Strongboxes Nodes on Atlas

I was wondering if they're still bugged? Last time I specced into the unique node, I stopped finding unique strongboxes altogether.

I've only seen 1 or 2 unique strongboxes and I'm level 91 and 86 on 2 characters.

As far as I know they work. I juiced an area with strongbox tablets and took all the nodes and got a fair amount of the unique ones. Was still very rare, like 1 every 5-10maps, but more common then it is for me now with zero investment (basically never)

There was conspiracy posting that the non-unique strongbox nodes made unique strongboxes more rare, but it's likely just bad RNG.

I try really, really hard not to get sucked into speculation about RNG-based mechanics because I understand how hard our brains work to make patterns out of random events and it takes longer than most of us realize to actually collect enough data to make any determination with confidence...

That being said, my friend has hit ~5 Vetnor's Contraption in the last week and 3 of those have dropped Perfect Jeweler's Orbs.

Meanwhile, with the same nodes locked in, my outcomes have looked more or less like this over the same time period (these were just from yesterday):



(the magic one with the yellow text is a stand-in for a rare I forgot to take a screenshot of)


To top it off I finally got frustrated and spec'd out of Strongboxes and into Wisps and I kid you not the next map I did the first strongbox I found was an Ogham's Legacy...

I really want to believe this is just RNG being RNG but f me if that didn't feel super jank.

The problem for me was that I did over 100+ maps with no uniques, whereas I was getting them fairly often before speccing into strongboxes, so. I suppose it could all be poor RNG, I'd just hate to do another 100 only to find out it WAS bugged, so I thought I'd at least ask and see if it was something that was known.

I think I'll risk it and spec back in. I like lockboxes regardless, and the nodes DID give me a fair number more of the rare researchers.

Have any of you ever seen a cartographers strongbox in this season? I haven't seen a single one in 100 hours, not even after speccing into it on the atlas.