Raid loot mechanic

The raid loot mechanic for DDO has changed through the history of DDO:

Current end reward mechanic
The chance for a raid item to drop for you at end chest varies from raid to raid. Most raids also have an additional mechanics, so that even if you're unlucky with the end chest, you slowly work towards your desired raid item.
 * As of Update 41, the end chests of end game raids include raid runes (BtA). You can turn in runes for raid loot.
 * Most older raids use a different mechanics: every 20th completion (or 5th / 10th for Master Artificer and Lord of Blades respectively) the quest giver offers a special reward list - generally a list of only raid loot. Each raid differs in exactly what and how many items you can select from.

Notes:
 * Tomes are generally weighted to be far rarer in the end reward lists then the other raid loot. The other raidloot itself doesn't vary much from item to item in terms of rareness.
 * Tomes from any source also have a 1 in 4 chance of instead being a BtA upgrade tome of the same type that would otherwise appear. (EG: A BtC +3 Strength tome could instead appear as a +3 to +4 Strength tome upgrade which would be BtA instead of BtC).
 * Guild renown will usually be offered in addition to the above items.
 * All raid reward items bind and a "Are you sure?" message will be displayed. (Exceptions: The Lord of Blades and The Master Artificer rewards vary in binding.)

Pre-Epic era raids
The chance for an older raid item to drop for you is as follows:


 * On normal, 1 in 6 chance
 * On hard, around 1 in 5 chance - varies depending on raid difficulty
 * On elite, around 1 in 4 chance - varies depending on raid difficulty

However, The chances will vary depending on how hard the developers think the raid scales up from normal to hard/elite. For example, there is little to no NHE difference in the Titan Awakes.

More recent raids such as The Master Artificer and The Lord of Blades do not use this loot mechanic and instead have unique mechanics; check the quest pages themselves for details.

Eberron Epic raids

 * On original epic difficulty (before EN, EH, EE difficulty was implemented), around 1 in 4 chance, and often a second chance at an alternate item

In the original Plane of Night on epic, you have a chance at raid loot, similar to as if you ran it on elite, but could also get a flawless red dragon scale in the same chest.

Later with MotU uodate, EN, EH, EE difficulty was added to these original Eberron Epic raids, however, on many occasion drop rates were busted beyond comprehension. On some raids EN and EH had better chance and EE didn't seem to drop any etc. It was hard to determine if there was any formula or rules for raid drop rates with these raids.

Post Menace of the Underdark raids
Caught in the Web and The Fall of Truth both contain Commendation of Heroism. It is far easier to obtain this in FoT however.

Post Shadowfell raids
Temple of the Deathwyrm, Fire on Thunder Peak and The Mark of Death all have far less chance than before for named items to drop in the end chest. The Developers made this change to the drop rate to encourage players to run harder difficulties. However, most players simply gave up hope of pulling anything other than token style ingredients from the end chest and instead aimed to gain rewards by completing sets of 20 runs on Epic Normal instead, often with the use of. At the time, there were many Bypasses floating on Auction House from Anniversary Card Collection duping. In Defiler of the Just drop rates returned to a higher frequency.

Raid Runes/Post-Legendary contents
With Legendary Raids the Developers again changed the Raid loot system. These raids still offer a chance for named raid items to drop, but the end chest also contains runes specific to that raid (, etc). The number of runes that appear in the end chest varies, with higher amounts appearing on harder difficulties. They cannot be transferred in the chest, but are Bound to Account on Acquire so can be transferred between characters on the same account. The quest givers for each quest also give the option of opening a barter window in which 1,250 runes can be traded for any of the named raid items. The barter window items are non-mythic, non-reaper versions.

The Codex and the Shroud (the Legendary version of The Shroud) drops both Legendary Shroud crafting materials (see Legendary Green Steel) as well as varying amounts of Codex Rune. Higher difficulties drop greater amounts of runes and crafting materials. The runes can be traded at the Altar of Fecundity for Legendary Green Steel base items.

In addition, the legendary raids now require the use of a to skip the three day raid timer, instead of the old Bypasses.

For the original Developer's post on the new system, see

History: Pre module 5 Mechanic
Prior to the release of module 5 at the end of a successful raid, the warded raid loot chest would always contain two pieces of warded raid loot not assigned to any specific player. The loot could not be removed from the chest without a Glyph of Warding. Two Glyphs of Warding (small stone objects) would spawn near the chest. These glyphs could only be taken in two ways:


 * By default, only the party leader could take them, and then trade them to the player(s) who could then use them to loot an item.
 * The party leader could change the raid to a "random party loot mode", where two random individuals would be able to pick up a Glyph. This needed to be done before the raid was completed, and could not be switched back to the default after it had been set.

Once a player had a Glyph in their possession, they would then be able to remove a raid reward item from the warded chest.

This system was discontinued since there always were 2 raid loot guaranteed per instance, and short-manning raids for better loot per person, was becoming very popular, especially for then latest raid, The Reaver's Fate. Some guilds went far more extreme, since they as a 12-man group could take down the raid boss to 2% and 10 of them could leave the instance to enter another, then remaining 2 members could get guaranteed piece of raid loot etc.