Smash, do not shoot
In Enter the Gungeon you open a chest by dodge rolling into it. The roll cracks the lid; it does not reload your gun by itself (only the Easy Reload Bullets item reloads on a roll). Shooting a chest does nothing.
Chest tiers
Chests come in six practical types, and the color tells you the ceiling on what can be inside:
| Chest | What it can hold |
|---|---|
| Brown | Common (lowest quality band) |
| Blue | Better than brown; common mid-tier loot |
| Black | High-quality rolls; also feeds generated magnificence |
| Red | High-quality rolls; also feeds generated magnificence |
| Rainbow | Best odds for top-tier loot |
| Synergy | A specific synergy item rather than a random roll |
| Mimic | Not a chest — an enemy disguised as one; attacks when opened |
Brown, blue, black, red and rainbow all roll their contents against the floor’s quality table below. Synergy chests bypass the table and hand you a synergy item. Mimics are traps.
The quality roll is per floor
Guns and items belong to five qualities — D, C, B, A and S — and the chance of each is fixed by the floor you are on. Higher floors simply roll better loot more often:
| Floor | D | C | B | A | S |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 — Keep of the Lead Lord | 10% | 50% | 35% | 4% | 1% |
| 2 — Gungeon Proper / Oubliette | 0% | 40% | 44% | 11% | 8% |
| 3 — Black Powder Mine / Abbey | 0% | 20% | 40% | 30% | 10% |
| 4 — Hollow | 0% | 10% | 50% | 30% | 10% |
By floor 2 you will never see D-quality loot, and by floor 3 an S-tier reward is a real possibility. This is why pushing deeper is itself a loot strategy.
Magnificence caps your top-tier haul
The game runs a hidden magnificence value so you cannot hoard A and S gear in one run. Picking up any A or S item adds to item magnificence; every red and black chest generated on a floor adds to generated magnificence. When the game is about to hand you an A or S reward, those two numbers combine into a logarithmic downgrade chance. Opening red and black chests early in a floor quietly raises that number — so sometimes the smart play is to leave a chest for later.
Loot discipline
Do not grab a gun just because it dropped. Check its type and stats against your run in the gun types guide before committing a slot. Spend shells on fit over raw tier in how to get good guns.