Let's talk about Luck and ARLS Formula

[Adoede]

It's time for me to make a contribution to the community.

From my experience, here are some of the benefits a high luck score can bring:
1) You learn skills faster - even with lower intelligence
2) You get more arena tokens from your fights...so you advance in the game faster (and have a better rating in blood gods)
3) You seem to get more item drops in tavern quests and conquest battles
4) You pick up your weapon if disarmed faster
5) You have better initiative rolls at the beginning of fights
6) You have a better chance of scoring a knockout
7) You are better at using your defensive skills at the most opportune times (like surprise ending)
8) You simply fight better

And perhaps many more benefits you all can share about that I've missed.

I had a chance to track the stat points / cost of about 100 HOL prospects recently and I found a way to measure the relative Luck stat of each Glad.

This is Adoede's Relative Luck Score Formula (ARLS Formula for short )

(Total Gold Cost / 1.75) - Total Base Stat Points = ARLS

You get your base stat points by adding all 7 of your known stat values together.
So, if you're Arrrrrghpirate and have 570 base stat points at a cost of 1155 gp:
(1155/1.75) - 570 = ~ a 90 luck score (the highest I've ever seen, btw)

I tracked 96 HOL prospects using this formula and this is how the data broke down:

96 Total
<50 Luck: 1 glad = 1%
50-59 Luck: 24 glads = 25%
60-69 Luck: 34 glads = 35%
70-79 Luck: 25 glads = 26%
80-89 Luck: 11 glads = 12%
90+ Luck: 1 glad = 1%

That is a nice bell curve if you ask me. Incidentally, the lowest score recorded was a 35...a total outlier since the 2nd lowest was a 51. And as I said before, the highest was 90.

My glads with high luck all do better in the arena. But I've noticed that luck seems to benefit offensive glads more than defensive ones. Meaning a defensive glad can get by with a middling luck score and be fine. Offensive glads have a harder time with lower luck. I think this has to do with the consistency of a defensive glads fighting style and tactics whereas offensive glads fighting styles vary from fight to fight.

Now, this is all based on my subjective observations so I could be totally off...but I think the ability to judge the relative luck score of glads can be helpful in deciding if a particular glad is the one you've been looking for or not.

Edit: Also, there are lots of gear pieces in blood gods that boost luck, so a gladiator with a middling score in luck is not at a huge disadvantage in the end-game...just in case some of you are tempted to dump your rosters like I was when I worked this out!

Chime in and share your experiences with Luck!