‘Destiny’: Bungie Assures Xur’s Exotics Are Random, But Is It Weighted Towards Certain Items?

The weekly visit by Xûr, Agent of the Nine, is usually one that generally produces mixed feelings from among Destiny community. The Exotic armor and weapons being sold this past week were a little special as they were an exact duplicate from four weeks prior. This caused PlayStation and Xbox players to question whether the vendor’s goods were random, forcing Bungie to respond.

The argument that what Xûr offers for sale is determined by Bungie was the following video captured by Bungie forum user wikiddd from a now-deleted Twitch broadcast.

In the video, Community Manager David “DeeJ” Dague can be heard stating, “Xûr doesn’t tell me what he’s up to, neither does anyone else. It is not random. There is a plan.”

This forced Dague to respond about the seeming lack of randomness in Xûr’s inventory and deliver an apology for miscommunicating how the vendor’s inventory is supposed to work.

“Hey, there. Let me attempt to clear some things up here.

“Xur is randomized. There are times when we can pull off miracles like making him stay in the Tower longer when Christmas is cancelled, but his inventory is governed by the same chaos that influences all the loot drops.

“Comments in that video about “the plan” were more about the fact that we know what he’s selling before he appears, even if we can’t reach out and stock his shelves ourselves. We set him in motion, and his will is not his own.

“Also in that video, you can hear me confessing that I’m not always in the loop when it comes to these things, so you should take pre-game lobby comments among friends with a grain of salt. That video was from months ago, and I was still learning the intricacies of all the new systems that we launched with the game.

“These conspiracy theories are symptoms of a burning desire. Gjallarhorn is the most popular ask that comes my way. I know you want it, even more than the collective requests for more vault space. As you can see, these are things that are beyond my control. I don’t have one either.

“I’ll do my best to talk to the people who create the code that drives Xur, and see if we can make him more valuable to you in the future.”

It may be a case that while Xûr’s inventory is random, every piece of Exotic armor and weapon are weighted to favor some items over others. That would explain why Exotic items from The Dark Below have been heavily favored since the expansion’s release and why some of the game’s most powerful weapons, like Icebreaker and Gjallarhorn, have rarely been seen. The first has only been on sale twice while the latter was only on sale once, the second week after the game’s release.

Let’s look at what Xûr has offered up for Exotic weapons over the past eight weeks since The Dark Below was released. It shows an even distribution of weapons from the expansion and weapons that came with the game at launch. However, only two weapons make all four appearances for The Dark Below.

• Dragon’s Breath (TDB weapon) – 2 appearances
• No Land Beyond (TDB weapon) – 2 appearances
• The Last Word (Launch weapon) – 1 appearance
• Patience and Time (Launch weapon) – 1 appearance
• Truth (Launch weapon) – 1 appearance
• Ice Breaker (Launch weapon) – 1 appearance

The armor selections show a similar distribution but are weighted slightly towards certain pieces from The Dark Below by a margin of 13 to 11. Again though, pieces like Mk. 44 Stand Asides (three appearances) and Starfire Protocol (four appearances) from the expansion have shown repeatedly, suggesting that there is some weighting towards them.

What do you think? Sound off in the comments below.

[Images via Bungie]

[H/T: Destiny sub-Reddit]