Where to find zetachrome equipment?

[Mars]

I made it to the mid-20 depths of a baroque ruin just outside the Moon Stair and I was still only finding flawless crysteel. The gamble didn't pay off because I got unlucky on a decarbonizer roll and lost 3 limbs plus my head.

Afterwards, in the same ruins, I opted to not die and enabled god mode so I could poke around a bit. From there I wished for a spiral borer and went down another 20 levels and was still only finding crysteel and flawless crysteel in the few moldering corpses and chests I found. Not even the one dromad merchant I found had any offerings.

Am I not searching in the right type of area or is the drop rate really THAT rare?

[billy.checkers.21]

Underground moon stair, be careful though. ♥♥♥♥'s dangerous!

[billy.checkers.21]

theres chests there that have zetachrome gear

[glass zebra]

Not sure if the ruin loot uses the same tables as trader stuff but:

The tier X armour tables usually have an entry to roll tier x+1 instead, which is some single digit chance (down to something like <1%). The rest of the roll is spread between the armour pieces of tier x.

As of tier 7 though, there is an additional entry in the table that has a ~30% chance to roll tier x-1 instead, that makes tier 7 already rarer in their own tier than all other armour tiers. Tier 8 also has a tier x-1 roll chance, but that one is ~90%. That probably means that 9 times out of 10 you will find tier 7 items in a tier 8 chest. Actually 6 out of 10 times it should be tier 7 and 3 out of 10 it will be tier 6 even.

[Dr.Desty Nova]

Lately, I had an easier time finding zetachrome gear in shop rather than in the wild.

Yd Freehold and Chavvah should have some in stock every once in a while.

Those zetachrome stuff I've found in the wild where all found at some silly depth during a quite disapointing cave run. Went from 24 strata down till 90 something and only found a couple zetachrome weapons whereas I was expecting to come out of this with full or nearly full zetachrome get up.

[gilrad]

From my experience in deep cave diving, the effect of depth level on goodie piles (mouldering corpse, etc) and points of interest (cryo chambers) is uncapped. I don't think this applies to chests however; they always seemed boring noatter how deep I go. They probably cap out at tier 8 and don't change much from what you find on the moon stair surface.

After around level 200 or 300, you begin seeing zetachrome and tier 8 gadgets everywhere on goodie piles, and dervishes always have psionic zeta weapons. After floor 600 nearly every room will have a cryo chamber and multiple goodie piles. If you can keep up, killing your clones can be an easy path to near-infinite polygel since you double your carried amount every time.

[Dr.Desty Nova]

Originally posted by gilrad:

From my experience in deep cave diving, the effect of depth level on goodie piles (mouldering corpse, etc) and points of interest (cryo chambers) is uncapped.

After around level 200 or 300, you begin seeing zetachrome and tier 8 gadgets everywhere on goodie piles, and dervishes always have psionic zeta weapons. After floor 600 nearly every room will have a cryo chamber and multiple goodie piles. If you can keep up, killing your clones can be an easy path to near-infinite polygel since you double your carried amount every time.

Mouarf, guess I didn't go deep enough.

How does it even look enemies wise at those level ? With a true kin it become quite tedious really quick with all those gamma moth everywhere.

[gilrad]

More of the same, except those dervishes. Zeta weapons really give them some extra bite. Also more PoI spawns means more free clones of Saad, which could be a problem combined with other spawns.

[glass zebra]

Originally posted by Dr.Desty Nova:

Originally posted by gilrad:

From my experience in deep cave diving, the effect of depth level on goodie piles (mouldering corpse, etc) and points of interest (cryo chambers) is uncapped.

After around level 200 or 300, you begin seeing zetachrome and tier 8 gadgets everywhere on goodie piles, and dervishes always have psionic zeta weapons. After floor 600 nearly every room will have a cryo chamber and multiple goodie piles. If you can keep up, killing your clones can be an easy path to near-infinite polygel since you double your carried amount every time.

Mouarf, guess I didn't go deep enough.

How does it even look enemies wise at those level ? With a true kin it become quite tedious really quick with all those gamma moth everywhere.

Zone tier caps out at 8, but special stuff like the cryo chambers keep scaling.

[Mars]

Originally posted by gilrad:

From my experience in deep cave diving, the effect of depth level on goodie piles (mouldering corpse, etc) and points of interest (cryo chambers) is uncapped. I don't think this applies to chests however; they always seemed boring noatter how deep I go. They probably cap out at tier 8 and don't change much from what you find on the moon stair surface.

After around level 200 or 300, you begin seeing zetachrome and tier 8 gadgets everywhere on goodie piles, and dervishes always have psionic zeta weapons. After floor 600 nearly every room will have a cryo chamber and multiple goodie piles. If you can keep up, killing your clones can be an easy path to near-infinite polygel since you double your carried amount every time.

That's crazy, I've never made it past depth 40 or so without having to emergency recoil for one reason or another. Makes sense though. At that depth I'd imagine nothing but top tier everything.

[Dr.Desty Nova]

Honestly, with a proper build and proper planning it's not that hard. Once you get the hang of what is dangerous and what isn't and have the tool to deal with it I find it almost boring. Especially cause the biome is the same all around past like 20/30 strata.

[gilrad]

Yeah there's a surprisingly small number of things that need to be taken care of to be able to delve limitlessly deep:

Friendly to robots: solves a lot of lethal problems like Galgal and phase turret surprises. Axe dismemberment focus can also work but is higher risk higher reward (a LOT of XP)

A good ranged weapon not dependant on radio power or solar power to deal with stat saps (or just friendship with winged mammals)

Regeneration level 6 to deal with gamma moths, disease, and dismemberment. Alternatively moths can be dealt with by simply having every negative mutation, which makes them grab bags of mutations and points.

Re-programmable recoiler can solve a lot of problems without you having to abandon your run, though solving every problem by going to the surface will slow your descent significantly.

Spiral borers make it MUCH faster to go deep and bypass bad biomes like lava biomes or ones filled with dangerous mobs, don't expect to get gery deep without being able to tinker them up.

If you can get those things together, and you're strong enough to hold your own in the palladium reef, you're good to go!