All drops in Dungeon Runners (DR) are 100% random and rainbow (RB) items are no exception. You might get a RB at level 15 or you may not get one until you are level 100 as drops are entirely RANDOM. You will hear many tales about RBs in chat with some being correct while others are incorrect. There are also ways to increase your chances of getting a rainbow to drop, but all drops are still RANDOM.

Q. Does the insane difficulty level give you better drops?
A. NO! Any player that tells you changing the difficulty level gives you better drops probably has cash or credit problems. To get better loot you have to kill a mob with a better loot table. If a RB item is not on the loot table for a particular mob there is ZERO chance of you getting a RB if you are on normal or insane.

Q. If insane does not get you better drops why do players farm on insane?
A. When you increase the difficulty of the game the loot you receive gets a multiplier so that additional (not better) loot will drop. For example, you are fighting a boss that typically drops 4-8 items on normal, but on insane the same boss will drop 4(*1.5) - 8(*1.5) or 6-12 items. Since you get additional items you have more opportunities to get a RB.

Q. So is it better to farm on insane?
A. The depends on a number of factors to include what mob you are farming, how long it takes you to kill the mob, what is required to kill the mob, whether you are solo or grouped, etc.

Q. That is a lot to take in, how does time factor in to rainbow drops?
A. Let's take Sissirat the first real boss in the game. If you can one-shot Sissirat on normal and it takes you 4 minutes to get 4-8 items, but on insane you die 4 times and it takes you 10 minutes for each kill. Here is how the math breaks down for 1 hour of farming Sissirat.

Sissirat on normal would end up being 15 kills that will average 90 items/60 minutes.
Sissirat on insane would end up being 6 kills that will average 54 items/60 minutes.

You also have to factor in the cost of potions or other items needed for each kill. If you are spending 5,000 gold on potions for each insane kill are you helping or hurting yourself?

Q. How does farming solo versus grouped level impact the rainbow drop rate?
A. When you farm solo you get 100% loot .... yay! How is that for an answer? LOL! Seriously though, DR uses a multiplier system where you get additional loot for each member of your team that normally EXCEEDS the total number of drops divided by the number of group members. The actual percentage will change depending on the mob and your group makeup but you can just mouse over the mob to see what the current loot % is.

Q. You mentioned a loot table, what exactly is that?
A. A loot table is a simply a list of items and the frequency they drop for a particular mob. Generally speaking the more difficult the mob the better their loot table will be.

For example, if you kill a level 1 rat you should never see a RB drop because RBs are not on the loot table for the rat. You can kill that rat 1,000,000 times and NEVER see a rainbow. So if you want a RB you have to use a different loot table so let's take Sissirat. Sissirat may have a 0.003% (I just made up a number) chance to drop a RB so on average for every 10,000 items that drop 3 of them will be a RB.

The drop rate does not guarantee you a rainbow if you kill Sissirat 5,000 times or 50,000 times it just means the loot table reflects a 0.003% chance and your drops are entirely RANDOM.

Q. Wow, I think I am catching on so how do you maximize getting rainbows?
A. If you insist on farming for rainbows here is what I would suggest. Find a group of 4 players that you trust and play well with. Pick a BOSS that you can easily get access to and that you can kill on insane consistently and quickly. This method will allow you to generate the largest number of drops in a short amount of time. Killing Frump is relatively easy, but you have to go through 2 waves of mobs to get to him so how efficiently can you do that? Killing the Snow Chief takes time, but if you are getting XP you can level and farm at the same time.

Q. So, should I start farming RBs immediately?
A. First off, there is not a lot of reason for lower level characters to spend hours farming when they could be leveling. RB drops off regular mobs are common so just go kill multitudes of them. When you hit 100 there will be plenty of time for farming RBs. Of course, it is your time and if you want to spend hours farming Sissirat even in your 60s or 70s have at it.

2 notices,
There are actually no real loot tables, there isnt a mob that doesnt have a chance to drop a rb, even a level 1 whisker ratling can drop a rainbow, chance is sick small, still. And a way to increase your rainbow drops are simply be level 90+ as the drop rate will be a bit higher.

Tristanne: Really excellent guide! Well done!

