Equipment Level Requirements (ELR)

With Equipment Level Requirements (ELR) all equipment (weapons, suits, helmets and packs) displays a new ingame item level ("LVL"), as shown here:

This new item level mirrors the level required by Bethesda for an item to drop from the regular loot list (or appear in a store based on the vendor lists). The displayed item level for tiered items (calibrated, refined, advanced or superior) is a combination of the base item level + an added tier level (again based on Bethesda's loot tables), depending on the tier itself, as shown here:

Weapons

Calibrated: +10 levels

Refined: +20 levels

Advanced: +30 levels

Suits, Helmets and Packs

Calibrated: +7 levels

Refined: +14 levels

Advanced: +21 levels

Superior: +28 levels

This is how it looks ingame:

Weapon base levels range from a LVL -4 Kraken to a LVL 45 Varuun Inflictor Rifle (so an Advanced Varuun Inflictor Rifle requires LVL 75).

Armor sets range from LVL 1 (eg Crimson Fleet) to LVL 29 (eg Bountyhunter; so a Superior Bountyhunter piece requires LVL 57).

If the player character equips a weapon, suit, helmet or pack below her or his own character level, all damage done by the player character is reduced to zero. This is displayed by "--" as entry for damage, as shown here:

The weapon damage shown in inventory may in some instances drop to zero for all weapons once a piece of gear is equipped underleveled. No worries, once unequipping that piece of gear the damage shown returns to normal. Sometimes you have to switch between a few different gear items to fully restore the UI display. This is only a little visual quirk with no effect on your gameplay.

Please note that rarity (rare, epic or legendary) as well as number and quality of mods on weapons/armors are not taken into account. This way you can still have godly rolls and be excited about great loot appearing surprisingly early. But this loot is much less likey to totally invalidate all other gear found for the next 25 levels as it is currently a reality in the unmodded game.

Also, hhen wearing/using underleveled equipment while flying with your ship, the frame rate can drop down. If you notice such just unequip all underleveled equipment (which you shouldn't ideally be wearing anyway), so that no more "--" entries for weapon damage are seen anywhere. This will instantly restore your frame rate.

The instances where I found high level overpowered gear way too early were many in my playthroughs (eg. many PoI are full of advanced weaponary used as part of the scenery, stores sell mid-level weapons for comparatively tiny amounts of credits right from the start, high level enemies drop the weapons they use regardless of character level...).

How it was done

Equipment Level Requirements (ELR