Loot tables

Alpha-2 Looting UI.

Loot tables (drop tables) of world bosses or dungeon bosses have a small RNG chance of dropping gear (completed items). Monsters drop hunting certificates, Items and crafting materials rather than gold.

• There is a much higher chance that materials and unique recipes are dropped that can be used to craft items of equitable value.
• There is a small RNG chance of looting rare and legendary items or crafting materials from mobs based on the level, status and type of mob. This also applies to harvesting resources with a gathering profession.
• Crafted gear is the best gear in Ashes of Creation.
• Legendary equipment is only dropped by Legendary world bosses.
• Stats on dropped items will vary based on the rarity of the item.
• Loot tables are disabled for player controlled monsters.
• Experience debt decreases the drop rate percentages from monsters.
• Loot tables will likely not be affected by weather conditions. This was previously listed as a possible effect.

Hunting certificates

Hunting certificates is a term that covers items, such as Pelts that house the value of a mob's death. These certificates are specific to an economic region. These are intended as an alternative mechanic to acquire gold.

A wolf is not going to be carrying a sack of gold. It may instead drop "pelts" that can be traded for gold.

• Hunting certificates will also drop on a character's death.
• Hunting certificates can be traded with hunter NPCs within nodes.
  • The level of the node and the distance of the node from the drop will determine the value of the certificate. Certificates redeemed from distant economic regions via the caravan system will provide higher returns (4 to 5 times greater in some cases) than certificates collected from the same region.
  • The value of the certificates are also calculated (by the world manager algorithm) based on the volume of certificates being redeemed in each region.
• Hunting certificates may also be used to pay housing taxes and citizen dues.
• Hunting certificates can also be stored within node warehouses.
• Hunting certificates are not intended as crafting materials.

Players drop hunting certificates and other items upon death, based on their applicable death penalties.

Looting

Alpha-2 looting UI preview.

In the group loot obviously there's a lot of functionality here that parties have the ability to customize. There can be loot master, there can be round-robin, there can be need/greed/pass that's applied on a per rarity basis depending on the party's choices. – Steven Sharif

Alpha-2 vote to change loot allocation method UI.

Ashes of Creation intends to use traditional loot rules, selected by the party or raid leader.

• Group loot rules are defined on a per-rarity basis.
• A majority of party members must vote to approve any changes to group loot allocation changes.
• The developers are considering using a double-tap interaction to loot all containers within a close proximity radius.
• There won't be auto-looting pets.

Free-for-all.

• Whoever is first to loot gets the loot.

Lootmaster.

• A master looter (or lootmaster) is a player designated by the party leader to decide how loot is distributed in a dungeon or raid party.

Round-robin.

• With round-robin looting, party members take turns looting.

Need or greed.

• This is a traditional need before greed system based on dice rolls.
• Since there is very little gear binding in Ashes of Creation, it's left to the party to deal with players who excessively roll Need on loot.

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Bidding system.

• Intrepid are investigating a potential bidding system, which allows players to bid on items instead of rolling for them.
  • The highest bidder wins the item.
  • The gold then goes into a pool that is split among the rest of the party members.

Loot tagging

Looting rights (also known as Loot tagging) is based on a blended tag and damage done system.

• The first party to obtain a tag (on a mob or boss) will gain an approximately 5-10% edge over competing parties in terms of the total damage done when determining looting rights.
  • These numbers will be balanced based on testing.
• At the end of the fight, the party with the highest damage done, including first tagging bonus, will be granted looting rights.

We have a blended approach of damage done and a tag benefit. So if you tag the boss first, or you tag the loot- whatever the loot target is first- you're gonna get a benefit in the damage overall determination. So if you need to have 51% of damage done in order to qualify your raid, or the plurality of damage done if there's even three or four raids, then tagging first might give you a five or ten percent edge. We'll play with that number- balance it based on testing, but generally that's our approach in competing loot rights – Steven Sharif

Q: If looting rights are based on a blended tag and damage done system, will there be any mechanics in place to ensure roles like tanks and healers have an equal shot even when they haven't dealt as much damage?

A: That's the reason for the blended approach. The reason that we're doing a hybrid system between tag and damage done is for the purposes of those classes who may not be as DPS oriented as other classes. The tag system- all classes are going to have a sprinkling of immediate effects- of instantaneous casts and they can use that to tag a target, and that'll give them a modifier on the looting rights: So plus 10 or plus 15 will balance that, but it'll give them plus 10 to 15 on overall damage done if they tag the target and then their damage will make up the remainder of that percentage completion. So if I do 50 damage to a target but someone else has the tag I'm not going to be able to claim that looting right. They'll have done the other 50 plus 10 or 15. – Steven Sharif

Master gatherers may have the ability to "spoil" a boss' loot.

