Where the hell is the D.F.A. in Destiny 2? (update)

Update: It’s not just us, it turns out the Nightfall exclusive rewards have a bug that is keeping them from dropping.

A few months ago, Destiny 2 developer Bungie added Nightfall-specific loot, which would only drop when a certain strike was featured as the weekly Nightfall. This week’s Nightfall in Destiny 2 is Tree of Probabilities, a bad mission-turned-strike with a brilliant reward.

The Tree of Probabilities’ loot is the D.F.A., Destiny 2’s best perks rolled up into a single hand cannon. There’s just one problem: It’s impossible to get it, and it’s never gonna happen for you, and I’m really sorry about that. It’s time to move on. If it has already happened for you, what I meant to say is that it will never happen for me, and your good fortune doesn’t do anything to help my lack of it. Keep it to yourself.

I have a history with this quest. The first time that Tree of Probabilities was the Nightfall, a group of us heard tell of the D.F.A. So we ran the strike over and over and over again, hoping to get the drop. In four hours of trying, nobody got it. We were angry and frustrated by how long we’d spent grinding for something that the game ultimately didn’t feel we had earned.

I had forgotten that frustration and anger in the past few months. I knew it was my moment when Tree of Probabilities rolled around again. I was sick of hearing how much people love their new hand cannon. This was gonna be my week, no matter how long it took me to make it happen.

Nope.

This grind is nonsense and now I know that I will never get this gun, no matter how badly I want it. I spent roughly six hours last night running the same strike over and over again, with different players. Not only did I not earn the gun, no one in my session earned the gun. This was torture dressed up to look like a random drop. My failure was contagious.

Grid View

• Bungie/Activision via DestinyDB
• DestinyDB

I then logged onto the Destiny subreddit to see if there were any strategies I had missed. I found something much darker: a post titled “HAS ANYONE GOTTEN THE DFA THIS WEEK.” The players inside, or at least one of the players inside, said it had taken over 100 attempts to get their first D.F.A.

Running Tree of Probabilities as fast as possible takes about eight to 10 minutes, for context. If you’re running it to maximize points, it takes about 15 minutes. That means the player spent 25 hours of grinding to get the weapon. It’s possible they were able to shave that down to 17 hours if they were moving as quickly as possible.

I sat with this information for a long time. Is a single hand cannon really worth 17-25 hours of my week? Why are these drop rates so punishing? What else could I be using my time for? How many languages could I learn in the time I’ve spent trying to earn random drops in Destiny 2?

The answers to the above questions are: no, probably bugged/Bungie doesn’t like us, almost anything would be more useful, and at the very least I could finally make my mother proud and learn Italian.

These are the same questions you can ask yourself about any game, however, and it’s not the first time Destiny has driven us to existential despair. We know what we’re getting into at this point, and we have no one to blame but ourselves.

See you next time, Tree of Probabilities. I hope you come back before I have time to forget how horrible you’ve been to me.