How much orbs can I get from Premium Packs if they are all dupes? (BONUS: Hom much orbs from ToTP)

Larz70

A handy guide for those who are no longer getting new cards from Premium Packs.  Basically a Premium Pack to orb conversion formula at the current rates (as-of 5/8/18).  Based on a simulation of 100,000 pulls:



ORI avg: 676.8 orbs.  When crafting ORI Mythics at 3,000 orbs, half of the player population will have enough orbs after 5 Premium Packs.  To craft a 5,000 orb XLN Mythic, we'll need 8 Premium Packs.

RIX avg: 1,114 orbs.  Because the current orb conversion is 50% more than regular, Half of the population will be able to craft an ORI mythic after 3 Premium Packs or an XLN mythic after 5.

XLN avg: 576.5 orbs.  6 Premium Packs to craft an ORI Mythic, and 9 Premium Packs to craft an XLN Mythic.

Pretty much confirms what we already know, RIX is the best deal, even with the mark-up. Note that the average above includes the bonus rare card.  This means that 5 regular boosters will have an average less than 100 (150 for RIX) from the numbers above.

The Trial of the Planes currently gives an XLN Booster Pack as a reward.  Platinum Players who pay the 30 crystals to play ToTP are getting 567.5 - 100 = 467.5 orbs every week.  In one month, for 600 crystals, they will have 1,870 orbs and 400 jewels.  The current rate for a Mythic+ booster is 75% Mythic and 25% Elite.  The Vault is currently offering Ixalan Mythic/MP cards so the average orb equivalent assuming duplicate Mythic and new Elite is 500 * .75 = 375 orbs (IRL, you're going to get either 500 orbs or 0, but we need the average to calculate the overall value of ToTP).  So, 4 weeks of ToTP at 600 crystals = 1,870 + 375 = 2,245 orbs. 

RIX orbs/crystal avg:                                 1114 / 320 = 3.48125
ToTP Platinum (XLN Mythic+, etal) avg:  2245 / 600 = 3.74167
ToTP Platinum (RIX Mythic+) avg:           (1870 + 750*.75 + 11870) / 600 = 4.05417

So as span_argoman already pointed out in his "is ToTP for me?" post, ToTP is indeed worth it for Platinum players who are pulling dupes most of the time (and don't mind playing the extra hours).  But I didn't expect it to be this close.

I wonder if holding on to the XLN packs and opening it later when the rates are better would make a difference.  Makes me wonder why the XLN rates are so low in the first place, or are the others just high? ......

Larz70

My mistake, ToTP currently gives out HOU booster pack not XLN.  It's the Across Ixalan (AX) event that rewards XLN booster pack.  HOU is currently not on rotation at the Vault but a booster pack has the following rates: C:98.67%; U:88.29%; C:25.51%; M:7.09%; MP:0.32%.  The result of running 100K sim is (results below already exclude the bonus rare card and additional assumption that we're still getting new Elites for consistency with Elite Mythic+ Booster):

      orbs       

 Min.      :    270.0  

 1st Qu. :    420.0  

 Median :    520.0  

 Mean    :    645.5  

 3rd Qu. :    870.0  

 Max.     : 3,020.0 

The corrected ToTP orb rate is now:

ToTP Platinum (XLN Mythic+, etal) avg:  (645.5 * 4 + 375) / 600 = 4.92833
ToTP Platinum (RIX Mythic+) avg:           (645.5 * 4 + 562.5) / 600 = 5.24083

ToTP is now at least 30% better in terms of orbs compared to spending crystals on RIX Premium Pack (50% better if waiting for RIX Mythic+ to get back on rotation).  I think this definitely makes it worth the extra 30 minutes - 1 hour grinding ToTP (although I'm still not doing it cause I'm saving my crystals for when Karn drops  )

span_argoman

Good points made here @Larz70 but I would like to take this opportunity to explain why I have not updated my TotP Guide to factor in the value of Orbs. And I really should at least update the guide in some form even if I can't put out the numbers, but that's a discussion for another time lol.

Initially when Orbs were introduced to the game, there was an appeal to being able to have a unified in-game currency to be able to measure all other currencies by. Veteran players expect to open Premium Packs till one gets duplicate cards 99% of the time. So it made sense to work out the value of a Premium Pack in the case of 100% dupes cause many players will reach a stage which reasonably approximates that of 100% dupes.

The issue then came with valuing the Jewels at a 100% duplicate scenario. I admit that I initially also worked on this assumption as 1) it worked for valuing Crystals, 2) it takes out the variance introduced in the values from different players owning a different number of cards in each Elite Pack and, 3) it takes out the need to have to arbitrarily value a new Masterpiece in Orbs since they are uncraftable.

But the issue is that one almost never expects to reach a 100% dupe situation for Elite Packs. And even if a player does reach that scenario, they would not in the right mind then decide to spend their Jewels on that pack instead of waiting for the next one to cycle into the Vault.

If you value a new Masterpiece at 5x that of a Mythic (in line with the ratios from Uncommon to Rare and from Rare to Mythic), the difference in expected value for a fully new Elite Pack versus a full dupe Elite Pack is a factor of 10. Which wrecks havoc with the expected values of participating in TotP, or just generally with valuing Jewels in terms of Orbs.

Another issue that came up often in the General Discussion forums when people complained about Elite Packs was about the strong sense of loss from opening a dupe after spending 400 Jewels. I attribute this to the fact that we aren't able to open Elite Packs all that often and hence a bad result after the weeks (or months) of saving up Jewels has an amplified emotional backlash. But the infrequent opening of Elite Packs also means that a mathematical analysis of Jewels & Elite Packs may never matter to most players since they have only that few chances at an Elite Pack.

Yet another qualitative issue is that not all Mythics are equal. Neither are the Masterpieces. As such, the value of being able to use Jewels to target specific Mythics is also not able to be valued in a quantitative analysis. As such, on the topic of Jewels I would only recommend that players wait for a collection where they have reasonably few or no cards which they own to try their luck at opening an Elite Pack. If they're trying for a specific card in an Elite Collection, hopefully they understand the gamble they're taking if it happens to be a collection where they have more cards which they already own.

And as a suggestion for your analysis, I would recommend to split the value of the Jewels from the Crystal-Orbs numbers and put them in terms of 0.X [or 0.# if you're a programmer] Mythic+ Elite Packs and X.X Rare+ Elite Packs. TotP will still show itself to be a solid option for earning more Orbs. And readers can decide how they want to spend their Jewels to maximise their value from it.

My TotP analysis is still outdated. Without putting down concrete numbers, TotP is only worth playing for Platinum players now and it is primarily due to the 30 Crystal rebate rather than the 25 Jewels earned in Progression.

As I also pointed out in the other thread, there is also the practical issue of having negligible Crystal income if one plays TotP every week. Even at Platinum, playing every TG, Across Ixalan and TotP event in the week means that one earns a net of 15 Crystals a week excluding the rotating events. Of course one can earn more Crystals from the other events over the week, but this will still greatly limit one's flexibility in being able to spend Crystals on other items. As a frame of reference, earning 150 Crystals a week means that a dual-colour planeswalker (650 Crystals) will take 4+ weeks to be able to afford. Take away the 150 deficit from TotP and it becomes barely 2 weeks instead.

Nonetheless, you put in a lot of effort and did great work here. It's been a great read and it motivates me to get around to updating my TotP guide sooner so that it is more relevant to the times. Thanks for the insights!

(Btw you can tag players by adding a @ before their username, you can use that to draw my attention to your reply as I don't visit this subforum all that often)

Larz70

Thanks for the feedback @span_argoman, really appreciate your taking the time to add to my post.