If you want to be able to get those mats from the boss, they're just not going to drop for anybody. They will only drop for a master gatherer who is capable of extracting those resources from the creature itself... The reason why we say there's a lot of interdependencies between the crafters of the world and the raiders of the world and our PvPers of the world is because we don't want to house the capability to attain these things all within the adventuring class. We want there to be an influence necessary from the craftsmen's guild to come in to either come and participate and spoil the boss and gather the goods or something along those lines. – Steven Sharif

Crafted items

Crafting UI. Alpha-1 screenshot. Image credit: Guild:Overlord

Crafted items (also referred to as Finished goods, or Final products) are items produced by crafter artisans using crafting stations.

• Crafted gear is considered best-in-slot in Ashes of Creation.
  • Previously it was stated that crafted items will be on-par with boss dropped items.
  • Crafters will be able to assign different skills/abilities and stats on gear.
    • Master crafters will be able to influence several (but not all) stats on their crafted items.

Crafted gear in the game is the best gear... One thing that I'm not a fan of is that you develop a crafting system in a game and you've spent a lot of time making this from a material and resource perspective. All the tables that you can receive, all the connectivity in the economy and how crafting is associated with the game; and then you undermine the crafting entirely by presenting a separate route of gear acquisition that is on-par with the crafting efforts. So here you have these people who are acquiring all of the resources getting, all the recipes, leveling up their professions and then everything they make is less or equal to anything you could just have chosen the easier path of and gone down the questing and received the best gear. So what we do focus on is that crafters make the best shit. Excuse me, the best things. – Steven Sharif

• The rarity of crafted items will be commensurate with the effort required to gather, process and craft the items.
  • Stats on crafted items will vary based on the item's rarity.

That plays into our crafting system in and of itself. The idea is for those stats to be variables that can be kind of dictated based on the mastery level of the particular crafter; and the higher they become a master of those professions, whether it be for armor or for weapons or for accessories, they're going to have some agency and put their mark on essentially what items they're introducing into the economy. – Steven Sharif

• Crafters are able to influence what their crafted items will look like.
  • At the moment, harnessing corruption to warp items into demonic or decayed things is not on the cards.
  • A crafter's name is embedded in the items they craft.

We believe that every item that exists in the world should in some way reflect its creator. As such, there will be extreme versatility in our crafting system – giving crafters the ability to create unique items that represent their strengths and weaknesses.

Item rarities

Item rarities in Ashes of Creation.

• Poor.
• Common.
• Uncommon.
• Rare.
• Epic.
• Legendary.

Legendary items

There is a small RNG chance of looting rare and legendary items or crafting materials from mobs based on the level, status and type of mob. This also applies to harvesting resources with a gathering profession.

• There is a much higher chance that materials and unique recipes are dropped that can be used to craft items of equitable value.
• Legendary equipment is only dropped by Legendary world bosses.
  • Legendary equipment will have a roughly 6-12% improvement in base stats, subject to testing and balancing.

At each stage from Gatherer to Processor to Crafter you are required to have certain prerequisites before those elite types of materials can be essentially gathered, processed, or crafted. – Steven Sharif

• Gatherers must have high quality tools to gather rare resources.
• Processors must have high tier processing buildings on their freehold to produce rare materials.
• Crafters must also satisfy certain prerequisites to craft legendary equipment.

The amount of effort needed and interdependencies across the different types of players – between raiders and PvPers and crafters and even role players and the taverns and businesses: the processors and gatherers – all of those systems will likely have a component that lends toward creating or crafting that legendary item... We want to stay away from the highly RNGd system, and instead take our multiple progression paths that we are offering the players and put the construction components for achieving these legendary items within them so it encourages communities to work together because it's going to be difficult for just one person by themselves to gather everything. Not to say that they couldn't in an economic sense, by buying those components, that's possible. But achieving them from a time investment standpoint we want it to be considerably less RNG focussed. – Steven Sharif

Certain legendary items may be limited to one per server at any given time.

• If the player character leaves the server then the item will become available for acquisition through whatever means it was acquired previously.

There are absolutely legendary items and they're not items that are attained easily nor are they granted out in a volume. There might even be items that are single items that will exist on the server at any given time.

A legendary weapon is easily distinguished by its visual appearance.

It will be a very ornate and detailed weapon, more so than any other weapon or piece of equipment in the game. It will also include some awesome looking effects that won't too gaudy, you know they won't be too bright and shiny so that it doesn't look good, but they will be subtle and people will notice it and know wow that guy has this weapon. – Steven Sharif

Legendary items are not intended to be temporary.

