One of the most often asked questions for new players seems to be accurate data on drops from hacking portals. There is some research scattered around – but it tends to be hard to find. It also seems not to address some basic questions like: what do you really get as extra items if you glyph hack, what is the difference between own portals, neutral portals and enemy portals.
Fev Games have a great article on Glyph Hacking. A successful Glyph Hack at a portal level 1 will gain a perfect Glyph Hack Bonus of 28% plus a speed bonus. I’m just starting out to Glyph Hack – I therefore concentrated my early research purely on portals level 1.
The experiment: I aimed to Glyph Hack a total of at least 600 total portals. Out of these I wanted to hack 200 neutral, 200 Enlightened (my own faction) and 200 Resistance (my opposing fraction). To maximise the usefulness of the data I aim to do half the hacks quickly (as fast as possible) and the other half as slow as possible by deliberately waiting for the timer to pass by.
I do 3-4 screen shots for each hack. One each of the bonus screen, the screen showing the normal drop and the bonus drop. In addition I make a screenshot of the portal if I do ‘mixed’ hacking (N, ENL, RES). I sometimes don’t do that if I do 10+ portals of the same faction. Data is entered into a spreadsheet as soon as possible – normally the same day.
This first analysis only deals with key hacking data. I will publish everything else at a later time.
| Normal hack | Bonus < 25% (average 15.0%) | Bonus > 80% (average 94.6%) | |
| All | 0.765 | 0.332 | 0.530 |
| Neutral | 0.754 | 0.324 | 0.437 |
| ENL | 0.760 | 0.388 | 0.591 |
| RES | 0.780 | 0.283 | 0.558 |
The first table shows the average number of keys I received. This is just the raw data. The number for normal hacks seems pretty consistent.
Hypothesis 1:
The number of keys for a normal hack level 1 is the same, no matter who owns the portal. This chance is 75%.
Justification for the hypothesis:
With 650 data points I can calculate the 5%-95% interval for the hypothesis between 72.2% and 77.8%. The value of 76.5% lies well inside that interval.
An 80% drop rate would gives me an interval of 77.4% – 82.6%. The value of 76.5% is slightly below my 5% margin. I wouldn’t rule this out as a possibility at this stage though. More data should be able to settle this question.
Off course any other value between 75% or 80% is possible as well. But this is a game programmed by humans and I assume a round number as the base chance.
This leads to the glyph hack data. It seems clear from the data that a) glyph hacks on a P1 yield less keys as normal hacks and b) that the speed bonus does increase the chance of a key. It is less clear if there is a difference between factions or if the bonus applies in the same way for N, ENL, RES.
It is clear though that the amount of keys dropped is not 75% times bonus (0.75% x 43% for slow and 75% x 122.6% for fast hacks).
Using the speed bonus to work backwards: The average speed bonus is 79.6% higher for the fast hacks compared to the slow hacks. We gain on average an additional 0.198 keys for the fast hacks.
0.198 / 0.796 = 0.249.
This number looks pretty close to 25%. This would make 0.25 the base chance.
Hypothesis 2:
The number of keys from a P1 glyph hack is 25% x (1 + total hack bonus).
Checking the hypothesis: This would give us an average drop rate of 35.8% for the slow hacks (31.4%-40.1% 5-95% interval) overall and a rate of 55.7% (51.2-60.2%) for the fast hacks.
Here is all the data I have as of 16th of June.
| All | No B | B <25% | B >80% |
| Keys | 0.765 | 0.332 | 0.530 |
| Keys 5% | 0.722 | 0.314 | 0.511 |
| Keys 95% | 0.778 | 0.401 | 0.603 |
| Occurrence | 650 | 334 | 317 |
| Speed | na | 15.0% | 94.6% |
| Neutral | |||
| Keys | 0.754 | 0.324 | 0.437 |
| Keys 5% | 0.700 | 0.286 | 0.476 |
| Keys 95% | 0.797 | 0.438 | 0.631 |
| Occurrence | 207 | 105 | 103 |
| Speed | na | 14.8% | 94.2% |
| ENL | |||
| Keys | 0.760 | 0.388 | 0.591 |
| Keys 5% | 0.702 | 0.284 | 0.482 |
| Keys 95% | 0.796 | 0.431 | 0.636 |
| Occurrence | 225 | 116 | 110 |
| Speed | na | 15.1% | 94.4% |
| RES | |||
| Keys | 0.780 | 0.283 | 0.558 |
| Keys 5% | 0.702 | 0.283 | 0.481 |
| Keys 95% | 0.798 | 0.434 | 0.635 |
| Occurrence | 218 | 113 | 104 |
| Speed | na | 15.1% | 95.2% |
There is one data point that falls outside the 5-95% interval and (Neutral fast hacks) and one that is just at the 95% margin (RES slow hacks). Neutral fast hacks should have yielded me 3.9% more keys.
I calculate a total of nine 5-95% intervals – as such this is expected that one value is close or slightly outside the interval. Nevertheless it should be treated with caution and more data should be added to confirm / reject the hypothesis.
Other assumptions done / issues / not tested / errors in the data
I always glyph hack with the ‘more keys’ option. It is possible that the I missed out the command / the command was not send to the server in case of bad connection – leading to lower values.
I try to be accurate in gathering data – but there is a manual step transferring the hacked data into the spreadsheet. Small mistakes in the data do happen.
It happens that a screenshot is missed. Originally I added just the remaining screenshot (leading to a possible mismatch non-bonus hacks / bonus hacks). I changed this after a while and now delete incomplete screen shots.
The minimal speed bonus is 13%. The speed bonus is time left / 20 rounded down. So 3.19 sec will yield 15%. Somewhere between 2.78 seconds and 2.69 seconds the game decides to display 0% speed bonus. I do have a few data points (<5) early with 0% that I likely should exclude. I later deleted all data with 0%.
I do not check if I already have keys from a portal. I tend to place all keys in key lockers when I start – but I sometimes do have keys available – especially if I plan to link the portal later.
Rounding down of speed bonus – the actual speed bonus might be 0.5% larger as 15.95% is rounded down to 15%. This tiny value seems irrelevant and is therefore ignored.