Loot, rarity and item rolls
ShredDead loot explained: armour slots, the Rare, Epic and Legendary bands, why two items of the same tier differ, and when selling beats equipping.
Zombies deliver the gear. The interesting part is deciding which of it is actually better than what you are wearing. 
Where loot comes from
Every zombie you kill can drop an item. The drop lands on the street, and you pick it up — or, more usually, your inventory fills up while you are watching the tree and you find it later. There is no vendor, no shop refresh, no gambling: the street is the loot table.
The three bands
Steam's achievement list names them directly: Rare Loot (fill every inventory slot with Rare or better, 19.9%), Epic Loot (17.7%) and Legendary Loot (15.6%). Three bands, in that order, and the completion rates fall by roughly two points per band — which tells you the bands are a progression, not a lottery.
| Band | Achievement | Completion |
|---|---|---|
| Rare | Rare Loot | 19.9% |
| Epic | Epic Loot | 17.7% |
| Legendary | Legendary Loot | 15.6% |
Full Set (unlock all inventory slots) sits at 22.6%, above all three. Players unlock the space before they fill it, which is exactly the order the game wants.
Why two Rare items are not the same
Items roll their stats. A Rare chest piece and another Rare chest piece can differ substantially, and one player who played the demo says the release widened the roll range, so worse gear shows up more often than it did in the demo build. Treat the band as a floor, not a guarantee: read the numbers on the item, not the colour of its border.
That also means the correct comparison is against the piece you are wearing, not against the band name. A high-roll Rare beats a low-roll Epic for the slot it occupies.
Selling
Sell value scales poorly. Players pushing into the late game report that mid-game items — blues included — sell for very little against DNA costs in the tens of thousands, and that blue DNA in particular piles up with nothing to spend it on. Two consequences:
- Sell early and often; the money is better in the tree than in a stash of items you will replace.
- Do not expect selling to fund the late game. It is a top-up, not an income stream.
What to keep
- One item per slot, highest effective roll.
- Anything that raises DNA income, even at a lower band.
- Nothing else — the inventory is not a museum, and the skill tree always wants the money more.
Once your slots are full of Legendary, loot stops being a system you think about; it becomes a number that feeds the tree. At that point the prestige layer is where the remaining decisions live.
