Chests, drop rates & loot
How chest acquisition, equipment rarity, gems, materials, Riftstones and auto-open work in QuestAway 0.8.1.
Common chest acquisition
The shipped per-kill random chance is 0%. The guarantee route requires the larger of its kill threshold and the kills corresponding to its time floor. Base guaranteed kills = round(90 × (1 + 0.0018 × max(0, stage level − 20)²)); Drop Find divides that threshold by (1 + total Drop Find), rounded to at least one kill.
| Recommended level | Time floor | Base time bonus |
|---|---|---|
| 1–9 | 180s | 20% |
| 10–29 | 300s | 35% |
| 30–49 | 450s | 35% |
| 50–74 | 450s | 45% |
| 75–89 | 600s | 80% |
| 90–100 | 600s | 110% |
Ordinary interval = max(floor, floor × (1 + bonus) / (1 + permanent Drop Find)). With an active Drop Find potion, divide that result by (1 + potion Drop Find): shipped 0.8.1 allows the potion to go below the permanent floor. These are stage levels, not hero levels. Estimates assume steady kill speed, online farming and available chest capacity.
Equipment rarity
These probabilities are conditional on equipment being rolled, before potion-created chest adjustment.
| Rarity | Common chest | Stage boss chest | Act boss chest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Common | 64.66332% | 58.94372% | 51.84286% |
| Uncommon | 21.62857% | 23.00651% | 23.80956% |
| Rare | 9.65872% | 11.97751% | 14.58062% |
| Heroic | 3.77907% | 5.45824% | 7.81326% |
| Mythic | 0.2115% | 0.46549% | 1.42418% |
| Legendary | 0.05688% | 0.14557% | 0.52337% |
| Eternal | 0.00194% | 0.00296% | 0.00615% |
Multiply by the equipment outcome chance for a probability per opened chest. Potion-created extra common chests multiply each rarity weight by (7 − rarity tier) / 7, then normalize again; tier starts at 0 for Common. This favors lower rarities. It does not change the ordinary chest's item/material/gem branch.
What is inside a chest?
Each opening resolves to one loot result. These are the shipped 0.8.1 defaults with gem sockets and enchanting unlocked, before Riftstone replacement. They are probabilities per opened chest, not per monster kill.
| Result | Common chest | Stage boss chest | Act boss chest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Equipment | 50% | 90% | 90% |
| Ore or essence | 39.5% | 0% | 0% |
| Dispel Scroll | 0.5% | 0% | 0% |
| Gem | 10% | 10% | 10% |
The common chest first rolls a 40% material branch. A separate 1.25% roll inside that branch gives a Dispel Scroll: 40% × 1.25% = 0.5% per chest, leaving 39.5% for ore or essence. A normal material or scroll result gives one unit.
The first common chest is forced to contain equipment. Before gem sockets unlock (hero level 12), a gem result becomes a material. Before enchanting unlocks (level 16 requirement plus its station unlock), a Dispel Scroll result becomes a material. Stage and act chests can therefore give materials while gems are locked, despite the 0% ordinary material branch.
Equipment slots & class targeting
Common chests draw from the eight non-jewelry equipment types. Stage chests select jewelry with a 10% chance within an equipment result; otherwise they use non-jewelry. Act chests can draw any of the twelve loot slot types, including the four jewelry types. Paired ring and earring positions do not create extra loot types.
When additional classes are owned on the bench, class targeting favors the active party with an 80% branch. The “only party loot” option restricts the pool to the party. Armor weight follows the selected hero pool. Equipment rarity is a separate roll; compare all seven variants in the equipment catalog.
Chest level, equipment level & gem ceiling
Loot uses the selected stage, rather than your highest hero level. Recommended stage level is the rounded value of (difficulty × 100 + (act − 1) × 10 + stage) / 3, clamped to 1–100; difficulty is 0 for Veil, 1 for Breach and 2 for Abyss. Act bosses use the act's stage-10 level.
Equipment brackets are 1, 10, 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 70, 80, 90, 100. For a common chest, start from the greatest bracket at or below the selected stage’s recommended level. Both boss-chest types instead start from the act-end (stage 10) boss specification, including its bracket and promotion chance. Within 2 levels of the next bracket, the native promotion chance is (level − (next bracket − 2) + 1) / 3: 1/3 at two levels away, 2/3 at one level away.
- Common: uses the bracket selected by the drop roll. With the shipped zero random-kill chance, the guarantee route uses roll 0 and promotes to the next bracket when in that early window.
- Stage: chooses from the act-end boss brackets with a seeded roll, adds 5, then caps raw chest level at recommended stage level + 2.
