Loot An explanation of Loot Drops, and what actually affects them.

Thomas Sailskull

Honorable Pirate
All the superstition people throw around regarding loot drops has always bugged me, so while the game is down for an update, I figured that I could post a list of factors that ACTUALLY have an effect on loot, to get rid of a lot of the nonsense floating around. All of this has been checked against an old leaked version of TLOPO's source code. While the actual percentage chances have been altered several times since this version, the underlying mechanics remain the same. I have also had most of this confirmed at one point or another by various staff, one bit at a time, in addition to my run-through of the old looting code.

What does affect your loot:
  • Enemy LVL Color
    • The level color of an enemy, which can be Grey, Green, Yellow, or Red, does have an effect on the type of container you get, but does not affect what is in those containers. A skull dropped by a enemy with a grey level has the same chance of a famed or legendary as a skull dropped by a red level enemy.
    • A red enemy will have a better chance of dropping a loot container, and a better chance of giving a chest or skull, vs an enemy with a yellow level, and the same can be said with yellow, relative to green level enemies, and green enemies relative to grey level enemies.
    • If multiple pirates are looting the same enemy, the level color the game uses in the loot drop formula goes off of the lowest level pirate that scored a hit.
    • As stated before, the level color only affects the container drop & type chances, as once the container drops, the enemy level will have no effect as to what is actually in the container.
  • Your weapon & overall stat levels:
    • If your relevant weapon stat is too far below the stat level that a weapon requires in order to be used, it will not show up in loot, I am not sure of the exact number of this, but the threshold is either 5 or 6 levels below the usage requirement. This means, if you do not have that weapon unlocked, none of that type of item will show up in loot. So if a pirate does not have dagger unlocked, they will not get any loot from Foulberto Smasho.
      • This can be used to adjust the chances of getting certain famed, as the game, when it drops loot, it picks item rarity first, the chooses from items your pirate can loot from that rarity bracket afterwards.
      • For example, there are two pirates, called A and B. A has all stats mastered, and B has all stats but two mastered, which are doll (not unlocked), and his dagger (Level 13). Both pirates have the same chance of getting a Famed/Legend, but B's famed have a higher chance of being a sword or a gun, because B's famed cannot be a doll or a knife other then EITC's Assassin's Dagger, which means it will either be a gun, a sword, a sailing item or the aforementioned Dagger.
    • NOTE: Remember, this DOES NOT make you more likely to loot famed. It just means any famed you loot have a higher chance of being a certain item.
    • It is not possible to get Bright clothing before Notoriety 20. Some colors, including Dark Black, do not drop until Notoriety 25. Famed & Legendary items can drop at any level of overall Notoriety, as long as you are close enough to the use requirement, as stated earlier.
    • Some sailing items ignore this rule, but all famed sailing items bar the Golden Charm item group do not drop on land.
  • What enemy you are looting at:
    • In the game's server side files, there is a file, called DropData.py. This file has each weapon, followed by a long string of 1s and 0s, each separated by a comma. Each column of data refers to a specific type of enemy, type of ship, or fish size. If a column has a 1, then that weapon can be found it loot from the enemy that column refers to. This is how they set stuff like cursed blades, because they only have a 1 in columns that refer to enemies that spawn on Raven's Cove or Tormenta.
  • Ammo
    • After the game generates the loot container, it determines how many items will be in that container, and what class those items will be. The classes are Ammo, Weapons, Clothing, Gold, and Collectibles. This happens before the RNG decides on the rarity of the items. If your ammo is full when the container drops, this means that is not an option, so you will get something that is not ammo in place of that.
  • Unlock status
    • Some items require the completion of a quest as well as the level requirement outlined earlier.
    • This applies to item types as a whole, such as Cursed Blades, Dolls, Daggers, Treasure Sets, etc.
    • You cannot loot Dolls, Daggers, some Treasure Sets, and so on if the relevant unlock quest has not been completed.
    • This used to be possible a while back, because the game used to set the stat of non unlocked weapon as Level 1 as far as loot containers could see. This was also visible on the way pirate cards were displayed. These issues stemmed from the same bit of data, and so both got patched at the same time. This patch was sometime between Feb and July of 2017.
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Basically, to summarize, the only way to get better loot is to either kill more enemies, or get super lucky, much like how the only way to increase your (almost nonexistent) chances of winning the Lottery is to buy more tickets, or get insanely lucky. Things like previous loot and what you took/did not take have NO EFFECT on loot drops, because TLOPO does not log past loot drops at all.
 
