World Drops
How gear is generated from kills, and the grade, quality and condition each drop carries.
Most gear in the world is not placed by hand. It is generated when something dies, built from a template chosen for the slot and the level of the fight, and then given three separate measures. Grade is its power band. Quality is a single roll for how well it was made, fixed when the item comes into being. Condition is the wear it picks up afterwards.
Nothing is guaranteed. Each kind of loot rolls on its own, so one kill might leave nothing at all, or a weapon, a potion and a bag together.
The trivial kill rule#
A kill pays nothing once you have clearly outgrown it. If the highest level player fighting a creature is ten or more levels above it, that kill gives no world drops, no runes and no coin. Whatever the creature carried still falls, but it is marked unsellable. The Explorer training grounds work differently: their creatures keep paying while you are an Explorer, and stop once you have joined a guild and reached level 5 in it. Psions keep earning there until level 20.
What can drop#
Each of these rolls on its own on every kill that qualifies.
| Kind | What it gives |
|---|---|
| Weapon | A generated weapon |
| Armor | A generated armor piece or piece of jewelry |
| Potion | One of the brewed potions |
| Scroll | One of the protection scrolls |
| Tool | A combat tool such as a smoke bomb, an ice wand or a tripwire |
| Component | A whetstone, oil, grip wrap or similar component |
| Bag | A container, most often one of the small cheap ones |
| Recipe | A crafting recipe scroll you do not know, at or below the fight's level |
Gear is the common find: a weapon comes up on about one and a half kills in a hundred and armor on about three and a half, roughly one piece of gear in every twenty kills. Each other kind starts at one percent. Luck, a socketed Fortune rune, a potion of fortune and the Fortune's Favor world event all multiply that chance rather than adding to it, so a large stack of bonuses lifts a one percent kind to a few percent. No kind can pass five percent however much fortune you carry.
Your first twenty levels#
Up to and including level 20, gear comes far more often: about one kill in five leaves a weapon or a piece of armor, with armor a little over twice as likely as a weapon. That rate is fixed. Luck, runes, potions and world events do not change it, and the trivial kill rule still applies. From level 21 gear drops at the usual rate. The other kinds are the same at every level.
In a group each kill is counted for one member standing in the room, chosen at random, and that member's level decides how likely gear is.
Gear made for you#
Every piece of gear a kill drops is made for someone who was there. A weapon is of a kind your class can wield. A piece of armor is in a material your class can wear, and is more likely to be for a slot you have nothing in, or one where what you wear is ten or more levels behind you. A class that can wield nothing that drops, such as a merchant or diplomat, is given armor instead of a weapon.
In a group the kill still drops at most one of each, made for one member standing in the room, chosen at random. A group of four sees gear for each of them about equally often.
Potions, scrolls and tools found this way arrive unidentified. A masked potion
can still be drunk and a masked tool still used, though neither tells you what
it did; a masked scroll cannot be read until someone names it. Shops pay a
quarter of the usual price for anything nobody has named. A mage's identify,
a rogue's appraise, a merchant's appraise from level 10 or a potion of
identify reveals the true name for good, and it stays known when the item
changes hands. Sidonie Grane, in Grane's Assay Office east off Tidegold Row in
Aurin, will do the same for anyone at any hour; ask her about her fee, which is
5 platinum at the current tariff. Bought, crafted and quest goods are never
masked.
Runes are not rolled here. They have their own drop table, described on the runes page.
Apart from the gear rolls, a kill that pays at all also leaves a trophy or a coin. A humanoid that was carrying anything drops a copper, or two at level 100, and a boss carries no coin. Other creatures leave a trophy for their race or body type, which a collector wants and a shop pays a copper or two for. Your own pets, companions and minions leave neither. Other income is listed on the economy page.
The level of a drop#
Gear comes in at the level of the creature that died, or close to it, and never above it. It is never above the level of the player it was made for either, so you can put it on as soon as you find it.
| Chance | Level |
|---|---|
| 90% | Within three levels of that ceiling |
| 10% | Four to ten levels below it |
Neither band goes below level 1, so a low level creature's drops gather at the top.
World drops stop at level 90 whatever the creature's level. Levels 91 to 100 belong to quest rewards, shop stock, crafted gear and boss loot. Compare an item's actual properties when choosing between a drop and a fixed reward; level alone does not tell you every bonus.
