PC Item stats vary between same-quality items

[Wyrm]

I have noticed this now and then, and I've been trying to search online for some explanation but so far not found anyone.

I often find that items vary in stats even between same-quality. So I can have a lvl 2 piece of leather armor give 10 light armor. Or 9. Or even 8. This lead to strange situations sometimes when I get a higher quality piece of armor that give less armor. Same with weapons. I just crafted a lvl4 wooden bow that does one less damage than my lvl4 primitive bow. (using iron arrows on both) So, why did I bother crafting the wooden one for rarer and more expensive resources when the primitive one is better? Except for projectile velocity and durability, but that is much less important. I was expecting a damage increase when going up a weapon-tier.

Is this on purpose? Do I have to craft multiple items and see which one gets better stats? Or what is at work here?

 

[Wyrm]

Can add that I was fooling around a bit in the creative menu now and checked on spawning wooden bows. It seems that the lvl4 wooden bow have overall worse damage than the lvl3 and even the lvl2 one. I frequently get lvl3 bows doing 28 damage but I've yet to get a lvl4 one that does more than 25. This is very strange

 

[Zarzthor]

This is the new RNG for all equipment that came into play with A18 and as designed. All items now have a range for damage, durability, etc. and as you have noticed you can get "better" equipment with worse stats. For example a level 4 primitive bow can have a damage range of 15-30 and a level 4 wooden bow with a damage range of 20-40 so if you found or made an above average primitive bow it can take some doing to get a better wooden bow. i've even had level 5 gear with worse stats than some of my level 3 gear and had to think hard what was more important to me more mod slots in the level 5 or the better stats of the level 3.

 

[Wyrm]

There appear to be something with just the wooden bow though. When I spawn items in creative, there is an average increase in stats between quality levels. But for wooden bows, there is a drop at just lvl4. Looking at the base stats, it seems the lvl4 wooden maxes out at 25 while the lvl3 maxes out at 28 (at least for the dozen or so I spawned of each)

If I look at the primitive bow, the lvl 3 seems to max at 22 while the lvl 4 max out at 24. More consistent behavior.

Maybe I stumbled upon a bug.

I looked at the crossbow.... same thing with the lvl4 being on average worse than the lvl3. I will submit a bug-report.

 

[Boidster]

There could be a bug, but FWIW damage ranges are not (or do not seem to be) hard-coded by quality level. So from Q2 to Q6 there is just a range of bonus added (from items.xml):

<passive_effect name="EntityDamage" operation="base_add" value="-4"/>

<passive_effect name="EntityDamage" operation="perc_add" value="-.15,.15"/> <!-- random EntityDmg -->

<passive_effect name="EntityDamage" operation="perc_add" value=".1,.5" tier="2,6"/> <!-- tier bonus -->

<passive_effect name="BlockDamage" operation="perc_add" value="-.15,.15"/> <!-- random BlockDmg -->

<passive_effect name="BlockDamage" operation="perc_add" value=".1,.5" tier="2,6"/> <!-- tier bonus -->

I interpret that XML to mean that from 10% to 50% bonus damage will be added (over Q1 base) per quality level. But there is also a -15% to +15% adjustment to the base item. That would mean it's quite possible for a Q4 to have worse stats than a Q3, but it ought not to be always the case. If you notice a consistent Q4 drop off over many trials, then that does sound like some bug that can't be explained in the XML.

 

[Gazz]

The creative menu is not a good way to generate random seeds. It's good enough for a quick test...

Use "real" loot to generate your data if you want to call it a bug report.

 

[ElCabong]

I have looted higher-quality pistols than the one I'm using but they all held less than the 16 rounds per clip on the one I'm using now.

 

[Scyris]

I have looted higher-quality pistols than the one I'm using but they all held less than the 16 rounds per clip on the one I'm using now.

Getting 16 round clips on a pistol is extremly rare, i've only seen it once. Its like a max roll for clip size iirc.

 

[Boidster]

Base magazine size is 15, +/- 12.2% which calculator tells me is 13.17 to 16.83.

<passive_effect name="MagazineSize" operation="base_set" value="15"/>
<passive_effect name="MagazineSize" operation="perc_add" value="-.122,.122"/> <!-- random MagazineSize -->

It appearst to just truncate (instead of rounding), so the range is 13-16, not 13-17. Given that, you ought to get a 16 round magazine about 27% of the time. I say 27% because any bonus of .0667 or higher will get you to 16.0+, and [0.0667 - 0.122] is about 27% of the full range of possibilities [-0.122 - +0.122].

I did a small test, crafting 30 pistols on workstations. With such a small sample size it's hard to say much beyond "pretty evenly distributed".

[TABLE=border: 1, cellpadding: 3]

[TR]

[TD]Magazine Size[/TD]

[TD]Count[/TD]

[TD]%[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]13[/TD]

[TD]10[/TD]

[TD]33%[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]14[/TD]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]23%[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]15[/TD]

[TD]6[/TD]

[TD]20%[/TD]

[/TR]

[TR]

[TD]16[/TD]

[TD]7[/TD]

[TD]23%[/TD]

[/TR]

[/TABLE]

I tried to do another 20 pistols, but I flew off in the gyro while they were cooking and when I got back almost all of them had 15 magazine size and identical stats. Clearly something went wrong with those 20. Maybe enabling God mode while I was goofing off screwed up the RNG.