No increase in finding rifles or rifle parts?

[Whiskeyjack]

Our group decided to jump back in with 1.0, and we largely have a wide variety of weapons. I went into the perception tree and I'm using spears and rifles. Every single weapon tree gives an increased chance to find that weapon or its parts, except for rifles.

We're on day 35, we've got time set to be longer so we've been playing enough hours to be probably close to day 50 with the amount of time we've been on. Everyone has at least one tier up of their weapons, with some people being two tiers up. We've got steel so we can start crafting some of the upgraded weapons. We've got numerous weapon parts for everyone's weapons. And I'm still rocking the basic pipe rifle because in all the time we've played we haven't found a single rifle part.

Are traders going to be the primary way of obtaining rifle parts? Is there a reason it's set so you can't find them as easily? I've always done sniping and it's been pretty on par with everyone else, even with the full sniper. I didn't think the rifles were game breaking in any way, I'm kinda screwed against groups or hordes if I'm spotted compared to other people I'm with (especially early on with only having one shot). And I have no idea when I'll be able to actually get the hunting rifle, let alone the lever action if parts are this hard to find with not having the same increased find rate.

[KaisarDragon]

The Dead Eye perk *should* increase chance of finding parts and mags.

[Dr. Rockso]

Originally posted by KaisarDragon:

The Dead Eye perk *should* increase chance of finding parts and mags.

This.

When speccing into Dead Eye.

The following items are 3/5/7/9/11x more likely to appear in item containers, trader inventories and as quest rewards:
Pipe Rifle
Hunting Rifle
Lever-Action Rifle
Sniper Rifle
Rifle Parts
"Rifle World" Crafting Skill Magazine
"Sniper" Perk Book

[Brevan]

In my newest game, it's day 8, I've only got 1 point in the Rifle perk. I've found about 6 Rifle parts, enough magazines to craft rank 2 Hunting Rifle, and I've found a rank 2 Hunting Rifle (and a Pistol) yet no AK-47, or Double Barrel Shotgun. For me it feels like the randomness is being adjusted by the perks. I'm in the Wasteland, so my Loot Stage is relatively high.

One thing to keep in mind is that you won't find a Sniper Rifle in a Shamway crate. Make sure you're looting Shotgun Messiah locations if you're after weapons.

[Pain Weasel]

Rifles and rifle parts definitely get the bonus.

I believe that rifle parts have a loot prob template of "ProbT1Cap" meaning you need to have a loot stage of at least 39 to have any chance of finding it in loot, and even at that loot stage it is a very low prob but it increases as loot stage increases.


I was just playing a rifle build and was able to craft a sniper rifle on day 10. Keep in mind that if you are playing with friends you have to be the one to loot a container to get the bonus.

Traders are probably the best source for parts though since they can sell them in fairly decent amounts, assuming you are playing a RWG map with a lot of traders.

As far as how good they are, rifles suck until you get to a lever action and then they are OK until you get AP ammo and Penetrator. Once you get a lever action or sniper rifle and penetrator leveled up it become one of the best weapons. Being able to kill 5 zombies with 1 shot is pretty awesome, plus it lets you keep the +50% damage bonus from the kill streak active. It may be the best weapon/skill combo for a killing corridor base.

[jynx]

The good stuff always hangs out in high tier biomes. Try out that new scav suit when you're looting.

[Whiskeyjack]

Originally posted by KaisarDragon:

The Dead Eye perk *should* increase chance of finding parts and mags.

I agree that it should, but in my game it is the only perk that doesn't have a corresponding "increase in chances to find weapons or weapons parts" included in the text of any of the 5 steps. I'll try to take a screenshot when I get home.

[Whiskeyjack]

Originally posted by Dr. Rockso:

Originally posted by KaisarDragon:

The Dead Eye perk *should* increase chance of finding parts and mags.

This.

When speccing into Dead Eye.

The following items are 3/5/7/9/11x more likely to appear in item containers, trader inventories and as quest rewards:
Pipe Rifle
Hunting Rifle
Lever-Action Rifle
Sniper Rifle
Rifle Parts
"Rifle World" Crafting Skill Magazine
"Sniper" Perk Book

So I've gotten a ton of rifle magazines, I think I can craft mid tier lever action rifles right now if I had the rifle parts. And I have multiple points into lucky looter, and several points into Deadeye. The trader rewards have not been anything specifically rifle related though, the closest has been a bundle of books that when I opened it had rifle magazines in it. Is it possibly just horrendous RNG that all of my rifle loot has been nothing but magazines..?

