General Looting Changes - kking117/balls.txt GitHub Wiki

Overview

Many drop rates and loot pools have been modified to both streamline the game and reward the player for progressing or deliberately seeking out loot. The odds used in the unmodded game seem purposely low for player retention and shock value, which while a good idea at the time, it has become increasingly annoying and only serves to disrespect the player's time.

Generally the progression for good loot looks something like this:

  • NVHM to Early UVHM = Chests
  • TVHM+ = Killing Badasses and Dedicated Drops

Dedicated Drop Rates

Dedicated drops are more likely at certain levels, for reference dedicated drops are usually 10% but can vary from 10-30%.

Level Drop Rate
1+ 5%
31+ 10%
51+ 15%
62+ 20%
73+ 25%
OP1 26%
OP2 28%
OP3 31%
OP4 35%
OP5 40%
OP6 46%
OP7 53%
OP8 61%
OP9 70%
OP10 80%

Additionally many dedicated loot pools have been de-bloated and separated. Before an enemy like Saturn would roll a 10% for a dedicated drop, then said drop was a split between a Customization, the Invader or the Hive. Now it will roll to drop each item individually.

Lastly Raid Bosses will drop all of their dedicated loot every time, even in NVHM.

All of this was done to keep the player weak early on but allow them to get unique gear more reliably when it's needed.

World Drops

All unique gear has been added to the World Drop Pool with a few exceptions, those being:

Action Plan
Gearbox Sniper Rifle
Gearbox SMG
Gearbox Rifle
Vault Hunter Relic

Makes World Drops more varied and allows players to try out loot they wouldn't normally go out of their way for.

Chest Loot

In Borderlands 2 most loot chests can be separated into two categories: Common and Red

The portable toilets you see in many bandit areas draw from the Common Chest pool, while the Red Car you see in some bandit areas draw from the Red Chest pool.

These two pools have been modified to give better gear, here are their drop weights plus the original values so I can shame them:

Common Chest Modded

Rarity Weight Chance Chance TVHM+
White 50 36.23% Removed
Green 50 36.23% 44.23%
Blue 25 18.12% 22.12%
Purple 12 8.7% 10.62%
E-Tech 0.5 0.36% 0.44%
World Drop 0.5 0.36% 0.44%

Red Chest Modded

Rarity Weight Chance Chance TVHM+
Green 25 39.68% Removed
Blue 25 39.68% 65.79%
Purple 10 15.87% 26.32%
E-Tech 2.5 3.97% 6.58%
World Drop 0.5 0.79% 1.32%

Common Chest Vanilla

Rarity Weight Chance
White 5 38.61%
Green 6.6 50.97%
Blue 0.35 2.7%
Purple 0.05 0.39%
E-Tech 0.05 0.39%

Red Chest Vanilla

Rarity Weight Chance
Green 10 86.88%
Blue 1 8.69%
Purple 0.25 2.17%
E-Tech 0.25 2.17%
World Drop 0.01 0.087%

Additionally, Badass, Boss and Raid Boss drop pools typically drop a few items from these pools, meaning their drops will improve slightly in TVHM+.

Vendors

Vendors can never world drop, vendors now play a critical role in supplying the player with lower quality gear that may be useful in the moment. Part of this change means that the quality of items sold by Vendors goes up as the player progresses.

White items stop being sold at level 40, while Greens stop being sold at level 61. Blues and Purples will be of equal chance at level 78 and then anything further will be in Purple's favor. Item of the day is always at least 1 quality higher than the worst it can roll, this also means it can sell E-Tech if it rolls higher than Purple.

Torgue Vendor

The Torgue vendor is special so it uses its own rules. All items sold are either Blue or Purple quality, additionally it also sells all Base Game and Campaign of Carnage uniques that are Torgue brand similar to how it sells the Pocket Rocket.

The full list of uniques it can sell are:

  • Pocket Rocket
  • Evil Smasher
  • Boom Puppy
  • Landscaper
  • Creamer

Lastly, item of the day costs 333 Torgue Tokens instead of 613 and the Deadly Bloom was added to the pool.

Seraph Vendor & Seraph Crystals

Seraph Vendors always use their UVHM pool.

This was to make Seraph Guardian loot more special with the release of UVHM but it felt very short sighted in execution so we've made it consistent.

Seraph Vendors sell items for 100 Seraph Crystals instead of 120.

You can only hold 500 crystals normally, this cannot be evenly divided, why.

Seraph Crystals drop in larger quantities the higher the OP level, specifically 20% more per OP level.

It's somewhat common to kill OP0 Seraph Guardians with OP level gear to quickly farm crystals, this has been done to make on-level raiding a bit more rewarding.