Grade and tier#
Grade is the name of an item's level band and nothing more. Legendary is the band you need level 100 for, Ancient 90, and so on down to Basic at level 1. The full ladder is on the gear page.
Under the grade name, generated gear is built at one of twenty tiers, and the tier sets the base numbers before quality is applied. Each tier opens at a level.
| Tier | Level | Tier | Level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | 11 | 48 |
| 2 | 5 | 12 | 52 |
| 3 | 10 | 13 | 57 |
| 4 | 15 | 14 | 62 |
| 5 | 20 | 15 | 66 |
| 6 | 24 | 16 | 71 |
| 7 | 29 | 17 | 76 |
| 8 | 34 | 18 | 81 |
| 9 | 38 | 19 | 85 |
| 10 | 43 | 20 | 90 |
Quality#
Quality is rolled once, when the item is made, and never changes. It raises or
lowers all the item's numbers by a set percentage. It is not shown in the
item's name; look with ooc or have a merchant appraise it.
| Quality | Change | Chance |
|---|---|---|
| Poor | 10% lower | 15% |
| Moderate | none | 35% |
| Fine | 5% higher | 25% |
| Good | 10% higher | 15% |
| Superior | 15% higher | 8% |
| Pristine | 20% higher | 2% |
Two qualities are never rolled. Gear dropped by the creatures of the Knucklebone Crypt is Cryptborne, 25% higher, and the Shrouded Champion's Gravewatch plate is Gravewrought, 35% higher.
Crafted gear uses the same scale, but its quality comes from the crafter's skill rather than a roll; see crafting.
Condition#
Every drop starts Flawless and wears from there. The ten condition tiers and how mending works are on the durability page. For now wear has no effect on how a piece performs.
Putting the three together#
An item's working number is its base value for its slot and tier, raised or lowered by quality and rounded down. If wear is counted again, the condition penalty comes off after that:
final = floor(base x (1 + quality) x (1 - condition penalty))
Sockets#
Sockets are rolled when an item is made, from its quality. Better work means more of them, and Poor work never has any. The roll tries for three sockets first, then two, then one, and stops at the first success.
| Quality | Three sockets | Two sockets | One socket |
|---|---|---|---|
| Poor | none | none | none |
| Moderate | none | none | 5% |
| Fine | none | 2% | 15% |
| Good | none | 5% | 25% |
| Superior | 3% | 15% | 40% |
| Pristine, Cryptborne, Gravewrought | 10% | 30% | 60% |
The result is then limited by what the slot can hold, listed on the runes page. A bracelet holds no runes, so even a Pristine bracelet comes out with none.
Enchantments#
A generated piece can carry one named enchantment at one of three strengths:
epic 5% of the time, rare 20% and uncommon the other 75%. The name is never
shown in the item's short description; ooc <item> lists it, and so does a
merchant's appraise.
| Weapon enchantments | Armor enchantments |
|---|---|
| Sage, Guardian, Tempest, Reaper, Fortune | Hawk, Bear, Owl, Serpent, Stag, Phoenix, Wolf, Turtle, Hare |
Generated gear carries no bonus health, spell points or stamina of its own. Every point of those on a dropped piece comes from its enchantment, and the rest comes from finishing a gear set. Stamina from gear counts for half of what the piece lists.
Each enchantment is capped: at most 3% resistance to any one damage type, at most +4 to any one kind of spell bonus, and at most +4 to any one stat.
Class pieces#
Fifteen percent of weapon drops and fifteen percent of armor drops are a piece named for the class of the player they were made for, and these are 10% better than an ordinary drop of their level. Class armor can be worn by that class alone and comes as body armor or a helm. A class weapon is limited by its weapon type like any other, so anyone whose class uses that type can wield it. Class weapons stop at level 80, ten levels short of the general ceiling, because they are the strongest thing a class can find at random. A thief's class pieces always carry luck or agility, and a thief's class weapon always has room for one rune.
Items can still be traded, subject to their own restrictions.
What can generate#
Armor drops come from the seven armor set slots and the shield: head, shoulders, body armor, arms, hands, legs, feet and off hand. Jewelry drops are rings, necklaces and bracelets. Every random armor drop is a piece you could be building a set from.
Weapons generate as daggers, swords, axes, maces, clubs, heavy weapons, polearms, scythes, staves, bows and instruments. A dropped weapon's class, the number behind its damage, is its level plus up to ten, adjusted by quality, and never above 80. Classes 81 to 100 belong to weapons placed by hand.