Wishing Well Guide
Everybody talks about the Wishing Well like it is a rainbow vending machine. It is not. Most of the time you feed it a coin and it spits yellow junk back at you. Sometimes a purple. Once in a while something actually interesting falls out, and that is why people keep walking up the hill.
This is the long version. Where it is, what the rolls actually are, why your level changes which names can show, and why it does not change the 1-in-20 the way people hope. The short Well page is still Wishing Well. Names that only come from here are on Well-Only Rainbows. Holiday pack names and the snowman hats are on Holiday Rainbows.
Contents |
Using it
Top of Townston, near the Loremaster. If it is ready it has a giant ! over it, same as a quest giver. If it is on cooldown it looks like a rock. Thirty minutes between paid tosses.
Members toss one King's Coin. Non-members toss two. First time on a character is free and only drops one item. After that a paid toss drops two.
Whatever comes out is at your current level, not soulbound, and non-member. You can trade it. That is the whole reason people bother. Boss rainbows start the soulbound timer when you put them on. Well junk you can park in the bank or toss at a friend.
What usually comes out
A paid toss is two separate rolls. Each roll can hit more than one thing. Yellow is the leftover when nothing prettier hits, so you see a lot of yellow. Purple from the ordinary unique table is about 1 in 3 per item, which is why the Well feels like a purple vendor with a rainbow rumor attached.
The Well does not use dungeon loot percent. Insane does nothing. Five people in your group does nothing. The number on a monster tooltip does nothing. You cannot "loot-mod" the Well.
| Each item on a paid toss | About |
|---|---|
| Yellow leftover | most of the time |
| Ordinary purple (same uniques bosses drop) | 1 in 3 |
| The extra Well bag | 1 in 20 |
| Ordinary rainbow (same mythics bosses drop) | 1 in 125 |
| Holiday purple, only when that look is on | 1 in 10 |
| Holiday rainbow, only when that look is on | 1 in 200 |
Two items means two shots. About 1 in 10 paid tosses will show the extra bag at least once. About 1 in 63 will show an ordinary shared rainbow at least once. Those are still "something from that bag," not one name.
The extra bag
The 1 in 20 is the interesting roll. When it hits, you did not win Squeaks. You won a ticket into a mixed bag.
Armor is the fat part of that bag. Weapons, jewelry, skill books, and the gold brick are the skinny parts. So most extra-bag hits look like a helm or a shirt, not a hammer.
Sitting in there:
- The pirate rainbows, the mouse-ear helms, Charge!, NC Hammer. Those names do not come off a boss corpse. List is on Well-Only Rainbows.
- A bunch of the named lair-chest pieces, once you are high enough for that dungeon. Same names as Boss Lair Rainbows. Not every name from every lair. Sissirat's Sissy Spitter and Ratsputin's Icy Sword are the kind of thing you still want off the chest.
- Purple ninja gear and the purple pirate look. Same Well, not rainbow.
- Skill books. A gold brick, rarely.
The ninja set is unique (purple). People lump "ninja and pirate" together because both only come from the Well. Only the pirate rainbows are the mythic ones.
Shared rainbows
Separate from the extra bag, the Well also rolls the same rainbow names every dungeon boss corpse rolls. That is the 1 in 125. Sissirat and Manglefeet are already rolling that list. The Well just does it too, slower, and without loot percent.
Which of those names can show depends on your level. The bands are 15 / 35 / 55 / 75 / 95. The lists are on Rainbow Level Bands.
If you want an old 15-band name, a 20 is not competing with the 95-band junk yet. A 100 is. That is the same idea as the extra bag, just a different list.
Holidays
When Karl's 1st Limited Edition Item Pack look is actually on, the Well grows two more rolls. Holiday purple about 1 in 10. Holiday rainbow about 1 in 200. When the look is off, those rolls are gone. You will not farm Love/Hate (mostly Hate) in July because you stood at the Well long enough.
That 1-in-200 hit is then one of nineteen 1st Edition names, even split. Dark Order, Uber Knight, the tophats, the hobo staff, the two axes, the breakfast mace. A specific name is around 1 in 2,000 per paid toss while the look is live. The snowman hats are not that table. They sit in the everyday extra bag, and they also come off Chilly's Chilly Head. The names are Chilly Nelson's, not Shivery's. Full split is on Holiday Rainbows.
Does level matter?
Yes. Not the way the world chat version goes.
The extra bag is still about 1 in 20 at 20 and at 100. Shared rainbow is still about 1 in 125. Going back to a low-level character does not make those tickets more common. What changes is who is allowed to sit in the bag.
High-level named pieces stay out until you hit that dungeon's floor. Manglefeet's chair is not in the Well until 80. Ratsputen's crown waits until 75. Doesn't Suck Charm waits until 25. A 20 tossing for mouse ears is not sharing the extra bag with the chair. A 100 is.
There is no maximum. A 100 still gets the early names. The bag only gets longer.
