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I recently obtained the Mehrune's Razor dagger. The enchantment is "Hits have a small chance to instantly kill". What are the chances of the effect working?

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  • 1
    I have no data for this, but I think "a chance" is 10% and "a small chance" is 5% or 1%, and a "good chance" is 20%
    – GmNoob
    Dec 19, 2011 at 10:18
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    After like 30 hours of playing with this dagger, it did not loose any charges.
    – ordag
    Dec 19, 2011 at 11:09
  • @GMNoob certainly no more than 5% chance. I've been using this dagger for a long time and if it was more than 5% chance I'd definitely notice. Ordag, this dagger, even when it procs, seems to lose no charges.
    – l I
    Dec 19, 2011 at 11:59
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    According to elderscrolls.wikia.com/wiki/Talk:Mehrunes%27_Razor_%28Skyrim%29 quotes the prima guide stating it puts the chance at 1%. That piece of information has not been confirmed and is seen as unreliable, though.
    – bkzland
    Dec 19, 2011 at 17:42
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    sounds to me like I need to go test this later today! I smell more science ahead
    – l I
    Dec 19, 2011 at 19:06

3 Answers 3

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Testing can be awfully bloody sometimes. Just ask Constance Michel:

For Science!

So I went around in god mode with the Mehrune's Razor and tested it on a bunch of NPCs after doing the following:

  1. Disable their AI via tai
  2. Set their health to 5000 via setav health 5000 (so they don't die to regular damage)
  3. Go on a rampage spree in Riften

Here are the # of hits before dying:

  • 15
  • 14
  • 1 (Super unlucky guard)
  • 114 (Super lucky guard)
  • 39
  • 3
  • 36
  • 51
  • 21
  • 46
  • 67
  • 28
  • 66
  • 66
  • 19
  • 70
  • 22
  • 76
  • 34
  • 18
  • 29
  • 36
  • 61
  • 47
    Average: 38.8333333 hits (stdev 26.8, which is quite high...)

This works out to be ~2.57% +/-1.78% margin of error

If anyone wants to provide more sample points, go right ahead. For now, I'm going to conclude that the chance to proc is roughly 2.5%

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yx. might need to check his math. I get a mean of 40.7917 for the values he quoted, with a standard deviation of 26.8.

This means 955 hits were non-instant while 24 were instant-kill hits.

Combining this with my own data of roughly 849 hits with 31 instant-kills (plus a few more) gives a total of 1955 regular hits & 58 instant-kill hits.

I applied a Bayesian approach and set the prior density to a half-triangle that peaks at zero, since most people assumed it was small. The final result is:

(2.91 +- 0.74)%,

where the +- indicates a 95% probability interval. As a hunch, since game programmers might prefer round numbers, our data together suggests that 3% might be the true proc rate.

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  • its a possibility, we won't know for sure until the CS comes out. You are right though, average should be 40.7917 instead of 38.8, but 2.5% or 3% both falls within the error margin.
    – l I
    Jan 16, 2012 at 0:53
  • You people scare me, like really scare me.
    – Neon1024
    Aug 7, 2012 at 12:26
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According to the UESP Mehrunes' Razor article, the chance of the Mehrunes' Razor instant kill effect activating is 2/101 or ~ 1.98%.

Note: This is the actual chance of activating, as this information was extracted from the game's files using the Creation Kit.

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