Guild Wars 2

please anet its a joke 106 gems for 1 mf booster one repair and a scroll of knowledge ?

i never ever will buy one and i advice everyone the same gamble is ok but thats to funny

I enjoy the keys, have 20 sitting in the bank (waiting for the next Chest promotion). But, there are different ways to acquire them, most at no cost.

It is a chance to get items that are rather common, and a chance to get items that are worth quite a lot of Gold. That’s the thing about chance. /shrug

the scroll of knowlege is what bugs me to put this even in is like a slap in the face

Lol. You would prefer a Mystery Tonic?

You will always be much better off, if you want something cool like a BL weapon skin, to just buy gems and convert to gold and buy it off the trading post, especially when the weapons are 1 ticket each. If you want to create human characters over and over to get to the level 10 personal story, until your eyes bleed and you hate the game, to get some keys for “free”, go for it. But don’t spend your money on the keys, ever, or you will hate yourself and the game.

Balsa.3951:

the scroll of knowlege is what bugs me to put this even in is like a slap in the face

I would rather get a scroll of knowledge than 100 luck, which is another item you can get from a chest.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Lol. You would prefer a Mystery Tonic?

i would even prefer 10 silver over a scroll

^ Ackk! Are you following me? ; ) (Dang it! Too slow responding.) =P

OT: You never know what you might get. Scraps, tickets, permanent this or that….

If you are unsatisfied with taking a chance, then don’t buy keys. Use only those you get from other means. This is the only advice I can offer.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

^ Ackk! Are you following me? ; ) (Dang it! Too slow responding.) =P

OT: You never know what you might get. Scraps, tickets, permanent this or that….

If you are unsatisfied with taking a chance, then don’t buy keys. Use only those you get from other means. This is the only advice I can offer.

thats the advice i gave with that post but thank u

Word of advice.

The odds always favor the house. Don’t bet against the house unless you expect to be entertained by losing.

You don’t buy 1 key
you buy 250 then from them you can get even or on profit

You may not believe this but I’ve been tracking the value of the Black Lion Chest loot for some time and based on the 177 chests in the sample I have you get on average ~150 gems of value from a BLC. I had an older data set of 161 chests opened and that had a value of around ~120 gems per chest. They made significant changes in the loot table and I abandoned it and started a new data set with no more than 5 entries in a row.

Some Caveats: I calculated the gem value based on the lowest regular per-unit price I could find at the Trading Post Gem Shop. That value ignores many items that are not available through the Trading Post Gem Shop (Armor, Rejuvenation, Speed and Strength Boosters to name a few). I’m also not saying that the gem value equates to items you would necessarily be willing to pay for.

Some of the “better” items I’ve gotten: 6 rare minis, 4 mini 3-packs, 2 backpack sets, 2 whole black lion tickets (not scraps), 4 BL Salvage Kits, 4 Self Style Hair Kits, 4 Total Makeover Kits, 1 Communal Bonfire Boost and 1 Permanent BL Merchant Contract (netted 300 gold on the TP).

It is actually fairly profitable to do key runs when you calculate what it would cost to buy the same items with gems, either using gold or real money. While any one or a few chests may be worthless, over time they add up to value.

Number of keys: 167
Intact tickets: 1
Tickets from scraps: 3
Boosters: 167
Unid Dyes: 48
Repairs canisters: 29
Bank express: 19
Merchants express: 25
Revive orb: 10
Trading post: 18
T-charges: 28
Specials: 11 × 300 influence. Cheetah Charr backpack. Pink Quaggan backpack. 7 x BLSK. Mini Marjory. Mini Caithe. Delaqua. Holo mini Scarlet. 2 x mini 3 pack. 3 x Total makeover kit. Self style hair kit. 3 x Metabolic primer. 2 x communal bonfire. 2x Royal pass. 2 x Box o’fun. 5 x Dye pack. 3 x Key. 24 x Tomes of Knowledge.
(Bonus items such as enchanted powders or dragon chests were not counted)

ozmaniandevil.6805:

If you want to create human characters over and over to get to the level 10 personal story, until your eyes bleed* and you hate the game, to get some keys for “free”, go for it. But don’t spend your money on the keys, ever, or you will hate yourself *and the game.

assumption much? Some people actually. (believe it or not.) enjoy it.

I love doing that story, and getting my key at the end. The guaranteed reward feels great. I do about 4 key runs a week, which isn’t that much really.
Sitting on 32keys, goal is 250.

1 key = 12g
or 15min doing story mode on an alt

12g =/= 15min

I honestly think they need to rework the entire Black Lion Chest Key idea. They need to be more worth buying, without removing the rewards for farming them. Maybe keep the normal keys dropping in-game, and then change the ones in the gem store to “Lucky Keys” that have a better drop table (I’d suggest removing the “junk” like the 100 luck and scroll) including a ticket scrap in every one that doesn’t have a full ticket. That way, when someone has 8 or 9 ticket scraps, it suddenly becomes really tempting to just buy the lucky keys needed to finish off the ticket.

