Combining is OP — it kills the RNG item roll, A (1-in-2.4-million chance) perfect weapon is now ~(39) copies and a combine station.

[Grandpa Minion]

Combining doesn't make weapons stronger than intended — it makes perfect weapons​

(Posting this as discussion, not a bug report. Nothing here is broken. The combine station does exactly what the code says it should. But I think the magnitude of what it does to loot rarity isn't widely understood, so here are the actual numbers from V3.0.1's items.xml.)

First, what combining actually does​

It is not additive. It takes two of the same item and, for each stat independently, keeps the better of the two values and discards the other. Item A's +23% EntityDamage merged with Item B's +61% gives you +61%, not +84%.

So the ceiling is fully respected. Nothing here produces a weapon stronger than TFP allows. Weapons are not overpowered. If someone tells you combining lets you stack damage forever, they're wrong.

The stat roll​

Every weapon rolls two values per stat and sums them (per TFP's own comment in items.xml — "quality (0 rolls as base value, >0 rolls as the added value)"):

• Base roll — always fires. Small.
• Added roll — only a 30% chance to fire, gated by quality tier and lootstage.

For a Q6 weapon at lootstage 20+, here's what a single M60 drop is up against:

Stat	Ceiling	Chance one drop lands in the top 10% of that stat
EntityDamage	+80%	5.3% (1 in 19)
MagazineSize	+110%	3.9% (1 in 26)
RoundsPerMinute	+32%	7.1% (1 in 14)
DamageFalloffRange	+80%	5.3% (1 in 19)
DegradationMax	+80%	5.3% (1 in 19)

Those are fine odds on their own. The interesting part is what happens when you want all five.

The number​

Chance a single dropped M60 lands in the top decile on all five stats at once: 1 in 2,393,074.

That's the weapon you were never supposed to find. That's the god roll.

With combining, the number of copies needed to build that exact weapon:

• 39 copies → 50% chance
• 76 copies → 90% chance
• 127 copies → 99% chance

Why the gap is so enormous​

This is the part I think gets missed. It isn't that the ceiling is easy to reach — it's that combine merges each stat independently.

Without combining, you have to get lucky on all five stats on the same item. That's the 1-in-2.4-million wall.

With combining, you only need each stat to get lucky once, anywhere in your pile — and then combine harvests them into one weapon. Best EntityDamage from copy #7, best MagazineSize from copy #23, best RoundsPerMinute from copy #51. The lottery isn't beaten. It's bypassed.

A 2.4-million-to-1 outcome becomes a weekend of farming.

What this means in practice​

On a long-running server — especially PvP — everyone who bothers converges on identical, mathematically perfected gear. Not because they got lucky. Because they farmed volume. There's no skill requirement, no perk investment, no resource cost, no time gate: just copies.

The chase is gone. The weapons aren't stronger than intended; they're just no longer rare, and for a lot of us the stat lottery was one of the last things left to chase at endgame.

What I'm not claiming​

• Not a bug. The code does exactly what it's written to do.
• Not overpowered. The +80% ceiling holds. Nothing exceeds it.
• Not free. You burn 39–127 copies. That's a real grind — it's just a grind anyone can complete, rather than rng most players never win.
• Not obviously bad. Plenty of players hate loot RNG and would call deterministic perfection a feature, not a flaw. That's a legitimate position and I'm not pretending it isn't.

The actual question​

Is the intent that a perfected weapon should be a rare find, or a farmable target?

If it's meant to be farmable, then this is working as designed and I'll shut up. If it's meant to be a chase item, then combining currently routes around the entire chase, and the levers are all small ones — a resource cost, a crafting-skill requirement, a diminishing return on the merge, or simply not taking the max on every stat.
Curious what others are seeing on their servers.

 

[8_Hussars]

I suspect the intent is to allow both.

Previously, a Tier 6 weapon was genuinely rare because players couldn't craft one, it had to be looted.

