Should I wait until level 30 or 35 to open chests?

[repaeR]

I'm still fairly new to the game. So, I have opened some chests for my current lvl 12-14 characters, got some ok gears (for the current level). So I wonder if I should just grind until I hit lvl 30 or 35, then I'll open all chests for best gears? Thanks.

[Mysterious Sir Knight]

There are mixed opinions on this by the community.
Some people seem to think waiting will give you better items.
Some people seem to think it doesn't matter and you might as well just open them.

You WILL NOT GET A CLEAR ANSWER, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, EVERYONE WILL JUST FIGHT ABOUT IT.

My suggestion is to forget about it and just bloody open them.

[repaeR]

Originally posted by Finder:

There are mixed opinions on this by the community.
Some people seem to think waiting will give you better items.
Some people seem to think it doesn't matter and you might as well just open them.

You WILL NOT GET A CLEAR ANSWER, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, EVERYONE WILL JUST FIGHT ABOUT IT.

My suggestion is to forget about it and just bloody open them.

I mean, so far, I got some blues and green gear for all current lvl 12-14 mixed characters. I feel like that I can grind (recruit lvl), but I just don't know if the enemies scale with my lvl? Do you happen to know what the best way of grinding? like what is the best xp score that you can get. I grind Righteous Stand with all tomes and gilmores on a run, I get like 1,3k xp or something, it takes about 20mins+, I probably will try to be faster when I play better.

[Mysterious Sir Knight]

@repaeR
You get different containers depending on difficulty, you will get higher quality items from the higher quality containers obtained on higher difficulties.

The fastest way to get XP is to play The Screaming Bell mission (because its quick and doesn't have areas where you have to stop and slowly complete an objective or wait.) and speedrun it as fast as you can, using talents/items/weapons to increase movement speed will help increase the speed too obviously. You can expect runs between 5-10 minutes depending on your equipment.

The fastest way to grind items is complicated and involves a glitch. The classic way is to play Legend difficulty and run all tomes & grims to relatively consistently get "Emperors Vaults" which are the best possible containers. Some people swear by Chaos Wastes, and it may be faster than vanilla for farming Emperors Vaults, but its completely over-shadowed by that glitch I mentioned. As a matter of fact, I would like to do some grinding myself, and that glitch happens to require 2 people in the lobby. If you'd like to do some grinding together at some point, shoot me a friend request.

Originally posted by repaeR:

I just don't know if the enemies scale with my lvl?

They do not, only with difficulty.

[Bleydoka]

You just open directly all chests you find. Items power level will rise with every chest you have opened until you reach power lvl 300.

This mechanic is unintuitive and unorthodox. It's extremely silly to me that there is still no tutorial in the game which explains crafting and leveling. Also it's sad that people always spread lies and superficial knowledge.

[Jonkler]

IMO it's better to open all chests as you receive them to push your itemlevel as fast as possible as it both boosts your power incrementally which improves your gameplay experience while also allowing you to get to the higher difficulties which result in better loot. Quality of items doesn't really matter until you hit pretty much the cap of ilevel as most of the properties and traits do almost nothing unless you reach certain breakpoints and/or have high rolls on them, but until max power breakpoints are not a thing so they are pretty pointless. But even if they weren't, in most cases it'd still be more beneficial to put whatever has the highest power than either to be constantly rolling desirable stats and then also rolling the values on them or to be stuck with an underpowered weapon with decent properties which provide little to non value.

Also getting faster to legend would provide you with a chance to get red items from the chests that are always 300 power which would boost you on the gear grind substantially.

[Munroe]

My opinion is to open everything except general and emperor chests from champ and above. Once you hit 600 power level open those chests for a chance of a couple reds, hopefully a charm, trinket and necklace that you can use across many builds on all characters.

Commendation chests also have a chance of reds but it's so low that it's not worth worrying about. About 1 in 100 boxes in my experience.

If you don't open any chests you won't increase your item's power level and I don't believe your item's power level is connected to character level. Your item power level is account wide so once you start pulling 300 power items on a character, you'll also be able to pull the same level items from a level 1 character.

The crafting system uses the same power level as chests and can also increase the power level. So if you want to try a new item but have not had the luck to pull it from a box, don't hesitate to craft one. To note, the weapons added in DLCs will not be pulled from boxes so your only way to obtain them is to craft them.

