Glyph hacking is likely the most important skill to learn if you want to improve your efficiency of game play. FEV games has a great article describing all the details including a set for maths geeks showing the formulas for the bonus depending on level.
Doing Glyph hacking myself I always felt that what I get doesn’t truly seem to be related to the bonus I got. Something seemed off – at least in the way I interpret a bonus. 100% is not double. Nor a every x% gives an extra roll.
I’m looking first into normal drop rates across level. I’m using the same high quality dataset as before – even if it is outdated. I do cross checks with new data – but this is a slow process. But it alerts me if something drastically has changed. Only own faction hacks are analysed.
This graph is pretty boring. It flat lines – apart maybe boosters at level 7. There are two possible explanations for that data point. a) random variation or b) you truly get less bursters as you can’t get a +2 level drop. I wrote about relative drop levels in a previous article relative drop rates of bursters where I calculate that 5% of bursters are at the portal level +2. This would be approx. 0.06 bursters and would fit nicely if these are excluded instead of redistributed. I predict for resonators only a 1.9% rate for level +2 – leading to approximate 0.025 resonators less at level 7.
So all in all it should be justified to assume a fixed rate of resonators. bursters, power cubes and other items dropping.
I now generate the same plot for bonus hacks. I do divide each value through the average from the above data to see only the bonus I get as a percentage.
First let us focus on what we expect. We see the highest bonus for level 6/7, followed by level 3/4/5 and then level 2 and level 1. Level 3/4/5 as well as 6/7 seem the same within error margin.
Now comes the unexpected. I have added the perfect hack bonus according to Fev games as the yellow line. We can expect that line to be below the other lines as I don’t have data for speed bonus. But a speed bonus can not explain the differences.
The speed bonus should be highest for level 1 (even I get regularly >90%) but the gap between perfect hack bonus and observed bonus is smallest for level 1.
There is also a distinct difference in bonus observed for resonators / bursters and other items. It pretty much seems that resonators/bursters get one bonus for glyph hacks (or at least a very similar one) and other items get another (lower) one.
| level | Glyphs | Fev formula | Observed bonus overall | Mods/ other | R and XMP |
| >1 | 1 (failed) | 10% | 80% | 10% | 85% |
| 1 | 1 | 38% | 139% | 64% | 154% |
| 2 | 2 | 60% | 176% | 127% | 182% |
| 3 | 3 | 85% | 210% | 149% | 216% |
| 4 | 3 | 85% | 209% | 148% | 225% |
| 5 | 3 | 85% | 208% | 146% | 222% |
| 6 | 4 | 120% | 255% | 204% | 256% |
| 7 | 4 | 120% | 250% | 181% | 283% |
The data for failed glyph hacks is my own. It is much more limited in numbers but adds another aspect to understanding glyph hacks as by definition the speed bonus in this case is zero.
Do I compare apples and oranges as there are guaranteed items drops (1 R for non glyph hack, 1 R and 1 XMP for glyph hack). I tried to take these out – but then I could get several hundred percent bonus. Clearly Niantic isn’t calculating the bonus percent as a simple boost of x percent. It also doesn’t just do y extra rolls.
I’m currently gathering a data-set of level 1 where I do deliberate slow hacks (<25% speed bonus) and quick hacks (>80% speed bonus) to get an idea how the speed bonus influences the bonus you get. I also do this for neutral/ENL/RES separate. All I want to say at this stage – trends so far look interesting.