Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-24577221-20140308040843/@comment-24577221-20140308215314

The descriptive phrase "The rare Ghazt only manifests itself when conditions are absolutely perfect" lends itself to a lot of interpretation, especially when people are frustrated (or jealous of people who got lucky). I can see why there's a lot of folklore on the subject. "It's kind of a ghost thing, so obviously midnight is better than any other time.  And that other guy said that he got two Ethereals, one right after the other, near midnight, so obviously it makes a difference!"

Is there any reliably-sourced information about what the breeding probabilities are, what the torches do, and so on? I've seen several mentions of "1%" for the Ethereals, but it appears to be all hypothetical, for purposes of explanation of the stats.

I've spent many years explaining "science stuff" to people who don't get along with science, so I try not to take it personally. Maybe I'm just not explaining something it properly, but I may be colliding with solidly-entrenched fallacy. A lot of people don't understand that the so-called "law of averages" does not in fact mean that when they flip a coin a bunch of times, it will come up heads exactly half the time... regardless of their own actual experience. I know that that collision between belief and experience can cause trouble.