Been key running for about 3 months now. Do it as filler content and I enjoy mixing it up a bit to see if I can do it faster (average about 20min/run). Guess I’ve opened about 150 chests since I started.

Paid off on Sunday night….Perma Bank Contract dropped.

…..so yes, I’m laughing at the joke….

Hey, congratulations on the Bank Contract.

For the OP: BL Chests + Keys were never meant to be more than a lottery: it drops mostly junk, sometimes a thing of minor utility or coin, or rarely a chance to get a valuable weapon skin. Only a tiny number of lucky winners (Brother Grimm, e.g.) will see anything of true value. They keys are designed to be a poor value, because the fun is in the opening.

I love opening containers in games. But not enough to spend dollars or even gems-bought-with-coin; those currencies are too valuable to me.

the keys has nothing to do with it, you mean the boxes are a joke.

i don’t agree with you on this one. the boxes are good for what they are – a random prize. so yeah, you get the one-time-bank-access which i think is a bit of a stretch for a prize, but sometimes you get more useful stuff like WvWXP, or the royal thingy pass

Eric.6109:

……. WvWXP, or the royal thingy pass

How I wish I could sell you those worthless storage wasters…..at least the last patch made them quite dropping. I have 5 and see NO use for them….maybe back when LA was closed but now they are absolutely trash (and to make matters worse, they do NOT stack).

If they guaranteed ticket scraps, those boxes and keys would move a lot more units.

Doing a little transformative math, a full ticket scrap would be $10-$15 (or 3-4 hours of key runs :P) for a skin. And with some of them being 3-5 tickets? (That’s kittening dumb, to be honest.)

Brother Grimm.5176:

Been key running for about 3 months now. Do it as filler content and I enjoy mixing it up a bit to see if I can do it faster (average about 20min/run). Guess I’ve opened about 150 chests since I started.

Paid off on Sunday night….Perma Bank Contract dropped.

…..so yes, I’m laughing at the joke….

So what was it like selling your soul to the RNG gods? Or did you do the sacrifice your first-born deal?

That is like someone who won a $100 million lottery telling you lotto tickets is a good investment.

I just ignore them tbh, both keys and chests, unless I somehow get a key through normal playing.

They may as well not exist at all, for all I care – same goes for the chance of a precursor from the MF.

Anet really needs to implement the system that TF2 has if they want any chance of people buying BL keys.

They need to introduce rare vanity items in order to entice people.

Unfortunately, this would result in plenty of rage, more so than the ascended gear rage IMO.

What I would do, just to lessen the blow, is to release a bunch of weapon/armor sets at the same time all at once and throw in the BL set so that it’s not focused on as much.

For example, in the feature patch I would include 10 different new weapon/armor sets. 9 of them will be acquirable in the game through varying means, but 1 of them will be known exclusively as the Gnashblade weapon and armor set.

EgonVenkman.1907:

Brother Grimm.5176:

Been key running for about 3 months now. Do it as filler content and I enjoy mixing it up a bit to see if I can do it faster (average about 20min/run). Guess I’ve opened about 150 chests since I started.

Paid off on Sunday night….Perma Bank Contract dropped.

…..so yes, I’m laughing at the joke….

So what was it like selling your soul to the RNG gods? Or did you do the sacrifice your first-born deal?

That is like someone who won a $100 million lottery telling you lotto tickets is a good investment.

I was neither condoning nor advocating key farming or gambling in general and certainly never implied BUYING BL keys was ANY type of “investment”. I was just sharing my recent experiences with BL chests (the subject of this thread), but many thanks for the nasty and venomous, jealousy laced reply you felt the need to share with everyone. Hope you have a great day too (note my orignal reply had far too many kittens in it so I did a 180….)

For the record, I think actually BUYING the BL keys is ignorant…..

Balsa.3951:

the scroll of knowlege is what bugs me to put this even in is like a slap in the face

I will trade you the scroll for 5 custom arena tokens. At least I can add the scroll to my collection but the tokens take up a whole new slot.

Indeed. The BLC is one of those horrible things that still plaguing the game. Any hate toward black lion chests is well deserved.

They should bin the BLC altogether, and go back to the Eye of the North way, where you buy keys ingame for gold, and open random locked chests in open world.

The Black Lion Chests even LOOK like a slot machine now when you open them. I’d think it couldn’t get any clearer to players that it’s a GAMBLE. :P

Ok I Did It.2854:

They should bin the BLC altogether, and go back to the Eye of the North way, where you buy keys ingame for gold, and open random locked chests in open world.

Have you played any of the new LS content…..your wish is granted (sort of).

Keys are available as drops, story rewards and purchasable via a drop “currency” (Geodes).

When each zone gets a different key to haul around to open chests, this idea won’t seem so great…..(I see a “key ring” gem store item being “needed”).