Lucky Find, Iron Mining Surplus and Two Iron in One skills are mutually exclusive.

I set up one of my geologist with all possible iron skills. Lucky Find lv1 with 15% chance. Iron Mining Surplus lv3 with 24% chance. Two Iron in One lv3 with 24% chance. My goal however was not to make an iron deposit skills overloaded geologist, but to find the extra iron deposit. I tried for 1 month, then I wrote ticket to support and I was not explained the skills are mutually exclusive and I was told just to "try harder". So I did and I noticed why Lucky Find skill is not functioning and why notoriously I can not find the extra iron deposit.

When I had one iron deposit cleared and sent geologist, then more or less 24% of the times I had in mail 30-50 iron ores. This was Iron Mining Surplus skill in work. I never found a single extra iron deposit.

When I had two iron deposits cleared and sent geologist, then more or less 24% of the times I found 2 iron deposits instead of 1 iron deposit. This was Two Iron in One skill in work. I never found a single extra iron deposit. I never also received any found by geologist iron ore in mail.

So it looks like, when you skill your geologist with Iron Mining Surplus skill, then you can not find the extra iron deposit with your Lucky Find skill. When you skill your geologist with Two Iron in One, then you need to have exactly 1 iron deposit left to discover for Lucky Find to function.

I dunno why it is so, but it is so. I would assume all skills on geologist should work, once I have them skilled up on a geologist, but it is not so. Apparently you can not have one skill with another skill. You have to pick one iron skill only for that skill to work for iron deposits. I have no idea if this is a planned game mechanics or a bug, but I found over last 2 months this is exactly how it works and nobody bothered to tell me about it or explain it anywhere. Re-skilling geologist costs 1550 gems or alternatively on re-skilling geologist you will lose around 5 manuals, 5 tomes and 6 codex. It is a costly mistake to fix.

Interesting, no wonder I have never yet found the extra iron mine despite running a solid iron chain depleting all iron mines every two days for nearly two years. I feel a moan coming on...Ravel dear could you ask the devs to clarify the situation please?

This is still being looked into. Please post any details you might have that you believe will help.

Another reason why a free skill reset event is much needed...

Mine has 2 in 1 Iron (max.lvl.) , find mined iron (max.lvl.) and look for the extra iron and marble, and I have found the extra iron mine with him

I was sending recently my geologist to find marble deposits. No extra marble deposits found either. I logged in with bb ticket about those "lucky find" issues 07.07 and they asked then devs to investigate if there are any issues with my island. Next tickets I filled returned "no issues with island" and "no issues with how skills work". This is 3rd month "lucky find" going on now and still not a single extra marble or a single extra iron deposit found on my island with "lucky find" skill. I even reskilled my geologist to lose "2 in 1" and "mining surplus" skills and keep only "lucky find" for no improved result on "lucky find" skill.

I asked few players in Newfoundland's server global about "lucky find" skill issue and quite few had zero results like I did and then some had no issues at all finding extra deposits. Those who had zero results like I do called "lucky find" skill as utterly useless and called RNG (random numbers generator) used in TSO as "extreme" in not much changing random results they were getting from it, even when adventure loot was concerned.

So, I am concerned that maybe RNG is somehow fixed for some players like me in TSO to never or almost never roll those 15% chances. For example for last 2 years I did during events and sometimes daily outside of them adventure known as "Bandit Nest" in hope to receive in loot the adventure "return to bandit nest". For last 2 years and this is around 1.5% chance I have got 5 such bonus adventures. Also despite doing for last 4 years many of the dark knight, roaring bull and so on epic adventures I received only once in loot one single Dark Castle. I think calling RNG "extreme" in few players cases, like in mine, is fully substantiated.

What I am worried about is if BB actually did not rigged RNG for some players in the Settlers Online to always consistently roll unlucky.

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Originally Posted by The_Sarmatian

So, I am concerned that maybe RNG is somehow fixed for some players like me in TSO to never or almost never roll those 15% chances.

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I would consider it beyond belief that the company would go out of its way to 'fix' things for selected players. Not only would this be incredibly unethical but if it got out (and such things always do) their reputation would be permanently trashed and players would leave in droves from not only this game but anything BB is associated with. And all that risk to avoid giving someone a virtual item that has no real value and costs them nothing. That would make no sense at all on any level. I seriously hope you are making some kind of a joke.

It's amazing how often the discussion of what "random" means comes up, and how so many people misunderstand the ideas of probability theory.

I feel your pain Sarmatian but have to agree with Xibor. I often feel the devs are secretly manipulating my own game to get back at all the bad things I've written about them over the years here in the forum and on the test site. In reality though I think they have better things to do, even when some of the bugs that arrive would indicate that they are not utilising that time to for the best.
I do think however that the very low % of some things in loot and skills are not balanced against the rng in a fair or balanced way for a good experience for the average player. We have also seen that BB can change drop rates ( thinking back to some event items, and first few weeks of new content ;) ) across the servers, very quickly when they have an agenda. However we do have a forum to express ourselves when we see it, as often its not subtle.
With skills, which are an `expensive' part of the game, especially regarding time to achieve, there should be much higher success of those skills on application. There should be far less occurrence of booby prizes as well ( thinking rarity search finding coal with 15 recyclers...doh, sounds like a wasted education! )

Well, it could be also some mysterious and undiscovered bug. Bug that affects quite few players on Newfoundland server. If I cant find for last 3 months any extra deposits with "lucky find" skill and I send my "lucky find" explorer on searches every day and quite few times too, then there are only 2 possibilities.

In the first case maybe devs are not even aware of this bug. Maybe someone managing tickets is scrapping complaints about "lucky find"'s results for some other reason. After all some players do find those extra deposits and other lucky things rather consistently. Then devs simply have no idea there is a problem on a larger scale with RNG and those 1.5% roles on adventure loot and 15% rolls on "lucky find"skill for some group of particular players on Newfoundland server.

In second case devs know very well there is nothing wrong with my island, the skills and the RNG. Exactly, as I am being told in all those tickets I've sent for last 30 days. It could still be of course bad luck with RNG rolls. However it is surprising how a quite large group of players on Newfoundland server consistently rolls badly. Something, which is maybe not obvious with adventure loot, but obviously sticks out with "lucky find" skill, which never ever finds any extra deposits of either marble or iron.

Once again the spectre of players who think they know something about how random number generators work rises it's head.

Lets look at the known facts.
With the on-going contest if you do some digging in that thread you can find out the exact make and model of RNG used to pick a winner. Armed with that information it does not take long to discover that particular RNG is flawed as it fails the industry standard tests. However this tells us nothing about the RNG used by the game all it does is lowers our confidence in the games RNG.

What we cant see from players posts is if they are making a fundamental flaw in their assumptions. One of these assumptions is the rules of real world chance do not apply in game.