User blog:BunsenH/Ghazt stats Phase 2, report 1

This is the first report on the second phase of our statistical research on the probabilites of successfully breeding a Ghazt from an Entbrat and a T-Rox.

In this phase, we're looking at the effects of monster Happiness and monster Level. We're using the same game IDs as in the first phase, rearranged into two different groups. Before, all of the monsters used for breeding were kept at Level 4 and 0% Happiness, and half of the game IDs were kept at player Level 11 while the other half were allowed to reach as high a Level as convenient by baking food and purchasing decorations. No significant difference in Ghazt breeding probability was observed between the groups.

Now, half of the "minions" are breeding with Level 15 monsters at 0% Happiness, and the other half are breeding with Level 4 monsters at 100% Happiness. The previous groups were divided equally between the two new "minion" groups. As before, the breeding monsters are adjacent to each other and there are no Wishing Torches. This time, we've been careful to be consistent: the Entbrat is the monster selected from the left column for the Breeder, and the T-Rox is the monster from the right column... this seems unlikely to be a significant factor, but one might as well control all of the variables that one can. All of the trials are being run using the Windows version of the game.

Of the 2025 trials run so far in this phase, we've got 20 Ghazts, giving a success probability of (0.99 ± 0.22)%. In the group with Level 4 monsters, 100% happy, we've got 1016 tries giving 12 Ghazts, a probability of (1.18 ± 0.34)%; in the group with Level 15 monsters, 0% happy, we've got 1009 tries giving 8 Ghazts, a probability of (0.79 ± 0.28)%.

There isn't a statistically-significant difference between the two groups (nor between the current data and the numbers from Phase 1 of our research). If one assumes that the 20 successes were being randomly placed into the two groups, the probability of getting 8 in one group and 12 in the other is "20 choose 12" for each of the two types (125,970), divided by the total number of possible combinations, (220= 1,048,576), or 12% for each. For comparison, the chance of getting 9 and 11 is 16% for each, and the chance of getting 10 and 10 is 17.6%. We're not far from the middle of the bell curve.

The MSM Facebook page says that "feeding your breeding monsters to higher levels boosts your chances of getting rare monster" [sic]. So far, we aren't seeing any effect like that, at least for the monsters we're looking at and the conditions we're using. We plan to continue the current work for another couple of months so we can get better precision in our results.