ToME WikiNerdanelVampire: I think I can by now say with some confidence that weapons and armor get NEVER generated in the game. I took a look at the items file and found out that only potions have a defined allocation, and indeed I have kept seeing only potions. My current character will probably never be powerful enough to take down a first lieutenant.
NeilStevens: They're not randomly generated, no. I'm not that cruel though; see the Monster Drops portion of init.lua. Each monster is supposed to have a 9% chance of trying to drop an item. It then picks an item, and if the item is allowed for that monster (isn't deeper than the monster, or in the case of firearms is carried by the monster), the item is dropped.
I am open to making drops more common though. I may also need to make the machete shallower.
NerdanelVampire: My current character has killed 102 privates, 115 privates first class, 49 second lieutenants, 37 corporals, and 9 sergeants. NOT A SINGLE ONE of them has ever dropped anything. So either probabilities are far out of whack or there is a bug that prevents anything from being generated. By the way, I support the idea of making the machete shallower, as sergeants are awfully tough for my character.
NeilStevens: Note that the engine also swallows drops of items you already have. So if it tries to drop a t-shirt or a pocket knife, you won't see it.
As for sergeants, I hear you, but what skills are you raising? I find that early on, Haste and combat are the good bets.
NerdanelVampire: I've raised Combat and Defense equally and also put several points into Haste. I am currently at +5 speed as fast as a sergeant. It sounds like Defense is underpowered.
NeilStevens: OK, for 0.9.3 I just made machetes level 2, and made monster drop attempts happen 35% of the time.
DarkGod: /me points Nerdanel and Neil to IRC, as you both seem to be avid for discusion 
(yes this is an hidden attempt at bringing nerdanel on IRC
NeilStevens: It turns out there WAS a bug in my Monster Drop code. I don't understand why, but somehow it was trying to generate vials for soldier drops. No fun. But I decided to make the game way easier all around in the next version anyway, heh.