The Vex Mythoclast is an incredibly popular Exotic Weapon in Destiny 2 right now. It is an Energy Fusion Rifle with an "optimal" time-to-kill speed said to be around .77 seconds, faster than other Destiny 2 weapons - including popular hand cannons like Thorn. There's just one problem, though: there is only one way to earn the Vex Mythoclast, which is by running a certain Vault of Glass raid encounter and destroying the boss Atheon until it drops. Destiny 2 players believe they've solved the odds of this drop, and it's safe to say odds aren't in players' favor.
In an incredible example of "Doing the Math," Redditor nutty-max wrote up an extended analysis breaking down what he believes to be the Vex Mythoclast's drop rate. He solved this using data pulled from nearly 10,000 Destiny 2 players' inventories, which were available to peruse via Bungie's API. Using this data, nutty-max came to the conclusion that a player's first run of Vault of Glass resulted in just a 1% drop rate for the Vex Mythoclast, but that's not the entire story.
Further analysis led nutty-max to believe that, while the initial run of Vault of Glass may have a drop rate of just 1%, there appears to be a "bad luck" system in place to increase players' drop rates over time. If the player returns to Vault of Glass a week later, their odds of acquiring the Vex Mythoclast from Atheon will increase by .05%. As such, every week will increase the odds by half of a percent.
While at first this may seem like an overly punishing grind, nutty-max does players a favor and shows how this system can be better than, say, a flat 5% drop rate for Vex Mythoclast. It's true that the 5% drop rate will be faster overall for the first 6,000 players who find the gun across 20 runs, but the next 4,000 may prefer the bad luck system. That's because with the flat 5%, it's possible to run 80+ Vault of Glass raids and still not have the gun, while the 1% + .05% per week system will guarantee everyone has their gun within 45 weeks.
Obviously, to most Destiny 2 players, either option sounds like a nightmare. The possibility of doing Atheon runs 45 times versus 80 times is not an attractive possibility either way. Still, it's somewhat kind of Bungie to choose the option that prevents players from getting extremely bad luck. Perhaps nutty-max's math will persuade some Destiny 2 players to settle for their Thorn, rather than farming a Vex Mythoclast, in the end.
Destiny 2 is available now on PC, PS4, PS5, Stadia, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.