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.

Additionally, after completing a raid a certain multiple of times (Usually 20, but 5 and 10 for Master Artificer and Lord of Blades respectively) the quest giver's end reward will be special - 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 str tome could instead appear as a +3 to +4 str 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 a 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 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.

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.

EN, EH, EE difficulty was added to 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 didnt 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 Shadowfell raids
Temple of the Deathwyrm, Fire on Thunder Peak and following The Mark of Death, these featured far less chance than before on end chest for named items to drop. Developers tried to encourage running harder difficulties this way (?) however, most players simply determined not to hope anything (other than token style ingredients) to drop from end chest and went for 20th running EN. In Defiler of the Just we saw change in this trend.

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 . 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.