Once Tier 6 crafting was introduced, those weapons effectively became farmable. The minor random stat differences between them were largely insignificant.

With the introduction of the magnitude system, there's now an even stronger class of Tier 6 legendary weapons. While they are technically still farmable, they represent a new top-end chase item.

At the same time, version 3.0 introduced several settings that allow server owners to make that progression more "chaseable," including maximum crafting level, maximum buy level, item degradation, and other progression controls.

 

[ktrain]

Combining doesn't make weapons stronger than intended — it makes perfect weapons​

(Posting this as discussion, not a bug report. Nothing here is broken. The combine station does exactly what the code says it should. But I think the magnitude of what it does to loot rarity isn't widely understood, so here are the actual numbers from V3.0.1's items.xml.)

First, what combining actually does​

It is not additive. It takes two of the same item and, for each stat independently, keeps the better of the two values and discards the other. Item A's +23% EntityDamage merged with Item B's +61% gives you +61%, not +84%.

So the ceiling is fully respected. Nothing here produces a weapon stronger than TFP allows. Weapons are not overpowered. If someone tells you combining lets you stack damage forever, they're wrong.

The stat roll​

Every weapon rolls two values per stat and sums them (per TFP's own comment in items.xml — "quality (0 rolls as base value, >0 rolls as the added value)"):

• Base roll — always fires. Small.
• Added roll — only a 30% chance to fire, gated by quality tier and lootstage.

For a Q6 weapon at lootstage 20+, here's what a single M60 drop is up against:

Stat	Ceiling	Chance one drop lands in the top 10% of that stat
EntityDamage	+80%	5.3% (1 in 19)
MagazineSize	+110%	3.9% (1 in 26)
RoundsPerMinute	+32%	7.1% (1 in 14)
DamageFalloffRange	+80%	5.3% (1 in 19)
DegradationMax	+80%	5.3% (1 in 19)

Those are fine odds on their own. The interesting part is what happens when you want all five.

The number​

Chance a single dropped M60 lands in the top decile on all five stats at once: 1 in 2,393,074.

That's the weapon you were never supposed to find. That's the god roll.

With combining, the number of copies needed to build that exact weapon:

• 39 copies → 50% chance
• 76 copies → 90% chance
• 127 copies → 99% chance

Why the gap is so enormous​

This is the part I think gets missed. It isn't that the ceiling is easy to reach — it's that combine merges each stat independently.

Without combining, you have to get lucky on all five stats on the same item. That's the 1-in-2.4-million wall.

With combining, you only need each stat to get lucky once, anywhere in your pile — and then combine harvests them into one weapon. Best EntityDamage from copy #7, best MagazineSize from copy #23, best RoundsPerMinute from copy #51. The lottery isn't beaten. It's bypassed.

A 2.4-million-to-1 outcome becomes a weekend of farming.

What this means in practice​

On a long-running server — especially PvP — everyone who bothers converges on identical, mathematically perfected gear. Not because they got lucky. Because they farmed volume. There's no skill requirement, no perk investment, no resource cost, no time gate: just copies.

The chase is gone. The weapons aren't stronger than intended; they're just no longer rare, and for a lot of us the stat lottery was one of the last things left to chase at endgame.

What I'm not claiming​

• Not a bug. The code does exactly what it's written to do.
• Not overpowered. The +80% ceiling holds. Nothing exceeds it.
• Not free. You burn 39–127 copies. That's a real grind — it's just a grind anyone can complete, rather than rng most players never win.
• Not obviously bad. Plenty of players hate loot RNG and would call deterministic perfection a feature, not a flaw. That's a legitimate position and I'm not pretending it isn't.

The actual question​

Is the intent that a perfected weapon should be a rare find, or a farmable target?

