I'm currently on my first play through on the current stable build. I am in the ship building stage, so I am doing a lot of exploration (still looking for the Moon Emblem). I have a full set of Ferozium armor (Seeker's Set - although I wear a Frozen helm most of the time for the Glowing buff), and a 2H'ed melee (dps 970ish) and ranged (dps 550ish) of the same material. On all planets except the highest tier, this makes me basically untouchable. The difficulty of the highest tiered planet is manageable (although the dungeons are nasty). My question is will I ever find better weapons and armor in the game as it currently exists (no mods)?
Unless you are lucky to find a gun that has almost the same DPS as the guns you have, and also have an useful behavior, such as STIcky Plasma bullets, you won´t find better gear...yet.
Weapons, perhaps (but the crafted stuff is realy good, so finding something random thats better would be somewhat lucky or require a massive grind). Armor no (well, the separator or manipulator armor would be more usefull in certain situations off course). (At least "as it currently exists", but a new tier will likely be added at some point).
It's not about the new tiers being added anymore, it's about the combat update that's almost on the doorstep, or so it seems. That'll get weapons scale with an armor-value called "Power". But yeah, you're almost outgeared for now, if you don't use any mods, that is. I prefer snipers tho, gets you some nice oneshots if you find a good one, but getting a good weapon relies completely on rng atm, so good luck there.
The latest todo list we have been given points to another tech tier after the current ones that includes tentacle mini biomes and a tentacle biome (But off course the latest todo list is rather old, so who knows how accurate it still is). Theres also a ore in the game assets that arent in use. And lastly, the devs have mentioned wanting a late game tier with every biome type at the same level. So its very likely that they are adding another tier eventually (not guaranteed, just very likely).
Yeah, sorry, wasn't very clear on that, lol. What I meant is, new tiers of weapons doesn't weigh that much anymore in future, regarding endgame gear. I'm sure there will be new tiers, since all the configs and assets are based for Tier 1 to Tier 10 planets.
Oh, you were talking about the damage value on armors and how there wont be much difference between tiers anymore on the weapons themselves. My bad, sorry for missunderstanding.
