I have been playing offline, and have started the perilous grind for covenant offerings. I read on here (see revision 38, it has since been removed and I can't link to it directly) that changing one's equipment periodically may help improve one's chances for obtaining items. I also saw some murmurings on other sites that this may be the case. I tried changing torso, glove, and leg armor out of desperation, and it might have worked.
I'm not sure if this was coincidence or not though. I'm also not sure if there is a specific thing I can do to reliably improve my chances (say, maybe changing my rings would be more effective, or maybe changing my headgear would be more helpful than just keeping the Symbol of Avarice on constantly).
Is there any definitive research?
Is this something consistent in other Souls games?
EDIT: I'm looking for ways to increase my odds of finding these items outside of increasing my Item Discovery stat. I may not have made that clear above.
Best Answer
No, as of right now there is no known and proven way to manipulate the RNG in a way to give you a higher chance of an item drop. The only way is increasing the Luck stat and boosting Item discovery with equipment pieces or consumeables, see Kritners answer for those
As someone who follows the Darksouls-speedrunning community actively, I can tell you that in the first Dark Souls game, one of the fastest routes was based on a random item drop, the only way to increase the chances of obtaining said item (the Black Knight Halberd) was by consuming Humanity, because having consumed humanity increases item drop chances though that maxes out at 10 consumed humanities if I remember correctly, before defeating the enemy that drops it.
And I assume that the developers have probably stayed consistant with the way this works, since no actual RNG-manipulation was found and confirmed in Dark Souls 2 either (Atleast none that i can remember).