Magic Find & The Lab - A Basic Question

Many of the discussions I've seen about running the Labyrinth advise boosting one's magic find as high as possible. My question is if boosting one's magic find really helps on lab runs? At this point my base magic find is 220. When I boosted it up to 550 for a lab run, I didn't notice any appreciable difference in what I gathered. The ToT bags don't say anything about being affected by mf and in any case I'm just selling them all without opening them. Is there something I'm missing? Is boosted mf really helpful in the lab?

I think it's confirmation bias on your part.It's a known fact that magic find helps with drops from mobs (but not those from unids anymore , that was an outlier that has since been changed). Are you using a build that can tag many things? For example shortbow+staff daredevil, grenade /bomb kit / flamethrower on scrapper/holo/engineer, shortbow renegade, sword focus+greatsword chrono/mirage, quickness firebrand (outputting boons reduces damage required for credit), staff necromancer of any kind (ideally power reaper or condi scourge with the staff as a swap from Greatsword and scepter+torch respectively), Greatsword +axe x2 soulbeast, dagger or staff (overload) tempest or elementalist. see https://fast.farming-community.eu/farming/builds

As far as RNG-based bags such as ToT bags if it isn't labeled as affected by magic find it probably isn't.

Since you are going to to be killing a lot of things and getting many rolls I guess you might as well maximize your chances of one of those rolls being very good. MF is probably not going to do much for your ToT count compared to simply tagging more stuff.

@"Chichimec.9364" said:Many of the discussions I've seen about running the Labyrinth advise boosting one's magic find as high as possible. My question is if boosting one's magic find really helps on lab runs? At this point my base magic find is 220. When I boosted it up to 550 for a lab run, I didn't notice any appreciable difference in what I gathered. The ToT bags don't say anything about being affected by mf and in any case I'm just selling them all without opening them. Is there something I'm missing? Is boosted mf really helpful in the lab?

Short answer: yes, increasing magic find always helps in the lab and anywhere else in the game in which the primary loot is from killing foes.It won't change what drops when you open the bags, but will affect what fraction of your drops end up as ToTs. With less MF, you'll end up with fewer ToTs.

Over a short period of time, you might not notice. Over long periods, especially in foe-rich farms, the difference is impressive.

One caveat: the second factor in determining your "bags per hour" in the lab is how many foes you get credit for killing. That can have a bigger impact for some players than MF. And that's affected by your commander's route, whether everyone in the squad stays together, whether people let the tag open doors, whether there are too many knockbacks, your choice of build, and other things that aren't as easy to quantify.

Maximizing bags requires both a "good map" and high MF.In the extreme, through 2019, I've seen the "best" rate at around 750 bags per hour (claimed; I didn't personally verify) while the worst might have been 50-100.

Medium answer:

! MF affects the quality of the loot that drops from the foes you kill (or get credit for killing). With sufficient MF, you won't get any "basic" drops, only "common" (blue) or better. In the extreme, if we could run around with ~1000% (maybe more) MF, we wouldn't get anything less than "uncommon" (rare) drops.!! There's considerable research on the effects of MF on loot from the brief period of the game when it worked on unidentified gear. It shows a near-linear effect, so that we can predict that with each 1% of MF, we get (on average) this much basic, that much common, etc.

Longer answer:

! Roughly speaking, when we get loot, this game (like any other) uses a "look up table" to determine what drops for us. The game rolls an imaginary die for us, uses that number to look up what kind of loot, and then rolls again to determine which specific item of that kind drops. Different foes have different drop tables, for example, veterans will drop better loot than ordinary foes of the same name.!! As an oversimplified example, you might roll a 20-sided die for a particular foe.! 0-1 means basic drops (white items, e.g. junk)! 2-14 means common (blue)! 15-18 means uncommon (green)! 19 means rare (yellow|gold)!! With 200% MF (in this unfair example), the game adds "2" to your roll, which means: no more basic drops. With 1500% (impossible to achieve), the game adds 15, which means no more blue drops.!! After determining rarity, there's another look up table. For example, the rare table also includes the possibility of an exotic. And the exotic table includes the possibility of a precursor, and so on.!! In reality, the tables are more complicated, although the MF works as described: doubled MF doesn't mean doubly-better loot; it means a doubled benefit to each of your rolls.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:Short answer: yes, increasing magic find always helps in the lab and anywhere else in the game in which the primary loot is from killing foes.It won't change what drops when you open the bags, but will affect what fraction of your drops end up as ToTs. With less MF, you'll end up with fewer ToTs.

Over a short period of time, you might not notice. Over long periods, especially in foe-rich farms, the difference is impressive...Thanks @Illconceived Was Na.9781. Your short answer gave a useful response. MF does makes a difference. Higher MF means a higher drop rate of ToT bags. So MF is worth boosting. Your longer answers gave a good explanation of the mechanics at play.

@"Infusion.7149" This year I've been running Metabattle's Tag Daredevil build and have been happy with it. This morning, I timed it and in a 45 minute "no big bosses" run, I picked up 365 ToT bags, 3 BL chests, and 68 Teal Petals. While I didn't specifically note today's MF, the 550 was from yesterday, I will time a run again tomorrow and note the MF.

And another 45 minute lab run this morning, mob doors only, no bosses other than Steve. Magic Find started at 625 though that fluctuated a bit with a boost from Steve and from ressing people while using pumpkin oil, then it went down again after the banner buffs ran out. Picked up 387 bags, 3 BL Chests, and 53 Teal Petals. @"Illconceived Was Na.9781" comments about the commander and the group came into play here. The first group I joined was billed as mob doors only, no bosses. Apparently the original commander left though and the new commander was opening every door, fighting the Lich and Viscount as they came up. So I jumped out of the lab, found another "mob doors only" group and jumped back in again. That was a bit of delay but as I had an irl appointment coming up, I couldn't stop/restart the timer. My ToT bag total would have been higher if it weren't for the delay.

There's probably an argument to be made about whether opening all the doors makes for more efficient farming or not. Personally, I enjoy the fast, fluid pace of "no bosses" runs a lot more than stopping and fighting the big ones. Also, a group expecting to skip the big boss fights may have a lower enough dps output to make the big boss fights drag on longer than it does with a group expecting to fight them.

The bosses give a magic find bonus though I doubt it offsets the typical time to kill them

Magic find is confusing specially cause there is an important unknown factor. The loottables themselves.In essence, magic find does not increase the amount of drops, but the rarity of the drops you get. You have a higher chance on getting something rare. But this also means you do not get something common or junk. In the labfarm this sounds counter productive as it is the ToT's you want and not bones. The observations are also very different.

The secret lies within the unknown loottables and that they are unknown. We know how the items are rated in rarety in the game, but not in the loottables. A few ways how this make a difference would be:I speculate that the loottable works with several dice throws. The first determines the rarity and what table to draw from (and each draw you can get a higher tier table again). ToT's can be a common object, but still be in the common table and the rare table as a possible drop. This means magic find increases the chance of getting them. This would mean you would get less trash items. Another explaination would be if the loottables also contains no drops. This would be of a less rarity as common and would mean you have a smaller chance on getting nothing and a higher one on getting common items.

But bottom line is that even though it is confusing the observation is:More MF means more ToT's