Yep, quest bosses tend not to drop anything useful. But you get loot as a quest reward. Public dungeon bosses do tend to drop more but that causes them to get farmed. Perhaps it is best that quest bosses don't drop loot so they aren't farmed as well.

I don't feel like I don't get enough loot though as random mobs do drop decent gear at a decent rate so there is no need to worry too much about bosses dropping loot.

Maybe stop farming the same boss? Just play the game and progress to different bosses. Farming shouldn't reward you so much.

What you are experiencing is ESOs finesse system, its unlike any other MMO.

Essentially you are rewarded loot depending on how well you as an individual performed.
If you successfully blocked at the perfect time, dodged perfectly and use your attacks with perfect timing, you would get the best loot every single time.
However on the other end of the scale, if you do not block, do not dodge and attack wastefully you will be rewarded poorly, mostly a combination of a coin and a handful of worms.

Some advice I would recommend experimenting with so you get a firm understanding of the system.
Start a new character(or use the current one) equip a 1h and a shield, find an opponent, best option is one with a 2H weapon, or a healing staff.
Every time your opponent attacks, block it! Get that timing down,
If they do a special attack/heal interrupt them.

Take your time with the combat, even if you can kill them by spamming a high damage spell, it does not mean you killed them with finesse!

Update: This has still been a problem for me. I'm not alone either, having found a couple other players on my adventures who are also not getting loot from bosses. Enemies that should drop both unique loot and random gear, such as the bosses of Soulfire Plateau, do not drop anything even on the first kill.

The harder fights against enemies with reinforced health bars cost weapon charges, armour strength, sometimes potions and soul gems, and all of that equipment is somewhat costly to maintain especially at lower levels. If you're not getting replacements as loot drops and you're not getting any gold either, that's a problem. It really takes the enjoyment out of fighting the bosses and in addition to being disappointing it just doesn't seem balanced. Not getting soul gems/potions/gear as loot means I have to buy them but since I'm also not getting gold as loot, I can't afford to.

JohnD212 wrote: »

Maybe stop farming the same boss? Just play the game and progress to different bosses. Farming shouldn't reward you so much.

I don't think you know what you're talking about, friend. If you had read my post, you would know I only attacked the first boss twice and then proceeded to play the game as normal, as a result of which I discovered a further problem with boss loot. If it were an isolated incident, I wouldn't have posted about it.

@Meogi I don't yet have the skills to craft better gear than what I can find and I can't afford to buy anything due to a lack of gear/gold loot drops from enemies.

@Avidus While you make a good point (I'm a clumsy fighter sometimes) you and others seem to be suggesting that there is a reward even for bad fighting. I'm not getting anything and I'm not the only one. When I'm on form, I do block and dodge and interrupt but the corpses still aren't lootable for me or the other people experiencing this problem.

TL;DR: Some people are not receiving any loot from bosses, not even worms or gold, regardless of their tactics, and the cost of multiple boss fights/progression is therefore not equal to the reward (because there isn't one). Could be a bug or a balance issue. I guess I'll continue to experiment and update this thread if the problem continues. I can also provide more information if needed and if someone can legitimately explain the reason behind this, that would be much appreciated. Anyone else experiencing this drawback should feel free to lend their voice to this thread as well. Thanks for reading.