Is there supposed to be platemail armor in this chest? The first time I saw it, I assumed something glitched out, so I restarted the game. It was still there... Did a reinstall of the game plus the unofficial patch. It was still there. And if it is a glitch, how often should I be expecting to find O.P. items in random chests?

That is quite the fortunate glitch you are getting!

There is always one (or sometimes more?) magic item in the chest. It is supposed to be fairly random though, kind of. I seem to remember there being speculation about the character's name having something to do with the loot in the chest, but that seems too silly and random.

But yeah, it shouldn't always give you the same thing. But platemail isn't necessarily a total glitch as that is something that should have a chance of appearing.

Also remember that while plate mail is nice, it requires decently high Strength to wear and is very heavy, meaning you can't carry as much loot and will quite possibly get fewer action points in combat due to your encumbrance. So it's a little bit of a trade-off, rather than being simply better than lighter armors.

You know, the name dependent thing crossed my mind. And it appears to be true! I changed the name of my protagonist 3 times and each time it was different loot, then I change it back to my first name and it goes back to the platemail armor in the chest. That's so weird.

It's not weird, really. It is just that the random seed of the world is based on your name.

I'm fairly sure that the seed is based on more than just your characters name. I also remember reading somewhere that it's also dependent on dates in some way.

Old thread, but i just read it. Using the same name on the same day, i get different contents by changing Race/Gender/Background.
So apparantly the random seed generator checks name, date, race, gender and background
that's a good bit of variety available.

i have a set of machined plate, but its so heavy that i only wear it for really bad fights, and the rest of the time the ogre carries it for me