• A notable exception to this is Royal mounts.

The fact there is only one of them... or very very few of them depending on what it is. I think that in and of itself is a balance component right and you need to make sure that the players who are striving for those legendary things and who are devoting the time energy, resources in order to achieve them are accurately rewarded... We do not intend on having legendary items that are temporary. – Steven Sharif

Some of the following information has not been recently confirmed by the developers and may not be on the current development roadmap.

Discovery of legendary items will unlock further chapters of the Lore.

AoE looting

AoE (Area of effect) looting is not included in the looting mechanics at the time of writing. It may be added based on feedback.

Caravan looting

Caravan PvP in Alpha-1.

You won't be able to see inside specifically but as part of the caravan structure itself there will be little hints as to what the the cargo is. So for example if you've seen some of our recent footage with caravans you kind of see sitting on top of the caravan there's some gold or some silver or some iron. – Steven Sharif

Caravans create an open PvP zone that flags players for combat (purple).

• Players will not be able to see the exact contents of a caravan before they decide to attack or defend, however there will be some visual hints to the cargo of the caravan, such as gold, silver, or iron visible on top of the caravan.
  • Cargo is represented in this way even if a cosmetic caravan skin has been applied to the caravan.
• Players will be able to state their intentions to attack, defend or ignore via a user interface window.
  • The proximity that the UI window appears is determined by the player's performance as either a defender or an attacker in previous raids.
• A group will be required to successfully attack a caravan.
• Basic attacks will not slow caravans, but certain items, attacks, or status effects can slow or block caravans.
• A caravan will persist in the world for a period of 5 to 10 minutes from the time its owner logs out or is disconnected from the server.
• Each caravan is its own bespoke event. Players can't participate in more than one caravan event at a time, but running decoy caravans is a valid tactic.

It's still intended from a design standpoint to be a window that is presented to the player based on proximity; and that proximity it can be greater depending on your performance as either a defender or an attacker in previous raids. – Steven Sharif

There will be incentives and risks for both caravan attackers and defenders. These will be tested and refined during the alpha and beta testing phases.

• Death penalties (mostly) do not apply to objective-based events (such as caravans, guild wars, and node sieges).
  • Gear degradation applies on death during Caravan PvP.

There is a level of risk that comes with the attacker. We have progression paths that exist for bandits and that exists for defenders; and if you choose to opt into a caravan attack- you sign up for that attack and you fail that attack- it is detrimental to your path of progression down the bandit area. That's one thing: Two is of course you have gear decay. You have degradation that can be suffered if you die. That is a cost. And then you also have a reputation; and if your reputation precedes you when you want to transit goods across the world; and you see somebody who's doing it and you want to participate as a defender or a participant, they might say hey screw you, you were just murdering my people last week and I saw that you're like on the top of the bandit list for killing caravans. So it has repercussions in the sense that it locks you out of certain player groups. It provides decay to your armor. It has deleterious effects on your progression, and the attacking- and the bandit progression of caravan attacks or defense. – Steven Sharif

• A quest system will track a player's successful or failed defenses and attacks. This will provide rewards that scale up over time based on the player's history.

• Other incentives and risks are social and are created (informally) between players.

The caravan defender role is going to have its own progression questing and rewards associated with it that are going to attract a certain subset of players and then you know vice-versa wise we're going to have incentives that appeal to the more highway brigand type players; and you know you might not always be on one side or the other: that might change depending on what your interests are in the at the time. But obviously you know those types of systems need to have robust you know consequential type rewards and benefits associated with them in order to compel the player; and that's something obviously we're going to test in alphas and betas and see how performant it is in actually attracting players to participate and make sure it's not just one-sided so-to-speak. – Steven Sharif

Caravan destruction

If a caravan is destroyed (becomes a wreckage) it will drop a portion of the goods it was transporting. The remainder of the caravan's goods are sunk (lost) when the caravan is destroyed.

The caravan becomes a wreckage upon destruction and that wreckage is an interfaceable item that players can come up to and they can receive certificates for a portion of the goods inside the caravan. Now the idea with that certificate is that it must be taken back to the point of origin, or at least a region within that point of origin. We'll see about that last part because there's a few things I want to test in the Alpha from a gameability standpoint. The reason why for this is because what might happen is you may have some type of collaboration within a guild to kind of game that system. Hey I'm gonna reach this caravan just to the border of the region and then we're all destroy it, collect the goods and take it to you know that region's warehouse; and have to skip out on the last half of the way. So it must successfully reach its destination before the goods can be considered a part of that region. – Steven Sharif

• Anyone may loot the caravan's wreckage.
• Caravan components may also drop when a caravan is destroyed. These components may be salvageable by the caravan owner or by other players, in the case of high grade components.
• Caravans drop certificates for heavy goods that are redeemable at the origin node for a portion of the goods.

