Larian Studios Forums Divinity: Original Sin 2 Divinity - Original Sin 2 - General What about tying loot to carried gear?

I think we've all been there where, you're fighting this enemy, they're clearly heavily armored and have a sweet weapon because of how hard they're hitting that's doing crazy stuff, and you beat them only to discover like 10 gold. Throw in a fudge factor for new items, but yeah, more or less make the lion's share of the gear we can loot what we can visually see being worn by the NPCs. How does that sound?

I've always found it weird that killing an NPC doesn't give me access to what they were selling/wearing/using/ect.....

I think in the first opus you actually got what they were selling (but not what they were wearing I admit)

The "What you see is what you get" approach *can* eventually work but it needs a series of tweaks to the overall economy to not break the game (for a start: common items being essentially worthless and too inconvenient to be carried in numbers) and I can't think of many games which tried it and implemented it successfully.

In any case, I'd prefer pretty much any possible alternative to the current "randomize almost everything".
I'm a fan of deliberately designed and hand-placed loot in these games.

I don't particularly like randomized itemization (and "loot whoring" in general) even in hack'n slash games like Diablo, let alone in a proper RPG where encounters are a finite number.

I had the feeling, when I killed the madman (magister?) with a 2h axe and heavy armor, I thought cool I gonna get some gear for my warrior... but only to drop a ring, iirc.

Witcher 3, Bethesda games all achieved this. It certainly isn't that rare.

But the looting system/itemization in most Bethesda games is, in fact, absolutely dreadful.

And no, TW3 doesn't have a "WYSIWYG" system.
Not to mention it has its fair share of flaws with itemization as well.

In Witcher 3, enemies constantly drop swords & armour. They're certainly not dropping *everything* like hats and socks, but they reliably drop weapons and other bits of equipment connected to what they were actually using. If you kill someone wearing heavy armour, it's pretty safe to say he'll drop some armour.

There were problems in Bethesda games looting sytem, but no worse than already exists in Larian's "pick up every seashell" loot system.

The problem, IMHO, with a "loot what you see" approach is that it forces the devs to curtail what they put on enemies, or else the player will escalate in power too quickly.

Usually NPCs aren't as tactical as players, and so, this shortcoming is often masked through bonuses like better gear. now, if you "loot what you see" the devs can't put better gear on the NPCs, because then, in short order, the players will have that gear and be even more OP. This would lead to a complete redesign of the encounters, forcing the player to fight far more inconsequential minions, and far less narrative, meaningful combats.

I for one don't really want to have to slog through tons of "trash mobs" during combat rather than the type of combat encounters that we have now.

While the idea is cool on the surface, I think it adds too much power creep and doesn't really make the game better - it would dilute one of the star features of the game - the tactical combat.

Ahh, but there is a way to get a vendors entire inventory. Let me tell you about a little thing my brother and me have come to call the "curse bag" in our divinity games.

When you kill a vendor you only get a little bit of loot, usually some of the things they sell will drop. They do however also drop every item you ever sold them. This means that if you have enough items to trade them for their entire inventory you can then get what you traded back by killing them.

At the start of the game it requires a bit of work. You simply pick up absolutely everything. Sea shells, sticks, candles, cloth, crates, fish, socks, shovels. Everything!
Put that in a backpack and trade the backpack to the least important vendor in your area. Kill the vendor, and put that vendors items in the bag. Now you have a more valuable bag to sell to the next vendor.

The name comes from vendors who come to pocess this bag of enormous wealth tended to meet a terrible end short after.

I agree Larians looting system isnt the best one but Bethesda games have a bullshit economy beginning with level 1. You can ALWAYS afford EVERYTHING. Which is good because games like Skyrim or Fallout are quite open while OS1+2 has no respawning enemies and a fixed endpoint -> economy should be better balanced.

In W3 enemies dropped everything yes but everything except for witcher armor was useless anyway so it didnt matter.

I think this would be alright as long as there's still a chance for something else to drop as well. A lot of enemies don't carry a whole lot in the way of things you would be able to use/equip - yet can take a lot of effort to kill. That would make all of those fights really disappointing. So keep a chance to drop stuff they're not visibly wielding/carrying as well.