If it's meant to be farmable, then this is working as designed and I'll shut up. If it's meant to be a chase item, then combining currently routes around the entire chase, and the levers are all small ones — a resource cost, a crafting-skill requirement, a diminishing return on the merge, or simply not taking the max on every stat.
Curious what others are seeing on their servers.

This is exactly why the combine was removed in the first place, long ago. It is also exactly why i removed combine from game versions 3.0.0 exp and up...

 

[Riamus]

I do think that it's too easy to get full starred items with the Combiner. If anything, I'd make it so all looted items and purchased items can only have 1 starred stat at most. Then you'll need to find or buy a minimum of 6 of the items to get a full starred item instead of possible either finding one already fully starred (I haven't see a full starred item in loot or trader yet, so not sure if that's possible) or at least being able to do it with only 2. Getting 6 items that have each have a different stat will be relatively low, so you're likely to need closer to 10 or so on average (ballpark). I think that's at least better.

However, that is somewhat unrelated to the post being about the stat range and getting the highest value in each stat, which isn't specifically about the stars, though they are necessary in combination with the stat roll to get the best values.

But this is just about how easy or not easy it is to hit the best values on items. In the end, how important is that really? Other than for people who are stat chasers, will an extra 2% on a stat really matter? Unless you're at a point where that extra little bit will change a 2 hit kill into a 1 hit kill or change a 2 hit block destruction into only 1 hit, it really has no importance. For example, if I have 2% extra damage and I'm hitting enemies for 50 damage per hit already and the enemy has 80 HP, getting 51 damage per hit (2% increase) won't change anything. Even bumping that to 10% wouldn't change anything (55 would still require 2 hits). Certain stats might be more useful for those increases, but many just aren't.

And in many cases, some of the stats aren't even really worth improving. I know some people might use a spear to break a block instead of switching to a hammer or pick or shovel or whatever, based on the block type, but generally speaking, block damage on a weapon isn't important... and in many cases, you might actually want it to be lower. I stopped trying out shotguns back when I started to play because almost every shot with a shotgun using the normal red shotgun shells would destroy any blocks they hit, making the POI nothing more than swiss cheese. That's changed since then, but I haven't gone back to them because of that initial experience. And, for me, regular attack damage on my spear is almost useless since it's extremely rare (usually an accidental click) that I'm not using a power attack.

So, yes... you can get the better, or even best, stats pretty easily. But if you're not a stat chaser, I don't think it's a big deal. But even so, I also wouldn't care if they balanced that better.

 

[Grandpa Minion]

This is exactly why the combine was removed in the first place, long ago. It is also exactly why i removed combine from game versions 3.0.0 exp and up...

the thing that really bothers me is that there is no gate for modding to change % or anything serverside when it comes to combining, everything i researched about it shows combining is controlled client side, to balance it would require eac off on servers with a client side mod, That pretty much puts the clamps on it. Its either keep it as is or get rid of it.

 

[Kire]

Personally, I feel like the chance of getting items with stars is too high. I'm fine with them having multiple buffed stats, and the combining system is great too. It just feels like every second item I loot has buffed stats.

It's supposed to be exciting to find a unique item like that, but I've come to expect items to have buffed stats now. Since it's a new feature, I think it's better to release it on the stronger side rather than the weaker side, and I'm sure there will be adjustments later, but as it stands, I don't feel like it encourages looting as much as I thought it would when I first heard about it. With the current drop rates you get maxed out pretty quickly.

 

[8_Hussars]

One thing that is potentially missing in this discussion is that, anecdotally 3.0 loot balance seems overly generous out of the box. Pulling multiple Level 6 tools with magnitude, from a Working Stiff truck in the snow biome is over tuned.

Don't get me wrong, I like the chance of a lucky random loot pull of a great item at great risk, but from what I have experienced and seen in streams, its too rewarding.

 

[ktrain]

the thing that really bothers me is that there is no gate for modding to change % or anything serverside when it comes to combining, everything i researched about it shows combining is controlled client side, to balance it would require eac off on servers with a client side mod, That pretty much puts the clamps on it. Its either keep it as is or get rid of it.