Q: What is the reason for requiring the destruction of a caravan by the attackers as opposed to the attackers gaining possession of the caravan?

A: With caravans we really want to emphasize this idea of not necessarily stealing the vehicle, but being forced to achieve victory through destruction; and when you do you then have the logistical issue of how you're going to transport those goods on your own rather than servicing the transport of that by just hijacking. – Steven Sharif

Mount and pet drops

Mounts and pets are dropped by world bosses on a very rare basis.

Temporary mounts

Temporary mounts that drop from bosses will age and eventually die.

Player death

Player death in an open world dungeon in Alpha-1.

We don't have deleveling, instead what we have is experience debt. Now the more experience debt you accrue, the greater the detriment to your character; not to the point where you can not get out of the debt. There will always be a way forward to remove your debt. – Steven Sharif

When a player dies they disintegrate into ash. The ashes contain any items lost by the player due to applicable death penalties. These ash piles are immediately lootable by any player. Player flagging is not triggered by looting.

• A non-combatant (green player) who dies suffers normal penalties, which include:
  • Experience debt (negative experience).
    • Skill and stat dampening.
    • Lower health and mana.
    • Lower gear proficiency.
    • Reduction in drop rates from monsters.
  • Durability loss.

  When players die and they take durability loss, our durability loss isn't like other games where it's a gold sink so to speak. It's a combination of both a gold sink and a material sink. So in a sense, even if you only have completed items, when you take that durability loss you are losing out on materials. It's just a debt to the materials that you are losing instead of the active loss of that material in your inventory. So now you are accruing a material debt if you want to repair and increase again the performance of those particular items that take that durability loss. – Steven Sharif

  • Dropping a percentage of carried gatherables and materials that are used in the generation of something else.
    • Items made for final consumption are not dropped, such as consumable items created by the Cooking and Alchemy professions.
    • A percentage of the certificates a player is carrying are also dropped.
    • If a player dies there will be a period of time before their mule despawns. Other players must kill that player's mule to be able to loot it.
    • If a player's mule dies its corpse will contain the same percentage of lootable items as the player.

• A combatant (purple player) who dies suffers these same penalties, but at half the rate of a non-combatant.
• A corrupt (red player) suffers penalties at four times the rate of a non-combatant, and has a chance to drop any equipped items based on their current corruption score. This includes:
  • Dropping weapons and gear.

  Any amount of corruption allows a player to drop equipped gear upon death. The higher the corruption the greater the chances. – Steven Sharif

  • These dropped items may be looted by other players.
  • Corrupt players respawn at random locations in the vicinity of their death, not at regular spawn points.
    • Non-corrupt players always respawn at the closest active respawn point (to their death).
  • Corruption penalties occur as the corruption is gained (not just at death).

• Experience debt will scale to approximately 2 or 3 percent of the total XP for a max level player. These numbers are subject to change based on testing.

• Death penalties (mostly) do not apply to objective-based PvP (also called sanctioned events).

  There will not be death penalties applied to event-based deaths. The penalties are in the outcome of the event. So your number of deaths is likely going to impact your ability to win that particular event and that's going to be the penalty. This is it to encourage players to opt in to the events right because the more participation we have the more fun it can be; and we understand that the community at large- there's already a risk versus reward component to these events. We don't need to stack on additional risk versus reward to inhibit kind of- to increase the barrier to entry for players who may not be as interested. – Steven Sharif

  • Gear degradation applies on death during Caravan PvP.

• Death penalties do not differ between PvP and PvE, but this is subject to change.

Death by falling is possible.

• Fall damage that occurs while mounted will be first applied to the mount; and if the mount dies as a result, then the remaining damage may overflow onto the player, but this will be determined based on testing.

Death by drowning is possible.

• Players that drown will respawn on shore.

If a player dies there will be a period of time before their mule despawns. Other players must kill that player's mule to be able to loot it.

• If a player's mule dies its corpse will contain the same percentage of lootable items as the player.

Players do not lose gold upon death, no matter their corruption level.

At the moment, the plan is for players to not lose gold upon death, no matter their corruption level. – Cody Peterson

Dropped items

Items that are dragged out of a player's inventory are destroyed.

• Allowing player-dropped items (such as Gear and Currency) to exist in the world is likely not going to be allowed.

See also

• Economy
• Group dynamics
• Encounters
• Artisan classes