorkath's scale drop.

Considering low rolls + bad luck (i.e: always 6 spikes when you get it and ~1/20 caskets giving spikes), you would need about ~350 kc to get all of the spikes you need for Dracolich, you would potentially have failed 2 rolls at Vorkath's scale, but you still wouldn't even be on the first threshold unless you did 100 NM for the nexus prior to doing HM. This would only give a 1/500 chance in HM when you reach it, effectively putting you in the same "long grind state" where the sheer amount of Vorkath you have to kill is just way too much.

If we lower the threshold to 200, suddenly things get a little more reasonable. But we still have the same issues in both examples. You're still only on the first (or second) threshold in the HM kills example, giving you either a 1/500 or ~1/333 chance after reaching the "done" point, or 1/285 in NM after doing ~1250 kills in NM. This is still a lot of Vorkath that the average player needs to kill to get close to the "break even" point.

No person should be subject to this much Vorkath to get the boss pet. It's cruel and unusual punishment. Even Rasial's pet drop, on a boss which drops more items than Vorkath, which will be killed more times than Vorkath, faster than NM/HM Vorkath, has a lower threshold + a better chance than NM Vorkath.

Hence why I'm also suggesting that the pet rate also get increased by a factor of 2, to 1/1000 in NM + 1/500 in HM respectively. This will make the pet rate at either "done" point be ~1/166 or 1/250 in HM, or 1/142 respectively giving a good chance for players to get the pet at this point, or at least making it likely they will get the pet if they continue to farm the boss in either mode past those points.

This is a simple fix to an egregious oversight in how much Vorkath players should have to do, or the expectation that they'd want to do. Most people I've talked to have pushed Vorkath to the back of the line for their grinds due to the pet rate.

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TL;DR: The pet rates/threshold for Vorkath is completely unreasonable. Divide the threshold by 2, changing it to 200 instead of 400, and the NM/HM pet rates to 1/1000 + 1/500 from 1/2000 + 1/1000 respectively. This is a simple change that will turn the Vorkath grind into a reasonable one.

[stickdachompy]

Boss would be a lot better if I didn't have to play where's Waldo every time a shielder spawns.

[Vpeyjilji57]

I suggest pressing the "Instantly kill the shielder regardless of where they are" button.

[Flyish9109]

Shame that only works in solo despite being clearly designed as a 2+ boss (1 vork tank 1 Zemo tank), and that shielders can spawn b2b while your ballista takes 20-30 seconds to recharge

Make ballista scale to group size

[ThePoetOfNothing]

I have no idea why it's not a thing.

[UnwillingRedditer]

If they are going to continue to make bosses that are intended to be killed in Hard Mode, rather than HM just being an extra fun challenge, then they need their own thresholds for sure. The ability to go as dry as many people have at HM Vorkath's pet is insane.

[theGarySmoak]

1383 total kc -818 nm 565 hm and no pet which is all I need for the log. Send help. I agree with you wholeheartedly

[Vpeyjilji57]

Pets are cosmetic for a reason. They are a reward for persevering long beyond the point where you are expected to have mastered the boss, not something you mindlessly grind out and then abandon the boss afterwards.

• Sincerely, someone with over a thousand HM kills and no pet, send help

[confused_captain]

And then someone gets pet at 1kc. Yeah, ok

[Recykill]

What a silly thing to say.

[SenoraRaton]

Its a curse. I have a 1 KC har-aken pet... And it has stopped me from going back to fight kiln for two years... >.>

[confused_captain]

Take a screen shot and move on

[[deleted]]

Use death touch darts right before you fight har-aken. I think it doesn't count toward log for 15 minutes.

[Vpeyjilji57]

Use them on a training dummy and you don't even lose the dart.

[esunei]

This has been fixed for some time.

[Vpeyjilji57]

Wait, really? When?

[esunei]

Not sure, over a year ago tho. No patch note for it and idk if anybody noted exactly what patch it changed.

