Garapon - How to roll it Guide

So we're all curious how rigged up this game really is when you look at things like people's garapon adventures ("$400 and no Aquila Girl! The garapon is rigged!") and experience trying to get much of anything they seem to want ("Why hasn't Stardust Cannon dropped for me?"). As you play this game it really does seem like there's something at work to keep you from getting anything you want, "desire sensors", "GM rigging", whatever you believe.

But this one's a theory I've been testing for 6 long months with a fair amount of observations and research into the game's trends/patterns, and if you compare the stories people have with the theory you're about to read into, it'll all make a disturbing amount of sense.

Massive, massive disclaimer: I'm going to stress that this is a theory. Nothing more. Do not blame me when something extreme you do doesn't return what you want; this is purely something to think about before you do make decisions, especially with your money.

It's what I'm going to refer to as the "drops theory." Simply put:
In before CyberStep deletes this article.
This game is designed to return you more of what you already possess in your inventory.

Simple, right? At first glance it holds about as much weight as "GMs read what you want and prevent you from getting it." But just sit down and think about it with me here.

I will give you a LOT of examples I've observed over the past few months.

Garapon Trends

Analyze the stories of players who wrote about their garapon experiences. You'll see three common scenarios:

- Player rolls several thousands of Rt into a single machine and still won't get that one top prize robot they wanted, or sometimes even a low-tier ball in the machine that they keep missing even though it's realistic to have rolled it in X amount of money.

- Player gets X top prize robot in their first 5x or even 1x roll. I've personally seen this several times in my own clan. We've had 2 Renny in a first 5x roll, two 1x roll Ivis gets, 3 of the same top prize in weekly garapon in first 5x roll, and so forth.

- Player never gets what they wanted. Guess which scenario is most common out of these three?

How I theorize this to be happening, is that in your earliest rolls, your odds are as "balanced" as possible. As you roll the machine more, your existing rolls influence your later rolls on a per-capsule basis.

Even in my own rolls I can see this very easily:

- Out of 11 capsules in Garapon Unit 1, 5 of them were bronze. All 5 were Blast Bazookas.

- In another 5x I got 4 Shine Battlers in a row.

- In Super UC Garapon, I didn't get a Ballista Shooter in 1820 rolls, despite it being a mid-grade silver ball. None of my drop set animations returned possibilities where silver balls were impossible to get out of the machine.

- Check this out (if you can't see the picture, log in):



All in 728k, and I didn't get my first sign until about 100k into my rolls. There's also another row or two not in the picture.

- And this one:



You still don't have a Handy Bazooka? I have 11. The 3 "NEW!" ones in this picture were in the same 20x roll. The three 0s ones I obtained pretty close to each other, and I got the first one over 2000 hours into my account.

It's pretty hard to call something like this a coincidence.

That said, this also soft-conceals itself in theory. After all, if you got what you wanted out of the machine, why would you roll it more? And the few people who do actually tend to get more of those high prizes, as well.

Drops Trends

Lotto Cubes and even normal drops seem to follow this trend quite well:

- Check this out:



Got this Challe-Lotto cube recently. Notice slots 2, 4 and 5 from somewhere recent? I certainly haven't seen things like this until I had several of each from the Super UC Garapon.

- In open beta, it took me around 2 weeks of grinding Berzelius to get my first Stardust Cannon. By the end of the second beta, I had 13, which was only around 6 more weeks tops.

- In official service, I had 6 Custom Shotguns before most people even knew the name of the weapon NFA was using to dominate epoch offense. Today I have around 21, and many people still don't even have 1.

- I have THREE Thoarla-chans, all within the span of about 1 month. Prior to that I was complaining for a good month or two about not getting one despite attending god knows how many epochs. I also had 7 Ballistic Launchers before they were introduced into the Super UC Garapon.

What can you do with this information?

Personally I've been testing this pretty carefully with UC content, and I've gathered that it truly is possible to game the system to a degree.

That Ballista Shooter I didn't get in 1820 rolls? I went to the Crimrose shop, turned in all of my 3s weapons from the machine that I didn't want, opened all of my IT cubes to remove those from my inventory, and so forth. 60 rolls later in the machine, Ballista Shooter pops out, along with an extra 3s Pom-Pom and Handy Bazooka. I turned in all but 2 Rocket Launchers, and in the past 626,500 UC I've rolled into the machine over the past week of intense grinding, I've only gained 2 more. I certainly got more Handy Bazookas, though.

Even in UC Garapon 2 I noticed a trend and tested it; I eliminated all but my 3s Plasma Guns from UC Garapon 2 via the Crimrose shop, and I can say with confidence that a decent 75-90% of any silver balls I got out of that UC garapon were 3s Plasma Guns. I used this knowledge to maximize the number of points I could turn in for tuneup materials, since Plasma Guns used to be the highest-value weapon to turn in for points.

What about full robots? I theorize that the BD part is the one that has weight in the system, seeing how you can freely buy more parts of robots you already have, or find parts of UC robots you didn't purchase in the shop already. So perhaps if you didn't want more Neon Neos, you'd turn in all of the BD parts to reduce your odds of rolling more.

As for Rt garapons, who in their right mind would remove things from their inventory that they paid 32-40 Rt a roll to obtain? That's something I'd imagine CyberStep took into consideration, and something that even I'm not willing to test myself due to the extremity of value lost attempting it. I bet that's the key to getting something you're truly desperate to roll out of the machine, though, and a very clever way to mask it. That's why I only do 1x rolls on modern garapons, and I've been obtaining some very high-tier prizes in the machines in the process; I snagged 2 Shino Exroad SS and 2 Double Gatlings in four 1x rolls of the Rose Garapon.

If you've done like 10 rolls on an Rt garapon and you didn't get what you wanted, I'd reevaluate whether it's worthwhile to keep on rolling when the odds are theoretically worse the more times you roll the same machine. There could be a way to fix that problem, but I'm not the one with disposable money to test this myself. I hold no responsibility for this; try it at your own risk if you're desperate. My personal solution is just not to crumble and keep trying to roll for what I want, and accept that I won't always get what I want. After all, there's probably else down the line that I'll want instead.

There's also that new Dispatch system that would encourage you to keep things you already rolled in the event that it qualifies for one of the requests...could there be a reason such a system was designed?

Check and back-check your own experience with this game; I'm sure you'll find these trends evident in your own experience as well. I'd be glad to hear more evidence of this theory being true.