Update: Jump to this post for the new key-opening spree for the Shadows of the Hist (Update 11) PTS.

Since our NA character copies will be nuked in a matter of hours, I went on a key-opening spree on the PTS.

Spent 100 gold keys. Got 100 purple shoulders. (As expected.)
15 Divines
14 Infused
14 Prosperous
14 Reinforced
19 Sturdy
13 Training
11 Well-Fitted

Spent 75 silver keys. Got 38 blue shoulders.
2 Divines
5 Infused
8 Prosperous
5 Reinforced
3 Sturdy
7 Training
8 Well-Fitted

Spent 3 bronze keys. Got 1 green shoulder.
1 Sturdy

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IMPORTANT ISSUE: Out of 139 looted shoulders, there were zero shoulders with the Impenetrable trait. It seems that the Impenetrable trait has been omitted from the new Undaunted chest loot table. Impenetrable is one of the best PvP traits, and a lot of PvPers step outside of Cyrodiil to do PvE pledges specifically so that they can get monster sets to use. If this is unintended, then it is a very serious bug that must be addressed. If this is intended, then it must be reverted--no ifs or buts. Since Impenetrable currently drops from the Undaunted chests on Live, removing them from the drop table for DB would be a very nasty surprise to PvPers who are seeking these sets. And in light of useless traits like Prosperous and Training being added, Impenetrable's removal would, frankly, be insulting and ridiculous.

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The Undaunted [insert name here] sets are missing. Undaunted Bastion, Undaunted Infiltrator, etc. According to the patch notes, "The items you obtain from the chests always scale with your level, all the way up to Champion 160." Removing these items from the loot table for CP160 players (essentially reverting back to the way it was pre-TG) does technically satisfy this patch note. But most people would interpret this patch note to mean that you've scaled these sets to CP160, rather than you've removed these sets for CP160 players. @ZOS_GinaBruno is this the intended behavior? If so, you may wish to clarify the wording in the patch notes for the final release.

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Yes, all the traits (except for the special Nirnhoned trait and the presumably-bugged Impenetrable trait) are dropping, including Propsperous and Training. I'm sure you were just looking forward to getting these items:



However, the buff to the drop rate makes up for this dilution of the loot table. On Live, the gold keys had, in my personal experience, approximately a 50% drop rate. So a guaranteed 100% drop rate is double the rate on live, which counter-balances the increase of the trait pool from 5 on Live (Divines, Infused, Impenetrable, Reinforced, Well-Fitted) to 8 in the new update (I'm assuming that the missing Impenetrable on PTS is an unintended bug).

On Live, the silver keys had, in my personal experience, approximately a 10% drop rate. This rate is being buffed by a lot to approximately 50% on the PTS. Silver keys are now dropping shoulders as frequently as Gold keys on Live.

So, yes, the loot tables are being polluted with junk traits like Prosperous, but the buff to the Gold and especially Silver drop rates should compensate.

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So, just how does the dilution and drop rate increase balance out?

If you're looking for a specific shoulder of a specific weight and trait, you are looking for one item out of a pool of 150 on Live (10 shoulder types, 3 weights, 5 possible traits). If you do both pledges on one character, you were expected to get 0.6 shoulders per day on Live (assuming 50% chance on gold, 10% chance on silver), so you'd expect to get that specific shoulder, on average, once every 250 days (500 keys).

On the PTS, looking for a specific shoulder of a particular weight and trait means that you'll be searching in a pool of 240 (10 shoulder types, 3 weights, 8 possible traits, assuming they fix the impen drop and don't add nirn). If you do both pledges on one character, you would expect to get 1.5 shoulders per day after the DB update (100% chance on gold, and assuming 50% chance on silver), so you'd expect to get that specific shoulder, on average, once every 160 days (320 keys).

So, on average, it would be better on the PTS than on Live, but it'd still be a very grueling RNG grind.