As with many of us in Early Access I’d been collecting dungeon and skirmish loot tickets, planning to use them at some point, just not sure when. Then came the news a week or so ago with the final patch before v1.0 that the XP for most activities has been slashed by 75%. So it seems as good a time as any to burn through those loot tickets before their value gets any lower.
I had already clicked my way through a fair number of dungeon tickets before I thought to track the data, and by then didn’t have many of those left to form meaningful figures, so have instead focused here on the 119 skirmish loot tickets that I had remaining. Not for want of asking I don’t think we’ve ever seen official drop rates, so I figure a sample size of over 100 should at least act as an indicator.
Because I had previously beaten Difficulty X skirmishes all chests opened here are L100. We believe that level does impact on the quality of the drops, so these should represent the best case scenario. If a L100 can’t drop the best loot, then what can?
Redeeming a loot ticket first gives two standard rewards: 318 gold and 66 XP, along with a randomly rolled L100 chest. This was the mix of chests found:
CHESTS
| Chest Type | Count | % of Total |
|---|---|---|
| Wooden | 52 | 43.70% |
| Iron | 32 | 26.89% |
| Gold | 22 | 18.49% |
| Ruby | 10 | 8.40% |
| Diamond | 3 | 2.52% |
| Grand Total | 119 | 100.00% |
My first observation here was that the number of prizes rolled was also linked to the type of chest. Wooden dropped 3 prizes, increasing up to 6 for both Ruby and Diamond. I think there were cases where the same prize rolled twice and were combined (eg. 2 Superior Armour shard drops rolled but only one higher value presented as the prize).
GOLD
| Chest Type | Sum of Gold | Count of Gold | Average Gold |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wooden | 4,427 | 51 | 87 |
| Iron | 5,639 | 32 | 176 |
| Gold | 6,709 | 22 | 305 |
| Ruby | 5,677 | 10 | 568 |
| Diamond | 2,917 | 3 | 972 |
| Grand Total | 25,369 | 118 | 215 |
Gold appeared as a prize in 118/119 chests, with only a single wooden chest bucking that trend. Safe to assume gold is going to be one of your prizes, with the average prize awarded increasing with tier of chest. Makes sense.
FOOD
| Chest Type | Sum of Food | Count of Food | Average Food |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wooden | 1,645 | 26 | 63 |
| Iron | 1,005 | 9 | 112 |
| Gold | 657 | 3 | 219 |
| Ruby | |||
| Diamond | |||
| Grand Total | 3,307 | 38 | 87 |
Everybody’s favourite prize. Food. Because who doesn’t already have a massive stockpile of food and nothing to spend it on? Snark aside, it turned up in half of all wooden chests, about a third of Iron chests, and mercifully not at all in Ruby and Diamond. I continue to hope that 8+ months of consistent player feedback on food and it’s lack of uses will finally be acted upon.
ORE
| Chest Type | Sum of Ore | Count of Ore | Average Ore |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wooden | 900 | 28 | 32 |
| Iron | 509 | 8 | 64 |
| Gold | 824 | 8 | 103 |
| Ruby | 325 | 2 | 163 |
| Diamond | 138 | 1 | 138 |
| Grand Total | 2,696 | 47 | 57 |
Getting to more useful materials with Ore. This was dropped at every level, close enough to call it 50% at wooden. The amounts were pretty much exactly half those of food prizes, which follows the 2:1 ratio we see elsewhere such as Brie and Adhakus production rates for food and ore.
SHARDS
| Chest Type | Minor | Lesser | Greater | Major | Superior |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wooden | 33 | 66 | 65 | 84 | 170 |
| Iron | 35 | 26 | 51 | 91 | 339 |
| Gold | 40 | 21 | 32 | 351 | |
| Ruby | 11 | 11 | 4 | 229 | |
| Diamond | 85 | ||||
| Grand Total | 68 | 143 | 148 | 211 | 1,174 |
I expected Shards to be the biggest focus of Skirmish chests and these figures show that. I only recorded these by rarity, not by individual type within that. This is where I speculate that being L100 chests shifted the drop rate in favour of Superior grade shards. 79 / 199 chests awarded atleast one bundle of the highest tier shards, and 32 of those dropped more than one superior shard prize. Individual prizes look to roll between 2-15 shards.
ITEMS
| Chest Type | Common | Uncommon | Rare | Epic | Legendary |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wooden | |||||
| Iron | 3 | 11 | |||
| Gold | 5 | 7 | 5 | ||
| Ruby | 4 | 6 | 1 | ||
| Diamond | 1 | ||||
| Grand Total | 12 | 24 | 6 | 1 |
Items - weapons, armour and accessories only. A few comments on this area.
Equipment was noticeably less frequent in Skirmish chests than it is from dungeon chests. I think that is intentional, and with skirmish tickets not being linked to one specific dungeon the items were spread across randomly picked sets.
The Legendary ring was a very pleasant surprise. I know the intent of this write up was meant to give an indication of drop rates, and for the most part I think it is reasonable, I have to point out that Legendary drop rates are much much lower than 1%. In the ~9 months I’ve been playing and many thousands of chests opened I’ve found 4 ever, and this my first from a skirmish. I would speculate the drop rate of Legendaries is likely closer to 1 in 1000 and I just got super lucky with this one chest.
The one very pleasant prize aside, the rest of the equipment was disappointing.
I would have expected to see an Epic item, but none dropped.
That the Ruby chests dropped 10/11 items as common/ uncommon is a previously aired grievance. I really feel strongly that these have no place even being in the drop table at this level. These are your maximum level, hardest difficulty, top tier chests, and they are dropping junk. A player that can beat L100 content has no value at all in these quality of items.
What about pets, spells and runes?
| Chest Type | Common Minion | Uncommon Minion | Rare Minion | Common Spell | Uncommon Spell |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Wooden | |||||
| Iron | |||||
| Gold | 2 | 1 | |||
| Ruby | 3 | 1 | 1 | 1 | |
| Diamond | 3 | 2 | |||
| Grand Total |
Something odd was going on here. In my first 64 chests every prize has been gold, food, ore, shards or equipment. The one exception came with the Diamond chest that had the Legendary item which also came with 2 uncommon spells and a mythic scroll.
I got all the way until my 94th chest before any minions dropped, and then I found 9 within 25 chests. I don’t have a reason for this, but to go so many with nothing, and to then drop them comparatively so frequently was odd.