Twilight Strand Loot; Gauntlet Practice Question

Hello,

I've been farming the Twilight Strand (Oni Garushi style) to practice for Ziz's upcoming gauntlet. I will admit it's been a season or two since I last did an Oni farm that put me here for hours on end but it feels different. (I turned off loot filters to be sure I saw every drop.)

I feel like I've easily been here 6+ hours with at least a dozen toons in this gauntlet practice league trying different strategies. The thing that I find most striking is how limited the loot is. (Not just quantity, which feels pretty sparse but variety.) Was the strands loot table nerfed in patch 3.15 as part of the making of Act 1 more difficult?

Some observations:

Iron base types feel like the only ones that drop from all mobs except Hillock and even rarely off Hillock.

Tower Shield is the only trash mob shield to drop.

Almost no weapons except Hillock.

Blues are few & far between and in 6+ hours I have gotten one yellow from trash mobs.

No belts or jewelry on the strand.

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While I don't generally mind the increase in difficulty overall, in Gauntlet it really shows as the start IS the hardest part. Granted my RNG may just be really bad but I don't recall this happening farming Oni previously. The lack of any evasion or energy shield gear is painful.

It feels really odd that the iron armor base type drops SO much and nothing else. Just wanted to bring this up in case it wasn't intentional and could be remedied before the Gauntlet.

Thankyou!

I noticed similar when I was farming for my Oni.

I suspect at that level, the iron armor types perhaps provide the best overall defenses. Enough damage mitigation to matter, and help the newbies out some. Or maybe they're just higher loot priority. I do know the drops are very muted - though opening all the barrels and crates helps.

Hillock provided most of the drops, but I got a few yellows off the crates and even a few chrome sockets from the chest that drops the second virtue gem.

Bottles scaled up with me, I even got a quicksilver flask from a barrel. I found all the shield types, but the armor one was the most common. Amulets would be the rarest thing I encountered, as I only had one rare amulet by the time I got The Goddess of Swords, but had cycled through several rings and belts.

I found about 10 chromes, 200 wisdom, 2 town portal - which you can't use - about 30 trasmutations and maybe 20 alterations. No other currency dropped, which is probably by design as an anti-botting measure. I found a SilverBranch and a Readbeak for unique items.