Ok.. there is conflicting opinions as to whether or not the loot tables for HDoL were changed or not. At least one developer has said that they have not. Every player I've spoken with that has played pre and post .49 says that they have, and I very strongly agree.

To put it simply, the loot drops went from good to terrible, I will post my examples in a moment, but on average one can expect three purple drops in an hour in HDoL. In an hour I can get 50 purples from any boss I choose! As such, I am under the impression that the devs are trying to encourage boss farming at the expense of the only elite dungeon the game has, and I think it's a very poorly planned out idea... Pre patch I could average 20 purples in an hour. Not as fast as the boss farming, but reasonable, and a great reason to play in the hardest dungeon in the game.

What I would like from players and devs are their own comments on this. If you haven't tried the dungeon yet, please do before commenting, and leave out the nonsense about there's too many drops already. You can kill the same monsters in Agrocks Field for example, and I guarentee you'll get better quality drops from them than you do in HDoL, and remember, for me, that means level 52 or better in the HDoL, and Agrocks Field is level capped.

So, what I did was spent 10k worth of experience (an hour and 15 minutes) in HDoL this morning recording every single drop that I got from Stage 3 - Lower Cindercore. I've broken it down into categories, and B=Blue, Y=Yellow, P=Purple, and will separate the drops from the clone bosses of Rotgut and Agrock which I encountered (there appears to be clone bosses at the end of stage 3 and the end of stage 6 now) because they are bosses, and work from their own loot tables apparently.

Boss - Korgluk (Agrock clone) : 2 potions, 6772 gold, P 1hander, P mage staff, P 1 hander
Boss - Tugtor the Brash (Rotgut clone) : 2 potions, 10604 gold, P Xbow, P Armor, P 1 hander

Drops :

Body armor : YBYYY
Hands : BYPYY
Feet : YYBYYYY
Shoulder : BYYY
Jewelery : PBYYBP
1 handed : BYYYPYY
2 handed : BYBYYBYYYBY
Mage : YYYY
Shield : YYBY
Xbows/Shotguns : YYYYYYYYBYYYYYYBBYYYYYYYYYBYYYYYYYYBYYBBYYYYYYYYBYYYY
Waypoint scrolls : 18
Potions (H or M) : 34
Gold : 122637

Now.. this is flippin ridiculous. Why in the heck do Xbow/Gun drops so vastly outnumber everything else? Over 50 of them in the space of an hour pretty clearly demonstrates something wrong with the loot tables. And three purples in that same time period also shows the same problem. It's so bad that I don't even bother looting anything for rangers any more.. I spend more time going back to town selling than I do actually killing.

Like I said, comments from players and devs on this would be appreciated. I realize that I might just have the worst luck of any player anywhere, but I'm absolutely certain I can go and do this again and see a comparable number of bows drop.

I've heard this complaint before also....so of course being a ranger and my xbow being 6lvls outdated i went in. Right off the bat first group i had 3 purps. lol. yeah i know just got lucky. but i didn't see the same thing everyone is talking about...but then again i only cleared the first lvl and never went through the portal...i'll go ahead and check what all i do get.

As a mage I have tons of xbows too. If you want purple Hdol isn't the best way. Boss are way better for this but if you want rainbow it's the best place. The problem is you don't get a lot fo purple and the one you got are useless or for an other class. We have no trade system and a lot of time nobody of our level. To equip myself I farmed the queen then Sam when I was missing few specifics items.

One day when Stephen was chatting on World, he said that HDOL is the place to get the best loot but from what you all say, I guess thats not the case =\

The drop rates for yellows are the highest - as to what yellows you get, well....

Well yes only time i've ever seen a green in HDoL is because of a chest. very few blues and lots of yellows....its actually the best place to hunt for rainbows. I've seen alot of complaints about finding alot of xbows, and other ranged items...i don't see it so dunno what is up with that. I did what some others did and kept track of everything i got through clearing out the entire first lvl when i was lvl 65.

and here is what i got. what i got from the gatekeeper is seperate then the rest of the lvl.

all in all i got 29 blues, 86 yellows, 5 purples, 0 rainbows
22 mage items, 64 fighter items, 25, ranger items.

(I did not count the rings and amulets into any of the class specific items, and i counted all 1h and 2h melee as fighter items, all wands and canes were counted as mages)

Gold..................- 139,489
Pots..................- 18 (counting all 4 types)
Waypoint scrolls.- 14
King Coins.........- 1
Rings.................- 3(yellow), 1(blue), 4(total)
Amulets.............- 3(yellow), 3(blue), 6(total)
1h melee...........- 17(yellow), 4(blue), 1(purple), 22(total)
2h melee...........- 19(yellow), 8(blue), 1(purple), 28(total)
2h ranged..........- 12(yellow), 3(blue), 15(total)
Wands...............- 4(yellow), 1(blue), 1(purple), 6(total)
Shoulders..........- 4(yellow)............................................- 2(mage), 1(fighter), 1(ranger)
Shields..............-3(yellow), 3(blue), 6(total)....................- 4(mage), 2(fighter)
Boots.................- 2(yellow), 1(purple), 3(total)................- 3(mage)
Helms................- 7(yellow), 1(purple), 8(total)................- 1(mage), 4(fighter), 3(ranger)
Gloves...............- 5(yellow), 4(blue), 9(total)...................- 1(mage), 4(fighter), 4(ranger)
Body armour.......- 7(yellow), 2(blue), 9(total)..................- 5(mage), 2(figher), 2(ranger)

For anyone who would do this it you would have to keep track of a bit more than just all of that to have it quite accurate.

I was cantering round the HDoL last night. For the first few hours I was getting lots of yellow, a few blues and NO purples.

Then it suddenly changed, I got 5 purples in the space of 10 minutes.

Methinks you need to look at your random number generator.

Personally I'd love to know how they are generating their loot table.

Given the trends we see in the drops, I'm guessing the range values are too high.

i.e. Instead of doing a random 1-10 where every 1 is a purple, they are doing something like 1-10000 where 1-100 is a purple.

The large the range of random numbers the greater the chance for trends and the more "loot" you'll need to go through before the trend skews disappear.

If the random value has some effective value of 1000 or 10000, then you might need like 2000 drops before the trends balance out.

If anyone sees a dev, could you ask them?

Are all the monster packs within the same lvl of the HDoL the same lvl? I wonder if each group spawns within a lvl range. A poor drop experience could reflect a larger portion of lower lvl packs spawning? I've seen drops 1 or 2 lvls higher than me, and drops 5 lvls lower. Not sure if this reflects a lvl range of drops, or a difference in lvl of the monsters themselves.

I know this isnt very quantitative, but sometimes I can solo 2 packs simultaneously with not much difficulty, other times a single pack has me burning through potions. Shrug.