Is there a reason why my weapon seems to do more damage the lower I go (the number that pops up seems to get higher, yet my level of weapon doesn't change). Lower levels seem like it takes the same amount of hits whether I'm using my level 10 4* gun or my previous level 10 2* gun.
Or maybe I'm just seeing things *shrugs*
There is a cap on all of your gear based on depth to prevent people in full 5* from blowing through tier 1 for quick farming runs.
For armor there is a hard cap on health (+1 per piece on T1, +3 per piece on T2) and these are actually somewhat bugged in that if you do a shallow tier run and continue into a deeper tier your health stays capped. There is an easy work around where you can drop your vitapod in town and pick it back up again before continuing on, but this annoying bug clearly demonstrates the hard cap.
Shield health and resistance seems to be scaled as well, though it's harder to gauge.
For weapons, there is a soft cap on damage. Your damage increases logarithmically as you go deeper and the cap is raised. Low star level gear will quickly plateau and stop growing at an appreciable level. However, higher level gear will grow significantly faster as you go down, and will continue to grow at an appreciable rate long after lower starred gear plateaus.
Fun fact, 5* gear is still significantly capped at depth 28. These weapons are doing nowhere near their true damage and will continue to grow in effectiveness as we descend into the core some time down the line.
The closer to the core you get the stronger your weapon gets, or something of that nature. Its to combat the increase in difficulty and HP of your enemies :)
I'm pretty sure.