Is farming more rewarded if you open all the chests in a level or does it not matter?

Borderlands 2 Gameplay Discussion (Spoilers!)
#1

I’m curious if anyone knows how chests spawn items? Like is there an aggro like leveling up varkids? Where the more chests you open the more likely to get a rare? Or is it simply a random chance in every chest. without any connection between other chests?

Basically a simpler wording is does opening chests a lot boost your chance for rares at all?

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#2

This here is a rather comprehensive set of guides to all things “Loot” …

@Kitty_Jo Started compiling this some time ago, and whilst i can’t say for sure my gut feeling is no, it’s just random luck … good or bad :+1:

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#3

Each item is randomly, procedurally generated at need, for each loot drop or chest.

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#4

It doesn’t affect the game drop-rate in any way, but it does increase your chances of finding something. I mean, if you don’t look, you’re not going to get anything at all! For example, suppose that the odds of any 1 item in a four-item chest being a legendary was 1 in 1000. But you just automatically rolled that dice four times. Open two chests, 8 times. Open 10 chests, 40 times. Each item in every chest still has the same 1 in 1000 chance of being a legendary, but you improved your odds of finding a legendary significantly.

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#5

If you make yourself more extra opportunities to find loot then even if you don’t find anything good right away you’ll find way more good loot in longer term. Nothing complicated.

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#6

http://www.gearboxsoftware.com/2013/09/inside-the-box-the-borderlands-2-loot-system/

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#7

Thanks for that

#8

yeah the common sense part of open more get more obviously lol. But yeah just wasn’t sure how it worked. but i feel i understand now. thanks!

#9

Its Schrodingers loot.
The legendary is both in the chest and not in the chest.

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So the items are generated as you open the chest , not when you spawn into an area?

Is that the same for vendors?

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#10

Yes.

Not sure. Vendors are complicated by the timer on the “Item of the Day” slot. It may be that they’re all neutral until you check the first one (or check a vendor for the first time). A clue might be found in the “Time remaining” on the IotD between different machines - I’ll try and remember to check that next time.

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#11

This is a question I’ve had in my mind, though I’ve always tended to lean more towards loot being generated when you open the chest, since the type of ammo found in chests can vary, weighted by how much of a given type you have on you the moment you open the chest. (That <50% full point where the game will give you more of that type of ammo.)

The treasure hunter in me wanted to believe there was “gold in yonder hills!” (legendaries tucked away in chests waiting to be found) but it’s not the case. Though part of me was relieved, because for awhile I was thinking “…but what if I missed something good in a chest somewhere!?” when I exited the game.

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#12

So the best way to find the good stuff really is just to open more.

Ha , I used to think that aswell.

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#13

I’m pretty sure the time is the same for all vendors in a given area.
Not so sure about different areas though.

#14

That would make it more likely that the timers (at least) are set on map initialisation (entry). I will do some experiments tonight.

#15

OK, so it looks like the Item of the Day clock starts counting down from the moment you start a session, and there is one IotD timer for all vendors on all maps (which actually makes sense from a memory use point of view).

It’s a bit difficult to say when individual machines are populated, but at least one of the Med vendors in Zed’s clinic sells exactly what you get from asking to buy from Zed himself. I did record some video, which I’ll go back to and analyse in terms of actual machine contents later.

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#16

Thats pretty much what I figured to be honest , although I wasnt sure about timers across different areas.

I’d imagine its the same as chests , where the items are generated upon being accessed. That would make the most sense I guess.

#17

Delving deeper into the RNG rabbit hole:

With chests having a larger pool to spawn from, as opposed to vendors having set types, do you suppose the items chests generate might be influenced (even slightly) by what is being used by the player (or maybe even enemies too) most in that session? Or even what other chests and/or other loot sources have already generated?..

Of course, this is probably just my human tendency to seek patterns when there sometimes isn’t any…but still, I can’t help the draw of any sort of “what-if” scenario…

#18

Not the vendors, no. Player ammo counts and health have some effect on chests and boxes, and character being played has some effect on which heads, skins, and class mods show up, but that’s it.

#19

Interesting…So how do the numbers divide up when it’s multiplayer for chests?

#20

It’s not clear from the “Inside the Box” loot article regarding the multi-player case in regards to class mods, heads, and skins; only that the odds are increased for characters in the game.

Generally for ammo and health, the odds are boosted by way “normal” and “emergency” drops, with a multiplier based on the number of players. (Emergency being “if player health < some %”) I think that the weighting for the increased odds of a specific type of ammo depend on the player opening the chest, but it would take some pretty extensive testing to figure that out.