PC Lucky Looter VS Better Barter?

[th3s0n1c]

This bears repeating. All LL does is give you +50 or whatever to your gamestage when you open a lootable. Get that +50 gamestage the old fashioned way, and you'll eventually get the same loot.
Option 1: Take the perk Lucky Looter, and get loot results like you're a higher-level character!

Option 2: Be a higher-level character!

Loot results will be the same (in the long run; RNG can be an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥).

Wait.. so loot quality caps? I thought they would at least stack with each other.

 

[Tehnomaag]

Wait.. so loot quality caps? I thought they would at least stack with each other.

Hmm. Wonder if the looting algorithm is using the individual gamestage or the calculated gamestage in groups. If the latter it would be pretty trivial to have couple of friends with you for extra +200 or so gamestage for ~L 35 characters.

 

[Boidster]

Now hold on a second there friend. Lucky looter only increases game stage in loot you say? So I should stop suiciding my character and in about 25 days I'll have the same loot effect as the maxed perk?

Oops sorry, I did not mean to ignore your response for a week.

Wait.. so loot quality caps? I thought they would at least stack with each other.

Or yours for two days.

What I said was:

All LL does is give you +50 or whatever to your gamestage when you open a lootable.

I'm not entirely sure what this has to do with suiciding your character or loot quality caps. The mechanism of Lucky Looter, as I understand it, is as follows.

1) Assume you have a character with Gamestage 100, no Lucky Looter

2) Assume that said character buys max Lucky Looter

3) When that character opens a lootable item, the game will "roll" RNG on the contents of that lootable as though the player had Gamestage 150.

Note that I'm not certain if max Lucky Looter is +50 or +100 or what the exact number is. But whatever the actual number is (and of course each lower level of LL adds a smaller amount) as I understand it the game just adds that to your Gamestage to give you an "effective Gamestage" when opening a lootable.

Continuing the example:

4) Assume the character gains 50 GS through a horde night, for a total now of 150

5) When that character (still having max LL) opens an item, the effective GS will now be 200 - 150 "real" plus 50 from LL

I hope that clarifies my understanding of how it works.

Edit to add: from loot.xml, here is an example of how LL would affect what is going on. (Note that in the actual XML it says "level" where I have put "gamestage" - I did this for clarity; the XML comments indicate that level=gamestage.)

<qualitytemplate gamestage="0,9" default_quality="1">
<loot quality="1" prob="0.764"/>
<loot quality="2" prob="0.765"/>
<loot quality="3" prob="1"/>
</qualitytemplate>

<qualitytemplate gamestage="10,19" default_quality="1">
<loot quality="1" prob="0.742"/>
<loot quality="2" prob="0.7"/>
<loot quality="3" prob="1"/>
</qualitytemplate>

If you were at GS 7, let's say, but you have one level of Lucky Looter which (let's assume) gives you +5 GS for looting, then when you open a lootable you would move from the first <qualitytemplate>, which is for GS 0-9, and instead use the 2nd <qualitytemplate> which is for GS 10-19. Because your effective GS for looting would be 7 (base) +5 (bonus from LL) = 12.

Moving to that 2nd <qualitytemplate> gives you a very slightly higher probability of a better quality item. If you look in items.xml this sort of thing is all over the place - probabilities dependent on effective gamestage, which is what Lucky Looter will increase.

 

[Boidster]

Hmm. Wonder if the looting algorithm is using the individual gamestage or the calculated gamestage in groups. If the latter it would be pretty trivial to have couple of friends with you for extra +200 or so gamestage for ~L 35 characters.

It uses the party's effective gamestage. I assume that the game takes into account the players' Lucky Looter-modified GS when calculating the party's effective GS for looting. From loot.xml:

<!-- This generates items with Quality Levels based on the player party's gamestage.
The  LootGamestage  effect is added to that. -->

...bunch of quality level/probability groups follow...

 

[FA_Q2]

The loot bonus is not relevant for me. I always get a few levels in LL because the loot speed. You can spend more time opening crap in this game than any other activity if you loot a lot. Faster looting saves time to gain more levels. You will eventually make up for those points spent anyway.

BB is darn near a necessity though. You can get anything from the trader.

 

[canadianbluebeer]

To get Solar BANKS and Quality 6 Solar panels you are required Better Barter 5/5, these are not things Lucky Looter would ever give you.

This.

However, it doesn't take much mining for shale to be able to feed a buncha generators without issues.

Battery banks easy to get.

Q6 batteries, well, keep wrenching cars, and LL does help there.

(of course as you close in on lvl 200, you'll start getting more Q6 stuff anyway)