Guild Wars 2

I’m not posting this as a kitten thread just to make things clear

What I wanted to ask, are Black Lion Keys meant to be extremely rare drops? So far in my 35 levels of playing I got only 2, via random drops. Other 3 were from the Black Lion Chests themselves. My friend told me I should be getting them as personal story quest rewards, or map completion rewards, but so far – nothing. I have about 20 chests in my bank, gathering dust since I can’t open them.

So I was wondering, are there any chances Anet might boost drop rate a bit? Or at least make them part of dungeon rewards, that would be really really nice. Because on my server, to get a pack of keys from the gem store would cost me anywhere between 40-50 silver and that is just a huge money sink, considering you can get mostly useless tonics, and in the long term – not worth it.

Sadly, the point of those keys being unreliable rewards and rare drops—while, naturally, the chests are quiet common—is to encourage people to buy keys off the gem store.

It’s lame, but there it is. shrug

The only reason they exist is to extract money from you, so no, there is not any chance that Anet might boost drop rate a bit.

A good compromise could be to give us a handful as part of the reward for the monthly achievement, perhaps three or five? I’ve never seen one drop from an enemy, yet I’ve gotten far more black lion chests than I care to count.

It’s good that we can get them as a reward for certain personal story quests as well as through map completion, but it isn’t enough.

I think Anet would make a lot more money off of them if they didn’t cost $2.25 US apiece… I find it incredibly hard to believe that anyone’s buying the keys with real world money, or even enough to open more than a fraction of a percent of chest drops, seeing as how there are a couple million of them on the market and I’ve got almost 150 in my bank.

If they were $.25, I’d probably buy quite a few. As it is though… I can open an imaginary chest in a video game that will probably only give me a useless transmogrify tonic, or I can eat a nice lunch at the deli downtown for the same amount of money.

They are worthless though. I got keys and opened about 10 chests.

TON of mystery tonics which is just appearance illusion.
Some xp boosts (wheee xp off kills which is stupid low to start with)
Run boosts (15% and my toons run that fast or close and can’t use in pvp anyway)
Few salvage kits which are solid.

Rest is all the small hour boosts that food will do a better job for you.

I would be more inclined to buy a few at a quarter a pop as opposed to buying them at $2.25 a piece.

I understand the reasoning of keeping the drop rates low as a means to encourage buying them, but the drop rate for the keys should be somewhat proportionate to the drop rate of the chests; i.e. 10:1 ratio. For every ten chests you collect, you get one key. A 10:1 ratio would be much better than the seemingly 10,000:1 ratio that is currently in place.

I’ve had a few drops, and some more from the chests I opened. Never any from map completions etc.

Now I have about 20 in bank, but since I never have gotten anything useful from these chests I will not use gems to buy keys.

Or at least give a larger chance to get a key as a daily achi reward. That way they could not be farmed.

They are obtained from:
Certain story missions. You’ll earn 5-6 from this over the life of the character, I don’t remember exactly how many.

A chance of receiving one on a map completion, seems about a 60/40 or so chance of 3 lesser transmutation stones vs. a key.

Extremely rare world drops. I’d probably put the drop rate at a minimum of 1:10,000.

One of the possible store item drops from the chests themselves.

Possible bonus from the daily achievement chest.

Gem Store.

—

The chests give:

Some shop item. The best ones are probably Black Lion salvage kits, instant repair canisters, and top end transmutation stones (5 of them). Others are Black Lion tools, 1-use bank access, 1-use trading post access, another key, and a few other items.

Some 1-hour buff item.

3 Mystery tonics. These were originally 3 of a specific tonic.

As it currently stands, the chests do not give valuable enough items to warrant buying keys for gems. It would be better to just spend the gems on the items you want directly, rather than “play the lottery”.

Find chests → buy keys → fill bags/bank with trash → buy bank/bag space → more room for chest – buy more keys → and so on

Recently they added the chance to get a permanent Black Lion Express item so you would never have to run to a Trading Post to pick up your items/money. Not sure if added anything else or how rare that item is to get but I bet its not easy.

Lysico.4906:

They are worthless though. I got keys and opened about 10 chests.

TON of mystery tonics which is just appearance illusion.
Some xp boosts (wheee xp off kills which is stupid low to start with)
Run boosts (15% and my toons run that fast or close and can’t use in pvp anyway)
Few salvage kits which are solid.

Rest is all the small hour boosts that food will do a better job for you.

Are you sure you want to sell those? They pretty much give guaranteed ectoplasm on higher level rares.

Lysico.4906:

Rest is all the small hour boosts that food will do a better job for you.

But as they stack there is no direct competition.

I have had 20 odd chests drop but only 1 key.

I can buy keys from the cash-shop though (but wont).

As you Americans say, go figure…

It use to be I was getting a new key from a chest when I open it about 3 out of 5 times it felt like. Recently opened 10 and got 0 new keys. So not sure they nerfed the chest key return when they added the new permanent rare drops.

I don’t find the loot in BLC that appealing anyways. They are fun to open now and then just like when you open a sticker pack just because you don’t know what’s inside but other than that there’s nothing really special about them.

The key to this issue (pun or no pun, take your pick) is to make gems COST LESS $$.

I want to support Anet…I really do…but I can’t justify spending 10 bucks on 800 gems when its about 50 silver for 130-150 of them. All I have to do is log for a couple hours and I’ve got enough money to buy a hefty handful.

If 10 bucks was 1500 gems…or maybe 2k…I’d be more than happy to pull a “Fry” and shout, “Shut up and take my money!”

I know many of you will respond: “So don’t spend the money, what’s your problem?” I’m okay with NOT spending money on this game too…since it will save me…well…money. I’m just saying that the gem:dollar ratio should be a little more enticing.

I get some. I may have looted about 7 or 8. and opened boxes with them. I still have 40 boxes left. I’m not in a rush though.

I’ve gotten maybe 5 keys total (including from chests) on each character I’ve played. So far, I have yet to find ANYTHING useful in these chests. It’s garbage. If ANet wants people to buy keys, they need to show us that something useful can (and WILL) come out of the chests. I’m not gonna spend 4% of the game’s total cost every time I want to look like a pink moa.

Silly silly silly.

So far, the only thing I’ve bought from the gem store is an extra bank slot .. because cooking materials take up a TON of space.

Edit: Also, how are people buying gems with in-game currency? I dropped some $$ on gems early on, but I was unaware that they could be bought with silver as well..

It’s the second tab on the Trade Post window. lol The big thing that looks like an advertisement, click it, opens to a window where you can enter how much silver you want to spend.