Can Someone Please Explain the Loot System?

I'm very confused about the loot system and can't quite get a complete explanation from anyone. I've seen so many numbers and charts and formulas and I don't know what any of it means. So far I've been max upgrading my strongest gear and waiting for stronger gear to drop. My stats are higher than the stats shown on max stat charts but I still can't even solo Chaos 1. Can someone please explain to me how this system works?

The general idea, as you point out, is put gear, get better gear, switch, repeat. There are ways where you can make this faster but as we know, Trendy is making this whole process a bit easier with the next update. You can read geo981010's guide on these forums on how to maximize loot gains, but the general idea is get better gear, change, replace.

Yeah, the loot system in this game is one of the most counter intuitive that I have ever seen.

I spent 80 ascension levels doing my best trying to equip the best stat items I could find thinking that I'd progress naturally and I was stuck at like 2k relics going nowhere. Then a 12 year old kid in one game looks at my gear and starts ridiculing me for having C2 gear at my level and tells me to unequip all of the items from my low level characters and I'll start seeing better drops. I try it, I kinda get results but not much.

Then someone else tells me to have one high stat character because all of the drops are based on the strongest character in your deck so I delete a character and make a duplicate of my main and try it, upgrading all of my items each game and I get marginal results again.

Then finally a guy tells me to just equip EVERYTHING I get each round on my mule, regardless of what the stats are and don't bother upgrading any of it. Sounds crazy replacing a legendary helmet with 2k defense for a blue one with half that but I try it, BAM within a day I find a totem that's literally 1k better than what I had before. Then over the next three days I go from 2.5k relics to nearly 7k.

The loot system is confusing for no reason and none of this extra malarkey is explained in-game, the average casual player will struggle and have no chance of leveling up unless they're the type to go online and look for answers as to why the progression system is so backwards.

I'm also a bit confused when it comes to the loot system.. So in Geo's post he states to go with the item that has a higher sell value usually... But then I get stumped at this part. I have a blue C4 totem that has higher max stats than my legendary C4 totem but the Legendary C4 totem has a higher sell value. Which am I suppose to be equipping?

Long story short: each item has an item power that rolls first, then the stats roll.  The average highest equipped item power (on the so called mule character) determines drops.  So it can happen that one item has higher item power, but less stats than another, because stats roll after item power and there is variation.  The only reliable way to determine item power is to look at sell value, but sell value varies by item power, item type, and rarity.  So you need a spreadsheet to compare say a blue relic with a gold relic, to tell which is further towards max sell value and hence item power.  

However, generally equipping items with better stats will tend towards the same result, just a bit slower.  Equipping items every round also does this, since items tend to drop with higher sell value.  There are many ways to get better equipment, but they are not all the same speed of progression, and the best way requires spreadsheets.

The sad thing is that you should never need a "mule" character to make use of a progression system, nobody outside of the hardcore audience is going to bother with that.

loot system destroyed this game for new players they should have prioritized it before release. Simply put 1 gear type on 1 character in deck,  most go with blue, and put highest blue gear on character based on gold value of each blue item.  From what I gather.

@xcrimsonlegendx quote:

The sad thing is that you should never need a "mule" character to make use of a progression system, nobody outside of the hardcore audience is going to bother with that.

You don't need a mule. The mule saves you from needing exact  affixes on top of scraping around for stronger items.

@ndesse1 quote:

@xcrimsonlegendx quote:

The sad thing is that you should never need a "mule" character to make use of a progression system, nobody outside of the hardcore audience is going to bother with that.

You don't need a mule. The mule saves you from needing exact  affixes on top of scraping around for stronger items.

My personal experience says otherwise.

I was unable to progress nearly at all for two weeks until I got a mule and started dumping every piece of garbage onto it.

Before that I was playing "legit" and doing my best to equip items that had high values and stats but that got me nowhere. If you want to progress in this game at any sort of pace other than snail, you need a mule.

@xcrimsonlegendx quote:

@ndesse1 quote:

@xcrimsonlegendx quote:

The sad thing is that you should never need a "mule" character to make use of a progression system, nobody outside of the hardcore audience is going to bother with that.

You don't need a mule. The mule saves you from needing exact  affixes on top of scraping around for stronger items.

My personal experience says otherwise.

I was unable to progress nearly at all for two weeks until I got a mule and started dumping every piece of garbage onto it.

