The entire purpose of the totem item being added is to alleviate some of the RNG in trying to obtain your weapon from each fight. Even if you can't get it directly as a drop, at least you know you can get it eventually if you do enough runs.

It makes sense to me that this same logic would be applied to the lanner whistles from each fight, and possibly other items. Even if the number required was absurdly high, as someone who has had bad luck with drops and struggles to find anyone else to do runs consistently, it would be a great motivator to keep doing the fight.