Borderlands 2 for PS3 has unbelievably low drop rates. Is something wrong?

Question

I recently beat Normal mode for the first time. When I killed the Warrior, he did drop a couple of legendaries, and I was ecstatic!

However, as I moved into True Vault Hunter Mode (TVHM), and as I scour the internet and Youtube for tips and tricks to get Legendary weapons, I keep hearing that specific bosses/mini-bosses have a 10% drop rate that will yield a Legendary weapon. My problem is that this 10% drop rate isn't lining up with my own experiences in game, since I haven't gotten a single legendary since my first one, and I've killed over 200 bosses and mini-bosses. I know your first instinct is that I've just gotten unlucky, but not getting a single legendary after 200 bosses/mini-bosses killed seems like far more than just getting unlucky.

My fear is that I'm playing an out-of-date version of the game. My Playstation is NOT online. I'm playing the stock game, with no updates. I've heard that many updates have been made to the game, and I'm wondering if this also applies to drop rates. Could an update have changed a 1% drop rate to the now generally acknowledged and agreed upon 10% drop rate? Because that would certainly explain my troubles!

Any insight into what's going on here would be greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Short Version: I believe that 10% drop rates you're seeing online are referring to the drop rates for very specific items from very specific bosses. I also believe this only applies to the newest version of the game, which you don't have. For you, the drop rate for legendary items is normally only 0.009%.

Long Version: I've been doing some research online, and I believe I understand why you're experiencing such low drop rates for legendary items.

First off, according to this Reddit thread, the drop rate in Borderlands 2 for Legendary items is notoriously low. One poster even says the following:

Bl2 drop rates have always been pretty low. I usually only get 1 or 2 random legendaries per playthrough.

This seems to line-up with your own experiences, where you only got a single legendry across your first playthrough.

Next up are some posts from Gearbox, starting with this one from 2013. According to this post, the drop rate for legendaries is 0.009% (1 in 10,000). This is far, far lower than the 10% value you've seen online, but it does better align with your own experiences. Additionally, a 2015 post from Gearbox states that they tripled the drop rate for legendary items with a patch, which if you're not online, you likely don't have (although that's still only a drop rate of 0.027%).

I also stumbled across the site Lootlemon. From what I can tell, this site has drop rate information for all loot across the Borderlands series. When searching across this site, I am finding some Legendary weapons with your referenced 10% drop rate, but that's only true for very specific bosses. For example, the Hornet appears to have a 10% drop rate, but only from the Knuckle Dragger boss.

Finally, there's this blog post which does reference that 0.009% drop rate from that first Gearbox post. However, it also talks about how some legendary weapons have designated drop sources which are closer 3.33% in the launch version, and 10% in the latest version.

My takeaway from all of this is that for your version of the game, the default drop rate for legendary items is 0.009%. There are very specific enemies which have a much higher drop rate for very specific legendary items, but that most bosses still only have that 0.009% drop rate for legendary items.