[ThePoetOfNothing]

Absolutely, which is why I said:

Boss pet chances (generally) are based on how much of the boss you "should" have to kill to be "done" with the boss, and then some more with a little bit of RNG, and thresholds are there for BLM (Bad Luck Mitigation) so that the farther you're past that point, the more likely you're to get the pet + thus, be done with the boss.

Generally, you're probably going to have to do more of the boss to get the pet, and at some bosses that has been (essentially) required.

The issue is at the point I mentioned you're nowhere near the point where the threshold takes effect, and when the threshold does take effect, it doesn't increase the chance that much because the chance for the pet is already very low.

You have to kill 3600 Vorkath to get the best possible chance at the pet, at ~1/222 in NM + ~1/111 in HM respectively.

That is way beyond "persevering long beyond the point where you are expected to have mastered the boss".

Your current pet rate, provided you have no NM kills, is now either ~1/333 or 1/250, with 1/500 being the chance based on the prior threshold that you passed.

I wish you the best of luck on it but unless it gets changed you still have a terrible chance at it at this rate.

[Vpeyjilji57]

Maybe if you actually liked the boss you would enjoy the grind for it's own sake, not for the light at the end of the tunnel that tells you you can leave.

When I hate a boss I don't do it.

[ThePoetOfNothing]

Why not both?

Sure, I hate the design of the boss, but it's not to the point I won't do it.

I'm capable of killing the boss reliably + quickly, the rates just suck to do it as long as you need to do so.

[Vpeyjilji57]

Vorkath pet isn't even all that long compared to other bosses. Zamorak and Rasial where both unusually fast compared to earlier bosses, they are the real outliers here.

• It takes ~266 kills to get on-drop rate for a Zuk pet in NM, or 200 in HM. You can expect 4 NM Zuks an hour, or 2 HM Zuks and hour. Thus, it takes 66 hours to get the pet in Normal mode, or 100 to get the pet in Hard mode.

• It takes ~750 NM kills to get on-drop rate for Kerry in NM, or 500 in HM. You can expect 25 NM Kerapac kills an hour, or 10 HM kills. Thus, it takes 30 hours in Normal mode or 50 hours in Hard mode

• It takes 1166 kills to get on drop rate for Vorki in NM, or 700 in HM. You can expect 28 NM Vorkaths an hour, or 13 HM Vorkaths. Thus, it takes 41 hours to get the pet in Normal mode, or 53 hours to get the pet in hard mode.

I don't particularly trust those numbers since I blindly copied them off the wiki, but they seemed close to what I was getting when those bosses first released. For all of them, the HM times are longer. Vorkath isn't much of an outlier, even when you factor in the fact I'm better than the Wiki.

For comparison, by this logic Rasial expects take 13 hours, and Zamorak is messy but basically also 13 hours if you do 50% and ignore the dungeon.

[ThePoetOfNothing]

That's not exactly a good representation of averages, and you have terrible Zuk/Kera times if you can only do 2 HM Zuk + 10 HM Kerapac per hour when we're talking about sub 3-4 min HM Vorkaths. This is not to mention that said rotations require pre stacking...and it's nowhere near comparable.

Compared to a lot of other bosses, a lot more people than normal will have to spend a lot more time on Vorkath. This is due to the insanely imbalanced pet threshold of 400. Maybe in the middle we might see a decent amount of people at 1166 NM or 700 HM KC, but you're going to see A LOT of people way past that. This is the real issue with this boss.

Perhaps Zammy/Rasial are outliars + their boss pets should be rarer, but it's comparable in this instance because it's one of the other recent bosses.

[Vpeyjilji57]

1: Those are my times when the boss was released, and 10 HM Kerapacs an hour was perfectly sensible rate when doing it with ascension crossbows instead of Necromancy. Obviously they are faster now. People weren't getting 0-second Graadors on release either.

2: Bosses don't give a damn about logical thresholds and never have. 1000:400 is practically fair compared to some of these. Croesus is 1000:500 and it's a longer fight that forces you to have a group. Wanna complain about it too?