I know the wiki lists those values out for Deadeye, but all mentions of increased loot chance have been removed from Dead Eye in my game.

[Whiskeyjack]

So using an A21 calculator, my loot stage should be around 80 right now when I include my lucky looter bonuses for just the base forest biome. And here is an imgur link showing that the rifle loot increase is not showing in our game according to the tooltip, but it is for other weapons (the spear at rank 1 shows increased loot).

https://imgur.com/a/xCEybx2

Is it for sure showing the text that says it has an increased in your game, assuming that it is a game that was started when 1.0 officially launched? It just seems wild to me that looting weapon safes and weapon related buildings with that loot stage, that many points in deadeye, that many magazines read, etc, hasn't given me a single thing related to rifles in over two weeks of playing on our new game.

There is also this post on reddit where someone noticed the same thing about a month ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/7daystodie/comments/1duv3fu/no_rifle_loot_bonus_perk/

[Pain Weasel]

Originally posted by Whiskeyjack:

So using an A21 calculator, my loot stage should be around 80 right now when I include my lucky looter bonuses for just the base forest biome. And here is an imgur link showing that the rifle loot increase is not showing in our game according to the tooltip, but it is for other weapons (the spear at rank 1 shows increased loot).

https://imgur.com/a/xCEybx2

Is it for sure showing the text that says it has an increased in your game, assuming that it is a game that was started when 1.0 officially launched? It just seems wild to me that looting weapon safes and weapon related buildings with that loot stage, that many points in deadeye, that many magazines read, etc, hasn't given me a single thing related to rifles in over two weeks of playing on our new game.

There is also this post on reddit where someone noticed the same thing about a month ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/7daystodie/comments/1duv3fu/no_rifle_loot_bonus_perk/

First, you don't need to use a loot stage calculator, it is visible in game. Open your character panel's stats tab. Loot stage is at the bottom.

If you are playing with any mods, remove them. Also try verifying your game files.

the bonus to loot is absolutely in the progression.xml for Dead Eye, and assuming you don't have any mods that overrule the settings in that file you should be getting the bonus. If you want to check for yourself open up \Steam\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\Data\Config\progression.xml and search for DEAD_EYE. You should see a section that looks like this:

<!-- Increase the chance to find rifles and ammo with each perk rank -->
<passive_effect name="LootProb" operation="perc_add" level="1,5" value="2,10" tags="rifleSkill"/>
<passive_effect name="LootProb" operation="perc_add" level="1,5" value="2,10" tags="ammo762mm"/>

<!-- Increase the chance to find rifle crafting skill magazines with each perk rank up to crafting skill 100 -->
<passive_effect name="LootProb" operation="perc_add" level="1,5" value="2,10" tags="riflesCSM">
<requirement name="ProgressionLevel" progression_name="craftingRifles" operation="LT" value="100"/>
</passive_effect>

Note that even though it doesn't explicitly say so, that first passive effect also increases the drop rate for Rifle Parts since they have the "rifleSkill" tag as well.

As for the tool tip, that doesn't really matter, it is just a missing text note. There is no actual relationship between the note and the actual bonuses, it isn't dynamically generated or anything, instead it is just a line of text in Localization.txt that probably needs updating. There are plenty of other bonuses that are never mentioned in the tool tip as well, particularly the perk book drop rates. Handguns increases Pistol Pete and Magnum Enforcer drop rates, but that isn't mentioned. Salvage Ops increases Wasteland Treasures, Machine Gunner increases Urban Combat, Pummel Pete increases Batter Up etc.

[Whiskeyjack]

Originally posted by Pain Weasel:

Originally posted by Whiskeyjack:

So using an A21 calculator, my loot stage should be around 80 right now when I include my lucky looter bonuses for just the base forest biome. And here is an imgur link showing that the rifle loot increase is not showing in our game according to the tooltip, but it is for other weapons (the spear at rank 1 shows increased loot).

https://imgur.com/a/xCEybx2

Is it for sure showing the text that says it has an increased in your game, assuming that it is a game that was started when 1.0 officially launched? It just seems wild to me that looting weapon safes and weapon related buildings with that loot stage, that many points in deadeye, that many magazines read, etc, hasn't given me a single thing related to rifles in over two weeks of playing on our new game.

There is also this post on reddit where someone noticed the same thing about a month ago. https://www.reddit.com/r/7daystodie/comments/1duv3fu/no_rifle_loot_bonus_perk/

First, you don't need to use a loot stage calculator, it is visible in game. Open your character panel's stats tab. Loot stage is at the bottom.

