What is the average EC value of a Lockbox?

midntwolf

I recently sprung cash for a 10 pack of keys and got fairly luckly and managed to get about 60 million EC worth of stuff out of them. Obviously though, your not going to average 6 million a box when keys are selling for around 2.3 million but it got me thinking, what is the true value of a lockbox?

Now individually with each box you can probably only expect the value to be a couple hundred thousand at most but I am curious if anyone has came up with a the average values for say opening 25 boxes, 100 boxes, 300 boxes, etc.

The reason I am curious about the values over large numbers of boxes is because for example when you attain 800 Lobi, you can buy a Lobi ship and sell it for 100 million on the exchange. This landmark obviously adds a huge amount of value to each lockbox (roughly 625k EC per box if my calculations are correct. Also at some point, roughly 250 boxes I think, you are almost assured to get at least one lockbox ship worth between 60-150 million or more. Again when you hit the ship, you get a huge increase in average value. Then there is all the other odds and ends of varying values you can get which over large number of boxes will also increase the average value.

Anyway I am curious if anyone has bothered to keep track.

edgecrysger

I dunno, but one thing i can tell you, they are of course really cheap, lets say 200-1000 ec each? or even less? . At leat the last time i checked.

ovinspace

People do probability tables for each lockbox, it would be possible to combine that with the exchange price and calculate an expected value of a box at a given time; that would be excluding lobi crystals that cannot be sold and are what some people are really after when they open boxes.

Many fleet have lockboxes freely available in their fleet banks.

midntwolf

yeah the lockboxes are cheap to buy but I am talking about the content value. Basically if I invest in a key on the EC or even spend money, what is the average return per box.

So far as far as I can tell, over the long haul each box is worth about 1 million to 1.5 million EC or about 1/2 the exchange value of a key so definately diminishing returns unless you win the lottery. Long haul meaning opening several hundred boxes. In the short run, your going to either end up really losing big or really winning big depending on when you hit a ship.

<sigh> Too bad lockboxes aren't a tad bit more fun and accessible (cost-wise).

jaguarskx

It's very hard to say what the average value of the content inside a lock box is. You need a huge sample size and someone willing to put it all on a spreadsheet.

I personally bought 4 Key on the exchange for roughly 7.8 million ECs. That was because I created a KDF toon too late to get the 1,000 Qmmendations back in Feb for the Dyson Destroyer. I got one for my Fed toon, but I don't really care much for it. Maybe I will eventually take it out for a spin... maybe. But I wanted one for my KDF toon which basically only fly BoPs.

I was 200 Qmmendations short so I decided to get Lobi Crystals from lock boxes to buy them. I think each lock box gives 4 - 25 Lobi. Each of the 4 boxes I opened gave me 4 Lobi for a total of 16. The cost to by a Qmmendation pack was 5 Lobi and you get 10 - 20 Qmmendations. I ended up with only 40 Qmmendations. At that rate I would need another 16 keys or about 30 million ECs back then, which was 8x more than what I actually had. I decided to abandon getting Qmmendations.

The most valuable item I got from the lockbox was a purple Hirogen Doff. Based on prices on the exchange, it was valued at around 1.5 million ECs. The other 3 items were pretty worthless combined they were worth about 200,000 ECs based on Exchange prices.

4 boxes = 1.7 million EC total content value. Average value was 425k ECs.

ladymyajha

midntwolf wrote: »

I recently sprung cash for a 10 pack of keys and got fairly luckly and managed to get about 60 million EC worth of stuff out of them. Obviously though, your not going to average 6 million a box when keys are selling for around 2.3 million but it got me thinking, what is the true value of a lockbox?

Now individually with each box you can probably only expect the value to be a couple hundred thousand at most but I am curious if anyone has came up with a the average values for say opening 25 boxes, 100 boxes, 300 boxes, etc.

The reason I am curious about the values over large numbers of boxes is because for example when you attain 800 Lobi, you can buy a Lobi ship and sell it for 100 million on the exchange. This landmark obviously adds a huge amount of value to each lockbox (roughly 625k EC per box if my calculations are correct. Also at some point, roughly 250 boxes I think, you are almost assured to get at least one lockbox ship worth between 60-150 million or more. Again when you hit the ship, you get a huge increase in average value. Then there is all the other odds and ends of varying values you can get which over large number of boxes will also increase the average value.

Anyway I am curious if anyone has bothered to keep track.

Which box? The current Undine lock boxes are relatively cheap. As more and more of them are opened too and more and more ships are posted on the AH, the relative "value" of the lock box will cheapen out as well. There's just too many of them floating around out there right now to make them valuable.

On the other hand, a lockbox that hasn't been seen in a while is generally worth more, since the ships inside of them are rarer and their prices on the AH are then conciderably higher.

But then you need to concider the "quality" of the ship inside, when compared to the communities view at large. A ship may have high PvP value on the Federation side (because it comes with a cloak-like) but low on the Klingon side (for the same reason) for example. It may have a high RP value, but a low min-maxer value. So ships are decided by rarity+community want.

