Improving Darkforge yields?

[Athe]

I recently had a very disappointing trip to Darkforge: no metal/hide armor of any kind (just clothes, robes, and leather), and no eternium weapons. This may have been because I was at a fairly low level when doing it. Is there any way, such as waiting until one is a higher level, to ensure that the rooms in Darkforge will provide at least semi-decent equipment, and not just junk?

Thanks.

[Silfir]

From my understanding of loot generation mechanics, no, there isn't - items are picked from a pool determined by the dungeon's danger level, which is constant, not the player's character level. It's not unusual for Darkforge to have crap items, just unlucky.

Character level does influence the quality of weapons and armor - but only whether they have affixes or not. With few exceptions, affixes generally don't matter a great deal (weapons of penetration or devastation and perhaps those with the poisonous prefix can be worthwhile, "of life" armor can provide a sizable HP bonus), and the effect is little enough that it shouldn't keep you from entering Darkforge at a low level, if you have the need and means to grab the items.

[Unforgiven82]

From my current monks experience who's just about to win (meaning just about to end up as YASD), I'd say class also has a huge effect on the items generated. Not only in the DF, but also when clearing a tension room of great blue wyrms and a greater fire vault, I noticed that robes and clothes get generated a lot more than usual.

[Silfir]

That is likely true in general, but I've really only noticed it with spellcasters, who will find much, much more spellbooks than others.

[Unforgiven82]

Monk actually also seemed to find a lot of scrolls and potions, but very few spellbooks (I think I found about 6-8 during the whole game). Back in the days when I had a habit of starting with id hopping I also noticed that it usually took a lot less time for melee classes to find good armor than for example a bard (seemed it was almost more likely to find SLBs than a set of good armor when playing a bard).