LegendRunner: There are loot tables. For example, bosses have a higher percentage to drop rainbows than regular mobs do. Also, mobs in HDoL have higher percentages to drop rare+ loot. You are correct in that characters over level 90 have a higher percent drop rate for rainbows.

In general, there are certain mobs that never drop any loot (Abaddon's guards, for example). I don't even bother killing them. I have, however, received a rainbow from a poison rat in Sissirat's Lair. I've also received rainbows from chests, have had two rainbows drop off a single mob and know of a player who received a rainbow from a sarcophagus (!).

I mean the monsters that do drop loot always got a chance of dropping a RB, the rate has nothing to do with loot tables, everything drops everything, except some monsters. For example, items arent bound to monsters, sissirat isnt only dropped at sissirat. And that is what I thought was ment above. Something that does drops loot, how crappy ever, can drop a RB.

great work

great work

I have to ask... how do you know?

For example, how do you know having a 900% loot multiplier in HDOL doesnt make it more likely that an individual drop is a rainbow.

Not what do most people think... but how do you know for sure? How do you know?

Can I reiterate the part about why bother boss farming when you're a low level? I'm level 85 right now, and if I had spent those 2 weeks I farmed sissi SC Frump and Rotgut getting experience, I'd be a level 100 right now. All the good farm loot I ever got I outgrew way faster than I expected, like within 2 days. It was a waste of time for me.

This has been stated by the devs but I don't think explicitly in the forum. They have stated in game chat though that this is the case. Most of this information is from running countless hours in various dungeons. Reading over the original post it is very well put together.



Edited by JoeB1978 (10/22/07 08:21 AM)

Thank you for your replies and taking the time to ensure my post was accurate. The post was directed primarily at newer players and not lifers like LegendRunner , but let me expound or clarify a few points.

Above level 90 there is a RB higher drop rate, point well-taken and made.

Loot tables:
Mobs do not have loot tables like the World of Warcraft where Boss X always drops a specific type and quality of loot, but it does have a table that determines what % of drops will be rainbows versus other quality items. LegendRunner and Ripper_McGee are correct that not every mob in the game has a functional loot table, because some never drop loot.

LegendRunner believes that every mob that does drop loot can drop a rainbow. I am not 100% positive that Dew Valley mobs can produce rb drops, but we both agreed it mattered very little. If you want to farm Dew Valley for rainbows you have way too much time on your hands. The lowest level rainbow I have seen is a level 10 that was dropped by Sissirat.

PhobicOne - If your goal is to quickly level then low level RB farming is typically counterproductive. For the players that want to have "cool toys" here and now it makes sense if it gives them pleasure to be level 20 after 2 months.

I believe there is an exception where a higher level player helps gear up a lower level player. Not all boss encounters lend themselves to this, but Sissirat is a prime example where a high level player can clear & reset Sissirat with sub-minute times. A decked-out (all purples) level 14 player will be able to level quicker for a few levels just due to gearing. So a single 30-minute farming session may save 2-5 hours of grind time even if a RB does not drop. Side note: don't use this as an excuse to spam the chat channel with "power level" requests ... this is Dungeon Runners and not Dungeon Slackers!

Qutse asks "How do you know?"
I have not seen the code so a developer would have to specifically address your concern. Suffice it to say that "the lottery is merely a tax for those individuals bad at math."

Thank you again for the feedback!

I was primairly thinking about the claim that RBs dont drop more frenquently on higher difficultly settings. Its the common wisdom but i dont like common wisdom for fact checking. Being a stat guy I know it would be very very hard to eyeball a multiplier on such a small percentage chance. Its not that I have evidence to reject the hypothesis that the drops arnt the same its that the power of the eyeball test isnt very good.

Some of you chat with devs though so I wondered if maybe you had.

Someone else on another thread said devs said HDOL has a higher rainbow drop rate. What to do with comments like that for example?

The chance/drop does not increase on a higher difficulty, this comes from the Devs. But if you are looking at your overall chance of getting a rainbow will increase because the amount of drops increases. So instead of getting 1 item from a mob you get 2 (as an example). This truly comes into play if using a group of 5 where you can get at least one rainbow to pop almost every run. This is entirely on the +% drop and not a change due to difficulty level.