Mob/Drop Rate tracking
 

Okay, short and to the point...

ATM I'm manually taking data from the chat logs such as this:



and manually transferring this info into an Excel spreadsheet, like this:



For mobs that drop money it's a little more complicated, but not much:



This is very time intensive and prone to transcription errors. I'm hoping someone out there that knows there way around LUA would be able to whip up a Add-on like DASS but for mobs and drops.

Or even just an external app that reads the log file and spits out the info into a simple CSV or XML file that can be imported into a spreadsheet.

I know I'm not asking for much... ;)

PS: Extra credit if it also tracks resource node drops...

I've done quite a bit of chat log parsing work for my KillTracker plugin. Certainly what you have highlighted in the log below could be parsed out and written to a file in a format that could be imported into Excel easily enough. Of course, there are potential flaws in tying the kill message to the loot message, especially if you're in a busy area, potentially with multiple enemies dying in a short period of time, killed by multiple players, or pets, soldiers, traps/devices or even NPCs. But, leaving the kill messages out of it, and assuming you always loot all, you could probably reliably tie the loot to the enemy.

A plugin could even keep the sums and calculate the % stats you have, rather than log every time you loot a corpse, which would be much more efficient - the data could even be displayed in-game, cutting Excel out altogether. The biggest hole I see in what you have below vs. what can be done automatically via the chat log is the lack of mob "Type & Kind" & "Lvls/Morale/Power" - as far as I know, nothing in the chat log or LUA API allows us to get this information programatically...it would have to be entered manually.

I think your idea is a good one, and frankly a good supplement to what my KillTracker does today, but, as you can see in my comments in the KillTracker page, the state of the game and API at the moment would make it quite cumbersome and unreliable to achieve a rather poor result. This makes it, for me at least, not worth the effort.

If my plugin code would be of help to anyone wishing to work on this project, by all means feel free to use it.

Thanks for your input. I'll take a look at any code there is that does something similar to what I'd like to do.

I hadn't thought about chat spam from other people in the area... that could be a deal breaker to automating this.

I'll go away and play with the chat filters for a bit, and see if I can find a way to clean up the log somehow.

Just a quick warning....

Open Tapping and remote looting are being implemented world-wide in Update 9: Against the Shadow

The primary effect for your project will be to change slightly the text of the loot messages.
[I'd verify the text changes for you, but Turbine broke the Mac Client (again) with B3 of Update 9 :(]

(Remote looting means that you will no longer need to click on a body to acquire the loot!)
(Open tapping means that if multiple individuals participate in the kill, they will all get "the same" loot. -- "the same" means that each player gets their own set of rolls on the loot tables, not one set of loot divided amongst the players.)

My guess is that Update 9 will be released next Wednesday, 13 December, as it also contains the Yule Festival. (Update 9 Beta 3 is currently live on Bullroarer).

Just looking at the update 9 changes now and everything changes... The message order to the log files is now almost impossible to disentangle automatically...

I can do it manually, but it makes my brain hurt...