[Jonkler]

Originally posted by Munroe:

My opinion is to open everything except general and emperor chests from champ and above. Once you hit 600 power level open those chests for a chance of a couple reds, hopefully a charm, trinket and necklace that you can use across many builds on all characters.

Commendation chests also have a chance of reds but it's so low that it's not worth worrying about. About 1 in 100 boxes in my experience.

If you don't open any chests you won't increase your item's power level and I don't believe your item's power level is connected to character level. Your item power level is account wide so once you start pulling 300 power items on a character, you'll also be able to pull the same level items from a level 1 character.

The crafting system uses the same power level as chests and can also increase the power level. So if you want to try a new item but have not had the luck to pull it from a box, don't hesitate to craft one. To note, the weapons added in DLCs will not be pulled from boxes so your only way to obtain them is to craft them.

You don't need 600 power to have a chance for red. i don't know the exact mechanics behind it, but when one of my friends picked up the game and i was bringing him to highest difficulties available, he got a red from a chest while having almost bare minimum power for legend and several other reds afterwards in a reasonable amount of time.

[Xaphnir]

Originally posted by Finder:

There are mixed opinions on this by the community.
Some people seem to think waiting will give you better items.
Some people seem to think it doesn't matter and you might as well just open them.

There aren't mixed opinions.

The few people (if any) who say that waiting will give you better items are wrong. Objectively. The power of the gear you get from loot is based on the power of the gear you already have. All you accomplish by not opening loot is slowing down your progression.

[Ittrix]

^^^^

[cape]

Originally posted by repaeR:

Originally posted by Finder:

There are mixed opinions on this by the community.
Some people seem to think waiting will give you better items.
Some people seem to think it doesn't matter and you might as well just open them.

You WILL NOT GET A CLEAR ANSWER, YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED, EVERYONE WILL JUST FIGHT ABOUT IT.

My suggestion is to forget about it and just bloody open them.

I mean, so far, I got some blues and green gear for all current lvl 12-14 mixed characters. I feel like that I can grind (recruit lvl), but I just don't know if the enemies scale with my lvl? Do you happen to know what the best way of grinding? like what is the best xp score that you can get. I grind Righteous Stand with all tomes and gilmores on a run, I get like 1,3k xp or something, it takes about 20mins+, I probably will try to be faster when I play better.

Recruit boxes will not get you past a certain power level (100?) so better to grind on veteran level which will get you to 300. Opening a box or crafting an item will give you a random power level +-10 from your so far highest item power ever looted across all characters. So keep breaking that high score until you get to 300.

Champion (2 top ones) and Legend boxes (and very low chance for commendation boxes) have a chance to drop a red, but I think (could be wrong) I read somewhere there is a hidden level requirement (20? 25? not sure) for reds to drop. Anyone else know for sure? So that would be the only reason to save those boxes to not waste chances of getting reds (again, if true). What I have seen for myself is that if I open legendary boxes on a level 1 character, I'd only get white (lowest quality) items, while mostly blue/orange/red on a level 35 character. So I suppose item quality could be tied to level.

[VernonKun]

From what I datamined with the local version of the loot drop chance, higher level would give you better rarity items. Based on this info, I would say keep the vaults (legend lootboxes) until you are lv30 at which loot drop chance is maxed. But you can open all other lootboxes because getting blue / orange doesn't matter that much.

Comment on local vs server codes: We don't have server-side loot drop codes so we will never know how that works except dealing it as a blackbox and do some statistics. However the local codes indicate that Fatshark has at one point typed that out, so see it as a benefit of the doubt.

[InfernoX250]

Better to rely on end of run chests for just general gearing while leveling

Save your commendtation chests for when you are level 35

These chests scale and offer your best overall means for reds just through persistence

When you use a character at level 35, you can continue to earn these through repeated "level ups" so you can also use it on other lower leveled characters too.

[PwninTaNoobs]

I personally opened a few every 10 levels just to hit a higher power level to push into the content harder. It's really just how you feel like doing it, though. There is no right or wrong way.

[SNAAAKE]

waiting does not effect your drop items anymore. They reverted this over a year ago.

[Jonkler]

Originally posted by InfernoX250:

These chests scale and offer your best overall means for reds just through persistence

No they aren't, they have a minuscule chance of dropping them. If you were to open them to push your ilevel in order to get to legend faster you'd have gotten more reds more quickly from the vaults. They only may be a decent source of reds for someone who is hard stuck in champion.