Larian Studios Forums Divinity - Original Sin Divinity Original Sin - Beta Treasure Chests and the question of randomness

I used to, back in the Divine Divinity, Baldur's Gate days get excited when I found an unopened treasure chest. These days, there's a randomizer deciding what you get.

Random "loot" is not better. I like hand placed treasure, I like knowing that there will be good treasure inside a hard to open chest. Not just random stuff I can reset by savescumming. It hurts the fun of it for me. Maybe random barrels and low trash enemies, but for the harder to reach/open why not actually reward the player??

The Dark/Demon's Souls series still does this and they're much better for it.

There should definitely be different qualities of random loot. Locked chests should be of a notably higher quality than unlocked ones and hidden/hard-to-reach ones should also be of a higher quality.

I agree random loot takes the reward out of exploration and is also worse in a game like this when the mobs are limited and do not respawn. This type of loot system works better for something like Diablo where the mobs respawn and you know you are going to keep running the area over and over because that is what the game is. However, in an rpg such as this it breaks risk/reward.

In DD I hated the random stats on dragon armor pieces. I also did not like in one case where I was fighting in an orc camp got a random epic off of a guard went a few stepps a mini boss came out and I got crap off of it. I use to read forums where people said they knew where items were and would save and load until they got the stats they wanted on the item, including skill books that could be on a bookcase. This seems to defeat the purpose to me if you just load and reload until you get what you want.

That's exactly it. Not only are you removing equipment that has history and is unique (think infinity engine games) but you reward save scumming better "loot". There must be a way to either have multiples "tiers" depending on the type of container, but having at least a few static chests with unique gear that have a story. I can't find myself caring about a sword that went thru a random name generator. "The Bronze Woe-begotten Sword of Icing +3 (Cursed)"

There should be loot 'tables'. Basically the way some devs do it today you have specific tables for specific areas. Say village A has a loot table with specific items listed in the table. When player opens one of the village chests then one of the items from the table is being generated. When player opens a chest in a dungeon then another 'table' is used where more dungeon appropriate items are used.

Do you see anything completely random in game chests? So far by opening barrels, boxes and couple of chests I've noticed difference of the loot type and I didn't find it very inappropriate. Some fisherman stand boxes gave me some fish, chest in a house with locked doors gave me a spell scroll. So far I see that loot tables in game at least make sense.

If you kill some hard monster and found a chest in his layer and after opening it with a lockpick you'd find a fish... then yeah, loot table for this location would need to be adjusted. So far I didn't have such 'funny' experiences. But then again, who knows maybe that monster likes fish more than anything in the world?

Right now loot tables are set to hand out a LOT of Animal Pelts and Sloth/Leather/Scale/Plate scraps. (Forktong is aware of this issue, though.)

+1 stabbey

I like random loot; but as others have said it should be table driven (I actually implemented something like that in a mud years ago) and as Stabbey already noted the devs are aware that the table flags are not set correctly.
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The only reason I added another comment to this thread is because I think random loot is the right way to do things (with a few static loads here and there) and I believe this is what they did in DKS.

Both have pro and cons, imho.

The nice thing about handplaced loot is that it can be easier to balance, more atmospheric and you don't have to worry about getting worthless junk due to bad luck.

I don't mind random loot for "filler" enemies or random containers, but quest specific rewards are probably better hand-placed.