Looting

Looting is the action of taking items off of monsters ingame after you kill them, or otherwise receiving recompense from the quest other than the reward offered by the questgiver. Unlike most MMO's, in DDO most monsters do not actually drop loot. Instead most loot is gained from treasure chests.

Chest level
Chest level affects the minimum level of any randomly generated loot that appears in that chest, and is usually equal to the quest's Normal CR, -1 on Casual, +1 on Hard, +2 on Elite, +any current global or personal loot boosts. Some chests are special and can have higher or lower level loot than indicated by quest level. "Ransacking" a chest (i.e. looting it too many times in too short a period of time), will decrease the loot level.

According to Update 29 Release Notes, treasure tables go up to chest level 40. The existence of high level loot for repeatedly questioned by the players, for example. As of May 2016, some issues concerning top level loot have been.

The expected coin drop is directly related to chest level.

To get the really special items, quests need to be run on Epic Elite, with loot boosts.

As of Update 30, a "particularly lucky" loot roll causes a chest to glow blue. Nowhere is it indicated what constitutes "particularly lucky" - 91+ or 96+ seem like good potential candidates.

Breakables
With Update 16 all breakables can now drop a wider variety of items, including equipment. (Common: Money, Gems. Uncommon: Potions, etc. Rare: Items. Very Rare: Tomes)

Challenges
Chests in Challenges are capped at CR 25.

Increasing the odds of finding named loot

 * Elixir of Discovery
 * Also, playing on higher difficulty usually increases your chances
 * Also, see below for information about rerolling chests

Increasing the loot quality

 * don't modify your loot level, but instead increase your chance of finding maximum effects for the given level.

Increasing the level of random loot
The following effects only affect the level of loot for the player who has the effect when they open the chest. It does not affect the level of loot for anyone else in the group.
 * Jewel of Fortune: +1 to +2 loot level.
 * Pirate Treasure Map: +1 Loot level.
 * Bash the Breakables Cargo Bay: +1 guild bonus to loot level.

Loot boost for everyone
 * Greater Dragonmark of Finding: Provides a +1 loot boost for entire group. See: Dragonmark of Finding for more information.

Re-rolling chests
Since Update 19 it is possible to change the content of a non-raid chest for you by clicking the "Re-roll Loot" button. You can use this function up to three times per chest. You cannot use it if you have already looted something from the chest, or if another player passed an item to you in the chest.

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. []

Re-rolling chest content costs Astral Shards. The amount depends on the level of the chest (taking into account also any active loot bonuses, such as global loot bonuses or Jewels of Fortune.) The cost is roughly equal to quest level / 2. Only your loot is affected, not that of other players.

Options/ rewards based on player class
On quest end reward lists that are entirely random, and have no chance of any named or special items appearing (including crafting ingredients such as from Necropolis or The Vale of Twilight), if the Class-Based End Rewards option is checked on, it will restrict the base type of the items that appear to specific types based on your class.

It has no function on any reward lists that can include any named items or special ingredients, and it does not restrict the effects that can appear on an item- only what types of items you'll see.