SimCity Social Collectible Drop Rates Guide

SimCity Social Collectible Drop Rates Guide by noodlz

I’m a bit of a stat geek, so when I see everyone complaining about the drop rate conspiracy, I have to go and investigate.

To do so, I started tracking all of my friend/foe/twin relationship clicks today, amounting to just short of 200 (full disclosure: I wasn’t able to do any partner/twin clicks because my inventory was full of Teamwork and I had no way of getting rid of them, more on why later). I’m keeping track of things like names, relationship levels, supposed (or advertised) drop rates, the building I’m clicking on, and whether I’m using bonus credits or not. I’m even tracking the sequence of clicks to determine whether staying in one city and clicking 50 times is better than going to 10 cities and clicking 5 times. Now, 200 clicks isn’t going to be 100% accurate, but it is statistically relevant. So far, here is what I have found:

• The advertised drop rate is correct – I averaged the claimed drop rate over all of my clicks (21%), and compared that with my actual drop rate (20%). So far, I am slightly lower than what EA claims, but given the sample size of ~200 clicks, it is well within the margin for error.
• It doesn’t matter what building you click on – I hear people saying things like “you get better drop rates if you click between the Mayor’s House and the Train Station”. Data so far shows it is completely meaningless what you click. For example, I have tried to randomize my clicks as much as possible, and have gotten Bliss/Wrath from a Detached Home, Department Store, and Fortress of Ultimate Woe.
• Focusing your efforts on 1-3 cities will pay off – Drop rates go up quite dramatically after you make it past the first few levels, and although I have fairly limited data, it does seem to support this already. (Going off of memory even prior to when I started keeping track, most of my Wrath/Bliss came from 50%+ relationship cities)

I will add more as I try different things, but everything points to this being a very simple formula (this could be adjusted slightly as I compile more data, but knowing developers, they probably used nice even numbers). You take your Collectible Drop Rate and multiple it by the following…

Common Items (Fury, Goodwill, Teamwork) – 60%
Uncommon Items (Rage, Harmony, Trust) – 30%
Rare Items (Wrath, Bliss, Unity) – 10%

What this means is that if the game randomly decides you’re getting a collectible, those are the chances that you will get one of the above. To make this easy, I’ve done the work for you…simply match up your Relationship Status with the collectible you are hoping to receive, and you will be able to estimate how many clicks you will need to make to earn it:

As you can see, most people are going to be in the 14% drop rate bracket. The rare items (Wrath, Bliss, Unity) will only drop a little over 1% of the time, requiring about 71 energies spent per rare item. This obviously doesn’t mean that your 71st click is going to be a Wrath…you could get 3 in a row, you could go 300 times before getting one…71 is just the statistical average. Bump your relationship up to the maximum level, and you’re looking at a rare item for every 10 energy spent. This is why it’s so important to focus most of your energy on just 1-3 neighbors.

Another thing to note about the chart above: this is assuming that you have available space in your inventory for each collectible. The system works like this…

User Clicks
|
v
Calculate Drop Rate via Relationship Status (14% – 100%)
|
v
Collectible Drop Earned?
Yes, No -> You get nothing
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v
Determine Which Collectible
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v
Rare 10%
Uncommon 30%
Common 60%
|
v
Does user have room for this type of collectible in inventory?
Yes, No -> You get nothing
|
v
Collectible Earned

In a nutshell, if you have 15/15 Fury, and 10/10 Rage, your total drop rate goes down substantially since the only collectible you can potentially earn is now Wrath, which will only happen around 1% of the time if you’re at a 14% relationship level. This is why people can go a hundred clicks without getting any collectible.

So that’s all I’ve got for now. I will continue compiling my stats as I go, but it is getting increasingly difficult getting rid of Fury/Teamwork/Goodwill. In fact, today…I didn’t have anything to spend Teamwork on, so I couldn’t get any legitimate data on the partner/twin click option, but Friend and Foe were so similar that I’m going to assume it’s the same calculation for now.

Oh, and I know there are other stat junkies here, so if you want to contribute, please do! I’m hoping that in time we can get drop rates for ALL collectibles in the game, including those in your own city (with building interactions). Just make sure you have enough space in your inventory or you won’t be able to collect legitimate data.