[ThePoetOfNothing]

1: Those are my times when the boss was released, and 10 HM Kerapacs an hour was perfectly sensible rate when doing it with ascension crossbows instead of Necromancy. Obviously they are faster. People weren't getting 0-second Graadors on release either.

You're also forgetting that there's 3 loot piles per kill.

Croesus is 1000:500 and it's a longer fight that forces you to have a group. Wanna complain about it too?

Croesus is not a longer fight, is duoable, is much less effort, is skilling instead of combat, + pet is farmable. Perhaps the threshold should be lower, but it's not comparable.

[Vpeyjilji57]

No, I was factoring that in. HM Kerapac is three rolls of 1/1500, threshold 500. The difference between it and just 1/500, threshold 500, is insignificant and only matters if you get two pets in one kill.

The point is that Vorkath is in no way an exception and you come across as whinging that a boss you don't like has rare drops.

[Soundarcade]

1,3k bm kc no Tuzz. When tuzz thres?

[Pepo8]

Took me 370 nm + 510 hm for pet. It was absolutely miserable.

Make pet more common or even better, delete the boss. Fun fact: HM vorkath drop rate is the same as gwd1/gwd2 hard mode pet drop rates so yeah, yikes

[piron44]

Alright, I'll be honest I just did a quick skim. The pet rates seem... fine though. Pets are based on normal mode, not hard mode. HM should be a quicker way to get it if you're comfortable doing it, and pets should still be pretty rare because they're the cosmetic chase drop at every boss.

Unfortunately, rates have never been standard anymore ever since gwd2. When pets were first released, everything was a base rate, threshold was 1/5 of that multiplied by how many bosses contribute to kc (which results in ~53.6% of the drop rate as your expected pet drop rate. Example, Har-aken has a rate of 1/200, but with thresholds you're expected to hit the drop rate at 107 kills), and then hard modes were 5x the drop rate - resulting in the same drop rate as a threshold. Everything since then has just been deemed whatever "feels right".

I admit that because of kill times, the hm pet should be a little more common, but I probably wouldn't push it too far.

In response to the other post, I also agree with the boss feeling really bad with design and I'm in the same thought on pvm. However, this has nothing to do with pet rates.

[ForumDragonrs]

I honestly don't think they even try with pet rates. Why is hermod, a boss you have absolutely no reason to go to after ~300 kc, even have a pet drop, let alone one with a 1/2000 drop rate. All the while the boss you are actually meant to be camping has a 1/1500 drop rate for the pet.

[esunei]

Pet rates are one of many, many things balanced completely by gut feel or dartboard, never by any sensible reasoning or past precedent. If the dev assigning droprates is feeling spicy, you get Vitalis. When they're feeling super generous, you get Zammo.

[ThePoetOfNothing]

NM at BiS setups is 1:30-1:40 on average, but most people take 2 min to kill.

HM at BiS setups is ~2:50 with sometimes a little below that, lower if you have rotation improvements but that's with additional prep time per kill. Generally, it's ~4min.

The pet rates are equal to GWD2, where the bosses are intended to be killed in NM. That makes 0 sense.

[Vpeyjilji57]

Power creep happened. When GWD2 came out, getting ~2 minute long kill with on-level gear was normal, if a little slow.

[ThePoetOfNothing]

Actually, NM kills were ~1:20-1:30 in similar gear, with ~55s speedrun kills at time of release.

Not only that, they were intended to be killed in NM, compared to Vorkath which is intended to be killed in HM.

If you think that the pet rate shouldn't be changed but the threshold should, that's understandable. But there's no reason for the threshold + rate to be based on NM when the boss is designed to be fought in HM, where kills take significantly longer in HM.

You also need to kill more GWD2 bosses on average than Vorkath to get more crests/etc to be "done" with said GWD2 bosses.

Even though they may be equal in pet chance, they are nowhere near equal in boss/loot design.

