If you’re deeply invested in Borderlands 4, you’re likely curious about its legendary drop rates. For many looter-shooter enthusiasts, the endgame revolves around optimizing builds with the perfect gear to maximize damage. But what are the actual probabilities of scoring a legendary drop from a boss in Borderlands 4?
Like many developers in this genre, Gearbox keeps these crucial statistics under wraps. Their aim, naturally, is to keep players engaged in the grind for months, or even years. However, the dedicated Borderlands community truly thrives on understanding the underlying mechanics. This drive leads to incredible efforts by superfans like Siphonicfir, who happily invest hundreds of hours and thousands of boss kills to uncover these hidden truths.
Siphonicfir’s painstaking work first surfaced on the Borderlands subreddit, where they shared a comprehensive spreadsheet detailing loot data from over 3,000 boss encounters. This invaluable resource has been warmly received by the community. What immediately caught attention was Siphonicfir’s primary conclusion: the dedicated drop rate for any single legendary item is approximately 5%.
Only 5%! This figure certainly feels lower than what many players experienced in previous Borderlands titles. Could there be an error in Siphonicfir’s methodology, or perhaps a glitch in the game’s system? We decided to connect with Siphonicfir to learn more. “Data analysis and stats are just a personal interest, though I would absolutely love to find work in that field,” they shared. “I have a passion for it and I would like to think I have a knack for it.”
Before diving into our full Q&A, here are some key details about Siphonicfir’s process: All boss kills were performed on Ultimate Vault Hunter Mode 5 (UVHM5), currently the game’s highest difficulty, using the character Vex. Drops were meticulously tracked from the moment UVHM5 was unlocked to minimize sampling errors.
Weekly Encore Bosses were intentionally excluded from the data due to their significantly different drop rates, which would skew the overall results. “Class Bosses” refer to bosses that specifically drop class mods. “Multi Bosses” are encounters featuring multiple named enemies, each with their own typical drop chance. “Normal Bosses” encompass all other boss types.
For those eager to understand the intricacies of Borderlands 4’s drop rates, based on someone who dedicated immense effort to uncover them, read on. We found their insights highly valuable, and we hope you do too. A big thank you to Siphonicfir for their time and dedication!
IGN: What motivated you to undertake this massive project?
Siphonicfir: My primary motivation was a desire for transparency in looter games. I want to understand the exact odds I’m up against when I commit to grinding. Since developers rarely disclose these rates, the only way to truly know is to gather the data myself. It also makes the grind itself more engaging because every run, even if I don’t get the item I’m specifically looking for, contributes another valuable data point towards uncovering the truth.
IGN: How much time have you dedicated to this effort?
Siphonicfir: For Borderlands 4 specifically, I’d say I spent around 150 hours collecting this data. However, I’ve done similar analyses for other games like Diablo 4 and Destiny 2 in the past. In total, I estimate about 400 hours spent collecting and organizing drop rate data across these different titles.
IGN: What was the total number of boss kills involved in this study?
Siphonicfir: The spreadsheet I shared was based on data from 3,035 boss kills. If you consider multi-boss encounters as three individual kills, given how the game treats their loot drops, that number technically goes up to 3,635. I’ve gathered even more data since then while playing with friends, but that’s not reflected in the initial post.
IGN: Can you describe your process for looting and recording data?
Siphonicfir: To keep track of everything, I’d have a notes app open on my phone. After each boss kill, either during the boss’s death animation or the phase portal animation, I would log one ‘run’ for that particular boss. I’d pick up every legendary item that dropped. Once a farming session concluded, I’d record the exact count of each legendary I’d obtained during that session. Finally, to create the Reddit post, I compiled all the raw data from my notes into a spreadsheet and ran the necessary calculations to determine the drop rates.
Borderlands 4: All Vault Hunter Skill Trees Ranked
Borderlands 4: All Vault Hunter Skill Trees Ranked
IGN: Your conclusions suggest the drop rate should be doubled. Why do you believe 10% is the ideal sweet spot?
Siphonicfir: I advocate for a 10% drop rate for dedicated items for two main reasons. Firstly, there’s a strong precedent: Borderlands 2 utilized a 10% drop rate, and that game is widely considered the best in the franchise, especially for farming. A 10% rate struck a perfect balance where each legendary drop felt special, yet players weren’t subjected to excessively long dry spells.
My primary, more mathematically focused reason for this change centers on the impact of outlier scenarios. For instance, my data showed a particularly frustrating cold streak while farming Fractis, where it took 96 runs to get a single UAV grenade. At a 5% drop rate, the probability of 96 consecutive failures is about 1 in 137. However, if the drop chance were 10%, those odds plummet to a mere 1 in 24,703. Doubling the drop rate from 5% to 10% doesn’t just double your chances; it drastically reduces the likelihood of the worst possible outlier outcomes by a factor of 180. These extreme dry spells often lead to player frustration, causing them to give up or quit. Limiting these scenarios as much as possible is crucial, and a 10% rate would make a world of difference in mitigating the most egregious cases of bad luck.
IGN: How do you feel about the current class mod drop system?
