Adventure Queue

The adventure queue is a feature in the game coding that makes high occurances 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 not,
• Decide on either combat or non-combat.

• (c) If combat: choose a combat encounter.

• If it's not in the combat queue, that's the encounter.
• If it is in the combat queue,

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

• (nc) If non-combat: choose a non-combat encounter.

• If it's not in the non-combat queue, that's the encounter.
• If it is in the non-combat queue,

• 25% of the time: accept the encounter.
• 75% of the time: go to (nc) and choose a new non-combat encounter, 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. Also be aware that the rejection probability, given above as 75%, is not totally nailed down. It could be more or less than that fraction.

Equations for Encounter Frequency

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

• E total encounters in a zone, all equally likely,
• 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,

The chance of drawing an encounter that is present in the queue is

                 1 - j
 inq(e,j,u)  = ---------
                e - j u

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

                   1 
 outq(e,j,u) = ---------
                e - j u

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, and u unique encounters from the zone already in the queue:

Percent chance to draw an 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 an 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%

Notes

• The adventure queue is thought to reset at rollover (although this has not been tested).
• All zones share the same two queues. If you head to a zone for the first time, or with 5 of each encounter flavor from some other zone, there will initially be zero, then one, ... applicable encounters in the queue.
• 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.
• This area of game mechanics is not well-understood. For current 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.