MOVED: "Progressive biome maximum loot caps to encourage exploration"

The quality/level of gear and other loot that you find is based on your loot stage.

So what this mechanic is doing is capping the loot stage you are able to obtain in the lower difficulty biomes. As a result in order to get higher tier loot, you will need to unlock the higher tier biomes. No more playing it safe and getting uber while in the forest to go loot the wasteland. The new biome progression also prevents you from just bee-lining to the wasteland on day 1.