Spading

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Spading is a colloquialism for the process of pooling, organizing, and deciphering the raw data from a large string of adventures while under the effect of the same set of variables (skills items level area etc.)

The Basics

☼ The more adventures supporting your data the more your data supports the truth.

☼ The more specific the data record the more information and speculation can be drawn from the data

Variables

Variables are all the things that effect your character and it's abilities that are not constants. Depending on the scope of your project a small change in stats could dramaticly skew the final results, or the change could be in a variable that has no impact on the part of the results you're spading to get.

As a general rule of thumb you want to keep any variables you start spading with throughout your entire spading lot. ALL of your variables should be listed when you format your data at the end. If a variable DOES change while your spading and you think itll be of little impact please LIST that it changes and how it changed over the course of your lot. Alot of faulty infomation has been drawn from the final results of spading where people forget or incorrectly list their variables, for example the passive skill Expert Panhandling will throw off alot of spading lots if its not accounted for.

☼ Complete List of Variables ☼

Stats
Buffs
Passives
Equipment
Environmental Effects (stat days etc)
....
....
....

Formating

There are quite a few variations to how people choose to display their finished data. A table is a very typical solution illustrated below

Character: The RNG, level 253 Inscrutable Force

Date: July 13th
Skills Used: None
Buffs: None
Familiar: 72-lb Fuzzy Dice
Quest: ****
Equipment:
big bad voodoo mask
antique spear
incredibly creepy marionette
pygmy nose-bone
badass belt
hemp string
(A)nimal, (R)ectangle, (P)hlat Tire
Enemies: paarrprprpapapaaprpppaarppaarpraarparrrprpa
Adventures: 43

Deciphering Basic Results

So you just spent 1000 carefully executed and recorded adventures spading something of your interest. Then you went to all the trouble compiling and formatting your data to be legible. What do you do with it? How does this list of information tell you any facts about what you spaded?

Using the RNG and its very simple spading lot you could come up with this statistic

Out of 43 adventures the RNG encountered 17 Phlat Tires 13 Animals and 13 Rectangles. From that you can figure out a guestimate the odds of fighting one mob over another.

The smaller the spading lot the less accurate your results

How can I help?

• In the Current Project listings on the left-hand menu of the Wiki you can find a

long list of articles tagged as needing spading.

• ALL new content needs to be spaded to some extent.

• You are almost guaranteed to NOT do your first spading perfectly. Take the criticism you get as constructive and learn from it.