How do phantoms affect item discovery?

I have leveled up to the point where I can barely be summoned as a Blade of the Darkmoon anymore, and in order to get the "Master of Miracles" achievement, I need to turn in thirty "Proof of a Concord Kept" to the covenant leader. To obtain these items, I have to farm the silver knights in Anor Londo, using items such as the Covetous Gold Serpent ring and the Symbol of Avarice.

How does having a phantom in your world affect item discovery? For example, if a friendly phantom kills a silver knight with the Symbol of Avarice equipped, then does the resulting item (if any) take their item discovery into account, or mine, or some mixture of the two?

1 Answer

Alright so I did some digging using a friend, CE and the latest table(not linking it because it's Bad Stuff™).

CE Values

The table I used didn't list item discovery directly so I had to search a bit for it. As expected, it is affected by luck and item discovery gear. Having another player didn't change it, and having the other player equip item discovery gear didn't change it either. Now I'm not a pro at CE but I tried to find places that used the item discovery value and what I think was the drop rate formula didn't have any changes when another player equipped I.D. gear.

Ingame observations

First, I did 5 "cycles" of killing the 3 Silver knights in Anor Londo with no item discovery gear and noted the drops. Then I did the same with my friend, no item discovery gear. It didn't make any difference.

I did 5 cycles with gold covetous ring+3, Symbol of avarice and a crystal sage rapier and noted the drops. Then I did the same with my friend (who had no I.D. gear). No difference. He then equipped the same stuff as me. 5 more cycles, no difference. We did this again a couple of times with him as a white, gold, purple and red phantom and it didn't change anything.

As a last attempt, I used the Dried Fingers and summonned the max amount of players I could and got invaded. I killed the 3 knights. No noticeable difference in drops, no changes in CE.