Starbound: Mint Condition, or: Why You’ll Never Legitimately 100% Starbound

Mint Condition is a ridiculous achievement that requests you find and acquire 50 of the game’s 69 figurines. (I refuse to call them action figures. They’re actually statuettes, because they don’t do anything other than sit on a platform, and no, I’m not just saying that for the bit. Also, nice.) If the drop rates weren’t so obscenely low, this might be remotely doable, but vanilla Starbound’s standard 0.1% drop rate renders it an absolute nightmare.

There are some strategies you can do to make this less painful – I’m hoping to learn some from the comments section, if you guys have anything – and that’s what I’ll be trying to cover, so that maybe, one day, with the right strategies, this will be within the realm of possibility of people like myself who so desperately crave the validation of 100%’ing a game you care a lot about.

Yes. Let’s have a look at the drop rates, courtesy of the Starbounder wiki page[starbounder.org]:

Gleap: 1/1000
Nutmidge: 1/1000
Poptop: 1/1000
Adult Poptop: 1/1000
Crustoise: 1/1000

… noticing a pattern?

Nearly every figurine in the game has a drop rate of 0.1%. On average, you’re killing a thousand Gleaps before you get your figurine for it. There are certain exceptions to this rule, that can be broken into three categories: Bosses, Boss Underlings, and Parasprite… because that’s it’s name.

Bosses have a universal drop rate of 1/20, save for the two penguin bosses, which have a drop rate of 1/40. The two Boss Underlings with figurines – Ixoling and Kluex Sentry – have increased odds, boasting a 1/333 rate – 0.3%. Finally, Parasprite has a sweet, sweet 1/100 drop rate – a whopping 1% for a “standard” enemy! Or that would be sweet, if it didn’t spawn exclusively in USCM ships via mech missions. Super!

You can’t! But here are some tips for making the going less rough.

• Throughout your entire playthrough, kill every named mob you see. (As in, not the randomly generated ones.) If you roll the dice enough times, you’re bound to get one eventually, so you might as well make a habit of it while you’re going about your other business. I got my first figurine from a random Crustoise after only 38 hours of gameplay! And I wasn’t even farming for it!
• Bosses have a MASSIVE step up in drop rates, so it’s wise to gun for them first. As a bonus, you can try for Ixoling and Kluex Sentry while you’re at it.
• Some enemies spawn in great numbers in dungeons – Batong in the Temple comes to mind – and since they still drop leather and stuff, it’s not too far of a stretch to assume they can drop the figs? Point is, find easily-farmable points for enemies.
• If you’re going to hunt for figures from common mobs, try to hunt the ones that are the most plentiful. It’s way easier to find a bunch of Nutmidges than it is a bunch of Adult Poptops, and each Nutmidge has its own drop chance.
• Some claim that hunting weapons increase the drop chance. Others claim it’s a myth. You can try using hunting weapons if you’d like; I personally love the Adaptable Crossbow considering how early you can get it, though note that only the basic projectile counts as a hunting weapon. Please don’t post whether you think it’s true or not unless you have an actual source that isn’t just someone else’s word. I want the facts, here, not just whatever people think is correct.
• Collaborate with your friends! Having more people simultaneously killing mobs (in separate areas) dramatically increases your odds of finding one sooner, since you’re getting more RNG rolls in per minute. Plus, if one of you gets lucky, you can pass it around and register it in everyone’s collection! It’s wins all around, minus the fact that you’re going for this forsaken achievement. (I don’t count it as legitimate if your friend spawned them in and then gave them to you to register btw. That’s just cheating with an extra step.)

I did. Well, as well as one can given the circumstances. Here’s what I banged out on a typewriter and pretended is remotely accurate. Feel free to criticize it, I’d love to make this actually accurate so we’re not just pulling numbers out of our ass like I am.

So, we start by getting all the boss figures first. if we’re being very generous and assuming that an entire dungeon run and its boss fight is done in five minutes, then on average you’ll knock out an easy 9 figures in around… 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 100 + 200 + 200 + 100… so, 1100 minutes, or around 18 hours? Not every boss has an associated dungeon but I’m just going to leave it at 5 minutes per boss.

Then we move on to the two unique dungeon enemy drops. We’re going to assume you’re killing 1 enemy per minute – generous, given travel time between enemies, dungeon load times, etc. – and each have a 1/333 (0.3%) chance to drop, so we’re looking at an average of 666 minutes, or around 11.1 hours.

Then there’s a standard enemy that has a drop rate of 1/100, the Parasprite, which is exclusively found in randomly generated derelict ship mech events. Once again assuming an enemy per minute, we can tack on another 100 minutes – or 1.6 hours.

now that we’ve spent 30.7 hours getting the twelve easy figures, it’s time to move on to the 38 harder ones. and by “harder” i mean “more tedious”. Because these are dropped from standard enemies, with the beautiful FULL ODDS of a 0.1% drop rate- around 8 times as likely as finding a full-odds shiny in the older Pokemon games. (to put that into perspective, you’d find 4.75 full-odds shinies in the number of dice rolls it would take you to get the remaining 38 figures.) Once again assuming a minute per each enemy (WAY too generous given travel times, loading times, and just finding the damn things), we’re looking at 38,000 minutes – which turns into 633.3 hours.

We arrive at a total of ~664 hours – approximately 27.6 DAYS of gameplay JUST GETTING THESE ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ FIGURES

And that’s for this ONE achievement. Keep in mind you’ve also got fossils to uncover, food to cook, codexes to find, bugs to catch, colony quests to complete, and 210 different armor pieces to gather, if you’re going for that legitimate 100%. Agony.

I’ve gotten I think one or two over the years, but since I’m on a new save file, I’m starting from the ground up here. If I remember to update this as I get figs, I’ll do so, just so everyone can see how mind-numbingly tedious this achievement is, and also because I’m petty and secretly hope ChuckleFish will somehow see this guide and raise drop rates to something more reasonable. Even though this game’s never getting updated again. Sigh.

4/12/2024: 370.6 hours total, with around 60.4 hours logged over the last two weeks during my most recent save. One figurine: Crustoise. Might hunt boss figs if I’m feeling it.

NO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I wouldn’t cheat it in – it just feels dishonest – but I could not in my right mind recommend someone actually hunt this thing down. At least, not without a team of friends building a sweet museum or something, all collectively working toward the shared goal of 100% completion.

ChuckleFish really ♥♥♥♥ the bed with this one, and that’s before getting into everything that went wrong on the development end of things. I’d MAYBE put it at 25 figs, MAXIMUM. But I digress.

Thanks for reading my combination rant and achievement guide. Is this where people put a stupid gif begging for likes and awards and ♥♥♥♥? I’m not doing that, but if you do decide to give me an award, know that I love you and I’m sure it’ll boost your figurine drop rate by 700%.

Best of luck, hunters!