It’s 10:54am on a Monday morning and I’ve needed to do a ton of math that I’m frankly not certified for, all due to an unbelievably fortunate Outdated College Runescape participant who bagged three ultra-rare drops in a real feat of MMO RNG.
I actually do not know the place to start, so let’s begin with this tweet from OSRS diehard Bazilijus, who just lately obtained three mega-rare objects from Outdated College’s clue scrolls in a single day, with the Twitch clips to again it up.
?????????????????? 3 IN DAY 1 LOL pic.twitter.com/9UNqBg2SZXJuly 22, 2023
It’s possible you’ll bear in mind Bazilijus as the primary participant to get each single boss drop in an unlimited grind after 22,000 whole hours performed. The purpose of that boss grind, and now this clue scroll grind, is to finish Outdated College Runescape’s daunting assortment log, which primarily tracks all of the uncommon drops that you’ve got obtained. This unbelievable clue scroll excessive roll has introduced Bazilijus significantly nearer to the (nonetheless far-off) end line, and like many gamers, I am struggling to calculate the percentages as a result of there are such a lot of variables in play.
Bazilijus managed to avoid wasting up 600 of the reward caskets that you simply get from onerous clue scrolls, with every clue taking round 5 minutes to finish (judging from his last run). That is roughly 50 hours of grinding, and he was going to money within the payoff in a matter of minutes.
By his 426th casket, Bazilijus had obtained three items of the ultra-rare third Age armor which is usually seen as the top clue reward. I’m a little bit of a math nerd however I’m not a mathematician, so I am simply going to do my greatest to clarify why my gast is so flabbered.
There are 13 third Age objects on the onerous clue drop desk, and the Outdated College Runescape wiki confirms that the percentages of getting a selected piece from a reward roll on a tough clue are about 1/211,250. Nonetheless, the percentages of getting any piece are only one/16,250. And since you get a number of rewards per clue, the overall odds of a tough casket dropping any third Age merchandise are 1/3,250, as OSRS developer Jagex affirmed in a weblog submit final yr.
The factor is, Bazilijus wasn’t after any third Age piece. They’re attempting to fill out the gathering log, in spite of everything, so that they wished distinctive third Age objects – items they’d by no means obtained earlier than. The gathering log hiscores present that they solely had two third Age objects logged earlier than this mind-boggling chain of occasions, which implies they’d successive 11/13, 10/13, and 9/13 odds of getting a novel third Age merchandise after hitting the 1/3,250 drop desk. And sure, this does imply that the ultra-rare clue hunt will get significantly tougher over time.
This shrinking pool adjustments the percentages of every of those three drops – Bazilijus’s third, fourth, and fifth third Age objects – being distinctive. This is my greatest estimation:
- First roll: 1/3,840
- Second roll: 1/4,225
- Third roll: 1/4,694
The excellent news is that the typical price of hitting a novel third Age piece on this knowledge set, 1/4,253, traces up fairly cleanly with what number of reward caskets Bazilijus opened.
The overwhelming majority of Outdated College Runescape gamers won’t ever see a single third Age drop of their lifetime, and now one individual has gone 10 occasions the distinctive drop price 3 times in one sitting. One third Age piece would’ve been extraordinarily fortunate right here, however three? I admit I do not know the online odds of getting that outcome inside this many makes an attempt, however I do not have to be a mathematician to know that Bazilijus can buy a lottery ticket subsequent.
In an much more excessive show of grinding, one participant blew 8 years of banked expertise maxing out a single OSRS ability in simply seconds.
