Care Package Drop Odds
May 18, 2011 Black Ops Tips, Killstreaks
Many people love the care package killstreak, especially players that aren’t particularly good. However, it can be frustrating when your care package keeps landing with low end killstreaks like ammo and UAV Jammer.
The first thing to take note of when this happens is that it may be a sign that you need to check out some of our Black Ops tips to get better so you don’t have to rely on weaksauce like care packages anymore!
The second thing to take note of is that you’re not just a poor unlucky soul. The killstreaks that drop in the care packages are weighted to drop the less effective killstreaks more often and the very effective ones less often. It wouldn’t be fair if everyone were rolling out gunships every time they got a couple of kills, would it? Ok, maybe it would, but it wouldn’t be particularly balanced.
If you’re interested in knowing how likely you are to get that Gunship, it’s “not very”, as the Gunship only drops 1% of the time. We’ve got the rest of the odds listed below as well to help you determine if grabbing those care packages is really worth it, and so you can commiserate in just how many other people keep getting ammo and UAVs along with you.
First Drop
- Additional Ammo – 20%
- UAV – 15%
- Counter UAV – 15%
- RC Car – 9%
- Surface-Air Turret – 5%
- Mortar Team – 5%
- Sentry – 5%
- Valkyrie – 5%
- Rolling Thunder – 3%
- Grim Reaper – 3%
- Napalm – 3%
- Blackbird – 3%
- Attack Chopper – 3%
- Death Machine – 2%
- Chopper Gunner – 2%
- Dogs – 1%
- Gunship – 1%
Re-roll
- Additional Ammo – 9%
- UAV – 9%
- Counter UAV – 9%
- RC Car – 9%
- Surface-Air Turret – 9%
- Mortar Team – 9%
- Sentry – 9%
- Valkyrie – 9%
- Rolling Thunder – 4%
- Grim Reaper – 4%
- Napalm – 4%
- Blackbird – 4%
- Attack Chopper – 4%
- Death Machine – 3%
- Chopper Gunner – 3%
- Dogs – 1%
- Gunship – 1%
So there you have it. Not exactly the best odds if you’re looking to land something sweet like the Gunship or Chopper Gunner. Exactly half the time, on your first drop, you’re going to end up with either extra ammo (which you probably don’t need if you’re using the regular care package) or some form of UAV. On those drops you’ll basically be taking a net loss and will be getting stuff you could have actually gotten cheaper by picking them directly.
Things get a bit better if you re-roll, but not with the big killstreaks. Dogs and Gunship are still nearly unattainable, and your odds don’t actually improve at all on a re-roll. Some of the moderately big killstreaks like the attack chopper, napalm, blackbird, grim reaper, and rolling thunder increase ever so slightly, bumping your odds up by a measely 1%.
The real difference in a re-roll is your likelihood to drop one of the ‘little three’ (ammo and the two UAVs) in exchange for one of the killstreaks in the next “tier”. On your first drop, the little three make up 50% of your odds with the next tier combining up to only 29% with its five available killstreaks. On your re-roll, those odds move much closer together as the little three make up only 27% while the next tier of five make up a healthy 45% of your odds.
It could be frustrating to drop a mid-tier killstreak for a re-roll only to get one of the little three, but the odds are nearly 50% that you’ll at least get another mid-tier killstreak, with the odds that you upgrade to one of the big ones being just as good as the odds that you downgrade back to one of the little three. Our Black Ops tips recommendation is that you re-roll it in that case and lay it all out on the line.
If you’re looking to get better at Black Ops so you can skip care packages all together, make sure and check out all our Black Ops Tips on the main page.
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