With the Black Empire Uldum assault starting on the first Tuesday of the year (NA region), and if using only 1 toon:
► Approx. 182 attempts for K'uddly & Corrupted Tentacle
► Approx. 183 days for Wicked Lurker
Can't really figure out how many attempts since it's random whether or not the rare that drops this pet will spawn.► Approx. 104 OR 105 attempts for Rotbreath & Aqir Tunneler
The number varies slightly because it depends on which Minor Uldum assault starts at the beginning of every other week (Aqir or Amathet). For this year (2020 and includes first few days of 2021) it's roughly 104 attempts.
I'm not listing the Minor Vale assaults since there aren't any pets that drop from those, but if you're curious about other drops from those two events, it's about the same as the Minor Uldum assaults listed above.
For me, this puts a year into some perspective. It may feel long sometimes, but there aren't actually that many days. Life is short. We're prisoners of our own time/making. Existential crisis, yikes?
Anyway, with a low drop rate and only so many chances per year it's no wonder that a pet collector's only options are to either use A LOT of alts for additional attempts per day, or buy/trade the pets. A third option is to just keep playing for however long it takes to see the pet drop. I'm not a statistics major so I can't calculate how long, but Wowhead currently lists the drop rates as follows.
- K'uddly - 2.1% chance
- Corrupted Tentacle - 2.38% chance
- Wicked Lurker - 1.98% chance
- Rotbreath - 2.76% chance
- Aqir Tunneler - 0.97% chance
RNG is RNG though. I received the Wicked Lurker before the Corrupted Tentacle, despite the latter having a higher estimated drop rate. Experiences will vary, of course.
I don't know how I feel about this information. It's kind of grim, to be honest. I'm fortunate that I have time to get multiple alts attempting for the pets, plus my OH who is also able and willing to try for me. But for someone that doesn't have the time and can only use 1 toon... oof. I feel for them. This 8.3 experience is probably not very fun if all they're doing it for is the pets.
At the moment it almost feels as if it's designed with players like myself in mind - those with lots of alts to use. I mean, that's how you fight RNG, right? Just roll the dice more and more? But how do you keep players playing if their army of alts makes (relatively) quick work of the RNG? Just make the events limited on top of the already low drop rate (and random spawn in the case of Wicked Lurker's rare). In other words layered RNG.
I wish there was a better implementation of this type of content. There has to be a compromise somewhere so that both designers and players are content with the results. It feels unnecessarily unfair.
