Item Discovery
To farm in-game items, you need as high Item Discovery as you can get. Your Item Discovery can be increased by using these: Symbol of Avarice, a Crystal Sage's Rapier in each hand, Gold Serpent Ring(+0,+1,+2,+3), Rusted (Gold) Coins, as high Luck as you can get. Ask someone to drop farming equipment for you.
Item Discovery can also be increased by your Hollowing stat and a Hollow infused weapon. With at least 15 Hollowing (at which you are hollowed), equipping a Hollow infused weapon would increase your Item Discovery. The exception is the Hollow Slayer, which has no effect on your Item Discovery. Below are some data on how many points can be added to your Item Discovery depending on the upgrade level of a Hollow infused weapon. The data show that with at least 15 Hollowing points, wielding a +0 Hollow infused weapon would add 2 points to your Item Discovery. You get the maximum of 5 points added to your Item Discovery when you wield a +10 Hollow infused weapon.
- +0: 2
- +1: 3
- +2: 3
- +3: 3
- +4: 3
- +5: 4
- +6: 4
- +7: 4
- +8: 4
- +9: 4
- +10: 5
Is there a maximum value for Item Discovery? Suppose you have 99 Luck. During any farming session, you can equip the Gold Serpent Ring+3, Symbol of Avarice, and Crystal Sage's Rapier for a total of 465 Item Discovery. You might be surprised why you would get 465 Item Discovery instead of 464. Your base Item Discovery is 100 and you have 99 Luck, so your Item Discovery is now 199. The Gold Serpent Ring+3 and the Symbol of Avarice add 115 and 100 points, respectively, to your Item Discovery. Finally, the Crystal Sage's Rapier adds 50 points to your Item Discovery. So in theory you should have 199 + 115 + 100 + 50 = 464 Item Discovery. Where does the extra 1 point come from? This extra point comes from stacking the Gold Serpent Ring+3 with the Symbol of Avarice, the stacking being multiplicative instead of additive. Equipping a second Crystal Sage's Rapier would increase your Item Discovery to 515. If you also use a Rusted Gold Coin, you would have 615 Item Discovery for 60 seconds. At 99 Luck, using a +10 Hollow infused weapon and having 99 Hollowing have no effect on your Item Discovery. The reason is that being hollowed and wielding a Hollow infused weapon would increase your Luck, but since you already have 99 Luck you cannot increase your Luck any further. Therefore the maximum Item Discovery you can have is 615.
How does Item Discovery relate to your chance of receiving an item from a kill? According this wiki
http://darksouls3.wikidot.com/game-mechanics-general#toc10
your chance of getting a drop of any item is related in the following way to your Item Discovery and the true drop rate of the item. Let Chance be your chance of obtaining a particular item. Suppose ItemDiscovery is your Item Discovery and TrueRate is the actual drop rate of the item. Then your chance of getting the drop is
Chance = (ItemDiscovery / 100) * TrueRate
How do you know the value of TrueRate for each item? The true drop rate of each item is contained in the file
C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\DARK SOULS III\Game\Data0.bdt
which can be read by using Yapped
https://www.nexusmods.com/darksouls3/mods/306
The true drop rates have been converted to a readable spreadsheet thanks to the following people from the ?ServerName? Discord server: Cryptid Tracker, TKPG. You can read the true drop rates here: