Basics: how does one look up a "loot table"?

People talk about loot tables, but where do I go to look at one. Let's say I want to know the "loot table" for Grumpy Jack. Where do I go to find it?

It seems like I should know that already, but I don't.

Some decisions were made as to the actual loot table things players are able to see. There was a time once when we could see what loot was available as the reward for a mission but has since been replaced with "you think there's something inside" ...like not knowing the loot table for a mission would be funny, or add a dynamic to the game that would add value(?) to the experience.
It's sorta similar to the decisions to remove the Blue areas of interest and the level descriptions on crafting mats. ANYhow.

There's another website where players have crowd sourced loot data that can be searched by encounter.
Sorta like this.

Granted its only as correct as the amount of data that's sourced, so it may be incomplete in nature (the depth of the loot table). I wouldn't hold my breath though, on overland names - historically, their loot tables were incredibly shallow.

For several years, EQ2 loot data (the list of items that may drop when an enemy is killed) was available on EQ2 ZAM. The manner in which it was displayed -- flat percentages -- was somewhat misleading, but it was still a tool which many players used to determine which targets/enemies to tackle, even if the exact numbers weren't right.

When EQ2 Census was launched, empowering sites like EQ2Players, EQ2U, and Dragon's Armory, loot data was not present. We campaigned for this data and eventually, it looked like it was on the horizon. EQ2 lead programmer Zoltaroth and EQ2U spent over a month developing and testing this so that we would be able to accurately display which enemies drop which loot and with the correct percentages. This would have been an invaluable tool for players, as well as a useful QA tool to identify enemies which have the incorrect (or no) loot coonnected to them, which has happened a few times. However shortly before this feature was to go live in the Census API, the EQ2 design team had a change of heart and decided that this data shouldn't be published and that 'some things should remain a mystery'.

This was March/April 2013 -- 7 years ago.

It is possible to see which items drop from which enemies through a crowdsourced loot tracker developed by Dedith of Dragon's Armory. You may have heard of the Advanced Combat Tracker (ACT) program which tens of thousands of EQ2 players have used to monitor their combat either personally or in a group or raid setting to see which of their spells and combat arts is most effective. Dedith wrote a plugin for ACT called the Armory Tracker which logs every time you or someone in your group loots something from a chest. With the power of this data, EQ2U is able to show you which enemy awards which items!!

If you'd like to browse Solo, Group Dungeon, and Raid content and see who drops what, check out the
Armory Tracker Browser on EQ2U

If you would like to contribute to this project by installing the Actloot plugin, please see these instructions:
Dragon’s Armory Releases “Armory Tracker” Loot Data Plugin

Also, the creator of EQ2 Logger Links (EQ2LL) has started updating their site again.

Thank you Feldon. You are our Hero again!!!!

does this work if the server choice is anonymous? I didn't see an option for HOF, or well, any of the merged servers.

It should work for any Live server.

I asked Dedith. I think he intended it for future use. Basically it doesn't matter what you set it to.

"The server list drop down does nothing, but it could"

This is excellent! You just gave me a good reason to use ACT. I try to not obsess over every parse anymore.

I knew there was some way to see this data from EQ2U, on some items, or maybe it was instances could tell you which loot had dropped in them. Something like that. But I didn't expect I could add to the data. And I couldn't remember how.

Other than the designation "ultra rare" I can live with knowing in a binary way which loot can drop where. Would've been nice to know percentages. I don't really feel like it's a spoiler. But then, I read the end of mystery novels first, always have.

I use parsing to figure out my best casting order. It also quickly reveals if I am fighting in my harvest gear. But what's most useful is to have it watch for text from NPCs that are telling me that Some Bad Thing is about to happen, because so much text can go flying by that I miss stuff, and then ACT detects it and uses text-to-speech to TELL me "get out", "cure quick", "use cat's eye" or whatever.

Did you know that there's a harvesting plugin for ACT? I like that one a lot, since it gives me real numbers to review and helms me eliminate emotional bias on what I actually harvested.

I see the text just fine, but I think in general they don't give us enough time to react.

It's like 5 or 10 sec. It can take me that long to find my mouse cursor in some places, or if I have to move and fight at the same time.

I've noticed wtih ACT (back when I was using it a lot) that the "ding" happens before I can see the text in my chat, so lag may be a problem for me as well.

In this case it's my lag, not the game's lag. I need a new PC, just not enough of the ready.