Where it actually helps
Jewelry and the 1-hand maces are the clean examples, because those little lists look like equal names. When a new name sits down, everybody else gets a smaller slice.
Rings and the Frump charm (the jewelry side of the extra bag):
| Your level | Who is in that jewelry list |
|---|---|
| 15–19 | Icicle Pop Ring |
| 20–24 | plus Widow Maker's ring |
| 25–49 | plus Doesn't Suck Charm |
| 50–54 | plus the Queen's ring |
| 55–74 | plus Balzack's ring |
| 75–79 | plus Ratsputin's snow globe |
| 80+ | plus Manglefeet's championship ring |
Hit jewelry at 16 and the ring you get is Icicle Pop. Hit jewelry at 100 and that hit is split seven ways. If you specifically want Algor's ring, a 16 is a lot kinder than a 100. If you want the championship ring, the 16 cannot see it.
NC Hammer / chair (the mace side):
| Your level | Who is in that mace list |
|---|---|
| 15–29 | NC Hammer, Sissirat's smasher |
| 30–79 | plus Rotgut's microphone |
| 80+ | plus the folding chair |
Before 80, NC Hammer is one name out of two or three. At 80 the chair sits down and it is one out of four. Same extra-bag ticket. Worse slice.
Where it barely helps
Do not make a level 16 mule just for Charge! or the pirate shirt. Those armor names are in the extra bag from 15, and they stay there. Later lair helms do join that same armor side — Vergrim, Abaddon, Ratsputen, the 80 Nacho row — but the thing that really hogs armor is the purple pirate / ninja / pimp hats. Knocking a few late rainbows out of the bag does not turn Charge! into a common drop.
Nacho Supreme is a Well item from 15. Manglefeet's chest also has it, but that chest waits until 80. So the helm is one of the cases where the Well is actually earlier than the lair.
Shared bands, same idea
Ordinary Well rainbows use the 15 / 35 / 55 / 75 / 95 bands. A 30 can see the 15-band names and not the 35+ ones. A 100 can see the whole mess. If you are Well-hunting a specific old shared name, a character sitting in that band is not sharing the hit with later names yet.
The extra bag itself does not even roll below 10. Ordinary rainbows do not roll below 15. Below that you are rolling yellow and hoping.
Ballpark numbers
The 1 in 20 and the 1 in 125 are the numbers I would bet a coin on. After the extra bag hits, the split is fuzzier. You still only walk away with the two items. Armor is obviously the common branch. After that it is a guess that it picks one name the same way the rest of loot does — common rows win more often, then it splits again.
Per paid toss (two items), if that guess is right:
- Pirate armor or Charge!: something like 1 in 1,500 to 3,500.
- Squeaks / Doesn't Squeak: worse. Extra helm split, and the purple hats sit on that same list. Something like 1 in 3,000 to 8,000.
- NC Hammer: behind the weapon branch. Something like 1 in 2,000 to 6,000. A bit hotter before 80, for the chair reason above.
- A specific boss ring, if you are already high enough for it: jewelry is a skinny branch, then split by however many rings are unlocked. A 16 wanting Icicle Pop is in a different world than a 100 wanting that same ring.
If you never miss a 30-minute cooldown, that is 48 paid tosses a day, 96 items. You should see the extra bag a handful of times. You should see a shared-pile rainbow every day or two. A specific Well-only name is a long-haul project, not an afternoon.
About 10 paid tosses to have a better-than-even chance the extra bag showed at least once. About 63 to have a better-than-even chance a shared rainbow showed. Those are averages. The Well will streak on you. It always has.
First toss
Free. One item. Different table. The extra bag on that toss is about 1 in 10, so your first wish is actually the hottest extra-bag shot you will ever get. The shared rainbow on that toss is the ordinary boss-corpse table, not the paid-Well 1 in 125: 1 in 200 below 90, 1 in 75 at 90. Gold can also fall out. After that you are on the paid table forever.
What does not help
- Insane, loot percent, grouping. Town does not care.
- Treating 1 in 20 as the odds for one name.
- Tossing a 50 at the Well for Manglefeet's chair. The chair is not in the bag yet.
- Making a 16 mule for Charge! and expecting a miracle. The extra ticket is the same. The purple hats are still hogging armor.
- Farming the Well for a named chest piece that is not even in the Well bag. If you want Sissirat's Spitter, go kill Sissirat. Five on Insane vs that chest is on Boss-Exclusive Rainbow Farming.
- Waiting for holiday names in the off-season.
If you want a lair-chest name and you can run the lair, run the lair. The Well is the side bet you take every half hour because you are in town anyway. It is a terrible main farm for one specific boss piece and a pretty good excuse to burn coins.
Also see Wishing Well, Well-Only Rainbows, Holiday Rainbows, Rainbow Drops, Boss Lair Rainbows, and Toss a King's Coin Down the Well.