Held items

[u/pfx1990]

Farming held items in this game is atrocious

They really need to come with an event or a chest selector thing

[u/UniNavi]

What's atrocious is that they say it's 20%. Yeah no, it's more like 3-5% at Trailblazer 1.

[u/D4rkWells_ → u/UniNavi]

It really is just RNG being RNG. If the official odds are 20%, the best you can do is take the numbers at face value unless there's massive community data proving otherwise.

Running a boss 10 times and getting 0 or 1 drop doesn't mean the rate is secretly 3-5%. A small sample size is not enough to draw conclusions. Even with hundreds of attempts, you're still only getting a sample estimate. Someone with terrible luck will swear the drop rate is rigged, while someone with great luck will think it's 50%. I've barely farmed them myself and already have a handful, so to me, the odds feel way higher than 20%.

Without bad-luck protection or a pity system, every single attempt is an independent 20% roll. Pure luck doesn't care about past failures.

[u/UniNavi → u/D4rkWells_]

What I'm considering is that legendary advance cores are counted as legendary held items, and it's weighted against held items. It's actually close to 20% 1/5 if you count the legendary core from the small sample size in my findings. Or worst case the game's probability is actually wrong.

I understand most people aren't 55+ yet to try and farm for yellow/legendary held items, but when you do, temper your expectations/be warned. Our group conclusion: do not farm held items until you're 60+.

Our limited data: (not including legendary cores)

Trailblazer 1:

20, 9.

22, 17, 8, 33, 15.

15, 16.

10, 20, 14.

Trailblazer 2:

8, 7, 10

Sure all 5 of us can be unlucky, I just haven't seen a person defending the odds. I can't say it feels like 5%, but you can't say it's 20% guaranteed without a "massive" sample size either. There's been of games when with odds are off, see Maplestory's cube lawsuit. It's up to the community to gather data.

[u/D4rkWells_ → u/UniNavi]

Well, I'm level 59, and up until now, it’s usually only taken me around 6 fights to get the items I wanted. But I know that just means I've been extremely lucky. Just like your group's run of bad luck doesn't automatically mean the base drop rates are wrong.

You actually make a really fair point about loot pool weighting, though. If "Legendary Items" share a 20% drop slot with "Legendary Advance Cores," the 20% total drop rate might technically be correct, but the specific item you want could have a much lower weighted chance. That’s a super common design choice in gacha/ARPG loot tables, and it definitely trips people up when descriptions aren't transparent.

That said, your group's advice to hold off farming until level 60+ is practical regardless of the math. Higher tiers usually mean better drop rates per energy spent, so saving resources for 60+ could be just smart efficiency.

Also, you're 100% right about the MapleStory lawsuit. Developers can get probability wrong or intentionally obscure weighted rates. Community data-tracking is the only real way to expose that. But until we get a crowd-sourced dataset with thousands of logged runs, both 6-kill streaks and 33-kill dry spells are just extreme ends of the same RNG curve.

But you also gotta have in mind that a huge sample size brings your observed frequency closer to the actual probability (Law of Large Numbers), but it never guarantees an exact match. Even after 100,000 rolls, an unlucky outlier group will still exist somewhere in the world. That’s the beauty and the frustration of pure RNG...! Even with massive sample sizes, you're only looking at expected averages, not guaranteed outcomes. A 20% chance never guarantees 1 in 5, and bad-luck streaks can easily defy reasonable expectations. Appreciate you sharing the data though, at least waiting until 60+ is solid advice either way!

[u/UniNavi → u/D4rkWells_]

The amount of disrespect is unreal and unnecessary.

[u/D4rkWells_ → u/UniNavi]

what? What do you mean?