Okay, coming back to this with some numbers. Google sheet for calculations can be seen
here. (see bottom of post for methods)
The trading post ratios for strange chests are as follows - 21:9 or 9:4 ratio, which is approx. 2:1 food:trinket.
Just from gathering & familiar bonding, it seems to be around
8.9%(± 0.89%) Strange chest, 46.4%(± 5.2%) Trinket, 44.7%(±5.9%) Food. (Including mimic powder)
Excluding mimic powder, since arguably that's not useful for the strange chest trades, it comes out to closer to
9.0% (± 0.86%) Strange chest, 43.5% (± 5.3%) Trinket, 47.5%(± 6.0%) Food.
This comes out to about a 1:1 ratio, meaning that if someone doesn't do the coli/does minimal coli (such as myself) then they're always going to have to a wealth of trinkets while never enough food items. While I do understand the the coli is a potential solution to this imbalance, I personally dislike it and would genuinely rather bond with all of the familiars in my hoard, which doesn't fix the unbalanced ratio.
So, yeah, support for making the chest trades closer to a 1:1 ratio, or swapping the required food:trinkets numbers.
Methods:
- Data tabulated over the course of five days, using 15 gathering turns and bonding with all the familiars attached to my dragons. (between 153 - 160, depending if one reached awakened and I swapped it out or not)
- However, day 1's data doesn't include mimic powder(I forgot it existed), so it is excluded from the first reported percentages, and included in the second. This appears to cause a slightly higher standard dev for including mimic powder.
- Trading post drops aren't included in this, since I think some of them have different #'s for drops.
- Deposited all grand exchange items to my vault before doing "runs" - gathering & then familiar bonding - and then added the non-vault grand exchange items to the google sheet.