Update 1.1 goes live in around 2 days and although we are a bit late with this topic’s coverage, we still want to make sure that everybody that maybe has not heard about it yet will be aware of the upcoming item drops and crafting changes in Tom Clancy’s The Division.
Stronger items with item level 32 will be introduced with the new patch, however the so called Gear Score will replace this ilvl classification to simplify the process of comparing players and their gear.
Because of this change in the item system, the developers also decided to make significant changes to the loot and crafting system, because the balance between good and valuable loot drops and the amount of crafted items since the release was far from good.
The way our crafting feature is designed is to offer an alternative for players to temporarily complete their gear, by crafting missing pieces of their level.
They have illustrated this in the following graphs, by showing how many item level 31 High-End items were acquired through crafting compared to items acquired as loot drops.
More High-End Items
With update 1.1, every named NPC that you kill will grant you a guaranteed High-End drop! This sounds great at first, but might lower the tension and expectation of getting good item drops from killing bosses.
Lowering the drop rate from 100% to like 80-90% might be a better approach to solve this problem, but let’s see how it turns out. In addition to that, drop rates for Division Tech materials will be increased to 40% on level 32 named enemies in the Dark Zone.
New Drop Tables
At the moment it’s not possible to determine which NPCs drop what kind of loot, which makes it difficult to farm for a specific item – maybe the last item you need for your gear to be complete. New drop tables have been designed to grant you just enough control to focus your efforts on specific NPCs, depending on your need. Each named NPC will now have more chances to grant a specific type of High-End item. By discovering the specificities of each named NPC, you will quickly learn which ones you should focus on in order to obtain specific items.
Crafting as an Alternative
Crafting should not be the primary way to develop your build and get your gear, while deconstructing and material converting will still be a part of the game and should be seen as an alternative to complete and improve the gear you have already got.
Increased costs for converting crafting materials and crafting High-End items:
- 10 Standard (Green) materials instead of 5 to craft 1 Specialized (Blue) material
- 15 Specialized (Blue) materials instead of 5 to craft 1 High-End (Gold) material
- 10 High-End (Gold) materials instead of 8 to craft 1 lvl 31 High-End (Gold) item
Changed deconstruction yield of Standard (Green) and High-End (Gold) items:
- Deconstructing a Standard (Green) item yields 1 Standard material instead of 2
- Deconstructing a High-End (Gold) item yields 1 High-End material instead of 2
Tip: Make sure that you convert all of your materials to the highest tier you can go, unless you haven’t done so yet!
Summary
To sum up the list of changes brought with update 1.1 in regards to item drops and crafting, the developers will:
- Increase drop rates of High-End items on named NPCs (100% drop rate)
- Increase drop rates of Division Tech, to make it less of a bottleneck than it currently is
- Modify loot tables for each named NPC, to make the hunt for loot more controlled
- Increase conversion costs of lower quality materials to high quality ones, making it harder to convert low quality materials into high quality ones
- Decrease construction yields, making it less interesting to farm lower quality items in order to obtain crafting materials, and because you’ll get more High-End items as a whole
- Increase cost of crafting High-End items, because High-End materials will be much easier to come by
