Loot and luck
Learning paths through this topic
Make armour drops favour the slot where the hero is weakest
Getting a fifth helmet while the boots are still from the first hour is the quickest way to make loot feel pointless. Favouring the weak spot helps, but done strictly it can be gamed by taking gear off. This entry tilts the odds gently and closes that door.
Lose about a quarter of the carried loot on death, never the worn gear
A death penalty has to hurt enough to matter and not so much that players quit. Taking a share of the value is fairer than taking random whole items, but stacks, quest items and a single precious find make that harder than it sounds. This entry takes exactly what it should.
Give every player their own loot from a shared chest, the same after a reconnect
Personal loot ends fights over a shared chest, but it needs every player's roll to be their own, repeatable if they disconnect, and not affected by who opened first. A careless mix of names can even give two players the same hash. This entry builds the seed with care.
Work out how many scrolls it takes to enchant gear to a high level
Each enchant attempt can succeed, fail harmlessly early on, or drop the item a level later on. Designers set the chances and then discover that the cost of the top level is ten times what they guessed. This entry computes the real average cost step by step and checks it with a simulation.
Hand out drops fairly in a group without arguments
When three players share a dungeon and one item drops, someone is unhappy. Pure chance gives one player everything over an evening. A simple memory of who got what lets the system even things out over time and still feel random enough to be fun.
Reward a boss kill fully the first time, then less when it is farmed
Players who kill the same boss fifty times in an hour break the economy, but a flat cooldown feels like punishment. A sliding scale that recovers by itself keeps casual players rewarded and makes grinding unattractive. This entry builds it from timestamps.
Make farming one resource spot over and over give less and less
Players find the one rich spot and stand there all night. A hard limit feels like a wall, while a slow fade feels like the land getting tired. The fade has to forget on its own, and it must never drop to nothing, or players will not know whether something broke.
Fill a dungeon floor with treasure worth exactly its budget
Scattering random items across a floor makes one run rich and the next poor, and it can bury the player in junk or hand out a fortune. This entry fills each floor from a fixed value, never goes over it, and turns whatever is left into something useful.
Let night, rain and bait change what a fishing rod pulls up
Fishing feels alive when the evening brings different fish than noon. But stacking several bonuses quickly makes one fish take over the whole pond, and a bad catch should not vanish either. Here is how to combine the conditions so the water stays believable.
Make a treasure thief drop its gold hit by hit while it runs away
A creature that runs off with a sack of gold is a fun chase, but if the prize only comes on the killing blow, a player who almost had it gets nothing, and one who overkills it gets too much. This entry pays out in step with the damage and always adds up.
Merge looted food into a stack without refreshing the old portions
Bread found today and bread found last week look the same in the bag, and merging them is natural. Done the simple way, the old loaves turn fresh, or the new ones spoil with the old. This entry keeps each portion's age through merges, eating and rot.
Make food you find lying around already partly spoiled
Food that was dropped days ago should not look as fresh as food made a minute ago. And when old and new food are put together in one stack, the result must not become a loophole that cleans up rotten meat. Here is how to age finds honestly and what a merged stack is worth.