T5 armor drops?

[Halcyon]

Where do they drop? I've been running level 20-30 map dungeons for a looooong time and have double digits of every unique item, hundreds of memories, several spare warden's wisdom, and more warding seals than you can shake a stick at. I've also got 5 pieces of T5 armor, 3 of which are finswain bracers. I am certain they aren't in the normal drop tables, the chest drop tables, or the champion drop tables, so I guess that means only ancient kings? However, I've killed a lot of ancient kings along the way and with my loot drop bonuses from renown items I would have expected more than 5 pieces. Am I unlucky, or do they only drop from zone bosses? I tried checking in the game files but couldn't piece together the drop functions.

[B.O.B.]

They're just exceptionally rare. You should be only finding them in the post game maps where you currently are.

The most common place I've find them is in the blue cave maps - the ones that are huge, have dynamite(ish) items that spawn so you can blowup the walls and explore. I usually only find 1 in these types of maps if I do a full clear by killing everything and looting everything. But even then there is no guarantee to even get that one.

One tip for the blue cave maps: enter and immediately exit. For whatever reason this glitches out respawns, so you're not constantly having to deal with trash mobs as you do a full clear.

In my experience I most commonly get a T5 in the blue caves when I do a full clear - when I do full clears on literally any other map type, it's even more rare to get a T5.

Another place to try and farm them, but I think it doesn't have great odds: The golden statue. Just farm that over and over for the boss monsters and every once in a blue moon they might drop a T5. <- I've been known to grind this spot to uber buff my character and get less T5 gear there than I do in the blue caves, but it is a great way to over-level your character if you are into that.

[B.O.B.]

Also note: I gave up on chasing T5 gear. Gear drops (including non-T5) slowly scale with the dungeon level. So that T5 gear you find in a lvl 20 dungeon is going to be weaker than T4 armor you find in a lvl 30 dungeon.

That's just a vague example. I've never paid attention to the exact rate of gear scaling to know 'hey this T5 gear will be weaker than T4 gear in X levels'. So it might be 10 levels, it might be 20 levels, I just know that if you keep going higher levels like I like to do (to see how high I can get), it being T5 is less important.

Course now there is renown armor in 3 slots, so if I get a T5 in any of those 3 slots I am definitely going to renown it and just keep leveling it.

[Halcyon]

I thought you could only renown chest armor, so I guess I'll need to look into that! I have at least one piece in each type now so I can see the set bonuses and honestly the medium armor set bonus is very underwhelming so I might just not bother anymore. If I switched to heavy I could see it being worthwhile, but I'm not going to swap out papal gloves or hat, so that just leaves boots, legs, chest, shoulders and I already have a renown 34 wurm carapace so I'm not swapping chest either. The marginal armor gains for the remaining 3 slots can be offset by just getting glory.

Thank you for the in depth reply, I really appreciate your taking the time.