Siphonicfir: I’m strongly dissatisfied with how class mods drop in Borderlands 4. It’s incredibly frustrating that there’s no weighting towards the vault hunter you’re currently playing. As I noted in my post, if all classes have an equal chance of dropping, then three-quarters of the class mods you find will be for other characters. While I understand Gearbox’s intention to encourage playing other classes or sharing loot with friends, the current system feels overly extreme. I suggested implementing some degree of weighting for drops towards your active class. Even a modest 40% for your class and 20% for each of the others would be an improvement, but I’d personally prefer 70% or higher for your class and 10% for the rest. Currently, it appears to be a flat 25% across the board.
IGN: Were there any surprising findings in your data?
Siphonicfir: Two bosses in my data truly stood out as surprises: the Rippa Roadbirds and Vile Ted & The Experiments. Their numbers were so unusual that I actually created a new category called “Multi Bosses.” These encounters feature three named enemies, and my testing indicates that the game treats each individual enemy as a boss with a typical loot drop chance. This effectively triples the farming efficiency of these specific sources.
I was also genuinely surprised by how low the overall drop rate is. Early on, within the first week of the game’s launch, I’d heard community figures like Joltzdude139 speculate that the drop rate was between 1/10 and 1/15. So, I was quite surprised and, frankly, disappointed when my data revealed it to be just 1/20 (5%).
IGN: You mentioned having many more thoughts on drop rates and RNG. Could you elaborate?
Siphonicfir: I definitely have a lot more to say on this topic, enough to fill pages! But I’ll summarize as best as I can. Fundamentally, I disagree with the design philosophy in many of these games. I believe truly perfect gear should be obtainable within a reasonable timeframe. The phrasing ‘possible amount of time’ is key because while perfect loot is technically *possible* in Borderlands 4, it’s not realistically achievable. When you start with a 5% drop rate and then layer on the RNG of the standard part system, followed by the RNG of licensed parts, the odds compound to such an extent that obtaining a truly perfect item begins to approach or even exceed real-world lottery probabilities.
A prime example was the class mod system in Wonderlands, where perfect rolls had a one-in-billions chance of dropping. Some within the Borderlands community enjoy this relentless ‘chase.’ They claim they don’t actually want their perfect item to drop, as it would leave them with “nothing to chase.” This is a mentality I’ve never quite understood. Borderlands 4 seems designed for these ‘chase’ players, which is fine. But it’s not what I personally seek from a Borderlands game. I want to farm for perfect gear and actually get to use it. I want to assemble a truly optimized build and then test its limits against the game’s toughest challenges. That said, I don’t believe loot should be handed out for free; I’m willing to put in the time. For me, ‘time’ means a few hundred hours, not hundreds of days, weeks, or even months of playtime. However, this seems to be a minority opinion, so perfect loot largely remains theoretical.
I think a significant factor contributing to this lack of attainability is a general absence of statistical literacy. Most players, and frankly, most people globally, don’t effectively grasp probabilities and statistics. Couple that with an optimism bias, which leads people to overestimate their ability to defy the odds, and suddenly ‘chase’ players completely misinterpret how astronomically low the probabilities need to be for them to never achieve their desired item. Developers often set the odds to be truly absurd because rates like 1 in 5,000 might sound too achievable to the average player, even though those same players won’t farm a single boss more than 500 times, let alone 5,000. Essentially, many players don’t understand the underlying math and statistics in these games, and this contributes significantly to the issues surrounding loot attainability.
IGN: Is there any indication that Gearbox secretly alters the drop rates?
Siphonicfir: I found no evidence whatsoever to suggest that Gearbox has secretly adjusted drop rates. In fact, my data points to the contrary. Even my earliest collected data, gathered within the first week of the game’s release, aligns consistently with the overall totals. This indicates a stable drop rate throughout my entire data collection period since the game launched.
IGN: What are your plans now? Are you finished with Borderlands 4?
Siphonicfir: I’m not entirely sure what’s next for me. I am, for now, finished with Borderlands 4 from a solo play perspective. I’ll still log on if my friends invite me to play, but I won’t be playing on my own initiative until the game receives a substantial update. I might consider playing the new Diablo season and tracking data for the new chaos uniques in Season 10, but I’m feeling a bit burnt out at the moment, so I’ll wait a while before making that decision.
IGN: What’s your overall assessment of the game?
Siphonicfir: Overall, my feelings about Borderlands 4 are mixed. It arguably boasts the best campaign in the franchise, and the initial level 1-50 playthrough experience is superb, even compared to other Borderlands titles. However, its endgame offering is clearly the weakest since The Pre-Sequel, especially when stacked against previous games with all their DLC and patches. I anticipate this will improve over time; we know at least one raid boss is on the way. Ultimately, though, I was disappointed that the sixth game in the franchise repeated the same mistake of launching with a lackluster endgame. For more casual fans of the series, this might be the best Borderlands yet. But for players like me, who truly value that endgame challenge and gear grind, Borderlands 2, 3, and even Wonderlands offered a more satisfying experience.
For more on Borderlands 4, check out other recent reports. Last week, a dataminer uncovered evidence suggesting that a much-criticized character from Borderlands 3 was cut and replaced late in development. 2K Games and Gearbox declined to comment on those findings.
If you’re diving into Borderlands 4, remember to keep an eye on updated SHiFT codes for in-game bonuses. You can also explore our extensive interactive map and utilize the powerful Borderlands 4 planner tool created by our friends at Maxroll. Plus, discover which character our expert players recommend (though they couldn’t all agree!).
Wesley is Director, News at IGN. You can connect with him on Twitter at @wyp100 or reach him via email at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.