If you are playing with any mods, remove them. Also try verifying your game files.

the bonus to loot is absolutely in the progression.xml for Dead Eye, and assuming you don't have any mods that overrule the settings in that file you should be getting the bonus. If you want to check for yourself open up \Steam\steamapps\common\7 Days To Die\Data\Config\progression.xml and search for DEAD_EYE. You should see a section that looks like this:

<!-- Increase the chance to find rifles and ammo with each perk rank -->
<passive_effect name="LootProb" operation="perc_add" level="1,5" value="2,10" tags="rifleSkill"/>
<passive_effect name="LootProb" operation="perc_add" level="1,5" value="2,10" tags="ammo762mm"/>

<!-- Increase the chance to find rifle crafting skill magazines with each perk rank up to crafting skill 100 -->
<passive_effect name="LootProb" operation="perc_add" level="1,5" value="2,10" tags="riflesCSM">
<requirement name="ProgressionLevel" progression_name="craftingRifles" operation="LT" value="100"/>
</passive_effect>

Note that even though it doesn't explicitly say so, that first passive effect also increases the drop rate for Rifle Parts since they have the "rifleSkill" tag as well.

As for the tool tip, that doesn't really matter, it is just a missing text note. There is no actual relationship between the note and the actual bonuses, it isn't dynamically generated or anything, instead it is just a line of text in Localization.txt that probably needs updating. There are plenty of other bonuses that are never mentioned in the tool tip as well, particularly the perk book drop rates. Handguns increases Pistol Pete and Magnum Enforcer drop rates, but that isn't mentioned. Salvage Ops increases Wasteland Treasures, Machine Gunner increases Urban Combat, Pummel Pete increases Batter Up etc.

Thanks! I shouldn't have anything that overrides that, but I'll double check just in case. Thanks for giving the exact location to check!

[Whiskeyjack]

I did eventually start finding rifle parts, it's just been very slow compared to other parts for whatever reason. Thanks for the discussion guys, glad that it's just a text error and not a bug

[thestile]

I don't think there can be any doubt that rifle part drops are messed up. I'm on day 12 and i've been looting like crazy, found tons of parts but not rifle parts. I've had three rifle points in since about day 4 and i've found tons of spear parts and whatever else but those rifle drops just seem broken. I've only had about 9 rifle parts but 6 of those were purchased from the trader.

I'm sure I could ride around to traders and get the parts but it annoys me that I have to because it's supposed to be coded in for the drops to increase. Clearly something is messed up because i've restarted playing perception at least three different playthroughs and it seems to be an issue every time.

It really helps to go to that Bullets and Booze POI though because I can usually at least something there because there are so many good shelves/crates to loot. Unfortunately I haven't found that place on my current play.

[Pain Weasel]

Part of the issues is related to how looting works. I won't argue it could be balanced better but it is working.

You absolutely get a bonus to finding rifle parts but that bonus only kicks in IF the loot group with rifle parts is selected, assuming it is even a possibility to begin with. Basically you have to search the right containers, and then get lucky with several RNG rolls to even have a chance for your bonus to kick in.

A weapon bag for example has a loot table with 4 loot groups in it, one of those groups is called "groupWeaponsLowHighMed". That loot group has 3 more loot groups in it each with their own loot prob, one of those is called "weaponParts". Inside THAT loot group there are 13 items, one of which is rifle parts and even if it is picked you'll only get 1 or 2.

The bonus to loot chance only applies to that final pick.

Rifle parts can also show up in other loot, but a lot of it is "scaled" meaning you have to have a high enough loot stage to even have a chance to find it and even then the chance is very low but increases as loot stage goes up. If your loot stage is too low then your bonus doesn't matter. Rifle parts in scaled loot require at least a 39 loot stage, and even then the loot prob is only .05 to even pick the group they are in. Basically you have to pass a very low chance roll in order to even have a chance to pick the item.

You mention finding a lot of spear parts, but if you have points in spears as well as rifles then those two skills are actually competing against each other in many cases. Some of the same loot groups that contain rifle parts contain spear parts and melee parts drop in higher quantities than gun parts.

However, there are some weapon parts that are easier to get than others because they drop in specific loot crates which may explain why you find a bunch of other parts. Stun baton parts in Mo Power crates, bow parts in Savage Country crates, machete parts in rolling tool boxes for some reason etc. Gun parts however don't have a specific crate, they only appear in the general weapon part loot groups.

That being said, hunting rifles do drop in Savage Country crates and gun racks and they can be scrapped for parts. The loot bonus from Dead Eye also applies to rifles as well as rifle parts so you may have a better chance finding hunting rifles and scrapping them than finding the parts in loot.