Venture Coffer and Retainer gear reward level (possible bug)

[EbonySeraphim]

I have the standard 2 retainers, both max level, one WHM and one MNK. For some reason one of them has given me venture coffers quite a bit more frequently tan the other and is and in game indicator that correlates, despite that indicator being seemingly incorrect.

My WHM retainer, despite hitting max level maybe 5 days ahead of the MNK, has given me 2 venture coffers to the MNKs 7 or 8 and the game shows me that when the MNK completes a quick venture it continues to say "<Name>'s gear level was high enough to attain a greater reward" and it does not say this for the WHM. This makes no sense because the MNK retainer has worse gear than the WHM at avg ilvl 692 instead of 690. It has more dungeon "green" gear pieces (some even 672) mixed in with some Neo Kingdom gear. The only thing that I can think of that might be bugged is the WHM has much of the 99/100 AF armor (Piety) set equipped on the left hand side, but supposedly it really is ilevel 690, and either way the avg ilvl is still higher.

The questions are: what's up with the game itself thinking the MNK is good to go, but not my WHM?

And does crossing this "tier" of having the game see your retainer is geared enough increase your changes of getting venture coffers? Either way, soon enough I'll get aethetic tomestones today and slap them on that WHM healer to see if the game decides to believe it's geared and update here.

[LibitIncarne]

The gear level thing only applies to making certain items HQ or a marginally higher number of materials. It's random, doesn't always happen even when conditions are met, and doesn't affect Venture Coffers.

[EbonySeraphim]

Thnk you and appreciate it. I noticed after focusing on it that the bonus was not every time too. I thought there was rhyme and reason to it while I was leveing up -- though I did catch it at times not making sense, since they were leveling and I was constantly changing up gear, I didn't want to slow down and figure it out. Now that both are stable at max, I can see that it is random. Though "greater rewards" don't always seem greater to me. This is off/extra topic question: will higher ilvl increase the chance I'll get that bonus tier reward in a general?

I guess I gotta keep praying to RNGesus.

[LibitIncarne]

This is off/extra topic question: will higher ilvl increase the chance I'll get that bonus tier reward in a general?

Wasn't able to respond earlier because of the 50/day limit.
Higher IL increases the chance that you'll get the bonus tier reward, but only in that you'll be more likely to have something that your IL is high enough to have the bonus apply to.
Housing Items and Dungeon/Tome gear can never have the bonus tier applied to it, and the 1 crystal fallback can't either.