Rarity & Odds
Almost everything you get in Resonance has a rarity — Standard, Rare, or Mythical. But rarity is decided in two completely different ways depending on where the item comes from, and mixing them up is the single most common source of "wait, how did I get a Mythical from that?" confusion. This page lays both out, with the real numbers, so you can read a drop or a cook and know exactly what your odds are.
Gameplay uses three rarity tiers everywhere: Standard → Rare → Mythical. "Legendary" is not a rarity roll — it's a separate craft-only tier you build through the Apotheosis chain. Nothing rolls a Legendary.
The two kinds of roll
| Drop roll (a cascade) | Upgrade roll (one step) | |
|---|---|---|
| Where | Mailbox, Mulcher, seed/material packs, Journey gear drops, weekly bounty gear | Cooking & Forging (the Elegance roll) |
| How it picks | Rolls the top tier first, works down | Starts from a base tier, bumps up one step on a hit |
| Can a Standard become Mythical in one go? | ✅ Yes — it skips Rare entirely | ❌ No — one tier at a time |
| Driven by | Tune-In level / combined value / difficulty | Your Elegance stat vs. the recipe baseline |
Everything below is just these two mechanics, in detail.
1. The drop cascade — "roll Mythical first, then Rare, then Standard"
This is the mechanic behind your Mailbox, the Mulcher, packs, and Journey gear drops. It's a top-down cascade:
Because it checks Mythical first, a drop can jump straight from the bottom to the top — a Standard-looking source can hand you a Mythical directly, without ever passing through Rare. That's the answer to the most-asked question: yes, a Standard drop can bump to Mythical directly. It's a single draw split three ways, not a ladder you climb.
In practice each source just plugs its own three numbers into that cascade. Two things move those numbers:
- Higher Tune-In / higher "combined value" → better odds. Mythical and Rare chances climb as the source gets richer.
- Mythical is hard-capped at 20%. No matter how high you push, the Mythical slice of a drop cascade never exceeds 1-in-5. Rare keeps climbing under it; Standard is always whatever's left over.
Mailbox
Your free daily Mailbox rolls this cascade, and the odds scale with your Tune-In level:
| Source richness | Standard | Rare | Mythical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Baseline (Tune-In L1) | ~89% | ~10% | ~1% |
| Every ~10 Tune-In levels | ↓ | +~1% | +~0.1% |
| Hard ceiling | — | climbs | 20% max |
So a max-Tune-In Mailbox sits near ~79% / ~19% / ~2% — dramatically better Rare odds than day one, with Mythical still rare by design. Signal subscribers get a further +1 rarity bias per roll (it shifts the distribution up; it does not add a roll).
The shape above (cascade + Mythical cap) is stable, but exact per-level numbers get retuned. Your Kitchen header shows how many rolls you have today — that's the source of truth. See Mailbox.
Mulcher
The Mulcher rolls the same cascade, but "source richness" is the combined value of what you feed in rather than your Tune-In level. Mulch more (and higher-value items) in one go and the Rare / Mythical slices grow — same +Rare / +Mythical curve, same 20% Mythical cap.
Packs & weekly bounty gear
Packs (seed packs, material packs) and the weekly bounty gear roll use the same top-down cascade with fixed per-pack weights. As a reference point, weekly bounty gear rolls roughly:
| Standard | Rare | Mythical | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Weekly bounty gear | ~70% | ~28% | ~2% |
Individual packs carry their own configured weights (shown at open time), but the "top tier first, work down" behaviour is identical.
Journey gear drops
Gear that drops from Journey nodes also rolls top-down, but the weights are set by difficulty, not Tune-In:
| Difficulty | Standard | Rare | Mythical |
|---|---|---|---|
| Normal | 80% | 20% | — |
| Hard | 50% | 40% | 10% |
| Nightmare | — | 60% | 40% |
| Trial | — | 70% | 30% |
Two things to know before you farm:
- Mythical gear only exists from Hard and up. A Normal clear can never drop a Mythical piece — it caps at Rare. Push to Hard+ if you're gear-hunting.