I'm not convinced that EAC is anything more than a virus disguised as an anitcheat engine.

Cheaters have been able to avoid detection since 2 hours after it's first release, and continue to avoid detection to this day.

It only catches the stupid copypasta script kiddies.

It's not worth the overhead or the constraints it places upon games.

Why people who should know better continue to push the ignorant masses to use EAC baffles me.

 

[Grandpa Minion]

I'm not convinced that EAC is anything more than a virus disguised as an anitcheat engine.

Cheaters have been able to avoid detection since 2 hours after it's first release, and continue to avoid detection to this day.

It only catches the stupid copypasta script kiddies.

It's not worth the overhead or the constraints it places upon games.

Why people who should know better continue to push the ignorant masses to use EAC baffles me.

it comes down to an old saying... "anything is better than nothing", EAC has its drawbacks but no way would i run a pvp server without it, Having EAC off does more harm than having it on for us.

 

[Vaeliorin]

I've admittedly not played a ton of 3.0, but looting 39 of any one T3 item sounds like a horrifically unfun grind to me. I've probably not looted 39 T3 firearms of a single type in the last 500-600 hours I've spent playing, probably not tools either. Melee weapons...maybe.

Maybe if you grind traders it would be less horrific, but it doesn't sound even remotely fun to me.

 

[Thecolours]

I would make 2 changes to rhe current system.

1- any magnitude items found in the wild should come with a max roll of 1 boosted stat.

2- There should be a 10% chance you completely destroy both items every time you try to combine them.

This will make it way more rewarding when you succeed and create a long term goal to get the perfect magnitude item.

 

[bdubyah]

I would make 2 changes to rhe current system.

1- any magnitude items found in the wild should come with a max roll of 1 boosted stat.

2- There should be a 10% chance you completely destroy both items every time you try to combine them.

This will make it way more rewarding when you succeed and create a long term goal to get the perfect magnitude item.

1: I would be fine with that, though the chance of a stat being boosted still needs lowered. Way too common right now.

2: Both destroyed seems a bit harsh. Maybe it fails and you lose the lower level one of the two, but I was thinking something like a small chance one boosted stat doesn't carry over, or if both have a boosted stat it picks the lower one.

 

[Riamus]

1: I would be fine with that, though the chance of a stat being boosted still needs lowered. Way too common right now.

2: Both destroyed seems a bit harsh. Maybe it fails and you lose the lower level one of the two, but I was thinking something like a small chance one boosted stat doesn't carry over, or if both have a boosted stat it picks the lower one.

Yeah, I doubt I'd use the combiner at all if both were destroyed.

 

[theFlu]

Yeah, I doubt I'd use the combiner at all if both were destroyed.

I'd use it, but I'd keep building up two of the same weapon, always upgrading the worse one. The destruction could still be "expensive", but it would never set you back.

 

[Grandpa Minion]

my 2 recommendations for the combiner:
Here are both, each with the reasoning behind why it works — not just what it does:


A) Cap what a merge can transfer, below the roll ceiling.
What: When combining copies a stat from one weapon to another, don't copy it at full value — transfer only a fraction (say 60–70%), or cap the merged result at some percentage of that stat's maximum.

Why it works: The whole problem is that combining takes the max of two values and walks straight to the ceiling. If the transfer is taxed, combining can never reach the top of the range no matter how many copies you burn — you build a second, lower ceiling underneath the loot ceiling. That opens a band at the top of every stat that only loot can fill. A best-in-slot roll becomes something you find again, and a perfect weapon goes back to being the rare drop it was designed to be, because you physically can't assemble one from parts anymore. It targets the actual disease — combining reaching the ceiling — rather than just slowing it down. This is the one to push.


