Like the owl’s age old question regarding Tootsie Pops, Destiny players have long wondered how many Strikes it takes to earn something really good.
One Guardian with the Reddit handle beeray784 aimed to find out by shedding light on the pure RNG loot drop ratios found in the game’s Strike playlists.
To do it, he and a friend teamed up to play 28 hours of Destiny Strikes, controlled in a marathon run of no less than 200 games in the Level 28 Roc Strike Playlist. The duo meticulously charted Exotic/Legendary drop rates, Strike frequencies and other stats along the way.
Below we have their findings, starting off with the loot drops. Before you check over the data, we should go over a few things.
The duo earned a Hawkmoon drop out of 400 possible drop rewards, which only shows how rare the handgun actually is.
LOOT TABLES: (based on 400 drops; 200 for me and 200 for roommate)
Out of 400 total rewards in the Roc Strike Playlist, beeray784 and his rommate earned just 8 Exotic Weapons via end-game reward drops. The duo reports that in their findings, Exotics dropped 1 out of every 50 Strikes, meaning the chance of an Exotic being rewarded in the Roc Strike Playlist is 0.02%.
Oddly enough Legendary Armor and Weapon Engrams weren’t that far above the Exotic drop rates. The Redditors report that out of 400 games, 11 Legendary Armors dropped (1 every 36 Strikes, ~0.03% chance) and 9 Legendary Weapons (1 every 44 Strikes, ~ 0.023%).
Both players didn’t pick up any in-game drops from kills. These stats are purely from end-game rewards.
- Exotic Weapons: 8 (1 every 50 strikes) Ice Breaker, Hardlight, Hawkmoon, 4th Horseman x2, Monte Carlo x2, No Land Beyond, (1 every ~33 strikes)
- Legendary Armour Engram: 11 (1 every ~36 strikes)
- Legendary Weapon Engram: 9 (1 every ~44 strikes)
- Legendary Ship: 12
- Rare Armour Engrams: 432 (1.08 per strike)
- Rare Weapon Engrams: 200 (0.5 per strike)
- Mote of light: 28 (1 every ~14 strikes)
- Strange Coin: 12 (1 every ~33 strikes)
Out of 200 plays the grueling Dust Palace saw 47 runs, with a back-to-back streak of 11 consecutive plays.
STRIKE TABLES:
As for frequency, the users were forced to play a whopping 11 Dust Palace runs in a row. Wow. We salute you, beeray!
If that wasn’t enough, the game certainly likes to make PlayStation gamers run the platform-exclusive Strike; the Dust Palace saw a frequency rate of 23.5% with a total of 47 out of 200 total Strikes.
Below we have the user’s breakdown of what you can expect to play should you fire up the Roc Strike Playlist yourself.
- Dust Palace : 47/200 (23.5% of the time) average completion time: 7:49, Fastest completion time: 6:15, longest same map streak: 11 (This sucked so bad)
- The Nexus : 32/200 (16% of the time) average completion time: 5:31, Fastest completion time: 4:21, longest same map streak: 3
- The Summoning Pits : 28/200 (14% of the time) average completion time: 6:11, Fastest completion time: 5:32, longest same map streak: 2
- Will of Crota : 25/200 (12.5% of the time) average completion time: 10:32, Fastest completion time: 9:21, longest same map streak: 2
- The Devils’ Lair : 24/200 (12% of the time) average completion time: 7:11, Fastest completion time: 6:15. longest same map streak: 5
- Winter’s Run : 20/200 (10% of the time) average completion time: 8:55, Fastest completion time: 8:01, longest same map streak: 2
- Cerberus Vae III : 12/200 (6% of the time) average completion time: 8:11, Fastest completion time: 7:16, longest same map streak: 1
- The Undying Mind : 12/200 (6% of the time) average completion time: 12:11, Fastest completion time: 10:55, longest same map streak: 2
Be sure to note that these drop rates are variable, and there are probably a number of unrecorded factors that determine loot drops like Light level.
This isn’t a complete decryption of Destiny’s RNG system, but a loose guide on what to expect when firing up the Roc Strike Playlist.
Beeray784 affirms that his next project will catalogue the duo’s findings as they play 200 Crucible matches. It’ll be interesting to see how that pans out.