- Repeat runs roll the leaner repeat loot pool. A Repeat run rolls the repeat/farm loot pool, which is leaner on gear than a first clear (the rarity split above is unchanged — it's the chance of getting gear at all that's lower). First clears are your best gear odds.
2. The cook / forge upgrade — one tier at a time
Cooking and Forging do not use the cascade. They run a single Elegance roll, and on a hit the output climbs exactly one tier:
- A cook can bump Standard → Rare, or Rare → Mythical — but never Standard → Mythical in one cook. It's one step per cook, no skipping.
- If the output is already at its ceiling tier, a successful Elegance roll mints a 2× bonus piece of that tier instead of upgrading further.
The upgrade chance starts at a 5% base and climbs with your Elegance relative to the recipe's baseline, hard-capped at 90%:
| Your Elegance vs. recipe baseline | Upgrade chance |
|---|---|
| 0 (no Elegance) | 5% (floor) |
| 1× baseline | ~27% |
| 2× baseline | ~56% |
| 3× baseline or more | 90% (hard cap) |
90% is the ceiling, reached at 3× baseline Elegance — even fully maxed, an upgrade is never a certainty. Signal's bonus cook lane and some snack buffs can push past the cap on that lane. Full math (the curve, variant-Elegance substitution, ceiling bonuses): Advanced — rarity-upgrade rolls.
3. Cultivator harvest — a gated ladder (the exception)
Cultivator harvests are a third structure, and it's neither of the above. Here Mythical is gated: the harvest first checks a Rare gate, and only if that passes does it check a Mythical gate. So Mythical requires clearing two gates in a row — you can't leapfrog straight to it the way a drop cascade allows.
- Harvest rarity is driven entirely by the avatars you commit — not seed tier, not cultivator level, not Elegance. No avatars committed → 100% Standard.
- At the top of the avatar-stat curve the split lands around ~35% Standard / ~49% Rare / ~16% Mythical.
- Since 2026-08-15 the upgrades are handed out as a per-harvest budget anchored to your producing seed slots, not rolled on each unit — see below.
- On top of that, Cultivation Mastery adds Tilth — a flat bonus of extra upgrades on every harvest, earned simply by harvesting. See Tilth below.
Reading the "Rarity upgrade %" on a cultivator card
Your cultivator card shows a single Rarity upgrade % — say +43%. Since 2026-08-15 this is a per-harvest budget, not a per-unit dice roll, and that distinction is the whole point.
What it means now: each producing seed slot contributes its share of
upgrades to the harvest. A cultivator with 5 producing slots at +43% earns
5 × 0.43 ≈ 2.15 upgrades that window — so 2 units come out Rare or better,
and the leftover 0.15 is banked toward the next claim. Mythical still sits
behind a second, lower gate applied to those upgraded units, so it stays the
scarce tail.
| Cultivator | Producing slots | Card % | Upgrades that harvest |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small farm | 5 | +43% | ~2 Rare-or-better |
| Levelled farm | 11 | +43% | ~4–5 Rare-or-better |
Why it changed. It used to be a chance rolled on every single unit, which meant rare output was a fixed fraction of volume — so anything that raised volume (longer-lived seeds, avatar boosts, more slots, Scroll upgrades) multiplied your Rare and Mythical supply by the same amount. Tripling a farm's output tripled the Mythic ingredients entering the game. Anchoring the budget to slots instead means volume now floods Standard only, and the rare ladder is moved by the one thing it should be moved by: committed avatar power.
What this means for you, practically:
- Nothing is lost to rounding. A budget under 1.0 is banked, not discarded — a small farm with strong avatars still earns its upgrades, just a window or two later. Before, a fraction below 1 could round away every single claim.
- A bigger harvest is not a rarer harvest. Longer-lived seeds and avatar volume boosts give you more Standard, not more Mythical. That's deliberate — Standard is the on-ramp currency, and it's meant to be plentiful.
- More slots is more rarity. Levelling a cultivator raises the budget directly, because the budget is anchored to producing slots.
- The output is deterministic. Same slots, same avatars, same result — there's no luck in the count any more, so a bad-luck streak on a harvest is no longer a thing.
