Deep in my gut, I knew that somehow, the day I wrote a big article about how garbage strike catalyst drop rates were in Destiny, would be the day I would I get one.
And sure enough…well, see above.
However, I’m not convinced this was just blind luck. Rather, after what happened yesterday, I’m tempted to believe in a conspiracy theory that one of the community suggestions about strike catalysts may already be implemented, either on purpose or by accident.
I think Three of Coins might actually increase the strike catalyst drop rate.
Yesterday, after I published my article, one of my followers told me that he was “very” convinced that 3oC worked already. He said that he was DFA farming with his fireteam, and they decided to pop 3oCs for the hell of it. And then, one by one, they all started to land strike catalysts.
I figured I had nothing to lose, visited Xur and spent 300 of my 4500 legendary shards on Three of Coins, and tried it for myself in heroic strikes (Nightfall farming is just too boring for me).
Five strikes later, I had my Riskrunner catalyst. This is after hundreds of strikes since Warmind launched/catalysts existed, and dozens after the July update, which supposed increased the drop rates. And yet, fundamentally, an hour into the first time I’ve ever used 3oC, I get my first catalyst, finally? And I did this because someone else said it worked for them? Hmm.
This is what we call “anecdotal evidence,” of course. I very well could have just been lucky, as after a few hundred strikes it was just…finally my turn to get one, at last, and perhaps the same has been true for others.
And yet I can’t shake the feeling that 3oC may actually be increasing these drop rates all the same. Not just because of what happened to me, but because of three things:
1) I have a theory that catalysts are coded as exotic drops, which is affected by 3oC increasing the exotic drop rate. A long while ago, 3oC was bugged to not do anything, but that’s been fixed at this point, I believe. As such, I think that because these catalysts drop like exotics (same animation and everything), fundamentally, 3oC has the ability to increase their chance of appearing at the end of strikes from the boss chest, just like it does with actual exotics.
2) In the current state of Destiny 2, almost no one is using 3oC so no one may realize this is happening. If you are the type of person to by grinding out strikes for catalysts weeks after Warmind’s release, you are also probably someone who already has every exotic in the game, like me. Exotics are currently in a weird spot because they’re actually less valuable than legendary drops, since they can’t even be sharded for masterwork cores, so most people are flat out deleting exotic engrams without even decrypting them. So why would anyone be spending 30 legendary shards to use Three of Coins to try and get more useless exotics? As such, I feel like barely anyone is even using 3oCs during strikes to test this theory, which is why it may not have been discovered.
3) While it seems like Bungie would have announced the fact that 3oC increases the catalyst drop rate to please fans, I would put money on the possibility that Bungie could very well not even know this is happening. Destiny constantly suffers from bugs and glitches that it takes Bungie months to discover. Sniper rifles were bugged from the launch of D2. Recently, Bungie figured out that Crucible matchmaking flat-out wasn’t working as intended at all. As such, I am willing to bet that 3oC could be “positively bugged,” increasing catalyst drop rates because they’re coded as exotics, even if that’s not what the item is supposed to do.
But here’s where I need your help. Try this out. As I said, right now this is just a conspiracy theory based on some anecdotal evidence and some personal observations. If you test this out and have the same kind of results I did, then well, maybe we’re on to something here. Please give this a shot and hit me up on Twitter (@PaulTassi) with your results. Together, maybe we can get these damn catalysts at last.
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