I'm in Catacombs. There is room with some sort of altar with trap (gas?). I found some nice gauntlets (of might?) that increased my melee damage. Unfortunately i died in next room (trap), so i loaded save... and now gauntlets are replaced with Cloak of Protection. Every time i load the game it's same cloak now. Gloves are gone.

 

So what happened here exactly? How loot works in this game? It isn't random i guess, because i get same item now. So is there a slight chance for better item if i get lucky? Or is there is some punishment system for loading the game after you found nice item?

 

PS Is there a console command for enabling spells AOE highlight on expert? I like playing in this mode, but seeing damage area is quite neat feature i always wanted in Baldur's like games.

I'm not sure about that. I know that I read a dev. comment somewhere saying that sometimes items are chosen from a list of possible items but never randomly generated--but that was prior to release and I'm not sure if that's true in the game as-is.

It probably has loot lists.

Some container may contain fixed loot, other will contain a "variable" that changes what you find picking a random number from a list. Items may or may not have different %.

That's how most games do it.

Is it possible to save-scum then?

Some loot is random, some isn't. Some of the random chests seem to use a 'high yield' table and gives stuff like special equipment.

 

Trust me, I've messed up enough times just before entering a new area to notice.