Strong Lockbox RNG Event Tera Online

So currently the server is having a 300 masterwork scroll event. This event works like so you have a chance to get 300 masterwork scrolls from one of the RNG strong lockboxes. The keys can be obtained either by purchasing keys or by doing cosairs daily. Whether your a new Tera player or whether you have been playing for awhile you need to know that chances are these events are a big trap for people.

The keys on Mount Tyrannus are selling for about 660 gold each. I spent all my time farming and saving keys from cosairs as well as my elite status so I had a nice big total of 62 strongbox keys. In the past 62 keys would have been more then enough to make some kind of decent return but that is no more. They added so many garbage items in the strong lockbox that it makes it not even worth taking the chance.

If I had to take a guess about what the drop rate is on the masterwork scrolls would be the items and drops would be something like so:

Masterwork Scrolls (300) 0.69%   Event Only
Masterwork scroll (1-3) 2%
Ruby 5%
Charm of some type 30%
Emerald 0.80%
Battle Panacea 5%
Summon NPC various types 40%
Divine Infusion 10%
Valkyron Potion 3%
Valiant Potion 10%
Sapphire 3%
Masterwork Alkhest (random amount) 1%
Extensive Alkahest (random amount) 0.90%
Spellbind 17 - 21  1%
Refined Alkhest (random amount) 4%
Crystalbind 10%
Canephora Potion 0.90%
Village Atlas (1time use) 5%
Reputation Boost 1%
Experience Boost 1%
Gold Hunting Boost 1%
Complete Crystalbind 0.80%
Semi Enigmatic scrolls 0.80%
Instance Reset Scroll 4%

I'm sure I'm missing some more items within this list which they throw into the mix as well and this is more a guess of what the percentages feel about but after skimming though the forums and looking at some of the more recent posts about what people got after opening lockboxes off event times these feel like pretty close percentages for most of the item drops.

So you might be like okay what's the issue if this is what drops from the lockboxes? The issue is more the way RNG tables usually work. The more items that are higher up on the percentage's the less chance to score the very valuable items making it a pure game of gambling. When it comes to loot systems with no guarantee of getting the 300 scrolls it could be anything from 1 to a million if your really that unlucky. These systems are not time based like masterworking they are a complete computer generated random system. An example of how these work is more like so:

set $LW3,rand (0,1);
if ($num3 == $LW3) goto Loss;
if ($num3 != $LW3) goto prizeclaim;

Of course we have no true way of knowing exactly how the formula is interprated for the script and unless someone could look at the source code of how it works we wouldn't know for sure but it's pretty safe to say it's a RNG gamble which will not net you a rich reward. You will most likely spend 90,000 gold to have a chance to get 300 masterwork scrolls which is worth about 90,000 and with the other items which you are more likely to obtain you can consider that you will most likely end up with between 98,000 to 120,000 at most. Those figures coming out if masterwork scrolls are about 300 gold each and most of the junk you obtain is pretty much junk like it was for myself.

Of course some people have gotten lucky I would imagine the best thing you could ever do is don't be greedy if you get 300 masterwork scrolls out of 10 to 30 strongbox keys don't keep using them and quit while your ahead cause the more you use the more money you will be wasting. I would also not suggest buying strongbox keys instead farm them from cosairs daily quest's.

The RNG system has changed from what it used to be for events I know some of you are most likely thinking but the first few events I was lucky as all hell and got 1,000 extensive alkahest or 1,000 masterwork alkahest. But remember when it first came out the amount of items in the table was so much smaller. The table used to look more like so:

Masterwork scroll (1-3) 2%
Ruby 50%
Emerald 10%
Battle Panacea 5%
Divine Infusion 50%
Valkyron Potion 15%
Valiant Potion 50%
Sapphire 30%
Refined Alkhest (random amount) 20%
Masterwork Alkhest (random amount) 10%
Spellbind 17 - 57  10%

The difference is that you had much less crap possible during the events people had more reason to spam keys because in the event that some rare item was added in even at a low chance of 1% or under you would have a pretty high chance of scoring at least something worth selling even if you didn't score the main item. Back then you could buy them and shoot for getting emeralds and masterwork alkahest as well as spellbind and make a fortune on it. Now if you actually get any spellbind it's gonna take you 40 to 50 keys to see some. When it first came out every 5 keys used almost always had some spellbind, masterwork alkahest, or refined alkahest.

One of the other things to note is you have different types of the reputation boosts, experience boosts and the gold boosts these can come in 1 hour, 1 day, 5 days and percentage wise 50%, 100% like so which also add's some more hidden ways you get screwed pretty much and also add's more to the RNG table of hell. The same for the NPC summons because there are 4 different types of merchants each has its own chance as well as adds more to the table to make it impossible to get what you want.

But they don't want you to think about it by breaking it down to fine detail because if you knew all of what drops from the strong lockboxes and thought about it in the terms of each type of possible item being another thing to stop you from getting what you wanted you would realize it's not a win situation for the player. It's a win situation for Enmasse why do you think they allow you to get keys by doing daily pvp this is because they know out of any events even if every single person in game farmed keys on all of the characters the chance that they actually win during an event is so low they can afford to give something out to the player base. They know someone will always buy strongbox keys.

So until they either remove the items which are pretty much junk like the NPC summon scrolls or the charms which are worth 8 gold to 50 gold at most you will continue to see really poor winnings. And for even more information I'll go and post some of the average prices:

Masterwork scroll (1-3):  300 gold to 550 gold each
Ruby:  100 gold to a merchant
Charm of some type:  8 gold to buy from a merchant
Emerald:  1000 gold to a merchant
Battle Panacea: Cannot be sold or traded worthless outside of use
Summon NPC various types: 10 gold to 50 gold each
Divine Infusion:  3 gold to 20 gold each
Valkyron Potion: Cannot be sold or traded worthless outside of use
Valiant Potion: 9 gold to 20 gold
Sapphire:  200 gold to a merchant
Masterwork Alkhest (random amount): 119 gold to 170 gold each
Extensive Alkahest (random amount):  120 gold to 190 gold each
Spellbind 17 - 21:  40 gold to 90 gold each
Refined Alkhest (random amount):  14 gold to 21 gold each
Crystalbind:  20 gold to 50 gold each
Canephora Potion:  Cannot be sold or traded worthless outside of use
Village Atlas (1time use): 50 gold to 100 gold each
Reputation Boost:  400 gold to 800 gold each
Experience Boost:  200 gold to 500 gold each
Gold Hunting Boost:  50 gold to 200 gold each
Complete Crystalbind:  500 gold to 1,300 gold each
Semi Enigmatic scrolls: 400 gold to 2,000 gold each
Instance Reset Scroll: 300 gold to 600 gold each

Of course market prices change so these might not apply to every server at every time but out of the items some of them cannot be traded these are slightly useless unless your going to use them yourself pretty much. Most of the items which have the highest drop chance are your items worth 3 gold to 100 gold quite a lot of these items exist now making it harder to actually get what you really want. So keep this in mind when you plan on opening lockboxes. It's up to you whether your a gambling person but after this last event unless they totally plan on giving a super awesome reason to open them I give up on ever trying my luck again. Not with the odds of getting so much garbage that is either not sellable, sells for nothing, or isn't frequent enough to make it worth spending the gold.

Your welcome to comment and post if I've missed any possible items which drop from strong lockboxes or if you have anything constructive that you feel I might have missed.

Update: I figured I would also mention some of my guildies bought over 200 keys and had no luck what so ever so that means that chances are this event will have you spending more in the neighborhood of 300 on an average if your luck is bad.