portal rarity, difficulty and loot

[giorgiobusoni]

So, I though rarity was connected to loot quality and quantity, but maybe it is connected to just quality, and actually the quantity is driven by difficulty?

Cause I found a portal with rarity 4 and difficulty one. "Bingo" I thought. I was hoping for massive loot with low effort. Now, instead, I found only a little wreck with just one big safe that was not behind a closed door. So it was easy indeed, but very little loot. It didn't even pay back the cost in crystals to open it up. I was doing a rarity 1 difficulty 5 before, and I made massive loot.

I am making portals principally for the crystals (the purple ones actually) and for the unique bp items, the solar quartz in particular. Any advice? I read it can only be found in rarity 4+.

[archmag]

Rarity 5, difficulty 5 resulted in a 3-story maze with 5 safes at the end.
Rarity 5, difficulty 1 resulted in a single line with a small crossroad with 1 safe at the end.

So yeah, I believe the difficulty affects the amount of loot as well as how difficult the maze will be. Rarity 5 costs a lot to open so it doesn't seem worth to use high rarity low difficulty portals unless you just want to spend some crystals for quick easy loot.

[Phoenix Cat]

I try to run 5 and 5. Get the best loot, and with a system set up you don't get lost in ship.

[Kate Miller]

Agreed, difficulty level sets number of safes in loot room so level 4 will have 4 safes etc.

As for the rarity thing? I played mainly on level 4 and 5 rarity. I went through a total of 28 locations (44 wrecks), cleaning out everything before I found the Fireplace blueprint! A lot of it is just dumb luck.

However, to prove the randomness of things, I went to a level 4 Rarity, level 2 Difficulty location and found 3 wrecks there!

Spoiler
There is a Solar Quartz blueprint so you'll be making your own once you find it

[archmag]

I started running 5/5 too. It's pretty easy if you follow left or right hand rule and 5 safes at the end give a lot of loot some of which is pretty useful. Found 4 unique recipes so far: light cube, yellow crystal, fireplace, tree pot.

[Kate Miller]

Ursprünglich geschrieben von archmag:

It's pretty easy if you follow left or right hand rule

Or go old school. I got an A4 pad of 7mm squared paper and map out the wrecks as I go through them.

Spoiler
The insides of the wrecks are far less complicated when you map them. Look at the corridor walls and you can see where the 'blocks' join (hence the squared paper). I've yet to find a single floor of a wreck that doesn't fit inside a 20x20 grid and most of that isn't used.

[DocRabbit]

Hardest 5/5 I've come across was in a waterfall world, the ship had flooded levels with ladders up or down to air pockets, door required 3 keys to open vault room.

[Sky Render]

I find that most of the loot in the level 1 and 2 difficulty portals is outside of the wreck in blue chests lying about the area. I found no less than 12 chests in the area outside of a wreck once, in the sandfall portal area. Lots of common loot in level 1 and 2, not so much fuses and large quantities of Terra Tokens.