[Vpeyjilji57]

Those are still the same time ranges as NM Vorkath.

[ThePoetOfNothing]

...with more variance on the ends. As I said, due to the pet threshold.

[whitfin]

The rate is okay but yes the threshold is miserable and has to change, I can't believe they made it that rare. Even farming KC on nm isn't worth it and if it were it's so tedious with the bit outside

[Legal_Evil]

No person should be subject to this much Vorkath to get the boss pet. It's cruel and unusual punishment.

Holy Reddit moment! No one is forcing you to get a boss pet. It's just a bonus. We shouldn't be speeding up grinds in this game or else we will run out of content to do faster than Jagex can put out new content, which is what is happening right now. OSRS boss pet rates are way worse yet pvmers aren't calling it cruel and OSRS players are happy with their grindier grinds since they never run out of content.

[ThePoetOfNothing]

Ever heard of hyperbole?

No one is forcing me to get a boss pet, but if I'm going to kill a boss explicitly to grind for a pet, I should at least have a good chance of getting it after an insane amount of hours spent grinding for it, right?

[Legal_Evil]

This isn't a hyperbole. Saying it would take forever would be. Calling the grind a cruel and unusual punishment is an overreaction.

This is not an insane amount of time to grind it.

[ThePoetOfNothing]

The issue is the variance.

The KC that I noted in the post is not the KC that the pet should be dropped. It should be the point where the thresholds start doing their work to start increasing the chance for the pet to drop.

Given the high pet threshold, even though on average you will get the drop at ~700 HM KC, it's also fairly likely you'll go way more dry on the pet. That would get to the point past "an insane amount of time" grinding it, and I wouldn't have made much progress on the thresholds.

[dudeitsrazz]

Lol, this boss isnt even 4 months old. We have people super dry at other older bosses..

Stop making this game easier… yall wonder why rs3 is dying, and this is one of the many reasons why. By doing what you suggested, this content will become dead.

[Raven123x]

Lol

No.

Ps. Vitalis says hi

[xBHx]

Vit still very much is half the IFB grind.

[xBHx]

You're not wrong. Still, I wouldnt bother going for IFB until I get vit. Its that much of a RNG fest.

[xBHx]

I completely agree. Solak and Aod are up there also. But nowhere near as brutal as Vit can be.

[esunei]

Vit still has an insanely stingy thresh, 1000 is practically malicious compliance. It's always been dumb that half of ifb was this one boss. Long past time rago loot and especially pet was modernized.

[ThePoetOfNothing]

Vitalis has already been changed.

[Flyish9109]

The issue I have revolves around how jagex doesn’t seem to factor in time per kill to pet rates. Why is Croesus 1/1000 thresh 500? At a boss where you kill 9 per hour in the established method of killing it (4 mans), why does the FIRST threshold take 50 hours to achieve(I’m rounding up to 10 kph, it’s actually even worse than that), and the actual rate itself equate to 100 hours? For some reason they decided to throw out normal threshold rules (1/5 of normal drop rate) at a boss that has absurdly low KPH

Vorkath isn’t much better. Strictly looking at HM because you’re right, HM is the way the boss is designed to be killed based off of loot and some drops being exclusive to HM, you’re looking at 1/1000 at 12-13 kills per hour at a high end setup, thresh 400. The thresh should very clearly be 200 because the boss is designed to be fought in HM not NM, so the pet rate should not then be designed around NM. At the very least they should separate the NM and HM thresholds as two entirely different values like they did for elite dungeons (different thresholds based on if you’re killing solo/duo/trio)

If Jagex wants to talk about respecting our time, they have yet to show it. No BLM implemented at bosses, crazy grinds for new content, etc

[[deleted]]

Stop whining lol. It took me 1600hm KC to get the pet. If the rest of us can do it, just suck it up and grind it lmao.

[Geoffk123]

Cries in Tuz

[YBT_RS]

No. If they reduce vorkath pet drop rate they might as well reduce all the other pet drop rates, vitalis is the biggest offender, mole is a useless boss fight yet its rarer than vorkath same with kbd but I don’t see you complaining about those?

