When to stop using hoarded tokens for taco vault

Cable_eel

Howdy. This post addresses the use of hoarding to maximize return on rare covers from vaults, particularly the taco vault. Hoarding allows you to apply saved tokens from past weeks to a single current vault (alternating between sweet and savory). Hoarding should only be done by players with well developed 3* rosters or better. If you're still transitioning to 3* land, hoarding is of little benefit to you because there are so many helpful covers that your odds won't shift much no matter how lucky or unlucky you get. On the other hand, getting your 3*'s covered as quickly as possible is most important so you should be using your tokens quickly, as long as you have roster space. Or maybe even if you don't have roster space and need to choose which characters to roster, but that's a different topic.

On the other end of the spectrum, for some vets, like Pongie below, the taco vault is primarily a great source for health packs and covers become almost a secondary bonus. In that case, you're really hoarding your tokens until you need health packs and then using them as needed. I tend to go this route. I stop as soon as I get 1 or 2 sets of health packs because I hate having more than 10. Since health packs regenerate, having more than 10 is kind of wasteful.

For players well along the 3* transition, more and more pulls end up being disappointing duplicates of covers you don't need. Therefore it becomes important to try to maximize your chances of getting something you'll actually be able to use. The taco vault increases your odds every time you pull garbage, but if you get something good, subsequent odds are actually worse. So if you have hoarded tokens, it's better to stop to let the vault reset if you get lucky early. This only really matters if you've hoarded enough tokens to make a difference. At low numbers of tokens, the change in odds is fairly insignificant. If you do hoard a lot of tokens, it's best to wait until you see a vault you like, then keep drawing and not get discouraged until you get something you wanted because the odds keep improving until you get it.

Below is a spreadsheet indicating where the stop points are located based on how many things you want, how many you've gotten, and how many tokens you've already used. Does not take into account varying levels of goodness (ie a 4* vs a needed 3* vs HP) as that's up to you to decide.
Left row is the number of items in the vault you would actually want.
Top row is the number of "good" items you've already drawn out of the vault.
Spreadsheet body indicates number of draws below which indicates you've had good luck and above which indicates you're getting rid of garbage and the vault is helping you.

As an example, say there are 20 items in the vault you would be happy with keeping. You use 18 tokens and get nothing, but on number 19, you get something you wanted. 19>16 so you're still behind on the odds and should keep going. You use 3 more tokens and get another good result. 22<31 so you should stop. For the next 9 tokens, your odds are actually worse than for a fresh vault. Time to go back to hoarding.



Edited post to answer some of the below comments.

TxMoose

I think a lot of us are wondering where the sweet spot is on number of tokens to hoard before you pull the trigger. I'll be pulling tokens through the end of this group then start my hoarding. my guess is that the number is somewhere between 40-100 but not sure where that is (lower for the ***s, higher for the ****s only). won't have to worry about that for a while but would be nice to hash that out now to know.

Cable_eel

How many tokens to hoard before starting on a vault is a very individualized thing. Here's a table to help though. It relates your chances of drawing something desired to number of tokens used. Sorry for the tiny size. Hope you can read it, or magnify it.
Left column is number of tokens.
Top row is number of desired items within the vault. Sorry for reversing the axes compared to the other chart, but it fits better this way.

So for example, if you already have all maxed 3*'s and only want the three 4*'s or 1000 HP, you only want 4 things in a good vault. Hoarding for 60 days will give you 60 tokens (splitting sweet and savory vaults). If you start then, you have a 55% chance of getting one of the 4 things you want, but to take full advantage of the odds (as per the prior chart), you'll likely to want to wait longer in case you have bad luck and end up wanting to try for 2 or more items.
If you're still transitioning and would be happy with, say, 30 items, then you only have to hoard for 2 rounds to have an 87% chance of getting something good with 20 tokens. Again, hoarding longer will help to draw multiple items. The worst would be if you don't hoard long enough and the vault resets without you getting anything.

TxMoose

wow that's awesome info. exactly what I'm looking for. the numbers just aren't legible for me. I understand its a big file. maybe post a link to a higher res? or hide under an expandable button? thanks for that work - I took stats in college but haven't used it since.

alaeth

Forwaded to my wife since she opened tokens the instant she wins them :-/

BlokeCDP

This is great cable-eel - but you have the stupid people out there like me who don't quite grasp it (sorry)

Question time....apologies in advance

Say there are 37 things you want and you have (ironically) 37 tokens....

You use 5 tokens and you pull one of the things you want...

Using the chart... the hypothetical subject is now 5 < 17.2 so the person should stop, even though there are 36 other things in the vault that they could pull.

So if the person users 20 tokens but hasn't pulled anything yet, then on the 21st pull nails one, as 21 > 17.2 they should keep going. Then say they pull another one on the 24th, now they have pulled two tokens and 24 < 25.3 so should stop.

I think I'm kind of explaining it to myself here....bottom line is the more trash you pull out the better it is for you to continue...

What I'm trying to understand is that 2nd column after the number desired column - is that saying you should pull one that you want roughly every X tokens so if you had 30 you wanted you should theoretically need to use 11 tokens (1/30) to pull your item?

Mr Slightly Confused But Very Grateful from UK.

Pongie

Okay, I have 86 savoury tacos saved up and today I ran out of health packs. I read people use these tacos to obtain them so I start opening them. After 6 I finally got my much needed health packs. The other 5 were made up of 3x 2* and 2x iso, one of which was 10,000. My question is, should I keep going with the remaining 80 in hope of getting the legendary token? The 2x 4* covers I need but it's just IW yellow and ant-man blue. The 1000HP would be handy but there only a couple of 3* that I can actually use. So if I'm reading the table right, and I only really want the legendary token I should stop?

