Talk:Idol/@comment-24.158.17.126-20120217211322/@comment-4102115-20120219164748

Hang on, I just re-read this original comment. "I just dropped $50m in random $5m+increments" - that means you are talking about maybe 6 to 9 at the most donations for 6 - 9 Drawing pieces. er, While that is a lot of money in total, the number is a tiny fraction of what would be needed to get specific pieces from a random draw.

My understanding is that there is a total of (3 x 9 + 3 x 9 + 3 x 6) = 72 individual pieces to collect. If you already have 13 unique pieces as you indicated, and you randomly draw out only another 6 - 9, the Law of Probability states that the chance is far from low that you get duplicates.

The way that I envisage that the selection works is this:


 * Take 3 identical sets of playing cards;


 * Take from each deck:


 * A-9 of spades to represent piece #1 - piece #9 of Ruins


 * A-9 of clubs to represent piece #1 - piece #9 of Water slides


 * A-6 of hearts to represent piece #1 - piece #6 of Surf station


 * You now have 3 full sets of each of the 3 "suits" representing a complete drawing.


 * Now shuffle these 72 cards together.

The sense that I am getting is - when you donate $5M+ or when Leonid decides to place a blueprint on a shelf for sale, one of these 72 cards (pieces) is chosen at random. If you donated or bought it, then there are 71 cards left in the deck to randomly get a piece from next time. My feeling is that if a piece is offered by Leonid, and you do not buy it, it gets returned to the deck and shuffled, and so you could be offered that same piece randomly again and again.

So if you never buy any Ruins or Water slides pieces, then there are those 54 cards remaining in the deck every time you randomly try to get a Surfing piece. On the working assumption that the card is chosen randomly from the remaining deck, it is entirely possible to have the same unwanted pieces continually being randonly offered in the merchants house.

From looking at 20 consecutive cycles of what Leonid stocks, it looks like he offers a blueprint roughly every 6th item. You might think that sounds way off, but bear in mind each cycle that you only buy one or none of his items, he only replaces one item each cycle, and based on my previous notes, each "away" or "open" clock will count down to zero but the next clock will not start until you are in the game. Meaning you have to be in the game once to check his stock, and again at least 90mins later to start his hunting clock, then again at least 60mins later to check his stock and start his clock ticking again before he will leave. All of that was just one cycle. Repeat 6 times before he picks another blueprint randonly from the large deck of the same unwanted returned pieces. Get the picture? That is, at an absolute minimum of 15 hours between blueprint offerings on the basis of checking in every 90 and 60 mins (without spending piastres to restock or return).

I found in my documenting the stock rotation, that if I bought 2 or more items in one cycle then another blueprint would come around in fewer cycles because it still seemed to come after replacing 6 or so items. Also, when you buy all 4 items, the clock immediately hits 0 and he goes hunting for 60mins then returns with 4 new items.

So, if you're only checking in once or twice a day and not buying, it would take 6-12 days between each random blueprint offering, and if I'm right about choosing randomly from the whole remaining deck each time, it could be literally years before 1 of each unique piece of the one structure you are after comes up. :)