BDO Enhancement Optimizer

I've throw together this fail stack calculator so that I could try out the new enhancement chance numbers that were released. I also wanted to get a more objective way to decide how to fail stack and enhance when considering multiple different pieces of gear at different enhancement levels.

It still needs more testing and the code could be commented better, but I am posting the code so it isn't necessary to wait on me and you can alter it as you please.

Video Guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6IzuQ-0Crw

Important Info

• Gear is entered at the TARGET level of enhancement. For example a +14 Reblath Helmet is entered at Level 15
• You can sort most lists by clicking on the column header
• This program will tell you suggested fail stack level, strategy and provide a walk-through in game of each enhancement step and decision
• The program creates a settings file and log file in the %appdata% folder. Back up your settings file at least once since thie project is in alpha.
• Not all gear types have a sheet of probabilities. Let me know if you have more data.

GUI User guide

1.) Go to the "Monnies/ MP" tab on the left side of the program.

• Chose if you want to sign into the online Central Market or manually enter prices

  • To sign into the Central Market click "Tools" -> "Sign into MP" on the main menu. Once you sign in a green message should show on the main window status bar. You can close the Central Market window or keep it open.

• If you have done the Bartali quest line or have free permanent fail stacks, set the "Quest FS Increase" field to your minimum fail stack.

• Make sure "Value Pack Active?" is checked if you will be using a Value Pack when interacting with the central market.

  • Don't edit the tax ratios unless you really know what you are doing.

• Optional for "Strategy": Als, Valks and Naderr

  • Click "Managed saved failstacks" and enter all of the Advice of Valks that you have
  • Click "Naderr's Band" and add all your pages with their current fs
  • Click "Manage Alts/Toons" and press the "Import From Game Files" button to look for your FaceTexture folder. This is a folder the game uses to store your alts pictures. If you select the right folder it will add an alt with their picture set up. You still need to enter their name and fail stack level
    • If you do not import from game files you can enter everything manually by pressing "Add Alt"
    • Change the picture by clicking the magnifying glass or the current image of the alt

2.) Go to the "FS Gear" tab on the left side of the program.

• This is the gear you will be using to build fail stacks and not yet attempting an enhancement. There should be a list of default gear if you just installed the program.

• To add gear press "Add Item." You can click on the magnifying glass icon in the "Name" column of the table to bring up a search window. Type in the gear you are looking for and find it on the list. Double click it to register the gear with a picture, name, type and central market functionality. Un-checking gear will keep it out of the algorithm later.

• If you signed into the online central market press "MP: Update all" to automatically update the gear costs from the central market.

3.) OPTIONAL: Go to the "FS Cost" tab on the left side of the program.

• Click refresh to generate a list of what to fail stack on. The numbers here should be fairly self explanatory

4.) Go to the "Equipment" tab on the left side of the program.

• To add gear press "Add Item." You can click on the magnifying glass icon in the "Name" column of the table to bring up a search window. Type in the gear you are looking for and find it on the list. Double click it to register the gear with a picture, name, type and central market functionality. Un-checking gear will keep it out of the algorithm later.

• Add gear here that you are working on enhancing. Once you add a piece of gear you can expand the item too see future enhancements for that item. All of the checked levels of enhancement will be considered by the algorithm but it is important to distinguish the current level of the gear. This is used to calculate when to save a fail stack and when to attempt an enhancement

• Note that in the "Strategy" tab, only items that are on this list are considered by the algorithm, so this can lead to decisions that would otherwise be odd like attempting an enhancement on a low fail stack or greatly overstacking for an item. If you are only going to attempt enhancements on the gear in this list and you either know when to stop, or you have future enhancements checked under your current gear you should be good to go.

• Once you have all your gear set up, click "MP: Update Base Cost" if you are signed into the market place or manually enter the cost of a base item for each of the gear.

• OPTIONAL: Press "Calculate Costs" to calculate: the fail stack to start enhancing the gear, the total cost, the total cost of repair materials + upfront costs, the average number of fails before success, starting probability and if you should use memory fragments.

• The cost, and suggested failstack numbers where minimize the total cost of the enhancement. Later in the program this is referred to as a "Loss prevention" calculation.

5.) Go to the "Strategy" tab on the left side of the program.