Unknown

Hmmm.... I know this thread is a little old, but instead of a table, it should be easy to write a quick excel sheet that allows you to punch in the # of tokens, and how many items you crave, and go from there...

Could even have it recalc on the fly...

Addendum: I a doing the Excel calculator, and one thing is painfully clear--it makes NO sense to spend a token if you have only 1. Two possibilities happen on each spend:

1. You get something good (yay!) and your odds of getting something good then drop for the next pull.
2. You get something **** (#&*@^!$ game!), and your odds of getting something good increase for the next pull.

Thus, if you bet... I mean PLAY well, the worst case scenario you will ever face is trying to pull 1 item with 1 token on a fresh vault. The probability of getting what you want is 1 in 300, or .003333. By the fifth pull, your odds have climbed up to 0.003378*. Not a huge increase, but better than you started. However, on the next day, the vault resets and rotates.

If you, replay this, on the tenth day, your odds of getting what you want are AGAIN 0.003378*. However, if you saved up 10 tokens, and used them all at once, by day 10 your last pull has a probability of 0.003436.

Not a huge number yet, but let's compare with 40 acceptable prizes using 1 token per day, and 10 tokens on the tenth day:

Token per day on tenth day LAST pull: 0.135135
All tokens on tenth day LAST pull: 0.137457

Now lets look at 40 tokens.

Token per day on 40th day LAST pull: 0.135135
All tokens on 40th day LAST pull: 0.153257

And, let's figure on 80 tokens (40 days of play):

2 tokens per day on 40th day LAST pull: 0.0.137457
All tokens on 40th day LAST pull: 0.180995


As soon as I remember how to do cumulative stats, I will get total probability. However, I do remember this much, those little increases for pulling all at once will add up significantly.

Also, as has been pointed out--once you pull good objects such that your current baseline for a pull drops below your fresh vault baseline, you stop until the vault resets. Using tokens until then is just foolish.


*Not the cumulative stat--I have forgotten how to calculate those.

Pongie

Needed health packs again and figured I should open till I get a 4* reward. Table says for 4 desired that's 76 tacos. 90 tacos later and I didn't even get any 4* rewards. Had heaps of 3* but none were needed. At least I have 70 health packs now. Should of stopped when I got the first health pack reward at 5 tacos.

Tryke

So for someone like me who is new and has upwards of 70-80 "good" items in a vault, whats a good number to hoard? My good items include some 2* covers I'm still missing.

following the first table, it looks like for 80 good items, if i draw something good within 5 tokens i should stop for a new vault?

SunCrusher

... I'm totally new to this Taco business and have no idea whatsoever how the Taco feature works.

Can someone explain how, in general, does it work?

Do you just hoard and then keep pulling until you get something 'good' and then wait for the Vault to reset, hoard, and do it all over again?

And what is considered 'good' for a 2-3* roster strongly in Transition Land? I need an extra cover of almost all the 3*s and all my 2*s are fully covered.

Aside from a bunch of 2*s which I'm maxed out and ISO (well, I guess I could always hoard the ISO!), most everything in the Vault seems usable.

I'm kind of bad at hoarding 'good' Tokens (I hoard Recruits so I can just pull all at once and get all the Venoms and Yelenas and other disappointments out of the way ASAP) so an incentive would be a good thing!

frostCoH

SunCrusher wrote:

... I'm totally new to this Taco business and have no idea whatsoever how the Taco feature works.

Can someone explain how, in general, does it work?

Do you just hoard and then keep pulling until you get something 'good' and then wait for the Vault to reset, hoard, and do it all over again?

And what is considered 'good' for a 2-3* roster strongly in Transition Land? I need an extra cover of almost all the 3*s and all my 2*s are fully covered.

Aside from a bunch of 2*s which I'm maxed out and ISO (well, I guess I could always hoard the ISO!), most everything in the Vault seems usable.

I'm kind of bad at hoarding 'good' Tokens (I hoard Recruits so I can just pull all at once and get all the Venoms and Yelenas and other disappointments out of the way ASAP) so an incentive would be a good thing!

I too have questions about the vault resetting. Do you keep the same savory vault from when you started hoarding or does it rollover into the next savory?

Also I second the .XLS file request

Quebbster

frostCoH wrote:

SunCrusher wrote:

... I'm totally new to this Taco business and have no idea whatsoever how the Taco feature works.

Can someone explain how, in general, does it work?

Do you just hoard and then keep pulling until you get something 'good' and then wait for the Vault to reset, hoard, and do it all over again?

And what is considered 'good' for a 2-3* roster strongly in Transition Land? I need an extra cover of almost all the 3*s and all my 2*s are fully covered.

Aside from a bunch of 2*s which I'm maxed out and ISO (well, I guess I could always hoard the ISO!), most everything in the Vault seems usable.

I'm kind of bad at hoarding 'good' Tokens (I hoard Recruits so I can just pull all at once and get all the Venoms and Yelenas and other disappointments out of the way ASAP) so an incentive would be a good thing!

I too have questions about the vault resetting. Do you keep the same savory vault from when you started hoarding or does it rollover into the next savory?

Also I second the .XLS file request

It rolls over when the next Savory round starts.

mcguinja

Here is a link to a Google Sheet I put together with the probabilities for Taco Vault draws. Just type in the number of tokens and number of items you want and it will give you the probability of pulling one of those covers/items.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1pPly7xAkacTneHLRJXfwuC4nrxZH97JVhqwDX-_pZjQ/edit?usp=sharing