Before that I was playing "legit" and doing my best to equip items that had high values and stats but that got me nowhere. If you want to progress in this game at any sort of pace other than snail, you need a mule.

It is not the loot systems fault you either ignored the upgrades/ sidegrades or move up to new chaos.   Hell you cant even get downgrades until well into  c5

@ndesse1 quote:

@xcrimsonlegendx quote:

@ndesse1 quote:

@xcrimsonlegendx quote:

The sad thing is that you should never need a "mule" character to make use of a progression system, nobody outside of the hardcore audience is going to bother with that.

You don't need a mule. The mule saves you from needing exact  affixes on top of scraping around for stronger items.

My personal experience says otherwise.

I was unable to progress nearly at all for two weeks until I got a mule and started dumping every piece of garbage onto it.

Before that I was playing "legit" and doing my best to equip items that had high values and stats but that got me nowhere. If you want to progress in this game at any sort of pace other than snail, you need a mule.

It is not the loot systems fault you either ignored the upgrades/ sidegrades or move up to new chaos.   Hell you cant even get downgrades until well into  c5

Did you read my previous post before you quoted it? I said I was equipping every single piece of gear that had either higher stats or sell value and it did virtually nothing for me. The only reason I attempted to go up in chaos tiers is because the logical thing to do is to go to the next stage when you stop progressing where you're at.

The system is vague and not intuitive at all, its confusing and the game does literally nothing to inform the player as to what hoops you need to jump though to progress. This isn't about my personal sob story, its simply feedback because the loot and progression system is poorly explained.

i use 2 characters that holds gear. one with full mythical armor/relics and another with full legendary (usually my main dps). i upgrade by gold value, stats have a +10/-10% so you will sometimes find worse stats but is actually a lil bit higher "ilvl" wise. 

once i got a full set of legendary/mythical and see that the drops are only increasing by a couple gold only, i max upgrade the legendary set including weapon. next game i would find drops that will have much bigger upgrade from what i'm wearing. the un-upgraded stats on new drops might be equal or sometimes lower than my upgraded but max stats will show higher. the mythicals u find will definitely be higher than the set the mythical mule will be holding. rinse and repeat.

you can skip the upgrading part if you don't have the gold/medals. you will just have to grind out much longer slowly upgrading a few gold value at a time.

WYWIWYG

What You Wear Is What You Get

loot system again needs to be reworked, this is the worst system in any game for gear progression

The loot system needs a few tweaks and my first suggestion is based on UX best practice which is to use the same language that gamers use.   It's pretty common to see players say "I'm wearing C4 gear" so perhaps each item should have a description like "C4-78.2%" that clearly tells you that it's a C4 piece at 78.2% of the maximum.   Now you don't need to worry with spreadsheets or loot guides, you can compare the tier percentage values to see if a drop is better.   And you get a wonderful sense of progression when you finally see the first drops for the next tier start appearing - "Happy happy - i'm starting to see my first C5 drops"

Due to scaling between chaos tiers the next notch after C4-100% would be C5-66% and so on. 

@Kruntski quote:

The loot system needs a few tweaks and my first suggestion is based on UX best practice which is to use the same language that gamers use.   It's pretty common to see players say "I'm wearing C4 gear" so perhaps each item should have a description like "C4-78.2%" that clearly tells you that it's a C4 piece at 78.2% of the maximum.   Now you don't need to worry with spreadsheets or loot guides, you can compare the tier percentage values to see if a drop is better.   And you get a wonderful sense of progression when you finally see the first drops for the next tier start appearing - "Happy happy - i'm starting to see my first C5 drops"

Due to scaling between chaos tiers the next notch after C4-100% would be C5-66% and so on. 

I would like this idea, and it would make determining what level gear someone has very simple.

But if possible - I would prefer it goes from C4-100% to C5-001%. That makes it pretty obvious - it is C5 quality gear, and you are 1% of the way to getting to max C5 gear. That way, those small little incremental upgrades will still be higher even with rounding issues and you will always be able to tell which piece is better. But either way would be much much better!

@geo981010 quote:

@Kruntski quote:

But if possible - I would prefer it goes from C4-100% to C5-001%. 

I agree that's better.  

I think the reason we do not have the iPWR rating shown or any of that matter, is because we are getting modes with loot not tied on a specific difficulty. This would make a good reason as to why the iPWR is not showing, and having C1 C2 etc ratings on gear not valuable or helpful enough.