Guide Loot Quality And Ingredient Grinding - Should You Use It?

Hey guys, so another question I've seen pop up quite a bit is, should you use loot quality while grinding ingredients? I decided to test this to see if there's any benefit. I’ve done 3 different tests, to try and get some useful information for every tier. The main things we are testing are, does loot quality actually do anything and does it give better tier ingredients.

Before we get into it I realise that this data is probably pretty inaccurate but it should give us an idea, hopefully. Also as mentioned before there are multiple factors that I can’t really control like the amount of mobs I grind. In this case all builds could easily 1-shot mobs, had good survivability and mana, so assuming that the spawn rates are fairly consistent over 30 minutes, it should be pretty close. TLDR at the bottom.

First of all lets breakdown the different armour sets I used.

Spoiler: Armour Sets

Set 1: loot quality set (57%LQ59%LB)
Now for this there is some unavoidable loot bonus, due to ancient currency, I could just use jewellery but I didn’t have the money to buy max loot quality stuff for science and the loot quality is kinda low on jewellery.

So I just created another set with 60% loot bonus so we can see if anything changes.
Set 2: loot bonus (60%)
Ok so this set is 60% loot bonus (ok I couldn’t get 59% I’m sure 1% doesn’t change much) just as a control to see if loot quality actually does something.

Set 3: loot bonus (116%)
This set is the sum of loot quality and loot bonus from the first set. This will directly test if say 50% loot quality is better or worse than 50% loot bonus.

TEST 1
Ok so, the mobs I decided to test first were the bandits in CotL. This is because they drop many ingredient types including:
-platinum ingots (0star)
-poorly made pouches (0star)
-shattered blades (0star)
-stolen goods (1star)
-old explosives (2star)

So I grinded for 30 minutes with each set…

Spoiler: Results

Summary
So the number of stolen goods were pretty constant throughout, showing no preference to loot quality. Theres kinda a noticeable difference in the number of platinum ingots, loot quality getting 24 more, not too sure what to make of this. There are also slightly more blades and pouches, once again not sure if this is due to randomness (maybe I killed more mobs?), but no old explosives were dropped during the loot quality set. So, there was no increase in higher tier drops using loot quality, and at the end of the day, if you are only worried about 0 star ingredients, its way easier to get more loot bonus. Also, no difference in the number of legendaries dropped, although it is a pretty small sample.

However, given the low drop rate of old explosives, I wasn’t happy with making assumptions about t2 ingredients.

TEST 2
The next mobs I decided to grind were the spiders in nivla forest. These are pretty good as they drop:
-forest webs (0 star)
-spider fang (0star)
-poisonous spider eye (1star)
-lucky spider egg (2star)
-luxurious silk (3star).

So after another 30 minutes of grinding with each set, the results are below…

Spoiler: Results

Summary
So, there is no difference found in the number of 2star ingredients when comparing loot quality to loot bonus. However, there is another kinda noticeable difference in the 1star ingredients. The loot quality set having 16 more, seems significant, but then this goes against what was seen in the first test. Also with the loot quality set I got no silk, however this is definitely too small a sample size to make any conclusions about 3 star ingredients. So, overall not too sure what to make of this, no difference in 2 star ingredients, but a semi-noticeable difference in 1star.

TEST 3
But, I wasn’t done with just that, I still needed to test 3 star ingredients and maybe rare mob drops. So the next test was done with one of the most common rare mobs, the highwayman. This guy drops a worn coin (1star dropped every time) and glimmering coin (3 star). Originally I decided to kill 20 highwaymen with each set and see the results. However, I wasn’t happy with the sample size so I did a second round, totalling 40 mob kills per set (it took me 2 days of afking lol).

The results are below…

Spoiler: Results

SET 1 HIGHWAYMAN GRINDING (57%LQ59%LB)
TOTAL = 16/40 = 40%

SET 2 HIGHWAYMAN GRINDING (60%LB)
TOTAL = 9/40 = 22.5%

SET 3 HIGHWAYMAN GRINDING (116%LB)
TOTAL = 17/40 = 42.5%

Summary
So, pretty much no difference in drop rate of 3star ingredients using loot quality. Although, this is only 1 mob so idk. If theres any other easy-ish t3 materials to grind let me know.

Conclusion
Welp, after all that testing idk not much can really be said. Loot quality definitely acts somewhat like loot bonus, but with my testing it doesn’t seem to influence the tier of the ingredients, apart from that one instance in the spider grinding. It did seem to kinda influence 0star with the bandit grinding, but then contradicts itself again with the spider grinding.

Also it got me thinking, currently I believe the highest loot bonus u can get on a crafted leggings/boots is 59% (if theres better let me know). While if you get max rolls on ur loot quality leggings it will total 63%. So I guess if u wanted a completely maxed set it may be better to use loot quality leggings / boots, but this would be almost impossible to get and I dare say not worth the effort.

I guess the take away would be, just use as much loot bonus as possible, but if you don’t have any loot bonus leggings / boots, then lq definitely could be used. Theres no real significant benefit to using loot quality, and with higher loot bonus theres a greater chance for higher tier ingredients anyway, so when in doubt just stack loot bonus.

Well, I hope you found the thread interesting, tbh I’m more confused now than before I did this research. Anyways, feel free to suggest stuff like what I should research next. Thanks for reading:)

TLDR
From my testing loot quality doesn’t seem to increase the drop rate of higher tier ingredients. However, if you had 40%lb leggings and another pair with 30%lb and 20%lq, it would probably be better to go with loot quality leggings, because the sum of lb and lq is higher. Also, when in doubt just go with as much loot bonus as possible.

 

According to the CT, loot quality SHOULDN'T affect ing drops but iirc @Altakar ? tested and found otherwise. Anyway, I'd just go with all lb.

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Also,

https://wynndata.tk/cr/423527929

 

By shouldn't do you mean tier or amount? Because its pretty clear loot quality acts like loot bonus, as the amounts were similar. Also I agree it is much easier to go with all loot bonus, however if you don't have the money for other leggings/boots or you're moving into starting profs from loot running, then loot quality armour is viable.

Those leggings are very nice, still 1% below loot quality/loot bonus combined, but definitely the go to, thanks.

 

Old ss from major. They shouldn't affect it AT ALL apparently, but altakar tested and found it works identical to lb.

 

Ald
Also 1 tip from me, do NOT use crafted lb items with less than 200 dura, its annoying and very costly in the long run

 

very useful

 

I took your data and did a simple paired t-test. Based on this, your conclusion holds that there isn't really any difference between lb and lq, yet. Sample sizes are small so it can't be one and done yet. Differences in drop rates between different tiers cannot be determined due to super small sample sizes (need to add different ingredients as well).

As we talked about earlier, we hypothesized that 1 lq = 1 lb.

(yes ik i forgot to do this weeks ago)