Research:Circle

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Contents 1 Enchantment levels 1.1 Method 1.2 Results 1.3 Other observations 1.4 Analysis

[edit] Enchantment levels

I've performed the following research to ascertain the distribution enchantment levels inside a magic circle:

[edit] Method

• Start with a terrain room.
• Verify that the terrain room has zero initial background enchantment.
• Get a witch to create a circle.
• Charge the circle by casting Hag's Blessing once.
• Take 50 readings with a thaumometer. All readings performed by the same person, with the same stats.

[edit] Results

ma.sp.sp bonus	ma.sp.mi bonus	Min reading	Average reading	Max reading	Std. dev	Range
257	223	219	279	335	37	116
290	253	254	310	376	37	122
322	338	260	310	378	36	118
315	285	258	316	380	36	122
300	328	258	320	383	42	125
300	328	262	324	385	37	123
300	328	272	339	385	34	113
331	344	289	354	412	36	123
331	344	290	355	415	39	125
331	344	289	356	411	36	122
331	314	291	360	416	42	125

[edit] Other observations

• The readings didn't change with time - the same distribution is present immediately after creating the circle and some time later.
• The distributions are flat - that is, values were evenly distributed between the min and max.
• I did a separate test involving creating a circle, charging it with Hag's Blessing, then smashing a 500-thaum thaum bomb inside. The readings duly went up by an average of 500 thaums (so, from ~290-400 to ~790-900 thaums).

[edit] Analysis

The average reading varies somewhat even for unchanging stats, however, it's pretty clear that the average is affected by the skills of the witch. Observe the consistently higher readings for 331/344 versus 300/328, for example.

There was a question of whether special or misc (or some combination of the two) was affecting the result, therefore, I added the final data set by keeping my special at 331 (bronze helm) while reducing misc to 314 (Dibhala's eggs). As can be seen, this did not affect the results significantly, therefore we can conclude that a witch's misc bonus does not affect the enchantment levels in the circle.

Based on a pure ma.sp.sp dependency and the available data, this gives the equation:

average thaums = 0.93 * ma.sp.sp bonus + 41

Or for an reasonably close equation with 'nicer numbers':

average thaums = 0.95 * ma.sp.sp bonus + 35

Observe that the variability of the readings was not related to skill levels - the range appears to be about 115 to 125 regardless of skils.

The thaum bomb test above indicates that enchantment does build up normally in addition to the baseline fluctuation inside a circle.

--Chat 22:12, 11 December 2009 (UTC)