• Press "Calculate" to populate the lists with data

  • This will not work unless you have at least one fail stacking item and one equipment item
  • The lists have spacers between them so you can change how much space they take up

• The left-most list is a list of fail stacks and gear that will tell you what you should optimally do on a certain fail stack This calculation is based on gain not on loss so be aware that higher failstacks will yield more potential silver. Higher priority enhancements should be worth more at higher fail stacks but if you are at the point where you are considering your highest priority enhancements chose your stack wisely.

• Clicking a list item will populate the two lists on the right. The top list is a break down of fail stacking gear. The bottom list is a break down of fail enhancing gear.

  • Cost is based on potential gain
  • Loss prevention is a measure of fail stack optimality
  • Average number of fails is starting at the current fail stack
  • Success confidence is the probability of achieving an enhancement at the current fail stack after tying "Avg num Fails" times
  • Differential is the difference in potential silver of the best gear on this fail stack

6.) Press the "Open Guide Overlay" button at the bottom of the "Strategy" tab

• This will bring up a small window that will walk you through what to do step by step.
• You must have at least one alt registered to do this
• The FS spinbox has the current fail stack on the alt displayed in the combo box below it
• Use the combo box to switch alts
• "Stay on Alt" will filter decisions for the selected alt only
• "Follow Track" will auto-accept the best decision for the piece of gear you just attempted
• The list on the left will populate with different choices for enhancing. They are sorted such that the decision that will net you the most silver are displayed first. Be careful, this is greedy.
• The types of decisions that show up are either considered optimal by the "Strategy" tab or they are decent alternatives. Alternatives will have a step that will say "Consider X".
• All the decisions should be viable but it is up to you to pick which you think is best. Remember to manage your alts and Naderr's band. For example, maybe don't fill up all ur alts with 35 stacks and then fail TRI. You will need a black smiths book then.
• The decisions consider:
  • Fail stacking from any level
  • Apply advice of valks
  • Using Naderrs Band
  • Using fail stacks on alts
  • Applying black smiths books
  • Combinations of above
• The items on the list have the target gear in the "Instruction" column of the root item. An "Accept" button is next to them on the right.
• Expand Decisions with the carrot to the right of the "Accept" button to see the steps involved in each enhancement.
• Once you find a decision you like press the "Accept" button and follow the instructions.
• The program will automatically account of your alts, valks, naderrs band and everything else as long as you are following the instructions in the program.
• An orange arrow will point to the step you are currently on
• Once the condition has been met or the buttons under the list have been pressed the step will eithre pogress or fail
• Once a set is completed a green check mark will show next to that step
• When a gear item has changed the list will repopulate with new decisions

Future Plans

• graphs
• Export to Excel
• Make UI more betterer in some places

How run code

If you are unsure how to set up the environment see the "Dependencies" section below. Make sure the directory that houses the code is in python path variable and run:

python.exe -m BDO_Enhancement_Tool

Dependencies

This project depends on several libraries and some libraries of my own. For this project to work the utilities and QtCommon module collection must be present. These are small versions of larger modules that I copied and cleaned for convenience.

See requirements.txt:

altgraph==0.17
future==0.18.2
fuzzywuzzy==0.18.0
numpy==1.19.0
packaging==20.4
pefile==2019.4.18
pyparsing==2.4.7
PyQt5==5.15.0
PyQt5-sip==12.8.0
PyQtWebEngine==5.15.0
python-Levenshtein==0.12.0
pywin32-ctypes==0.2.0
six==1.15.0
urllib3==1.25.9

Versions

It is recommended to install Anaconda python distribution 2.7 for this project because that is how it was developed.

See: Downloads | Anaconda

> python --version
Python 3.7.6
> python -m conda --version
conda 4.8.3

Methods

To be clear, I am not great at statistics so I highly encourage anyone who know what they are doing to critique the methods I am using to calculate. I detail the math here in the hopes that someone may destroy it :)

Establishing Fail Stack Cost

The cost of a fail is an important factor in the calculation because it establishes a curve of value that equipment and opportunity cost rely on.

The essence of a fail stack cost at any level of fail stacks is the opportunity cost of acquiring another fail stack and the value of the current fail stack.

