Has loot for 3rd & 4th rate changed over past few days?

[WernerHoffmann]

Less than a week ago, I could kill 4th rates and 3rd rates, looting decent mods, books, and doubloons. For the past 3 days, most of the ships drop low-level books that I was getting when hunting 6th rates, and some drop little loot at all (the 3rd rate that I just sank dropped 73 rum and that's it). Has something changed?

[nicksmithcc]

^^ I am noticing the same thing, anyone else?

[WernerHoffmann]

I don't know, something is up. Just sank a pair of elites, one was a Wasa.. No notes, no bloomfields or anything except 36 rig repairs and 500 doubloons.

Edited April 7, 2020 by WernerHoffmann

[SFCGunny]

I think you're a victim of your own confirmation bias

[WernerHoffmann]

1 minute ago, SFCGunny said:

I think you're a victim of your own confirmation bias

It's possible, but it's not just me. Myself, my brother, a few I've talked to in Global. I don't know, would be nice to know either way though, I have killed close to 30 ships and have seen a marked decline in quality and quantity..

[BoatyMcBoatFace]

gold chests give garbage too now

 at least the past 11 of them

[WernerHoffmann]

10 minutes ago, BoatyMcBoatFace said:

gold chests give garbage too now

 at least the past 11 of them

Now THIS I know for sure. I've opened 7 in a row, not a single permit, and all of the mods have been low-level.

I'm tracking the data now though to make sure it's not just confirmation bias (always a legitimate idea when it comes to looting).

[Tomasso il Fortunato]

Same thing here too.

Opened 5 gold chests and no book or permit . Only upgrades and poor books ( 2 or 5 )

Edited April 7, 2020 by Tomasso il Fortunato

[SnovaZdorowa]

[Malcolm3]

10 hours ago, WernerHoffmann said:

Now THIS I know for sure. I've opened 7 in a row, not a single permit, and all of the mods have been low-level.

That happened before for me, when I opened 5 Gold and 4 Silver Chests and got not one permit. They checked and said that it's incredibly bad luck...

But still I also noticed that loot recently really became worse, at least from trader ships.
Stealth nerf, some unexpected and unwanted tweaks or just some bad string of events?

[erelkivtuadrater]

if they changed it its good in the long run, maybe the elite events will be worth doing soon, imo its not good when  you can rinse and repeat the same excat farm for a short time to get the best items ingame, it will become a mid max meta like you have in wow classic, where if you know how to do it you can farm so much resources with minimal effort

Edited April 8, 2020 by erelkivtuadrater

[GrubbyZebra]

Looking at the loot tables for Gold Chests, the permits have a lower chance of dropping than almost any other possible loot except for the rare books for the 3 encylopedias. So it would make sense to get a string without receiving any.

For 3-4th rate OW fleets, it seems the most likely loot is repairs, loki, logbook, or 381-1797 doubloons (3rd rates are the higher part of this, 4th the lower).  Middle of the roads upgrades have a much smaller chance of dropping (by middle of the road, I mean one step above the "basic" upgrades), with good upgrades being rarer still. Rare books and upgrades have almost no chance of dropping (same as the 5th rate fleets), which, given my anecdotal experience, means one ship in a 6-8 ship fleet, every 3rd or 4th fleet, should contain one of these types of items.

That said, I did not make a note of the loot tables before and after the loot tweaks a few weeks back to see what all changed, but there was a change when they increased the rate at which blueprints dropped in the wooden chests (their chance value went from 20 to 60). (BTW, it was a hotfix in Feb).

Edited April 8, 2020 by GrubbyZebra

[Ink]

Captains, loot have not changed. A similar to this topic ingame reports were recently checked and no issues or bugs found