Some Odd Jewels

[Aldeth the Foppish Idiot]

I did a cow run yesterday, and I picked up a few jewels that I intended to use for crafting purposes. However, I noticed something odd about the jewels. First, they all had both a prefix and a suffix, and second the prefixes and suffixes (with one exception) were all of a similar type. The prefixes were always something like jade, ruby or something granting resistance to a particular element. The suffixes were all things like of daring and of virility, or something else giving a small bonus to particular attribute. I picked up five of these during the run, and four fit into this category. The fifth one also had a prefix and suffix, but it was odd in that it was a scarlet jewel of wrath, so two modifiers, but since they both increased damage the description was one line (just adding the damages together).

Now, is this something peculiar to the cow level? The odds of picking up 5 jewels, all with both a prefix and suffix are low to begin with, but finding 4 out of 5 with similar types of affixes seems astronomically long for it to happen just based on chance. What's the deal here?

[st-hearts]

Nothing peculiar about that at all.

[thegiantturtle]

Now, is this something peculiar to the cow level? No

The odds of picking up 5 jewels, all with both a prefix and suffix are low to begin with, but finding 4 out of 5 with similar types of affixes seems astronomically long for it to happen just based on chance. What's the deal here?
You've just seen the nature of chance and the human mind's resistance to the nature of chance.

The chance of any specific set of things happening is astronomically low, but you didn't think there was something odd about seeing a specific armor followed by a specific weapon, followed by bolts, followed by a flawless gem. Your brain is just trying to find patterns in the random chaos. Do a few more runs and you'll see that the pattern of jewels you found won't hold up.

[helvete]

You will sooner or later see other "patterns" too, which aren't really there either. (Except for the extremely high chance of a green Breast Plate; that's for real).