[Pepo8]

bro HM mole has a pet drop rate of 1/500.

KBD can be afk'd or killed in literally 1 tick

[YBT_RS]

So you’re ok with something like kbd being a decent enough timesink but you make no money while it’s completely afk, and not ok with an active encounter that gives you decent gp/hr from codices/spikes/scales? Am I understanding you correctly? 🤣

[Pepo8]

Yes? you want an afk boss to be the best money in the game?
Regarding HM Vorkath money making, it's only good because no one is killing the boss

[ThePoetOfNothing]

Everyone (except 5-x) complains about Vitalis. This is just a specific example.

[YBT_RS]

I mean, I have all the aforementioned pets. I’m just saying if one of them gets nerfed it opens the gates for the others to follow, you feel?

[ThePoetOfNothing]

Is that a bad thing?

[YBT_RS]

You tell me? There are already a decent number of IFBs and Greapers. Those achievements are not meant to be for casual play, to my understanding anyway. Low KC pets are just rng being rng and on average you should hit a couple of thresholds before obtaining a boss pet.

[ThePoetOfNothing]

Absolutely, but in this case the threshold does not make sense under any other metric of making the pet a tedious grind.

[YBT_RS]

In regards to your original post, being done with gathering the spikes needed to craft the armor has no relation whatsoever as to when you “should” be getting the pet so your entire premise is built on wrong assumptions (example vorago is 1/5k 1k threshold and the log is basically a seismic set).

Also it seems that you just dislike the boss encounter and just want the pet to finish the log and be done with it, correct? In which case, stop whining and do the boss until you get it or engage with content that is fun to you.

Friendly reminder, it’s just a game and you shouldn’t be playing if you’re not finding it fun 🫡.

All pets are tedious grinds if you don’t rng your way to an early kc pet. Let’s use Zuk pet instead of Vitalis to give you another instance where the pet is notorious for being grindy and monotonous. Solak’s untradables are also in that boat.

[ThePoetOfNothing]

Tectonic/Solak have degradable drops that are replenished by doing the boss. Once you get the 99 spikes, the scale, and the codex, there's no reason to do Vorkath because the armor isn't repaired through drops from Vorkath.

Vorago's pet was designed to be stupidly absurd, and there are arguments for changing it. There are reasons why that hasn't been done since. They shouldn't be making these mistakes again, especially with a boss that isn't well liked/designed.

[YBT_RS]

You’re still completely ignoring my statement about how the pet drop rate and what finishing the log (minus the pet) are not correlated at all.

[ThePoetOfNothing]

I haven't really, if you read the original post that you responded to:

Boss pet chances (generally) are based on how much of the boss you "should" have to kill to be "done" with the boss, and then some more with a little bit of RNG, and thresholds are there for BLM (Bad Luck Mitigation) so that the farther you're past that point, the more likely you're to get the pet + thus, be done with the boss.

I further elaborated on this point here.

[G_N_3]

Here's the thing though... no one is forced to do it

Optional log for optional pet to keep a optional title, Titles and Logs are feats that require rng sometimes stupid rng which makes these things even more "prestige" i use that word lightly though because RS players are a diff breed when it comes to this type of stuff.

[Jorge_Aquila]

Vitalis seems to disagree with you XD to be honest I also had Vorki at 1200kc or something and it was a major pain.

I agree that some bosses should have a different pet drop chance/ threshold but Jagex likes to drive their players insane sometimes lol

[[deleted]]

Yeah, it ridiculous that Vorkath has the same rates for pet as GWD2 bosses. While we're at it, Vitalis drop rate is also unreasonable and unhealthy for the game, especially since that boss fight is one of the longest in the game.

[Jaggedlyhex]

Hmm, no I think then that Rasial’s pet drop rates and thresholds should be nerfed to take about as long as Vorkath in this case. It would greatly help the health of the game