Chest ransack

This page is about the mechanic that limits chest and quest reward loot. For the quest XP bonus from breaking objects, see Experience points.

Chest Ransack Timer

"You have ransacked this chest often."

"You have stripped everything of value from this chest."

Looting a chest too often within a certain span of time can temporarily reduce the quality and amount of treasure that chest generates for you. This is to prevent players from farming the same chest over and over, especially chests that certain builds can reach quickly and chests that contain highly sought named items.

Every single chest in the game has its own chest ID and "ransack timer". Timers are tracked separately for each character. They are not tracked separately for each difficulty level (with a couple of exceptions).

When a chest is opened: if there is no active chest timer for that chest, it generates normal loot for you and the game starts a secret timer that lasts exactly 7 days (168 hours), right down to the minute.

• Normal loot drops the first through eighth times you loot that chest within those 7 days (counting the first one that started the timer).
• Starting on the ninth chest looting: you get a ransack warning notice, most chest-specific named items cannot appear, and the chest's loot level is reduced by 1 for each time beyond 8 that the chest has generated loot.
• You get no loot at all once you've driven the loot level to 0.
  • How long this takes depends on the initial loot level.
• Effectively, you can loot 8 times per 7 days without ransack. The 9th looting is the first to be reduced (and have no named loot).

The ransack timer counts down even through game updates and server outages. Once it runs out, that chest refreshes completely. It'll provide full loot and start the timer again the next time it's freshly opened.

Chest ransack is reset by any form of reincarnation (including lesser).

Update 58 introduced a new option in settings: Enable Detailed Chest Information. This setting is false by default; if you enable it in the Gameplay tab of the settings page, the first time you touch or open a chest in a particular run of a quest, the game will print a report on that chest's ransack status in the "Loot" chat channel (visible by default in the general chat tab) containing the number of times you've looted that chest this ransack period, and how long it is until the count resets. If the chest spawns randomly (like a Mysterious Remnant chest from a Monster Champion) or does not ransack as its contents are quest-critical, it will list its time until reset as over 900 years.

Re-roll

While the act of re-rolling does not count towards ransack penalty, you will continue to accrue ransack as you normally would for repeated runs. Re-rolling a ransacked chest will result in the loot quality of the re-roll being equivalent to the standard chest ransack thresholds. U19, Introducing Chest Reroll

Tips

Due to the way the ransack mechanic works, if you close and reopen a chest, it shows you the message you would get from your next looting, not the current one. So if you get no message on your first opening, but reopening it gives you a ransack warning, you know you just got your 8th and last set of normal loot this period and your next run will be penalized unless you wait the timer out. This is an easy way to know if you will soon be ransacked without keeping track. (This only works if the chest is due to be ransacked next run - if you have two runs to go, the alert will not show if you open a chest a third time.)

Opening a chest repeatedly in one quest does not advance your ransack count extra times. This has been confirmed by a developer, and tested (DDO Forums).

Because the chest timer does not reset each time you loot the chest, you only need to wait 7 days from the first time you open the chest for the chest to be reset. So, you could loot the chest once, wait 6 days, then loot the chest 7 times within that last day of the chest timer, then loot the chest an additional 8 times after that day has elapsed. So, you can "pre-set" a chest's timer 6 days before a planned loot boost weekend and then loot the chest 15 times on that weekend.

What still drops after ransacking?

Drops

• Chests with 100% static loot have no ransack rules.
  • Prey on the Hunter, Tempest Rune for Dragontouched Armor and Toothpick.
  • Eye of the Titan clam
  • Any chest containing a key or any other item required to complete the quest.
• When you loot a ransacked chest which has not yet had its loot level completely reduced to 0, randomly generated items, gems and coins will still drop, although the value will reduce as the loot level decreases.

Doesn't Drop

• Named items which aren't guaranteed drops or quest-critical
• Pack-specific crafting ingredients
• Guild Renown tokens
• Once a ransackable quest's loot level hits zero, nothing will drop at all.

Quest Rewards

"You have completed this quest frequently."

"You have completed this quest too often recently and receive no reward."

Quest end rewards can be "ransacked" as well, with a similar mechanic.

Note

Ransacking on Heroic also ransacks Epic/Legendary chests and end rewards.

See Also:

• Quest ransack