You can spend a lot of money on loot boxes these days, and it’s not always clear what you are likely to get by doing so.
I wrote about what you get when you spend $100 on Apex Legends’ loot boxes shortly after the game’s launch. That spend was enough to get a feel for how this loot system works, and it’s very similar to the one used in Overwatch. There were, however, a few complexities in the system that we weren’t able to figure out without spending more money — in some cases, much more money.
Luckily, the online community, and a few big spenders, have been able to step in and pick up some of the slack. And what I’ve learned from their spending has been fascinating.
THE QUESTIONS ABOUT APEX LEGENDS’ LOOT BOXES
The Heirloom item set is a very rare loot box for Wraith that contains a unique banner pose, a unique voice line, and a skin for her melee weapon that allows her to wield a kunai knife. I didn’t get it in my hundred boxes, but there’s now better information about just how rare the set is, and what you can reasonably expect to pay if you want it. That’s helpful information for hardcore players.
I also wanted to know what the lack of duplicates in the Apex Legends’ loot boxes actually means for the player. You get no duplicate items until you have all the items on a rarity tier in Overwatch, after which duplicates are immediately cashed in for credits by the game itself. So what do you get in your Apex boxes once you collect all of the game’s Common and Rare items?
Do loot boxes just turn into endless parades of Epic and Legendary items?
The answer is no, sadly. But I can now explain what will happen if you manage to collect all the game’s lower-tier loot.
The final question — the one that kept showing up in the comments and emails after my previous piece on the Apex economy — is how much crafting metals you get from opening a large number of boxes, and how viable crafting is as a source of Legendary loot in this game.
My initial assessment of the crafting economy was not positive; I didn’t get enough crafting currency to craft a single Legendary skin after opening 100 boxes. However, after seeing the results of these large spends, I have some good news about how this system works. Or at least it’s good news for the big spenders out there.
The data I am using for this analysis comes from two YouTube videos. One video shows Benjamin “DrLupo” Lupo, a popular streamer who usually plays Fortnite, opening 500 Apex Legends loot boxes. The second video shows Gaming Curious opening 1,000 Apex Legendsloot boxes.
This data set isn’t large enough to be statistically certain about any mechanics that aren’t also officially disclosed, but I’ll explain the reasoning about conclusions.
THE $500 KNIFE
EA’s official FAQ about Apex Legends loot tells us the following:
“When a player opens an Apex Pack, there is a <1% probability of an Heirloom Set dropping,” and “a player cannot open more than 500 Apex Packs without receiving an Heirloom set.”
The mechanism through which a player is guaranteed to get a Rare item by opening a certain number of loot boxes is called a “pity timer,” with the implication being that pure luck might be too punishing. If you open enough boxes, the company is guaranteeing you that item.
But saying that there is less than a 1 percent probability you’ll unlock this gear could mean that this particular event occurs almost once every hundred packs, or once every thousand packs, or once every million packs. We don’t know how much less than 1 percent the chance of getting the Heirloom set is.
But lots of people have opened lots of packs at this point, and the community seems to believe that the odds of getting the Heirloom set are far below 1 percent. I agree with them, based on the available information and anecdotal reports of the set being found.
If the odds of getting the Heirloom from a random pack are less than one in 500, then the mechanism by which you’re most likely to get the Heirloom items is the 500 box pity timer. Most people who found the item did so after opening hundreds of packs, and people online are reporting hitting the pity timer when trying to get the knife.
“TL;DR: I spent $500 opening 500 Apex Crates In search of the Wraith Heirlooms,” one player wrote. “I got them on my 500th crate. Don’t be like me.”
DrLupo gets the Heirlooms after opening about 430 of his 500 packs, and Gaming Curios finds his after opening 334 packs. But neither of these videos begin from fresh accounts. DrLupo has 340 crafting metals banked and Gaming Curios has over 2,000 — nearly twice as much as I had after opening 100 boxes.
Why is that important?
Both players having that much crafting metals means they had opened some boxes prior to these video, and those boxes count against their Heirloom pity timer. Both of these players certainly opened nearly 500 boxes to get the knife, and it is likely that both of them got it through the pity mechanism.
You want to lay this out in detail because some players may look at the official “less than 1 percent probability” disclosure and assume that they have a pretty good shot at the knife if they open 100 boxes. This does not seem to be the case.
Even discussions which assume the odds of finding the set as being one in 500 may lead people to spend $50 thinking they have a 1-in-10 shot at the knife. That kind of thinking is a trap; we have no idea how rare the Heirloom box is, and significant reason to fear that the 500-pack pity timer is the most likely way to find it.
If the Heirloom set is important to you, make sure you go into the process of buying it with your eyes open. Be prepared to spend over $400 and perhaps as much as $500 to bling out Wraith with the knife. Good luck.
