Loot Midget Data Farming - 100 at a time

Borderlands 2 Loot and Weapons
#1

I’ve decided to dedicate a large chunk of my free time to one of the few things that I love most about this game: Loot Midget farming. The way they can drop almost anything excited me far more than farming any single boss, and their frequency allows for lots of cool legendary finds.

For those who don’t know, Loot Midget Farming is done mostly in the Wildlife Exploitation Preserve, though others prefer Thousand Cuts or Sawtooth Cauldron. You must keep the mission Doctor’s Orders active and never pick up any of the mission items; this ensures that you get as many loot midgets as possible out of the 4 boxes in the room with the red chest. If you pick one up, alt+f4 or dashboard and start again.

So in the spirit of discovery, I’ve decided to record my farming results, 100 midgets at a time. I was inspired by Smikers on twitch, who does something similar with some of the easier bosses to farm - wilhelm, knuckle dragger, mick zaford - in order to try and put out a solid idea of what drop rates really are.

Before this post, I have done this 3 times, but I only have the results from the 3rd and latest attempt - the previous ones gave me something like 11 legendaries/5m pearls one time and about 8-9 drops between legendaries and pearls the next. I also spent yesterday farming loot midgets, though I did not record my results in any meaningful way - all I know is that I must have killed at least 100, and got around 9-10 legendaries and about 7-8 pearlescents.

I’m going to link my template so y’all can do this for yourselves, as well as my results. If there’s any stats you think I should record, let me know! I’m sure that together we can put down together a solid farming guide for these sneaky little buggers!

http://pastebin.com/fw8FjGXr

As you can see, today’s first expedition was quite successful - 13 legendaries and a pearl from 99 midgets. Longest dry spell was 21 midgets, or around 5 runs. And yes. I did get 3 Sledge’s Shotgun. That gun LOVES me for some reason - they almost always spawn with a Hyperion stock.

5 Likes
What is the spawn rate/legendary drop rates for the loot midgets in Wildlife Exploitation Preserve?
Drop rate confusion
What did you do in BL2 during your most recent session?
#2

Yeah, I can’t escape that shotgun either.

This looks interesting. I look forward to watching the results!

#3

13 oranges and 5 pearls in 25 runs, that’s the average on a normal run.
Yet nice experiment :slight_smile:

#4

I would like to see a similar experiment normal Loot Midgets (so from Normal or TVHM). They cannot drop Pearls or E-Tech Relics which appears to make Legendaries appear more frequently. That may or may not be because they share loot pools but I’d like to see how it actually averages out.

Otherwise, pretty solid work so far!

#5

Second set today:

Interesting that the pitchforks were back to back, but on different runs, and the butcher and second storm were in the same run.

1 Like
#6

That’s actually a really good idea - I’ll consider taking my Maya back to the WEP on normal mode and doing that too. If anyone else wants to pick that one up too, go ahead.

#7

Dude I know this a bit off topic but what’s with your background?? It looks like your typing in a borderlands notepad XD. That’s awesome!
Also congrats on the double pitchfork, haven’t had luck like that in forever

#8

I know haha, both elemental too - i grabbed the corrosive one, which was #2. You are right, by the way - it is actually a Borderlands notepad.

#9

I did a 100 LM run in TVHM and I have some interesting data to share:

   Number of Runs: 25
 Spawned midgets: 100
   Jimmy Jenkins:  3
  Bonus midgets*:  4
     empty boxes:  0
# of drops (l):  17

Legendaries (+midget #): 

Leech			(5)
Legendary Mechromancer	(18)
Gunerang		(21)
Pandemic		(28)
Legendary Psycho	(30)
Rolling Thunder		(32)
Unkempt Harold		(42)
Hornet			(47)
Bunny			(49)
Hammer Buster		(55)
Deliverance		(57)
Invader			(58)
Maggie			(59)
Madhous!		(61)
Pyrophobia		(74)
Striker			(78)
Rolling Thunder		(87)

*midgets spawned from boxes other than the 4 near-guaranteed ones

Interestingly, there are 3 dry spells of 13 exactly.

I blame Organization XIII!

#10

A LOT of nothing. The last 20 midgets gave me nothing as well as a 24-midget dry spell from 25 to 49.

#11

With your runs, we can finally confirm that the Storm is the most frequent pearl drop xDDD

#12

This looks like a fun experiment to take part in.
How do you keep track as you go? Just on scrap paper, or straight onto PC?

#13

Directly via my notepad docs - i update after every run.

#14

Cool bananas - I’ll give this a go for sure! About time I contributed something other than anecdotes.

#15

Something definitely seems off with my WEP midgets. I’m 43 midgets into a 100 run. So far I’ve had a level 70 TumTum Skullmasher drop from the first midget, and since then absolutely nothing. Only 15 E-Tech relics in that time as well.

EDIT: Make that 60 Midgets and still nothing.

#16

I just did 84 and got a total of 8, which is within the range to expect, but still lower than I’m used to. Once I finish the set, I’ll update with a pic.

#17

I’m taking a break from mine for the time being (Second time I’ve done it during this first set through frustration), going to go and take my first run through the Son of Crawermax HH DLC.

On a more positive note, Tumbaa did drop my first Deliverance on the way out of WEP

#18

Roughly how long does each run take?

Out of curiosity.

#19

I was streaming it earlier, through not without issues. If you’re killing everything quickly, between 90 to 120 minutes. You can of course spread it out.

Unless you mean a single midget run, in which case about 3-5 minutes.

#20

May I ask your name to find your streaming?

And how do you get a midget run down to 5 minutes?