Mk Rating variance on loot drops:

[khadgar]

One thing I noticed diminished my enjoyment of finding loot in this game is that everything you find on a given day is a given level. It's good to slowly scale up the quality of goods you find as you go deeper into the dungeon, or farther along in the days, but I found that I expected a chance to find stuff from all sorts of Mk ratings.

Sure, on day T Minus 50 you're most likely to find level 1 / Mk I stuff. AFAIK, right now its 100% chance. I thought it could be a little neat if there was some small % chance to find things of a different (higher?) level than your current. I feel that right now, 'rarity' is filling this role, in that you have a small chance of finding a high rarity item. An average mission yields what, 10 pieces of loot-ish? So maybe a small chance (5%?) to find something 1-2 Mk ratings above (2-4 days), and a smaller chance (2%?) to find something 3-4 Mk ratings above (4-6 days). Maybe even a miniscule chance, 1% or less, to find something above even that. Since almost all of the stats are percentage based, it's not like it would create an unstoppable overpowered death exo early on, with the exception of the shield stats. And even worst case scenario, day 1 you find a something like a Mk VIII shield part that grants 20 damage reduction, 30 regen, and 150 shields. That is definitely a lot, but is it game-breakingly a lot? I don't think so.

I'm just thinking back to other games I have played with random loot generation and/or random loot drops, such as Dungeons of Dredmor or Diablo II. There was something exciting about finding a really "high level" piece of gear, even if it wasn't something you necessarily were looking for. In Dredmor, for example you had a chance of finding super high rarity stuff as low as the first dungeon level... but it was extremely rare! I might be crossbow-spec, but if i found an 8-star chainsword, I just might change my entire strategy just because I didn't want to throw away something so high level.

The analogue of this in bionic dues would be finding an orange rarity item early on I guess, since they have the highest stat pools, but in my experience, I have NEVER found an orange rarity item outside of the bot command center mission mission-victory loot.

Yea? Nay? Somewhere in between?

[keith.lamothe]

There would never be variance right now, fwiw.

But I could add a 25% chance of +1 and a 5% chance of +2.  Would that feel like enough variance?

[khadgar]

It's hard to say how it would actually 'feel' when playing, but it sounds good.

With my guess of 10 items dropped per level (counting hacked door loot, end of mission loot, and random drops), that means one would find approximately 2.5 items of +1, and 0.5 items of +2.

[Pepisolo]

I agree with this change. I'm not quite getting the loot satisfaction at the moment. A small chance to find something that little bit extra special would be great. Orange Mk3 circuit board of greatness in early game...yes, please.

[Tridus]

If you're adding variance, what about a small chance of -1?

[Pepisolo]

If you're adding variance, what about a small chance of -1?

Seems decent to me, just to mix things up a bit. Gives the player a little more of a cue to get straight to the shop and offload them. These would kind of become cash items to some extent (the white ones anyway). Might reduce the amount of items the player feels like they need in their inventory because they're not sure whether it's a good item or not.

[orzelek]

Is there an actual chance to find an oranfe in loot?
I don't recall getting any randomly - only from command stations mission reward.
From what I seen mission rewards are usually green with few exceptions and random loot can give something better than green.

[keith.lamothe]

Random oranges are possible, just very rare.

[Tridus]

Emma can buy them in the shop too.

[Pepisolo]

Random oranges are possible, just very rare.

Speaking of oranges. Does the text colour show what level of loot you've picked up? Seems like it obviously should, but I just picked up another orange loot and it's nowhere in my inventory. Starting to think the colours are random or something or I've gone colour blind or just mad.

[Tridus]

The color is the rarity,the mark is the level. A rare of the same mark will have more item budget than a common.

[Pepisolo]

The color is the rarity,the mark is the level. A rare of the same mark will have more item budget than a common.

Might make me seem thick, but if you can help... basically if I see or pick up an item in game that has coloured text, let's say orange, does that signify that waiting in my box will be an item of the same colour? Or are the colours of the items when you pick them up irrelevant or have no relation to the loot rarity?

[Tridus]

The color is the rarity,the mark is the level. A rare of the same mark will have more item budget than a common.

Might make me seem thick, but if you can help... basically if I see or pick up an item in game that has coloured text, let's say orange, does that signify that waiting in my box will be an item of the same colour? Or are the colours of the items when you pick them up irrelevant or have no relation to the loot rarity?

Ah I understand the question now. Yes, if the item name is orange colored text, you should have an orange item in your inventory. The text color matches the item rarity.

[Pepisolo]

Ah I understand the question now. Yes, if the item name is orange colored text, you should have an orange item in your inventory. The text color matches the item rarity.

Definitely either a bug then or I've gone colour-blind. I saw a orange text loot, but no such item was in my inventory. I'm playing as Emma, not sure if that makes a difference.

[Tridus]

Yeah that's odd. Maybe the next time you see an orange item, take a screenshot (F12 if you're running in Steam) and then check your inventory. If it's still not there post the save and the screenshot.

Emma's ability lets you buy orange items at the store, it shouldn't impact drops.