If you’re big into Borderlands 4, you’ll be wondering about its drop rate. The looter shooter is, when it comes to the endgame, all about getting the right items for the right build so those damage numbers keep on going up. But what are the actual chances of getting a legendary drop from a boss in Borderlands 4?
Developer Gearbox keeps the drop rate hidden from players, as it and so many other developers do when it comes to games like this. It wants the grind to keep players going for months, even years on end, after all. But the hardcore Borderlands community really wants to know how things work under the hood. And so, you end up with superfans like Siphonicfir, who are happy to spend hundreds of hours killing thousands of bosses to find out.
I first came across Siphonicfir's work on the Borderlands subreddit, where they had posted a spreadsheet detailing the data thrown up by the loot dropped by over 3,000 boss kills. It’s a really helpful piece of work, and it's been well-received by the community, but I was struck by Siphonicfir’s top-line analysis: the dedicated drop rate for any individual item is about 5%.
Just 5%! Surely that can’t be right. That feels worse than the drop rate in previous Borderlands games I’ve played. Perhaps there’s a flaw in Siphonicfir’s work? A bug in the system, maybe? I thought it best to have a chat to find out. “Data analysis and stats are just a personal interest, though I would absolutely love to find work in that field,” they told me. “I have a passion for it and I would like to think I have a knack for it.”
Before we get into the Q&A, below, let’s get some housekeeping out the way. All Siphonicfir’s kills were done on the Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode 5 difficulty (currently the hardest in the game), as Vex. The drops were tracked from the moment Siphonicfir unlocked UVHM5 to limit sampling errors.
Weekly Encore Bosses are excluded from the total since they have dramatically different drop rates that would skew the overall data set. Class Bosses are bosses that have class mods as dedicated drops (Siphonicfir certainly has thoughts on class mods, more on that below!). Multi Bosses are encounters with multiple named enemies that each have a typical drop chance. And Normal Bosses are every boss that didn't fall into the other two categories.
Read on if you fancy getting into the weeds on how Borderlands 4 drop rates actually work, based on someone who’s put A LOT of effort into finding out. I hope that if you’re into the game, or looter shooters in general, you’ll find something insightful here. I certainly did! And thanks to Siphonicfir for their time.
IGN: What drove you to do this in the first place?
Siphonicfir: I was driven to do this by a desire to know what is actually going on in looter games. I want to know what sort of odds I am trying to beat when I am grinding a game. Unfortunately the drop rates in this type of game are often not communicated to the player in any way, so the only way to really know is to collect the data myself. It also makes the grind more enjoyable since I am working towards the overarching goal of clarity. Even when I don’t get the item I'm technically farming for, each run is still another data point towards the truth.
IGN: How much time have you spent doing this?
Siphonicfir: In Borderlands 4 I would say I spent about 150 hours collecting this data. But I have done it for other games in the past such as Diablo 4 and Destiny 2. In total I would say I have spent about 400 hours collecting and organizing drop rate data for these games.
IGN: How many boss kills in total went into this?
Siphonicfir: The spreadsheet featured in the post was a compilation of 3,035 kills worth of data. Technically 3,635 if you count the multi bosses as three kills each since they are treated as three individual bosses. I have since recorded more data while playing with my friends, but that data isn’t represented in the post.
IGN: How did you actually loot everything?
Siphonicfir: To actually loot everything and record the data, I would have the notes app open on my phone. After each kill, either during the boss's death animation or during the phase portal animation, I would add one run to the total kills of that boss. I would pick up every legendary during this process, then after the farming session was over I would record how many of each legendary I received during that session. Then to create the post, I created a spreadsheet and compiled all the data from my notes app into sheets to run the necessary calculations to produce the drop rates.
IGN: In your conclusions, you say the drop rate should be doubled. Why is 10% the sweet spot?
Siphonicfir: I think 10% is the sweet spot for dedicated items for two reasons. One reason is precedent, as that was the drop rate in Borderlands 2. I think that game is widely regarded as the best game in the franchise, and I am almost certain the community thinks it was the best game for farming. 10% created a perfect balance where a drop always feels special, but you never go too long without one.
The nerdier math answer, and my primary reason to push for the change, is the severity of outliers. For example in my data the longest cold streak was when I farmed Fractis. It took 96 runs to get a single UAV grenade to drop. The odds of not getting the item 96 consecutive times at a 5% drop rate are about 1 in 137. In stark contrast, at a 10% drop chance, the odds of going cold for 96 trials in a row are just 1 in 24,703. Going from 5% to 10% isn’t just doubling the chance, it's reducing the worst possible outlier outcomes by a factor of 180. Those outcomes make people give up or quit due to frustration and should be limited as much as possible. An increase to 10% would make a world of difference in limiting the most egregious outlier scenarios.
IGN: How do you feel about class mods?