When I'm killing a giant crab on PR for a quest .... I shoot the itty bitty sand crabs in my spare time waiting for it to respawn , I get some decent loot just from the lil sand crabs at any level . Now like ya say all the drop is loot pouches so never anything big but higher level foes do drop better items in progression to the pirates level and weapon coresponding .
 
Couldn't this be exploited by letting a low level player hit enemies and then have higher level finish them off? For instance, a level 5 sweeps the group of vets at kingshead and then a maxed player one hits them.

Also, is there really no multiplier for higher levels within a color bracket? For instance, I feel like higher red levels clearly drop more gold than lower red levels.
 
Couldn't this be exploited by letting a low level player hit enemies and then have higher level finish them off? For instance, a level 5 sweeps the group of vets at kingshead and then a maxed player one hits them.

Also, is there really no multiplier for higher levels within a color bracket? For instance, I feel like higher red levels clearly drop more gold than lower red levels.
To the first question, yes, that can be done. I've done it plenty of times. Second, the amount of gold is determined by what kind of enemy you are fighting, and where you are fighting them.
 
While I 'm not entirely convinced that you have listed everything that affects loot I also think everything you do mention is true. This is the best and most complete explanation I've seen, thank you for that. I should point out that your list is of things that affect loot so you saying nothing but more looting at the end of your post is a contradiction of the rest of your post.
 
While I 'm not entirely convinced that you have listed everything that affects loot I also think everything you do mention is true. This is the best and most complete explanation I've seen, thank you for that. I should point out that your list is of things that affect loot so you saying nothing but more looting at the end of your post is a contradiction of the rest of your post.
I could have been a bit more clear on that. When I said better loot, I meant as in getting more famed and legendary. You can shift what the famed and legends might end up being, but you cant make them drop any quicker, except via more looting.
 
I could have been a bit more clear on that. When I said better loot, I meant as in getting more famed and legendary. You can shift what the famed and legends might end up being, but you cant make them drop any quicker, except via more looting.
Not true, you can hit higher lvl enemies, you can bring along a lower lvl friend, and you can not unlock many of the weapons just to name a few of the techniques that you yourself mention to greatly increasing your chances of getting cursed legendarys. Loot can be and is manipulated by the players just as your post indicates, it is limited and it's true that you can't do a simple trick and get anything you want but you can and do influence what you get by how you play.
 
Thanks Thomas! This was really helpful to me and hopefully to all the people who keep arguing (not anyone on this thread in particular but just throughout the community) about loot and such.
 
Things like previous loot and what you took/did not take have NO EFFECT on loot drops, because TLOPO does not log past loot drops at all.
This makes me wonder, how did the admin know when to announce krakenslayer was found back when Henry found it?
Just curious.
 

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The rarity of a weapon is not dependent on the type of loot container it is in either, yesterday I received a Divine Sabre out of a loot pouch from a lvl 13 gator on Tortuga while questing with my lvl 10 alt on my 50. No photo evidence unfortunately because I was freaking out when I seen blue.
 
The rarity of a weapon is not dependent on the type of loot container it is in either, yesterday I received a Divine Sabre out of a loot pouch from a lvl 13 gator on Tortuga while questing with my lvl 10 alt on my 50. No photo evidence unfortunately because I was freaking out when I seen blue.
It is.
 
Even after reading the looting method, it didn’t make sence to me logically. It’s great to see that taking loot has no impact on the value of loot in later containers.
 
This thread is pretty true from my own findings. I compiled a spread sheet from DropData.py here on the "ITEMS" sheet if anyone is interested. It basically only shows what each enemy can drop, and these files are from 2013 POTCO keep in mind, so anything could be changed on TLOPO potentially. However being that TLOPO is keeping as true to POTCO as they can I doubt any pre-existing data was changed. I also outlined some of the specific numbers and information that @Thomas Sailskull gathered his information from in the "LOOT CHANCES" sheet in that google spreadsheet above.
 
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