= Poogie Recommends

This tool is designed to find the best quest or hunt for farming a monster
part. To do this, it calculates the
link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value[expected value] for each
quest, which is the average number of rewards from doing the quest many times.
For easy display, it's listed as the expected value from doing the quest 100
times. This value can be greater than 100, which indicates that on average,
you can expect to get more than 1 of the item in each run of the quest.
Expected value is linear, meaning that if you do half the number of quests, the
expected value will be half. If you do one quest, the expected value is 1/100th
of the shown value.

Remember that expected value is an average - in a single run you could get none
or a lot less than expected and you could get more than expected. By the
link:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_large_numbers[law of large numbers],
if you do the quest many many times, it's very likely that your average will be
close to the expected average. If you do the quest only a few times, it's not
surprising or unlucky to get less than expected.

== Example

=== Poogie Recommends

The "Poogie Recommends" section is all you need if you don't care about the
details. Here is a snippet of recommendation results for "Zinogre Jasper":

-------------------------------------
*** Poogie Recommends ***
> G
  [No skills   ] (QUEST) Advanced: Fury on the Mount G cap (114.40)
  [Capture God ] (QUEST) Advanced: Fury on the Mount G cap (124.90)
  [Amazing Luck] (QUEST) Advanced: Fury on the Mount G cap (164.20)

> HR
  [No skills   ] (QUEST) The Caravaneer's Challenge HR kill (28.13)
  [Carving God ] (QUEST) The Caravaneer's Challenge HR kill (37.03)
  [Amazing Luck] (QUEST) The Caravaneer's Challenge HR kill (34.09)
-------------------------------------

For each rank, it recommends the best quest and strategy for getting
a Jasper. LR is not listed because the item is not available from low rank
quests or hunts. The numbers given at the end in parenthesis are the expected
values. If luck, capture, or carvings kills can give you a better expected
value, they will be listed as well. This can give you an idea which armor
skills may be worth using to farm the item.

These recommendations and expected values assume that you break all parts of
the monster and cut and carve the tail. For details on which of these actually
give you the item, scroll to the detailed entry for the quest or hunt below.

If hunting a monster in quests that don't give the item as a reward gives
better results than a quest that does have the item, or if the item simply
isn't available as a quest reward, hunts will be recommended instead of quests.

=== Hunt list

After the recommendations, the monster that have the item are listed, along
with detailed expected values:

-------------------------------------
(HUNT)  Zinogre HR
            Body Carve 1  9.00 / 100 ( 3 each) 9.75 10.50 12.00 14.34
            Tail Carve 1  2.00 / 100 ( 2 each) 2.50 3.00 4.00 5.56
            Shiny Drop 1  2.00 / 100 ( 2 each)
               Capture 1  5.38 / 100 ( 2 each) 6.00 7.38 8.00
            Break Head 1  3.00 / 100 ( 3 each)
              = Totals
                  Kill 14.00 to 22.91 / 100
                   Cap 10.38 to 13.00 / 100
                 Shiny  2.00 / 100
-------------------------------------

The totals can be used to figure out if killing or capture the monster will
yield better results on average. The first value is the expected number of
rewards from 100 hunts, assuming no skills. The second value assumes the best
possible armor skill - Capture God for cap, and Carving God for kill. Shiny
drops are not included in the total, but can be multiplied by the average
number of shinys you get per quest and added to the carve or cap total. This
is one of the advantages of using expected value instead of probability of
at least one: it is very easy to calculate.

The previous lines give a breakdown of the expected value from each source,
with the following format:

    Source StackSize ExpectedValue (DropChance each) [EVWithSkill1, EVWithSkill2, ...]

For the quest section the source is A, B, or Sub, for the first line, second
line, and Sub quest line. The ExpectedValue assumes no food or armor skills and
takes into account StackSize. For quest rewards, cap rewards, and carves, the
extra values at the end are for armor skills, starting from the weakest version
to the best version. For example on quest lines the values are for Good Luck,
Great Luck, and Amazing Luck.

=== Quest list

Finally quests are listed, which combine the quest reward expected values and
the carve/cap expected values from hunting the monster which are also listed
in the HUNT sections above.

-------------------------------------
(QUEST) See the Lightning (Caravan 6* HR)
 Goal: Hunt a Zinogre
 Sub : Wound the Zinogre's back
              = Quest
                     A 1  4.71 / 100 ( 1 each) 5.24 5.90 6.70
                   Sub 1  2.49 / 100 ( 1 each) 2.87 3.31 3.82
          = Zinogre HR
            Body Carve 1  9.00 / 100 ( 3 each) 9.75 10.50 12.00 14.34
            Tail Carve 1  2.00 / 100 ( 2 each) 2.50 3.00 4.00 5.56
            Shiny Drop 1  2.00 / 100 ( 2 each)
               Capture 1  5.38 / 100 ( 2 each) 6.00 7.38 8.00
            Break Head 1  3.00 / 100 ( 3 each)
              = Totals
                  Kill 21.19 to 30.10 / 100
                   Cap 17.57 to 20.19 / 100
                 Shiny  2.00 / 100
-------------------------------------

=== Wyporium Trades

Items that are only available by trading other monster parts at the Wyporium
are supported by showing recommendations for the item you trade for that part.
For example, "Zinogre Skymerald" can be traded for "Nargacuga Mantle". When
searching for the mantle, this is displayed on top of the results for skymerald:

-------------------------------------
*** Wyporium trade for 'Zinogre Skymerald'
    Unlocked by quest 'Advanced: Bolt of Pink (Guild 9* G)'

*** Poogie Recommends ***
> G
  [No skills   ] (QUEST) Advanced: Fury on the Mount G kill (53.97)
  [Capture God ] (QUEST) Advanced: Fury on the Mount G cap (54.97)
  [Carving God ] (QUEST) Advanced: Fury on the Mount G kill (68.22)
  [Amazing Luck] (QUEST) Advanced: Fury on the Mount G kill (70.57)

...
-------------------------------------

== Known issues

=== Recommendation engine issues

These are known issues in the recommendation engine which I plan on fixing:

- If cap and kill have equal expected values, e.g. if the item comes only
  from quest rewards and breaks that you can get with both strategies, it
  will still be listed with strategy 'cap'. I'd like to enhance this so it
  reports that it doesn't matter.
- I'd like to list more details in the recommendation section so you don't
  need to scroll down to see which breaks and shinys you should try for.

=== Database issues

The monster hunter database used by this recommendation engine is a work in
progress, and in some places the data is in complete or incorrect.

In particular:

- Drop rates are determined by the community and not provided by Capcom, so
  they may be slightly off from the actual values used by the game.
- Some quests rewards have total probabilities that add up to more than 100.
  This shows up in the results as WARNING lines.
- Some quests are not linked to all the monsters you hunt in that quest. When
  this happens the expected values will not be correct. This is easy to see
  when the quest goal says something like "Hunt MONSTER1 and MONSTER2", and
  MONSTER2 has the item, but it's not listed below. The monsters in a quest
  are found from the database, not from interpreting the goal text.

=== Monster hunter mechanics

There are also assumptions made by the recommendation engine about how the game
determines rewards that may not be correct. Some examples:

- Quest line A always has at least 4 rewards, line B always has at least 2,
  and C always has at least one. This is probably a good approximation for most
  quests, but it may vary between quests.
- Probabilities for getting more than the minimum rewards may be off, and the
  way the number of rewards is determined may even be wrong.