Siphonicfir: I strongly dislike the way class mods drop in Borderlands 4. I think it is extremely frustrating that there is no weighting towards the vault hunter you are playing. As I mentioned in the post, if all classes drop equally, then three quarters of your class mods will be for other classes. I understand Gearbox wants class mods for other classes to drop to encourage you to play those other classes or just so you can share the loot with your friends who play those classes, but I think the current system is extreme. I suggested in the post weighting the drops towards your class to some degree. I think as low as 40% for your class and 20% for each other class would be fine, but I would prefer 70% or higher for your class and 10% for the others. For reference it currently seems to be 25% across the board.
IGN: Did anything in your data surprise you?
Siphonicfir: I was particularly surprised by two bosses in my data, the Rippa Roadbirds and Vile Ted & The Experiments. I actually created the category of “Multi Bosses” because their numbers were so out of the ordinary. These bosses are collections of three named enemies, and based on my testing the game treats each individual enemy as a boss with the typical loot drops. So each run of these encounters are equal to three boss kills, effectively tripling the efficiency of these sources.
I was also surprised by just how low the drop rate is. Very early on within the first week I had heard community speculation that the drop rate was between 1/10 and 1/15 from creators such as Joltzdude139, so I was quite surprised and frankly disappointed when it turned out to be just 1/20 (5%).
IGN: You say you have many more thoughts on the drop rates and RNG. What are they?
Siphonicfir: I do have many more thoughts, honestly more than even this. I feel like I could write pages on this topic but I will summarize best I can.
I fundamentally disagree with the design philosophy of many of these games in the sense that I think truly perfect gear should be obtainable in a possible amount of time. And the phrasing there is important because while perfect loot is technically possible in Borderlands 4, it isn’t actually realistic to obtain. When the initial drop rate is just 5%, and then you stack the RNG of the standard part system on top of that, and then stack the RNG of the licensed parts on top of that, you hit a point where the odds compound so much that getting a truly perfect item starts to approach or even exceed real life lottery odds.
A good example of this was the class mod system in Wonderlands. Those items had a 1 in billions chance of dropping with a perfect roll. Some members of the Borderlands community like that chase. They never actually want their perfect item to drop, they want to chase the idea of perfection without ever actually achieving it. If they get their drop, then they “have nothing to chase” which is a mentality I just never understood. Borderlands 4 is designed for those “chase” players, and that is fine. But it isn’t what I want from Borderlands. I want to farm perfect gear and actually use it. I want to put together a truly perfect build and then go take on the hardest challenge to put it to the test. That said, loot shouldn’t be free by any means. I am willing to put the time in, but for me that means a few hundred hours, not a few hundred days, weeks, or even months of playtime. But that mindset seems to be a minority opinion, so perfect loot continues to only exist in theory.
I think a major contributing factor to this lack of attainability is the general absence of statistical literacy. I think most players and honestly most people in the world don’t effectively process probabilities and statistics at all. Add in optimism bias, which tends to make people overestimate their own ability to beat the odds, and suddenly the “chase” players grossly misunderstand how low the odds need to be for them to never get what they want. The devs have to make the odds truly absurd because odds like 1 in 5,000 sound too attainable to the lay player, even though those same players won’t kill any single boss more than 500 times, let alone 5,000. Most players just do not understand the relevant math and statistics at play in these types of games, and that is contributing to the problems with attainability.
IGN: Is there any evidence to suggest Gearbox tweaks the drop rates behind the scenes?
Siphonicfir: I have no evidence that Gearbox tweaked drop rates behind the scenes, in fact my data reflects the opposite. Even my earliest data which was collected in the first week of the game's lifespan aligns with the overall totals, indicating a consistent drop rate throughout all my data collection since release.
IGN: What do you plan to do now? Are you actually finished with Borderlands 4?
Siphonicfir: I am not really sure what I will do now. I am actually finished with Borderlands 4 at least from a solo play perspective. I will still be logging on if my friends ask me to play, but I won’t be playing of my own accord until the game receives a significant update. I might play the new Diablo season and start tracking data for the new chaos uniques in season 10, but I am a little burnt out for now so it will be a bit before I make that decision.
IGN: What's your take on the game overall?
Siphonicfir: Overall I am torn on how to feel about Borderlands 4. I think it arguably has the best campaign in the franchise and the first playthrough experience from level 1-50 is superb even among other Borderlands games. But this is pretty clearly the weakest endgame offering since the Pre Sequel, especially when compared to the prior games as they are today with all DLC and patches released. I expect that to get addressed over time, we know there is at least one raid boss on the way, but ultimately I was disappointed that the sixth game in the franchise made the same mistake of launching with a lackluster endgame AGAIN. I think for more casual fans of the franchise, this is the best Borderlands yet. But for players like myself that really value that endgame challenge and gear grind, I think Borderlands 2, 3, and even Wonderlands were more satisfying for me personally.
We’ve got plenty more on Borderlands 4. Last week, a Borderlands 4 dataminer unearthed evidence to suggest that one of the most hated characters from Borderlands 3 was cut and replaced relatively late in development. 2K Games and Gearbox declined to comment when contacted by IGN.
And if you are delving into Borderlands 4, don't go without updated hourly SHiFT codes list. We've also got a huge interactive map ready to go and a badass Borderlands 4 planner tool courtesy of our buds at Maxroll. Plus check out our expert players' choices for which character to choose (no one agreed).
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
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