Good morning everyone, it's Haz here and today I'm bringing you the news that is has been finally figure it out: Splatoon 3 Salmon Run has introduced a special reward system using bronze, silver and gold scales for various cool rewards that everyone has been grinding, but the rewards have been quite inconsistent to put it mildly. Defeating a King Salmonid it is already proving to be a challenge for many, with a lot of players not being able to topple down this monstrosity, while others also can just barely able to make it. The confusion and anger on the other hand comes from the inconsistent rewards you get from the Xtrawave as players rewards seem to be all over the place: gaining a gold scale while Cohozuna is still alive, or getting ten bronze scales after splatting them, so what's the deal? LeanYoshi and Wem have figure out the system finally and revealed the truth, which seems to be much worse than we expected though a lot of speculations were also correct. It seems encountering a King Salmonid on an Xtrawave already guarantees you to be rewarded with two scales at the very least, the rarity being undecided and from there on there is an algorithm determining the rest and nothing else is guaranteed. There are three factors that are important when it comes to rewards: time left, the King Salmonid's health, and the bad news is, also your Hazard level. First, let's talk about the number of scales. So we are guaranteed to get two scales by default just for encountering the Xtrawave itself and after that, it's split into two sections: time remaining at the end and the amount of damage we dealt to Cohozuna. Reportedly, for every 12.5% health damage on a King Salmonid rewards you with an additional scale up to eight, so player damage very much matters but only the team overall, so teamplay is still number one priority. Second factor here is the amount of time left, which is fortunately the less important part, for you gain an additional scale for every ten seconds left up to thirty seconds for additional three scales for an overall of 13 scales at maximum. So if you have defeated Cohozuna and you have at least thirty seconds left on the clock you're guaranteed 13 scales as rewards at the end: two scales for encountering the wave, eight scales for how much damage you dealt to Cohozuna and three scales for having thirty seconds left. That's all good and dandy, now we know how scales are calculated but let's talk about their rarity. Since we're all interested why everyone is getting bronze scales and some silver scales, but never gold scales. So here comes the bad news: First, to understand the system I'll quickly explain how the difficulty or the so-called Hazard system works for Salmon Run. In simple terms, Salmon Run's wave difficulty quota system and rewards all matter on the Hazard level of the run. Hazard levels are determined by the player's Salmon Run rank from Apprentice to Eggsecutive VP, and each rank increases the level starting from 150% on Apprentice and upping it up by 10% each rank all the way to Eggsecutive VP of Hazard level of 230%. There's also a special 333% Maximum Hazard level run that can activate if all players are very high Eggsecutive VPs, which is the maximum difficulty right now. So to determine the rarity of the scales, whether they will be bronze, silver or gold, it seems to entirely depend on the Hazard level of the run: each scale's rarity is calculated independently, and I haven't been able to see if there is a maximum or not, but I do believe there is possibly a maximum of rare scales you can get and the system is very very harsh. So let's take a look at it. According to this algorithm, the probability of the scales you start with is around 12% for silver scales and 1% for a gold scale. And this is on Hazard level 150% which is the lowest rank: Apprentice. So each time you encounter a King Salmonid you have around 1% chance of getting a gold scale, which is abysmally low if we consider how much of a grind it is already to keep encountering them. But this is not the worst news, and if you were hoping it gets better, sadly it doesn't. As you rank up, each rank increases the chances such as around 0.1% more for a gold scale and around 0.4% for a silver scale. So if you calculate with, let's say a reachable base of Eggsecutive VP rank, you have increased your chances to get a rare scale to 15% for a silver scale and 2% for a gold scale. Personally, I think this is pretty hard crushing and somewhat confirmed my worst fears on how grindy these scales are. But most importantly, that fighting through those much harder difficulties is almost pointless if you're hoping for better rewards, as it barely increases your chances, if at all. The most you can get out of the system is, in fact, having a whole team of Veteran and top Salmon Run players running Hazard level maximum runs, which are already quite difficult on Hazard level 333, but if you manage to get a King Salmonid like that then you have a significant increased chance of 3% getting a gold scale which is the current maximum chance in Splatoon 3. Overall, I understand this is supposed to be something players will have to grind for months or years to get all the rewards and that was the intention, so no point in rushing or trying to get everything immediately, but I still feel the reward system is to stingy that fighting a King Salmonid just doesn't seem that rewarding and satisfying at all. Especially defeating them since, if this is all true, whether you defeat them or not has absolutely zero effect wheter you're going to get a gold scale or not. And it's pretty true in my experiences most of the golds I got were from failed attempts, so there's that. I understand it needs to be a grind but I think there should be at least a more visible reward for actually beating this Xtrawave with your co-workers because this isn't really much. I feel this is the typical situation of I would have been happier not knowing this information at all, but at the same time, it lets me relax and not worry about what the rewards will be and I'm only hoping Nintendo will make it better in the future. So what do you all think about the scale rewards in Salmon Run? Did you expect this, or something better? Let me know in the comments section, and if you're looking for additional resources, guides and videos on Salmon Run or Splatoon 3 in general, check out the rest of my channel as all support is greatly appreciated. Thank you so much for watching hope this information helps, and I'll see you all the next time.