For the rest of us with reasonable gaming budgets? The Heirloom set is bait for players who don’t understand probability.
WHAT DO YOU GET IF YOU DON’T GET DUPLICATES?
Apex Legends promises that you won’t get duplicates in your loot boxes, but most of the game’s items are Common or Rare quality. Each character has dozens of voice lines and stat trackers, and each gun has a bunch of boring palette-swap skins nobody wants to use. But you should be able to collect all this junk if you spend enough money, and the primary benefit of doing so would be that the junk no longer shows up in your loot boxes.
So what replaces the lower-tier items in your loot boxes if you manage to collect all the Common goods? You get crafting materials instead, it turns out.
recorded opening 100 loot boxes on a fresh account, and you’ll notice that I got mostly Common and Rare items, with only the occasional crafting metals. Gaming Curios, on the other hand, collected all the Commons, Rares, and Epic items after opening 1,000 loot boxes. Most of his boxes contained nothing but crafting materials by the end of his video.
It looks like the ratio of crafting metals to loot rises as the number of boxes you’ve opened increases, even before you’ve collected all the Commons and Rares. DrLupo gets many more crafting metals after around 350 boxes, even though he’s still getting Common and Rare drops.
It suspect that the game is drawing from the full loot table, and that, when an item that would be a duplicate comes up, it gives you crafting metals instead.
But don’t get disappointed by this news! There’s an upside to this approach for heavy spenders.
HERE’S WHY THAT’S A GOOD THING
It would be nice if the game gave big spenders packs of Legendaries so they could rapidly unlock everything once they’d dumped enough money into the game to collect all the Common and Rare crap. It would also be nice if there wasn’t so much Common and Rare crap.
But, despite the many criticisms I’ve leveled at Apex Legends’ loot boxes, it turns out that the game’s way of handling crafting currency is better than Overwatch’s.
It typically use Overwatch’s loot system as a yardstick for comparing similar systems in other games, and they almost always turn out to be categorically stingier and more expensive than Overwatch. Apex’s loot system is worse than Overwatch’s in a number of respects, but its handling of crafting currency is actually pretty good.
Overwatch gives you duplicates which are instantly cashed in for credits when you’ve collected all the Commons, Rares, and Epics. You get five credits for a duplicate Common, 15 for a Rare, 50 for an Epic, and 200 for a Legendary, although you will not receive duplicate Legendaries in Overwatch unless you have all the Legendary skins on the loot table you’re drawing from.
You can also get chests of credits of varying amounts: Rare chests contain 50 credits, Epic chests contain 150 or 200 credits, and Legendary chests contain 500. Legendary skins off Overwatch’s regular loot table cost 1,000 credits, and event Legendaries cost 3,000.
Crafting metals can drop in differing amounts corresponding to each of the game’s rarities in Apex Legends, and there is no distinction between the crafting metal drops you get as loot and the crafting metal drops that would replace duplicates. You get 15 for a Common crafting metal drop, 30 for a Rare, 200 for an Epic and 600 for a Legendary. A Legendary item costs 1,200 metals to craft.
If you own all the Commons and Rares in Overwatch, and you get a box containing three Commons and one Rare, you’ll get 15 credits for the Rare and five each for the Commons, for a total of 30 credits.
You’d get 60 metals total if you have an Apex account with all the Commons and Rares unlocked and you get a loot box containing two Commons and Rare crafting metal drop. The difference favors Apex even more as the quality of the box improves. Overwatch would give you 75 credits for a loot box with two Common duplicates, a Rare duplicate, and an Epic duplicate. Apex would give you 260 metals for a box with Common, Rare, and an Epic crafting metal drop.
If you’re one of the poor chumps who opened 500 boxes chasing the Heirloom knife, the silver lining to that cloud is that you will get enough currency to craft a Legendary item of your choice every marginal 15 boxes or so in addition to your random Legendary drops after opening this many boxes. This doesn’t mean that Apex Legends’ loot system is good, mind you; it is still a loot box system and subject to all the familiar objections to loot boxes. But its crafting system is less stingy than Overwatch, at least.
Hopefully the spectacular success of Apex Legends will force Overwatch and other games that use similar systems to be less stingy with their crafting currencies.
SO, WHAT DID WE LEARN?
Apex Legends’ Heirloom box is a trap to lure you into spending more money than you would otherwise spend on loot boxes. Expect to spend over $400 if you’re chasing it; moreover, I don’t recommend doing so even if you have that kind of cash to burn. Loot systems tend to get better over time, so you may get more for your money just by waiting a few months. This isn’t a new opinion for me.
If you do decide to spend hundreds of dollars on Apex Legends boxes, the silver lining is that accounts with most of the low-tier items unlocked get more crafting currency from marginal boxes in Apex Legends than swagged-out accounts get in games with similar systems like those in Overwatch and Destiny.