- Act: chooses from the act-end boss brackets with a seeded roll, adds 12, then caps raw chest level at act-boss recommended level + 2.
The resulting raw chest level is rounded down again to an equipment bracket when generating an item. Gem ceilings use raw chest level before that equipment rounding. For example, Veil act 6 stage 4 recommends level 18, while its act-end boss recommends level 20. A stage chest starts from bracket 20, adds 5, then caps at 18 + 2 = raw level 20, producing equipment level 20. The act chest caps at 20 + 2 = raw level 22, also producing equipment level 20.
Select a stage and inspect its level.
Materials: ore, essence & tier upgrades
Conditional on a material result, the type split is 53.5% ore / 46.5% essence. The equipment bracket determines the starting material tier:
| Equipment bracket | Material tier |
|---|---|
| 1 or 10 | 1 |
| 20 or 30 | 2 |
| 40 or 50 | 3 |
| 60 or 70 | 4 |
| 80, 90 or 100 | 5 |
If below tier 5, the result can upgrade by one tier: 4.53% for common chest, 5.73% for stage boss chest, 8.53% for act boss chest. The boss-chest rates mainly matter when a locked gem result is converted to a material. The reviewed 0.8.1 material roll either keeps this starting tier or upgrades by one tier.
Browse ore, essences and scrolls.
Gems: biome affinity & tier chances
A gem result picks from 24 gem types. In an elemental biome with a matching resistance gem, a 50% branch picks that gem; the remaining branch selects uniformly from all 24, including the matching gem. The resulting matching-gem chance is 52.08333% per gem result. Neutral biomes use a uniform pool.
Gem tier ceiling is min(5, 1 + floor(raw chest level / 20)). A ceiling is not a guaranteed tier: roll from the distribution below.
| Raw chest level | Ceiling | T1 | T2 | T3 | T4 | T5 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1–19 | T1 | 100% | — | — | — | — |
| 20–39 | T2 | 75% | 25% | — | — | — |
| 40–59 | T3 | 60% | 28% | 12% | — | — |
| 60–79 | T4 | 45% | 28% | 25% | 2% | — |
| 80–100 | T5 | 44.5% | 28% | 25% | 2% | 0.5% |
These percentages are conditional on a gem result. For example, a normal chest with ceiling T5 has a 10% × 0.5% = 0.05% chance of any tier-5 gem before Riftstone replacement. Inspect gem bonuses by tier.
Riftstone replacement & pity
From stage 6 onward within an act, common and stage chests can replace their entire rolled loot with a Riftstone. Act chests never use this replacement. The chest's stored origin determines eligibility.
| Map | Chance per eligible chest |
|---|---|
| Veil | 5% |
| Breach | 3% |
| Abyss | 2% |
A shared no-stone counter advances only on eligible common/stage chests. A Riftstone resets it; if the counter reaches 25, that chest becomes a Riftstone. This guarantees one by the 25th consecutive eligible opening, rather than waiting for an extra opening afterward.
Replacement reduces all ordinary outcomes. At 5% replacement, for example, common-chest equipment is 50% × 95% = 47.5%, while Riftstone is 5%. Pity makes the replacement certain at its threshold. Rift & Colossus covers stone access, Colossus hunts and the Circle.
Capacity, queue & auto-open
Each chest type has its own holding cap. Capacity runes expand it; a full type cap or the 60-chest shared queue prevents an additional chest from entering the queue. The timer alone does not guarantee received loot if capacity is full.
| Chest | Base → maximum cap | Base auto-open | Timer reduction per node | Nodes | Fully upgraded timer |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Common chest | 6 → 16 | 15 min | 30s | 10 | 10 min |
| Stage boss chest | 4 → 8 | 60 min | 300s | 6 | 30 min |
| Act boss chest | 2 → 4 | 1 min | 10s | 5 | 10s |
Auto-open starts disabled. Rune of Vigil unlocks common-chest auto-open, Rune of the Keen Eye unlocks stage-chest auto-open, and Rune of the Crimson Seal unlocks act-chest auto-open. Their timer chains are Quick Hands, Swift Latch and Hasty Seal. Capacity upgrades and auto-open speed are distinct effects. These timers describe opening held chests, not obtaining new ones.
Colossus reward chests have their own equipment, Circle-piece and material rolls; the ordinary common/stage/act tables above do not apply to them.
Version & interpretation
These rules were verified against the installed QuestAway 0.8.1 client and its shipped balance settings. Live settings and server-resolved loot may differ. Gold Find changes gold income; it does not replace the removed Luck stat as a rarity modifier. Drop Find changes common-chest acquisition, while a potion-created extra chest has its own rarity weighting.