Adventure Queue

The adventure queue is a feature in the game coding that makes high occurrences of the same adventure in a short period of time less likely. For example, if you head to the goatlet for the first time and fight a dairy goat, dairy goats will be slightly less frequent for the next several adventures.

Choose Your Own Adventure

Specifically, the way an adventure is chosen is

• Roll for a Superlikely adventure. If that roll did not give you the adventure,
• Decide on either combat or non-combat.
  • Create a selection list to use for the encounters.

• (c) If combat: populate the selection list with the possible combat encounters from the zone like so:

• For each combat encounter in the zone, choose from one of the following:

1. If the monster has a special rejection rate on it, do not add it if a roll says that monster should be rejected.
2. If there is a conditional, such as delay() on the monster, do not add it unless the conditional has been met.
3. If the monster is banished, do not add it to the list (unless it is olfacted, see next choice).
4. If the monster is olfacted, add 4 copies of that monster to the list (overrides banishing, but not the special rejection rate). Note that for zones with 2 copies of an olfacted monster, we would end up with 8 total copies of the monster in the selection list, etc.
5. Otherwise, add 1 copy of the monster to the list. (For zones with 2 copies of an un-olfacted monster, we'd end up with 2 copies on the selection list, etc.)

• (c select) Select an encounter from the selection list.
• If the combat selection list is empty, throw an error. (Only known place this used to happen is banishing Bodyguard Bats).
• If it's olfacted, that's the encounter.
• If it's not in the combat queue, that's the encounter.
• If it's in the combat queue,

• 25% of the time: accept the encounter.
• 75% of the time: go to (c select) and choose a new combat encounter, subjecting that choice to the combat queue as well.

• (nc) If non-combat: populate the selection list with the possible non-combat adventures from the zone like so:

1. If the adventure has a special rejection rate on it, do not add it if a roll says that it should be rejected.
2. If there is a conditional, such as delay() on the adventures, do not add it unless the conditional has been met.
3. Otherwise, add the adventure to the list.

• (nc select) Select an adventure from the selection list.
• If the non-combat selection list is empty, go to (c)
• If it's not in the non-combat queue, that's the adventure.
• If it is in the non-combat queue,

• 25% of the time: accept the adventure.
• 75% of the time: go to (nc select) and choose a new non-combat adventure, subjecting that choice to the non-combat queue as well.

Note that once you enter the queue-elimination process, you don't reroll for superlikely or the type of encounter: if a non-combat is first selected you only examine non-combats against the non-combat queue, and similarly for combats.

Equations for Encounter Frequency

For one type (combat or non-combat) of encounter, with

• e total encounters in a zone,
• j fractional chance of rejecting an adventure in the queue (assumed to be 3/4 or 75%), and
• u unique encounters from this zone in the adventure queue
• U giving the indexes for the u adventures from this zone in the queue
• R (elements r_i) giving the frequencies of encounters of our type in this zone
• r_inq giving the total base frequency of drawing any of the encounters from this zone that are present in the queue.

For all adventures equally likely, r_i=1/e and the chance of drawing an encounter that is present in the queue is (assuming j=3/4)

                    1
 inq(j;e,u)  = -----------
                4 e - 3 u

while the chance of drawing an encounter not present in the queue is

                    4 
 outq(j;e,u) = -----------
                4 e - 3 u

Note that these formulas only hold if the zone's encounters are equally likely.

If the adventures are not equally likely, the chance of drawing an encounter that is present in the queue is (again assuming j=3/4)

                           1 
 inq(j,R,U;i)  = ri ---------------
                     4 - 3 * rinq

The chance of drawing an encounter not present in the queue is

                           4 
 outq(j,R,U;i) = ri ---------------
                     4 - 3 * rinq

The adventure queue is 5 encounters long (it was changed from 3 encounters to 5 encounters in Fall of 2006).

Table of Encounter Frequency

For j=75%, among e total encounters of that flavor in the zone (all equally likely), and u unique encounters from the zone already in the queue:

Percent chance to draw each encounter that is in the queue

u \ e	3 enc. in zone	4 enc. in zone	5 enc. in zone	6 enc. in zone	7 enc. in zone	8 enc. in zone	9 enc. in zone
1 zone enc in queue	11.11%	7.69%	5.88%	4.76%	4.00%	3.45%	3.03%
2 zone enc in queue	16.67%	10.00%	7.14%	5.56%	4.55%	3.85%	3.33%
3 zone enc in queue	33.33%	14.29%	9.09%	6.67%	5.26%	4.35%	3.70%
4 zone enc in queue		25.00%	12.50%	8.33%	6.25%	5.00%	4.17%
5 zone enc in queue			20.00%	11.11%	7.69%	5.88%	4.76%

Percent chance to draw each encounter that is not in the queue

u \ e	3 enc. in zone	4 enc. in zone	5 enc. in zone	6 enc. in zone	7 enc. in zone	8 enc. in zone	9 enc. in zone
0 zone enc. in queue	33.33%	25.00%	20.00%	16.67%	14.29%	12.50%	11.11%
1 zone enc. in queue	44.44%	30.77%	23.53%	19.05%	16.00%	13.79%	12.12%
2 zone enc. in queue	66.67%	40.00%	28.57%	22.22%	18.18%	15.38%	13.33%
3 zone enc. in queue		57.14%	36.36%	26.67%	21.05%	17.39%	14.81%
4 zone enc. in queue			50.00%	33.33%	25.00%	20.00%	16.67%
5 zone enc. in queue				44.44%	30.77%	23.53%	19.05%

NS13 Queue Manipulation

There are some ways of increasing or decreasing the odds of encountering given monsters.

• Copying can be used to repeat a combat encounter against any normal monsters upon which the item is used.
• On the Trail ups the odds of encountering the monster being trailed.
• Curse Magnet doubles the chances of fighting the scary pirate when using a cursed piece of thirteen.
• Banishing a monster from an area.

Notes

• The adventure queue does not reset at rollover.
• The adventure queue can have duplicates. If you meet 5 dairy goats in a row, the combat queue contains 5 dairy goats and no other encounters.
• Prior to NS13, all zones shared the same two queues. If a player entered a zone for the first time, or with 5 of each encounter flavor from some other zone, there would have initially been zero, then one, ... applicable encounters in the queue.
• After NS13, the adventure queue was changed in a way that -- according to Jick -- makes abusing it impossible. Each zone now has two queues, one for combats and one for noncombats.
• This area of game mechanics is not well understood. For past investigation, see the work by godskook, eit_brad and others in this HCO forum thread on Adventure Outcome -- the material on this page is derived from that investigation.
• Choice adventures in zones like the The Haunted Bedroom count towards the non-combat queue only.
• The adventure queue cannot be manipulated at all on the Secret Tropical Island Volcano Lair, neither by using Transcendent Olfaction nor by using banishing or scaring items. (Monsters from this lair can still be copied, though.)