All the data and experiences from both BWCom & BigH determines their outlook on it from the drops provided during that time... excruciating time to inspect each and every item dropped from an Evil Presence (or more), a Well monster, a normal monster or monsters in a Trapdoor or Solo or groups. There are speculations.
I believe that "Whistling" Solo gives you more accurate data since the Monster Level is the same as your Clvl - even if they are normal monsters, the drop quality and quantity will be in that % range.
Solo exploring Catacombs will also change the Monster levels that spawn! I range it at + 3 levels of your character level ... so if you are level 50, 1 or 3 monster spawn will be either, equal to or higher than your character level (3 max), hence more or less drop quantity & quality, Magic Luck still plays a part of course. Hence whistling will give you more accurate data, however very tedious.
Note: This also applies to Evil Presence, hence why there are harder ones and easier ones, as for Well monsters, I would also assume this applies because the side drops can be 2 Tiers higher than the item dropped into the Well (my assumption) and still Magic Luck would still apply of course.
I have done some testing, not as much because I ended up taking a ton of time off during things.
Well Monster: Put on ML gear before dropping item into the well, re-equip (in catacomb) to damage gear, whittle down life enough to kill off with ML gear, swap without leaving and kill off Well monster. Tedious, didn't come out with enough data. Also did the Final Hit and the wear only ML gear, however at higher levels you are going to town to shrine eventually. Inconclusive.
EDIT: Group runs is another kettle of Fish.
The difference with Evil Presence ... you randomly encounter them, and 99.9% of the time you have your best gear on... so Final Hit is more optional if you want to play through faster and so Data is incomplete, and if you ONLY use ML gear in full run, even more tedious and time consuming (especially if you stop for all the drops and record them for data collecting). However, because you have not used your ordinary gear, you think you are getting better results... you can not say those (excluding Overspawns) items wouldn't drop ... RNG effect.
Also, different Events with modifiers, thus don't include runs where ML, Drop Quality / Quantity & Item Stat event is running (or running Maps with any of those mods, because a Map may also make a difference)
If you want to test out the level of a monster changes while exploring a catacomb, you have to collect data by Noting your current Experience points, not level, not % gained... the hard numbers, once a wave appears, kill one monster and exit catacomb, write down the difference, repeat and rinse over and over for 100 waves (take a not of how many monsters spawn within that 100 waves. You will see that some monsters give you less experience and others higher... there is a Lowest amount and a Highest amount) Note: to gain one(1) Level, you only need to gain 1 million experience points, know matter what level you are.
Yes, I have done this before, however that was years ago, so maybe something changed, maybe test with Whistling to also find out the set lowest to highest point of that character level... it should be the same no matter what level your character is because to gain a level, it is 1 million points. (I have not tested this out)
tl;dr RNG is what I also think, the only consistency is Overspawns.
Doubt this helps, however I only thought about whistling as I was typing this out.
EDIT: Got to love Transmute Skill, ML Gear all the time.
This post was edited by izParagonzi on Nov 7 2025 12:30am