A common mistake is to treat +43% as both gates and multiply: 0.43 × 0.43 ≈ 18%. That double-counts — the card's % drives the first gate. The Rare→Mythical gate is a separate, lower value, and it's hard-capped, so even with fully maxed avatars the Mythical slice of a harvest can't exceed ~16%. Push avatar power to raise both gates — but Mythical stays the scarce tail by design.
Tilth — the mastery you earn by harvesting
Everything above is structural: the budget comes from how many slots you have and how strong your committed avatars are. Tilth is the one part you earn.
What it is. Every harvest you claim teaches you Cultivation Mastery — one account-wide level, not one per world or per farm. Your mastery level grants Tilth, and Tilth adds extra rare upgrades straight onto the budget of every harvest, on top of what your slots and avatars already earn.
How you get it. Just harvest. There's nothing to buy, equip, or spec into — claiming a harvest is the only thing that earns Cultivation Mastery XP. Bigger harvests teach more, and higher-tier output teaches most: a Mythical ingredient is worth 10× a Standard one in XP, so pushing the quality ladder also speeds up the stat that pushes the quality ladder. A claim that produced nothing teaches nothing.
What it's worth. Your cultivator card shows it as an amber Tilth +N.NN pill next to the Rare and Mythic pills. At the level cap it reaches +2.5 upgrades per harvest — which roughly doubles the rare output of a fully-levelled, fully-crewed farm.
The curve is deliberately back-loaded: early levels grant a small fraction like +0.05, and it accelerates sharply toward the cap. That fraction is not lost — it's banked into the same pot as the rest of your budget and paid out as a whole extra upgrade once it adds up (roughly every 20 harvests at +0.05). So a "+0.05" pill is real progress, just slow at first. If it were generous early, every casual farm would flood the game with Rares — which is exactly what the per-harvest budget exists to prevent.
Where Tilth does not apply. It only touches quality, never quantity. No amount of Cultivation Mastery will grow you a single extra ingredient — it changes the mix of what a harvest produces, not the size of it. Volume comes from seeds, slots, avatars, and cultivation gear.
Here's the whole picture of what moves what:
| What you invest | What it moves |
|---|---|
| Seed rarity (lifespan 3 / 6 / 10) | How long a slot keeps producing — fewer planting trips |
| Cultivator level (more slots) | Volume and quality — the budget is anchored to slots |
| Committed avatars | Volume (boost) and quality (both rarity gates) |
| Cultivation gear on those avatars | Volume — it makes an avatar a stronger worker |
| Cultivation Mastery → Tilth | Quality only — extra upgrades per harvest |
| Cultivation Mastery → Growth | Neither — it just lets a farm hold up to 48h of harvest instead of 24h, so you lose less by claiming late |
Details and the avatar-stat curve: Cultivators — harvest rarity.
Making better decisions
- Want a chance at Mythical fast? Use the drop cascade sources — a rich Mailbox, a big Mulcher batch, or Hard+ Journey gear. These are the only places a single pull can land Mythical outright.
- Want a specific Mythical item? Use the cook/forge upgrade or refine chains — it's slower (one tier per step) but you're building a known output, not gambling on a top-tier hit.
- Don't expect Mythical from Normal Journey nodes — that table caps at Rare. Push difficulty to unlock the Mythical slice.
- First-clear, don't Repeat, when hunting gear — repeat runs roll the leaner repeat loot pool.
- Elegance is the rarest stat for a reason. The upgrade roll caps at 90%, so stack Elegance where the output ceiling is highest (Mythic food, Mythic equipment) and chase Skill first everywhere else. See Advanced — strategy notes.
- The 20% Mythical cap on drops is a floor under your patience — no amount of Tune-In makes Mythical common from the Mailbox. Treat drop Mythicals as a bonus, not a plan.
See also
- Mailbox — the free daily drop cascade
- Recipes & Cooking — the cook reveal and the Elegance upgrade
- Advanced Guide — the full upgrade-chance math
- Cook Chains — the Standard → Rare → Mythical value ladder
- Cultivators and Sub-Slots — avatar-driven harvest rarity
- Journey — Loot & Rewards — where gear drops come from
- Reference — every Kitchen number on one page