Let's discuss the current state of chests and drop rates

[Sibelios]

@Sibelios

So it’s been two weeks and I was really hoping there would be some followup on this. There are a lot of open questions right now well beyond just the change to shards such as:

• Apparent increase in food/ore in Dungeon chests, particularly Seasons Chests, which seems from my perspective to be a result of an apparent change to which items are eligible to rolled in which slot in Dungeon chests
• No apparent increase in Relics seen despite yet another “increase”
  …
• The often times occurrence where a Diamond Chest has 7 loot rolls resulting in the equivalent of 2 Iron Chests, which is not a fair value given the time and rarity

Yet another example of this ongoing, and as yet unaddressed issue by @Kafka and the developers:

This is the contents of a Level 80 Seasonal Diamond Dungeon Chest. In this case I actually had capacity to receive food as this was one of the first chests I had opened after spending some Food on the Food Deal. Of the six eligible slots, 3 of the 6 are Food, x2 in this case (which I will quickly be back to receiving 0!) or Ore. Additionally I have 3 evolve materials and absolutely zero items. For this I burned a Diamond Key which supposedly has significant potential value; however I essentially received the contents of 2 Iron Chests (albeit with increased food and ore).

EDIT: Adding this from yet another Seasonal Level 80 Diamond Dungeon Chest received in the same batch of 9 Battles:

3x Ore (received 300+ Ore), 1x Food, so 4 of the 7 slots are food or ore.

This is a clear change in behavior of Dungeon Chests previously (the regular absence of any items at all is now the very common) and is a worse outcome as a result.

I have now done 5 weeks of Seasons via a Platinum Pass Purchase. I have completed nearly 300 Battles of Level 80-100, almost exclusively Dungeon Chests. To date I have received from these chests:

• 0 Epic items
• 0 Legendary items
• 0 Relics
• 0 Glyphs

I have however received:

• A metric ton of Food which essentially amounted to 0
• A metric ton of Gold which essentially amounted to 0
• Ore - which I could actually put to some use (followers are pretty much the only regular source of epic items at this point)
• 100+ of Legendary/Mythic Runes/Scrolls which I cannot use (I have so many I will never use them, so essentially a dead currency)
• 1000+ Shards, many of them Superior quality, thanks to the quality of Life change which I may one day be able to use (but unlikely if they don’t allow downgrading of Shards) but had 0 marginal benefit as I had plenty of these shards to begin with
• dozens of common/uncommon seasonal minions, items, and a few spells that I cannot evolve to determine potential mastery value due to the lack of seasonal evolve materials and got broken down into even more shards that I cannot currently use
• ~2,000 Anthrite (not from the chests but as a result of doing these additional paid-for battles) which I have spent on at least 10 Ultimate Caches which have given me Shards or Rare Seasonal items more than half the time, which again I can’t evolve due to the lack of sufficient seasonal evolve materials

Feel free to review the contents of these chests that I tracked for a while but ultimately stopped doing due to the repetitiveness of the results:

Server Push 10th May 2022 - Small Fixes and Improvements

I’ve been meaning to post about this as well. In the past, Gold Chests would always have at least 1-2 upgradable items (e.g. gear, minion, etc) but often i’m seeing Gold Chests, especially Seasonal chests having extra ore/food, well beyond what these chests normally have (and to the extent that you do get an item, it is more likely to be a minion more than anything else) … [Screenshot_20220507-185607_Puzzle Quest 3] [Screenshot_20220507-185559_Puzzle Quest 3] [Screenshot_20220507-185552_P…

There are 3 weeks remaining in the Season Pass and I cannot for the life of me understand how this is something that the developers think will be found to be worthwhile as continuous premium content. At least with Events, as tedious as they are, you actually can end up with resources to acquire glyphs which are sufficient to evolve likely just a few of these seasonal items (which by the way are necessary to complete seasonal goals that are absolutely incapable of being completed even by the biggest of spenders).

Is this good feedback? Should I post it on reddit? Youtube perhaps?

EDIT (6/5/22): Someone brought up a great point: Currently @Sirrian wants to charge you 325 Crowns in the Shop to purchase 2x Diamond Key or 2x Ruby Key for 235 Crowns. Currently Crowns are being sold for various prices but using the prices of the mid-range packages, the 2 Diamond Keys costs you the equivalent of ~$5USD. So for 5 US dollars you can get Gold, Food, Ore, Runes/Scrolls, Shards, etc (all the stuff you can for free from Iron Chests with easily acquired keys) and the tiny tiny tiny tiny chance of maybe a decent item.

What are the actual chances? We don’t know. And they can clearly by changed by @Sirrian and the developers at any time without any apparent announcement because the chests can be earned through gameplay and they can hide the numbers so you can’t see anything. They can tell you 4 or 5 times in a row that something has happened (“rates of relics have increased, especially higher tier relics!”) but you can never validate it because everything is hidden.