Cocytus Succeeder
Posts: 2184
Joined: Tuesday, 3rd February 2015, 22:05
XP given by popcorn monsters
- What proportion of monsters generated are popcorn?
- How much XP do these popcorn monsters give, as a proportion of the total XP?
First, we have to define "popcorn". There's no universal definition, of course. I use the following arbitrary, but fairly reasonable definition:
Look at all the monsters you've killed so far and sort them by XP value. Calculate a "threshold" as the 80th percentile. Any generated monster in the future which gives less XP than this threshold is popcorn.
[I did some sanity checks that this definition makes sense. If anything, it undercounts popcorn. Details under spoiler tag.]
The following graph looks at a sample HuBe run up until Orc:2. It shows how many popcorn monsters are generated, and how much XP is retained if these monsters are removed from the pool.
[Edit: X-axis shows the number of monsters killed so far]
As you can see, anywhere from a quarter to a half of monsters are popcorn, and these monsters give negligible XP.
Old thread giving some practical suggestions to reduce the popcorn monsters.