How does difficulty really affect item drops?

Another day, another topic. Sorry about that

Just wondering something. The other day I was playing PSO on Normal, and when I was playing through the Mines a Gillchic dropped the Book of Katana 1. I was surprised, since I thought it was meant to only be available on the Ruins. Then later on in the same game sessions, either a Dark Belra or a Claw dropped an Agito (1980). I then remembered that once on BB, while playing a TTF run on normal, Gillchics were also dropping something called Custom Parts for Androids, and this was a 10 star item, IIRC.

I've also found three Delsaber's Right Arms on Normal level while playing PSO, while I've yet to track one down in BB on any difficulty; and in 9 out of 10 PSO runs on Hard (I counted them), the Dragon kept dropping minute variations of the Dragon Slayer

So my question is pretty much the one on the thread title - how does difficulty really affect drop items? I thought these items were supposed to only be available in the higher difficulty settings but I've found them on the simplest one. Were these just pure luck or is there something else at work here?

It seems to me that certain items are programmed specifically to drop in certain areas in certain hardness modes. A special weapon will always drop in Ruins Normal after every few tries. From my experience, it's only the same item over and over again. For example, my skyly will always find an AGITO in Ruins Normal after every few tries. It will never find a claw or other special weapon. I could be wrong, but I'm just saying what has happened in my experiences.

One of my character (forgot which) kept finding Dragon Slayers, too.

As for the Delsaber's Saber, I think it is dropped early on in the game to make people want to search endlessly for Delsaber's Shield. I remember getting my first one in Ruins Normal.

Years ago, my first character, a HUcast yellowboze found a Book Of Katana 1 in normal mode in an area that wasn't Ruins. I know this because I remember that (1) this was my very first character and I hadn't gotten that far in the game yet, (2) I found it before I got online the SEGA servers and had a chance to ask anyone if it was important before tossing it, and (3) I didn't think I was powerful enough to fight the big boss and avoided him at any cost and avoided Ruins because I was so very frightened to die and drop my weapon.

I see what you mean. I've been noticing this as well, from other people I've talked to. Oh well, at least it keeps things surprising enough for me to keep investing in the game

Oh, and today I found a Parasite Wear for the first time in Hard - something I've always been chasing in BB for a while but never found, yet in PSO it sits on my Check Room, waiting for my char's level to reach the requirements

On PSO GC, (which BB takes all its drops from) Sega revamped all the rare drops. On Ver.2, the Dragon drops Dragon Slayer in Hard (and Vhard?), but on GC he no longer does. Every enemy has their own, static, predefined "rare" drop and they can drop nothing else but that rare. However, certain items that appear to be rare are actually classified as common items, and thus can drop from anything.

For example, on Ver.1, the common 9 star rare items like Club of Laconium, DB's Saber, Varista, and so forth drop as ?SPECIAL WEAPON and can be tekked. However they are not classified as rare items, and they drop like hotcakes in Vhard mode. Apparently Sega got complaints from people not wanting to tek garbage all the time, (you get excited when you see ?SPECIAL WEAPON, then sad when you find it's just a Varista ) so in Ver.2 those items drop tekked but with the same frequency.

On GC, Sega gave all those weapons new, unique models and made them designated rare drops from various monsters and boxes in various difficulties.