The other issue is the "traits" inside of them. Certain traits are more valuable then others, which raises the "value" of lockboxes in comparison to others.

Weapon types play a small part in the desirablity of the ship as well, depending on procs and secondary procs and the like.

All the worthless TRIBBLE inside (Bridge Officers and the like) that are common to pretty much all lockboxes don't matter in this scenerio.

But overall, it's pretty much worthless to use your keys to open lockboxes. The chances of you buying say 10 keys and getting the ship worth 75 mil is slim to none.

It's generally concidered wiser to sell the keys on the AH especially now when everyone has a huge about of EC and there are new shineys to unlock, sell the boxes cheap, and take the cash and buy what you want.

ddesjardins

The aftermarket on lockboxes varies. Temporal boxes appear to have the highest resale value, hit 25K each at some points. Most go for much less, based on what's in the boxes.

Right now, Tholian doffs are hot for their anti-undine bonuses. Hirakene (feds) is up to 9-10 mil a piece.

As for the contents, the rule has always been the more you open the less value you will receive over time ITS A BAD LOTTERY

I was lucky with Temporal boxes, got the wells on #17. I still opened 100+ more.

The last few boxes I've ignored. Why?

It's cheaper to BUY what you want with ec, than to open boxes. Just wait a week after the launch of a new box.

The Undine Lockbox has been good - so far sitting at a break-even point vs the cost of buying a key in ec vs the return in value. That means i've been very, very lucky.

Right now a key runs 2.5 mil ec.

I have bought 20 million in keys. I have earned about 11 million in goods at fair market value, and maybe another 5 million in iffy 'hot' stuff, and 4 million in stuff I will try to use. I've added 50+ lobi to my bank. I got the Mirror Somraw I wanted (another 1.5 in value today, likely half that in a week or two).

At current exchange rates 143 dil to 1 zen, that a key cost of 17,875 dilithium. Or 9 (8.9) Contraband missions at 50K x5 Contraband x9 missions = 2.225 mil ec.

So at the moment it's cheaper to use dil to open boxes than EC.

But it is a lottery. You take your chances.

szim

I've recently opened 60 Tal'shiar lockboxes. By selling everything exept the mini-doff packs I ended up where I had started. I've made about 2 mil EC plus. But the Tal'shiar lockbox has some rather expensive items like the Plasmonic leech console or the Adapted Destroyer or those Tal'shiar command codes which go for 1.1 mil EC on the exchange. The disruptor weaponry gives a decent amount of money as well. This means I got an average value of 2.3 mio per lockbox plus approxiamately 400 lobi.

In summary I guess the best you can hope for is to break even. And this will only happen if you're VERY lucky. My advise is: don't bother. Buy the items you want from the exchange. I know it's less exciting but much better for your budget in the long run.

warpangel

a) People who open lockboxes and sell the contents benefit if you buy the items.
b) People who buy lockbox items benefit if you open boxes and sell the contents.

I wouldn't trust anyone's advice on this issue.

fraghul2000

The only way to be really sure, would be to use some of the numbers collected by dukedom and add up the exchange prices.

http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=912071

Fo course the whole thing would vary quite a bit, depending on exchange prices, what you choose to do with the Lobis you get out of it and how you'd value the dilithium mining packs.

midntwolf

warpangel wrote: »

a) People who open lockboxes and sell the contents benefit if you buy the items.
b) People who buy lockbox items benefit if you open boxes and sell the contents.

I wouldn't trust anyone's advice on this issue.

It really wasn't about advice on what to do with lockboxes, rather I was just trying to see if anyone did had did the math so to speak and came up with a average value of the contents of a lockbox. I know in most games, some crazy person or another out there ALWAYS seems to do the math and come up with numbers.

I guess where I was going with this post was if it was actually worth between 2.25 and 2.5 million EC to purchase keys in order to get the chance at the high value items.

For example, If I could average say 2.0 million return on each lock box if I say bought 25 of them at a time then it might just be worth the average loss of 500k per box just to get a chance to hit something big because lets face it, if you hit something like a D'kora Marauder which sells for around 250 million plus on the Exchange, after only opening a few boxes, it was all worth it and if you don't, it is pretty easy to recover a 500k loss. I in 10 boxes I got a rare drop worth 50+ million EC which made my 10 box average 6 million per box. I would buy 2.5 million EC keys for that return any day hehe.

However if the average return is only 400k per box, well spending 2.5 million on a key is just dumb.

ovinspace

The issue is that the big money drops that are like lottery wins do greatly vary in market price over time, which may slowly bump up the expected value of a lock box but greatly increases the value of a 'hit'. Any value table six months ago will be wildly out of date, for example in the last 7 months the Plasmonic Leech has gone from 10.5-14.5m to 22-25m. Checking the value of every item in every lockbox until you find the one with the bets payout would take hours, require regular updating and probably return little profit.