The totems and nuts are a sanity check for the randomness. The fact that they are also random is absurd. I don't mean that in a hurtful tone, its just that it is illogical and self-defeating. Please see this.

Every victory, you should be able to make real progress (not fake random number progress).

Option 2 if you must. Should someone really need to kill ifrit more than 10 times for a drop? They're not really proving anything beyond that point and have clearly defeated the content.