Loot Scaling: How Does it Work?

For anyone who’s journeyed to a lower level area in order to help friends, complete exploration objectives, or gather crafting materials has noticed that part of the time, loot scales with a character’s level. The rest of the time, players receive loot equal to the area they’re in. This is quite an interesting mechanic in theory, one that attempts to strike a balance that meets the objectives of multiple players. Need Jute Scraps at level 40? No problem– run some starting area DEs. Helping guildmates in Metrica Province? Fear not– you might get some cool upgrades, so it’s still worthwhile to loot.

But what about in practice? Is it better to farm on a low level alt, or farm on a level 80? Also, how about WvW? How does loot scaling work there? Yesterday, Linsey Murdock, Games Designer, answered a couple questions in regards to WvW loot scaling. It seems that ArenaNet still might be working out some of the kinks in the system.

First, this was said:

WvW DOES scale all loot to your level, but PvE does not. I don’t know the exact percentage but it’s not a big number, I am sure. We wanted you to be able to go back to low level PvE maps to farm for low level mats.

Afterwards, it was followed up with:

I dug a little deeper and it seems that the loot system for WvW is a little more nuanced than I initially thought, and doesn’t always scale the loot to YOUR level. Which explains how you were getting lower level mats.

Interesting. So technically players have multiple options when it comes to farming lower level crafting materials. The real question then becomes… what are the percentages we’re looking at?

Some players have been reporting on the official forums that the percentage of lower level drops when farming on a higher level character doesn’t seem nearly high enough, especially since certain crafting materials like cloth and leather are drops only found in bags or by salvaging. Other players report that the percentage in PvE seems to be around 75% for low level items, and 25% for base level items. I’ve personally noticed PvE percentages in this range as well, but I can’t help but think that it would be nice if ArenaNet released some actual numbers.

What do you think about the loot scaling system? Does it work in both theory and practice, or does it need some additional adjustments?