The opportunity cost pseudo code:

op_cost = black_stone_cost + (suc_rate * (last_cost + return_cost)) + (fail_rate * repair_cost)

Here, there is:

• black_stone_cost : Cost of black stone in one enhance attempt
• suc_rate : Probability of success enhancement
• last_cost : If this cost function of a fail stack (F) at position x then this is F(x - 1)
• return_cost : Cost to return the gear to how it was before the success. This is either cleanse cost or the cost of materials in the case of accessories (rely on cost class member in this case)
• reapir_cost : This is the cost to restore the gear after a fail
• See common.py -> simulate_FS

Since the opportunity cost is just the cost for the opportunity to gain a fail stack, we calculate the average amount of opportunities incurred before a fail is achieved. Now and hereafter the number of fails is calculated as the average number of fails:

avg_num_fails = 1.0 / suc_rate

Since for fail stacking we are counting the number of successes before a failure we have:

avg_num_success = 1.0 / fail_rate

• See: https://math.stackexchange.com/questions/102673/what-is-the-expected-number-of-trials-until-x-successes

So the function (F) defined as, cost of gaining a fail stack, at fail stack position x :

F(x) = avg_num_success * op_cost
F(x) = avg_num_success * (black_stone_cost + (suc_rate * (F(x-1) + return_cost)) + (fail_rate * repair_cost))

Calculating Enhancement Cost

The next step is to use the global fail stack cost curve to find the number of fail stacks for each gear such that the cost of enhancing at that number of fail stacks is minimized. Fail stacks get expensive quickly, almost needlessly so, an attempt at mitigating this issue is addressed next.

The method for calculating the price uses the same concept from before where an average number opportunities is calculated and then used with probabilities to compute an overall cost. The difference here is an a number of fails is calculated and the remainder is used as a number of successes. These are not integer values. The basic pseudo code for the enhancement cost of a piece of equipment at a particular fail stack:

avg_num_attempts = 1.0 / suc_rate
avg_num_fails = avg_num_attempts - 1

fails_cost = avg_num_fails * repair_cost
total_cost = fails_cost + cum_fs_cost + (black_stone_cost * avg_num_attempts)

Here we have:

• avg_num_attempts : The average number of attempts for one success
• avg_num_fails : The average number of attempts BEFORE one success
• fails_cost : The cost of failure
• cum_fs_cost : Cumulative cost of fail stacking to position x
• total_cost : The cost of the average number of fails and the one success

Notice here that the price of the fail stack is included in the success rate. This may be obvious, but it is there so the max fail stack isn't chosen every time. Here we have cumulative fail stack cost compared to repair cost.

What about gear that drops an enhancement level upon failure:

backtrack_start = lvl_map['TRI']

for i in range(0, 3):
    this_pos = backtrack_start + i
    prev_cost = min(total_cost[this_pos - 1])
    new_avg_attempts = 1.0 / suc_rate[this_pos - 1]
    new_num_fails = new_avg_attempts - 1
    new_fail_cost = repair_cost + prev_cost 
    total_cost[this_pos] = (new_num_fails * new_fail_cost) + (black_stone_costs[this_pos] * new_avg_attempts) + cum_fs_cost

This is just a loop starting at "TRI" which is "DUO" -> "TRI" that factors in the previous gear cost upon failure. The cost formula is the came as above

Here we have:

• backtrack_start: An integer index where we start adding the previous cost
• this_pos: Position in the list of enhancement levels counter
• prev_cost: Cost of enhancing one level below
• new_avg_attempts: The average number of attempts for one success
• new_num_fails: The average number of attempts BEFORE one success
• cum_fs_cost: Cumulative cost of fail stacking to position x

Notice that this method needs to be different for accessories and the like.

Calculating Enhancement Strategy

This needs an update. The previous explination does not represent the code anymore.

Calculating Enhancement Probability

A quick note on the "Strategy" tab in the bottom right list of enhancing gear there is a probability on the far end of the list. This probability is the chance of at least one success in n trials, where n is the average number or trails to success. This probability helps determine a reasonable amount of fail stacks because it gives the confidence that attempting the average number of trials will result in success.

• See this article on the binomial distribution

Files

Below are file definitions or descriptions of some of the files that this project uses.

*.log Files

Log files simply contain debug information that the program has output. Typically this file should not be altered by the user. These files should not be copied from one machine to another or it could make debugging the application harder. There is no maximum file size for these so if they get to big they can be deleted. That should not be a problem though

settings.json

As the name would suggest this file is a JSON string that contains the programs settings. They can be safely edited with a text editor; be careful. If you really screwed up the settings file it can just be deleted. The next time the program runs it will simply create a new settings file with default values. The settings file is auto saved when the program exits unless it crashes. This can be revised later. The settings file can be found in the user %APPDATA% path under a folder named after this program. A command line parameter should be used to supply the default loaded settings file in the future. Below are a description of the fields:

Gear Object

The gear object is a json string object that is encapsulated in the settings file.