B) Limit a merge to one stat at a time.
What: Instead of a single merge harvesting every stat where the donor is better (all at once, unlimited — which is how it works now), let it improve only one stat per merge — the player's choice, or just the single biggest improvement.

Why it works: The reason 39 copies gets you a god weapon isn't that the ceiling is easy — it's that each merge is a free unlimited harvest, vacuuming the best of all five stats into one item in one pass. Force it to one stat per merge and every stat you want costs a whole separate weapon. Assembling a perfect item means finding and burning a dedicated god-roll donor for each stat, one at a time — a deliberate series of choices instead of a sweep. Caveat: on its own this only slows the grind; a determined player still reaches the endpoint. So it's a pairing with A, not a replacement — A sets the ceiling, B makes even reaching the capped result feel like real decisions.

NOTE: THESE OPTIONS ARE NOT POSSIBLE ON A EAC PROTECTION SERVER OTHERWISE A MOD COULD DO IT

 

[Maxil20]

I really think the best course to this solution is to simply add new options related to the magnitude system. I do think it is quite odd a system being so dynamic has practically zero customization options added in the update that added over 100+ options for several aspects to the game.

I would personally prefer this as I do like the system right now (I'm currently working on "perfecting" several guns/auger + chainsaw right now, and I'm still finding new upgrades on day 65), but I can totally understand how its current implementation can be quite unbalanced to a lot of people right now . I would be a bit personally disappointed if they flatly changed how the system works and not add options for players who wish to custom tune their magnitude system (or even not have it at all!).

One more minor tidbit, I never personally minded finding an item with several starred stats, especially since the stats it can effect have drastically different levels of importance (you are going to care considerably more for a damage/stamina upgrade on a club than it's durability/block damage, for instance!)

 

[ElCabong]

This is much better in the recent update. Weapons aren't as common and if you do find one you want to use you are probably not going to find lots of other weapons like it that you can upgrade with to make it exceptionally overpowered.

I've been upgrading by crafting a higher level weapon. My exceptional pipe pistol has eight rounds that I upgraded buy crafting a higher level pipe pistol to get extra slots and damage. I didn't find any other exceptional pipe pistols.

I am finding lots of upgrades for my stone ax and it is very op. Lol

 

[Grandpa Minion]

This is much better in the recent update. Weapons aren't as common and if you do find one you want to use you are probably not going to find lots of other weapons like it that you can upgrade with to make it exceptionally overpowered.

I've been upgrading by crafting a higher level weapon. My exceptional pipe pistol has eight rounds that I upgraded buy crafting a higher level pipe pistol to get extra slots and damage. I didn't find any other exceptional pipe pistols.

I am finding lots of upgrades for my stone ax and it is very op. Lol

thats the kind of stuff ive noticed, low lvl players running around with powerfull weapons and tools., kills progression.

 

[ElCabong]

I

thats the kind of stuff ive noticed, low lvl players running around with powerfull weapons and tools., kills progression.

Oh it's great for me because I never go beyond stone axes and shovels. I looted a 9 mm that has three extra rounds I don't regard that as very overpowering. I haven't loaded any other pistols. I looted an AK-47 that was pretty darn good but I don't use assault rifles. And I did loot two hunting rifles that combined to make a real nice rifle but I don't use rifles either.
Perhaps if you were willing to change your game play based on what you loot? That might work up to a point.

Far I'm willing to say it's fun and not overpowering. I play solo too.

 

[Kazgrel]

I like the combine system. However, I do think there needs to be a percentile cap, or if there is a cap, bring it down a bit. I had a g6 Dulture doing right at 300 damage a shot with AP ammo thanks to a ~70% magnitude bump on damage. That's not accounting for my perks (5/5 Pistoleer). Think the only thing I couldn't one shot with it was zombie bears and infernal zeds. Granted we had player damage set at 100% despite having played for years on insane, so we're gonna move those sliders back to 50% because with how magnitude is now, things are a lot easier.