Are high rarity drops common in this game, or have I just had incredible luck?

Hey, I just recently reached level 20 on this character, and I've already found a unique and many rares. I just checked and I have 7 rares equipped right now and some rare quivers to give to my ranger, the first character I started. In any other loot game I've played, at this point in the game I would have found maybe 2 items of the second highest rarity at most, and none of the highest. Have I just had insane luck, or are the drop rates in this game higher than most?

This game does rarity a bit differently. You get bombarded with rare items, but because of how random their stats are, most of them are just terrible (although you won't really notice that until you get a bit further into the game). In endgame farming, I would estimate that I keep maaaybe one of out every 200-500 rare items I find, and sell the rest to vendors. With uniques, there are actually different tiers of unique rarity (four I believe, although all our information on this is a bit circumstantial). You see lots of uniques, just not many of the rarer ones (although when it comes to uniques rarer does not always mean better).

You'll get used to it.

Edit: A quick note on what 'rare' means on items in this game, since I figure it might help. It's just a measure of how many mods the item has. Magic (blue) items have one or two mods, and rare items have three to six (although you can make two-mod rare items by crafting). The mods themselves aren't in any way different to the ones that show up on magic items, you just get more of them.

There are different "tiers" of Unique Items. The Tier 1 Unique Items drop quite often. Rares also drop pretty much everywhere.

Rechoice, as long as you are happy you finde those Uniques the game is much more enjoyable :).

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or have I just had incredible luck

This.

First time I've ever seen somebody talk about the amazing drop rates in PoE :)

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viperesque wrote:

This game does rarity a bit differently. You get bombarded with rare items, but because of how random their stats are, most of them are just terrible (although you won't really notice that until you get a bit further into the game). In endgame farming, I would estimate that I keep maaaybe one of out every 200-500 rare items I find, and sell the rest to vendors. With uniques, there are actually different tiers of unique rarity (four I believe, although all our information on this is a bit circumstantial). You see lots of uniques, just not many of the rarer ones (although when it comes to uniques rarer does not always mean better).

You'll get used to it.

Edit: A quick note on what 'rare' means on items in this game, since I figure it might help. It's just a measure of how many mods the item has. Magic (blue) items have one or two mods, and rare items have three to six (although you can make two-mod rare items by crafting). The mods themselves aren't in any way different to the ones that show up on magic items, you just get more of them.

Thanks, this explains a lot. This game definitely works a lot differently than most loot games I've played so far, and that's definitely a good thing. I've played games before with random loot were even some of the more uncommon rarities could turn out to be kind of crappy depending on how it rolled, and it sounds like that's what it's like here as well. That's why I'm particularly excited about how the crafting/currency system works in this game. While there is still a large RNG component, loot seems more customizable in this game than most, so long as you have the currency to spend. I particularly like how even white items can sometimes be valuable if they happen to roll with something like six linked sockets, because they can be crafted in to good gear.

Edit: Oh and by the way, does anybody have a link to what uniques we think are on what tier? I'm a bit curious to know after somebody mentioned it.

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Hey, I just recently reached level 20 on this character, and I've already found a unique and many rares. I just checked and I have 7 rares equipped right now and some rare quivers to give to my ranger, the first character I started. In any other loot game I've played, at this point in the game I would have found maybe 2 items of the second highest rarity at most, and none of the highest. Have I just had insane luck, or are the drop rates in this game higher than most?

LOL...oh man. You have so much to learn.

Edit: Sorry I have nothing helpful to add, but it seems someone else covered it.

Uniques come in a bunch of different tiers, chances are the one you got was likely one of the most common and low-tier uniques. It's maybe a little lucky to get one by level 20/before the end of act 1, but really nothing remarkable at all... hell, a month or so ago I had a startup character that managed to get 6 Uniques to drop before level 28; none of them were anything special, but it was kinda cool.

When it comes to 'rares', they're not really rare at all... it's just a name, pretty much. It depicts that the item can have up to 3 prefixes and 3 suffixes, compared the the 1 and 1 of a 'magic' item.

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Edit: Oh and by the way, does anybody have a link to what uniques we think are on what tier? I'm a bit curious to know after somebody mentioned it.

I don't know about such a list, since it's pretty easy to find out after playing for a while.
Build enabling properties are more likely to be rare than just an item with fixed stats, which are good for its level. But I can't find a rule of thumb right now. You could look up prices if you want to make sure to not sell a valuable item (which I actually wouldn't recommend). But this shouldn't happen with common sence.
Rarity alone doesn't influence the market value of an item, it's of course also the demand and utility. So don't bother too much about the rarity levels.

About crafting and co.:
Please be aware that crafting gear is no core concept of improving your gear in the early late game. If you take Viperesque's example of keeping rares, you can get an idea of how much sense it will make to randomly spam Chaos Orbs on an rare item.
It is a part in terms of sockets, links, colouring, maps, shopping and maybe some low tier crafting with vendor recipes, or transmut and alteration crafting.
Crafting new rares needs in most cases "a lot" of spare currency.

Gaining currency is part of your characters progress in this game. From there on you can choose to craft gear, buy gear, or you don't aquire currency and be lucky in finding stuff.

But don't worry, despite of a lot of crying about how bad the drops are, there are some very successful self found players.
And if you are not refusing to learn how to gain currency and accept the trade system in Poe, it's actually pretty easy to gain wealth and gear --> progressing.


Disclaimer: This is of just a rough explanation for a new player, before anyone complains about me generalizing a lot of stuff.

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Caliginosus wrote:

But don't worry, despite of a lot of crying about how bad the drops are, there are some very successful self found players.
And if you are not refusing to learn how to gain currency and accept the trade system in Poe, it's actually pretty easy to gain wealth and gear --> progressing.

This is a tad off topic(derailing my own thread), but once I get to endgame how should I go about making money? My best guesses would be by doing maps and trading(but only if I really know what I'm doing), but I don't claim to have all the answers(in fact I claim to have very few answers). Also at about what level do you start doing endgame content?