It's odd; my chief has consistently pointed out only rares that I do not yet have; I haven't completed a single collection, but my chief's served well so far.

As I understand it, the chance of a certain collectible showing is a percentage chance, not influenced by things like what collectibles have shown up before.

Since my chief keeps pointing out the same rare collectibles that I already have, I'm getting frustrated and ready to wipe out the tribe.

My chief points out the same turtle shell everytime!! She is still a bit young...maybe she will become wiser with age.

We can make an estimate, even without knowing the programming, I think. Let's assume that each rare collectible has an equal chance of showing up when the chief points one out.

There are 16 different rare collectibles (four of each type), so each should have about a 6.25% chance of showing up - 1/16. This number gets higher if you already have some of the rare tablet pieces (because these can only be collected once) - it becomes 8.33% if you have all four rare tablet bits - 1/12.

But that doesn't mean you can't get the same one two or three times in a row .

(Actually, I don't think this changes if the game randomly selects which type of collectible should appear first and then chooses from the four pieces. But I could be wrong.)

I tried seeing if Tribes show the same collectables at the same time. They don't. Did an experiment where when I saw the rare feather I needed in my first tribe, I switched over to see if it was there...Not there

That's exactly what I did. I started 2 new tribes, one of each fraction. Neither have begun working on the statue yet. Magic faction is way ahead in its collection than Nature faction.

That helps if the collectibles function is truly random. I wonder if that is the case. How in the world would you structure the logic for that code?

I disagree with your theory. I have consistently gotten non-rare collectibles, or even none at all. I am getting so angry that I am about to uninstall the game. I have two simultaneous villages that I am working on, one is nature faction, the other magic. I have completed all of the puzzles, but when it comes to the chief pointing out collectibles, he/she often points out nothing at all. I have tried pausing the game, and thoroughly searching the entire map, but come back with nothing.

On a side note, where did all of the leader boards go? They were quite popular in VV1 and VV2... Why take them out of VV3?

weasel if you pause the game it wont appear

Weasel, I know it can be frustrating not to find missing collectibles. That happened to me too and there were more times the Chief pointed out nothing than he pointed out a rare collectible. I was just missing about four. I kept searching and within a few days I was just down to missing one. It took me almost two weeks to get that one and the Chief finally came through for me on that one. If you uninstall the game, you'll lose all your hard work solving the puzzles and your little villagers.