Overview
A short booklet on the basics of how to bet wisely in the Fighter’s and Brawler’s Pits.
Basics of Brawl Betting
Competitors in the Fighter’s Pit and Brawler’s Pit, which are both located in the Near North region, have names that can be broken down into three basic parts. By comparing these parts between two competing fighters, you can frequently predict the outcome of the match. Using these predictions and a bit of smart betting, you can make thousands of gold per year.
Here are a few examples of competitors you might encounter:
Sir Azran the Grizzled Champion
Elfyre the Dirty Bandit
Grigor the One-Eyed Veteran Bandit
As you can see, there’s a Name (Sir Azran), a Descriptor (Grizzled), and a Title (Champion). For our purposes, we don’t care about the name part and will focus entirely on the Descriptor and Title.
As you may have guessed, some descriptors and titles are generally better than others. A Lucky Warlord is, unsurprisingly, much better than an Unlucky Fresh-Blood. However, some comparisons are a bit less obvious. Is a Fighter better than a Warrior? Is Nasty better than Dirty? To answer this question, I’ve tabulated hundreds of fights and analyzed the results. I’ve provided a general breakdown of these results below for your convenience.
Descriptor and Title Rankings
Better Descriptors and Titles are associated with higher overall win rates (the % ranges shown). Ordering within a group is not meaningful.
Very Good (70% – 100%)
Good (60% – 69%)
Average (41% – 59%)
Bad (31% – 40%)
Very Bad (0% – 30%)
Additional Notes
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The current rankings are based on 503 tabulated fights for game versions [0.7.4.1] and [0.7.4.9]. Using the full data set, my prediction accuracy is roughly 76%. I will update this portion if I do further work and change the table above.
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Some important notes:
1) While a competitor with a better overall description is indeed more likely to win, they are not guaranteed to win. There is additional randomness beyond the description of the competitor, which even I cannot predict. DO NOT BET EVERYTHING ON ONE FIGHT. You will eventually lose and it will be all your own fault.
2) The delineation of Very Good / Good / Average, etc. is mostly arbitrary. There are not obvious categories in the actual win/loss data. There are differences between descriptions in a single category that are larger than the difference between some of the descriptions in adjacent categories. Where possible, rely on description differences that are at least two categories apart (e.g. Good is definitely better than Bad; Very Bad is much worse than Average). If I eventually get enough data to be confident in a more precise ranking system, I’ll consider adding it.
3) There’s an additional Descriptor that will appear in the Brawler’s Pit called “Brawl Pit”. Since I did most of my fights in the Fighter’s Pit, I don’t have enough data to confidently list it, but I would assume it’s similar to “Black Market” and falls in the Average category.
4) ‘Veteran’ variants of a given title appear to be consistently better than their non-veteran counterpart. For example, a Veteran Warrior is believed to be better than a Warrior. However, one should not assume all Veterans are better than all non-Veterans (e.g. don’t assume a Veteran Fighter is better than a Warrior).
5) I’ve been tracking competitors with the “Sir” part in their name. So far it doesn’t seem to make much difference compared to those without it. If there is an advantage to having it for brawling, it’s quite small.
If you have any questions or feedback feel free to leave a comment.