Skin Talk: Is there really a difference between “high-tier gold rare item” and “regular gold rare item” for knife skins?
What is the probability of hitting gold from a Counter-Strike weapon case? — 0.256% (about 1 gold rare item every 390 cases)Most people already know this number. It’s the hit-gold rate disclosed on the official CS:GO China website to comply with legal requirements, and it’s also the probability most veteran players are familiar with.
But have you ever considered that, when you’re “guaranteed to hit gold,” the odds of pulling different knife skins may not be as “evenly distributed” as you think? A “mainstream liquid item” Doppler may not actually be rarer than a “trash-tier gold rare item” Bright Water? Let’s take a look at the probability distribution Anomaly found after tallying all gold rare item drops~
And in cases with the newer knife set, the knife-model distribution is also even—that is, among the newer “Stiletto Knife, Ursus Knife, Navaja Knife, and Talon Knife,” the chance of pulling any one model is 1/4, or 25%
As for other cases, aside from cases with a fixed knife model pool (for example, CS20 can only drop Classic Knife, while Shadow can only drop Shadow Daggers), all other cases follow the same rule of uniform distribution across different knife models. So the next time you open a case, you can at least tell yourself that pulling “Shadow Daggers” is actually just as rare as pulling a “Butterfly Knife.”~
Is the probability distribution across different knife skin finishes uniform?
Since the odds for different knife models are the same, does that also mean the odds are the same across different finishes? There really is a probability gap between different finishes when it comes to “high-tier gold rare item” and “ordinary gold rare item” outcomes—for example, the simplest case is that “gem-pattern Doppler knife is rarer than P1-P4.” But outside of Doppler, Valve may have adjusted the drop rates for different gold rare item outcomes in ways that are even more complex than you might expect.
First, take the simplest case: the finish distribution within the original five. The odds of pulling any given finish are all 1/13—that is, 7.69% (conditional on being guaranteed to hit gold). In other words, the odds of pulling Stained are the same as the odds of pulling Fade.
But among the six new finishes introduced with the Gamma Case in January 2015 (Damascus Steel, Marble Fade, Rust Coat, Ultraviolet, Tiger Tooth, and Doppler), Valve apparently had not yet properly set the probability distribution for the different Phase tier outcomes/gem-pattern Doppler knife variants within Doppler. The drop rates across different finishes were not uniform!
In the Gamma Case, Valve mistakenly gave the “subsets” under the Doppler category (that is, P1, P2, P3, and P4) the same weight as the other finishes, which greatly increased the odds of pulling Doppler!
Therefore, the odds of pulling any of the other five finishes besides Doppler—“Damascus Steel, Marble Fade, Rust Coat, Ultraviolet, and Tiger Tooth”—are identical at 11.85%, while the odds of pulling Doppler are as high as 40.75%! In other words, once you hit gold from a Gamma Case, roughly 1 out of every 2.45 gold rare items will be a Doppler!
And within the Doppler “sub-pool,” the probability distribution across P1, P2, P3, and P4 is even, at 23.475% each; “Ruby” and “Sapphire” are both 2.75%; and “Black Pearl” sits at 0.6% (conditional on already pulling Doppler).
In the later Spectrum Case, which also includes the Doppler finish family, Valve appears to have recognized the earlier mistake of Doppler being “too common” and adjusted the drop rate for the Doppler category to match the other finishes at 16.66%! (conditional on hitting gold)
Aside from the adjustment to the Doppler category itself, the drop rates across the Doppler “sub-pool” for different Phase tier variants and gem-pattern Doppler knife variants were also adjusted: P1, P2, P3, and P4 were equalized at 20% each; Ruby and Sapphire were raised to 9%; and Black Pearl was increased to 2%. (Conditional on rolling Doppler) the probability distribution in all weapon cases released afterward that include the “Doppler” family of finishes was fixed.