Overwatch

|Posted 3 days ago

It costs $850 to get all Overwatch's summer items... but legendary drop rates have doubled

By
Ben Barrett

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Overwatch summer loot box opening chances

With what we know about loot boxes already, and the release of a whole new type of box with the Summer Olympic skins, we decided to do the maths again with new boxes and see how much had changed. Our sample size was only 250, which could lead to some errors, but we think the conclusions are easy to draw. It's recommended you familiarise yourself with our original data if you haven't seen it before, which is further down the page or summarised in the video above. Here's what we found.

Legendary and epic drop chances are higher

Across the videos we watched, it was clear that legendaries and epics dropped more commonly. We saw multiple epics in a box on various occasions, while double legendaries were not as uncommon as we would expect either. Here's the exact data:

• Epics appeared about once every three boxes, with an average gap of 2.6. This is a 20% increase over our previous average of 3.3, even if it still works out to about one in three.
• Legendaries were roughly every sixth box, with an average of 6.2. This is a 40% increase in legendaries from a previous average of one-in-ten.

Summer box pity timers don't seem to have changed, though the smaller sample size (and continuing mystery surrounding pity timers in Overwatch in general) does make it hard to tell. We saw one epic opened on the 10th box, keeping with that pity timer, but legendaries never stretched beyond the 16th.

It's worth noting that this is items as a whole, not just summer items. Here's that data...

There are about 1.2 summer items per box

You are guaranteed a single summer item in your box, and we saw as many as three in one. Over the course of all our boxes opened, this averaged out to just under 1.2 per box, with 297 opened in all. This makes them slightly less common than rares in ordinary boxes.

We also saw a decrease in coin drops that was roughly equal to this, due to there being no currency drops from the summer item 'slot.'

Of summer items dropped, 5.4% are legendary, 15.5% are epic

Here was the breakdown of just summer items from that total of 297:

• 123 commons - 41.4%
• 112 rares - 37.7%
• 46 epics - 15.5%
• 16 legendaries - 5.4%

This compares favourably to the opening chances from ordinary boxes, with less commons and more rares, epics and legendaries per item opened. As shown above, you get 1.2 goes at it per box, so times these figures by that for your chance of any individual box having the rarity of item you want.

Summer legendaries appear roughly one per 16 boxes

Using the above data, any summer box has a 6.48% to contain a legendary. That's one every sixteen boxes, so while summer boxes are better for legendaries overall, summer legendaries are rarer than normal legendaries were from normal boxes, based on our data.

Your chance of getting a Summer duplicate is quite high

This is a bit more hand-wavy than we'd like, as we weren't tracking exact duplicate chances in our previous data, however across the 250 boxes opened we saw 24 duplicate summer drops of epic or legendary rarity, not counting the originals. That's 8% of the rarer summer items opened becoming currency that then can't be spent on other summer items. If you add in rare and common drops, it will be even higher.

The reason for this comes down to the size of the pool being drawn from. In a normal loot box, four items are pulled from a pool of 1,333, with one of them having to be rare or higher. For summer items, it's one from a pool of 110. This means in a single box, assuming just one summer item, you are seeing 0.91% of the summer pool, versus 0.3% of the pool in one of the classic boxes.

You need to open 850 summer boxes to get all of the summer items

Again we aren't the only ones that have been doing the maths. This data comes from this Reddit post and associated video archive. Despite there being a tenth as many items in total, due to credits not being usable on summer items and there not being four per box, almost the same number of boxes are required to unlock everything.

Original story: Overwatch’s progression system is simple. Level up, get a loot box, open it for four items of varying rarity. You can also buy the boxes for real money if you wish, and that’s where it gets more complicated.

There are two ways to get the in-game cosmetics you want. Either, you can luckily acquire them directly out of boxes, or you can gather enough credits to buy them. Credits also come from boxes, but are rarer. How often do you get legendaries in Overwatch? How many credits do you get in Overwatch? We’ve done the maths and now believe we can answer these questions, based on 500 crate openings from various sources.

The core of our assumptions for this came from our interview with Jeff Kaplan back in February when he said “there’s no such thing as a random loot system, not at Blizzard.” This was in reference to a question we’d asked him about Hearthstone’s pack-opening mechanics, which guarantee a legendary every 40 packs without one, among other statistics. Kaplan wouldn’t tell us exactly how Overwatch box-opening did or would work come release, but at least implied it would be similar.

By watching 500 boxes opened across various YouTube videos in streaks of at least 50, we’ve managed to come to some conclusions - and here they are.

For anyone not well-versed in Overwatch loot, some basics:

• Legendary items are the rarest and cost 1000 credits.
• Epics are slightly easier to get and set you back 250 credits
• Rares are in every box unless they’re replaced by an epic or a legendary and cost 75 credits
• Commons are three to a box unless replaced and cost 25 credits

It's worth noting that when a new hero has been revealed, you might be tempted to grab a bunch of loot boxes, or hold on to any that you earn, in the hope that you'll get drops for the new character once they're out. Following the reveal of new hero Ana Amari, Blizzard have released a statement telling people not to waste their time. 

"Now that we’ve revealed our upcoming hero, Ana, we know that some of you may want to try to prepare for her arrival either by stocking up on loot boxes or holding off on opening the ones you already have.

"Before you do that, though, please remember the following: loot box contents are generated at the time that they earned or purchased, NOT when they are opened. 

"This means that any loot box you earn or purchase now, or at any point before Ana is released, will not have a chance to contain her cosmetic items. Only those loot boxes that are earned or purchased after she is live and playable on your gaming platform will be eligible for her skins, sprays, voice lines, hero emotes, etc. (This is how the system will continue to work for future content updates, too.)"

So just to reiterate: old loot boxes won't have new items in them, even if you open them after those new items are released.

You will never go more than 24 boxes without an Overwatch legendary drop

Across every video we watched, the longest gap between legendaries was 24. On the 25th box a Legendary was opened, be it a skin or credits. We also saw a couple opened in the 24 slot, suggesting that, as with Hearthstone, the chance of opening a legendary scales upwards as it nears the maximum. This is called a pity timer, and the Overwatch pity timer is set at 25.

We also kept track of this for epics, and observed that it was never past the 10th, with several opened in the 8-9 slot.

Since originally writing this article, we’ve had community feedback suggesting the Overwatch pity timer isn’t as hard and fast a rule as in Hearthstone. Multiple people have said they’ve reached levels above 25 and not yet opened legendaries in their boxes. However, we’re yet to hear of someone buying a large number of boxes and going past 25 opened without a legendary. This means there also isn’t any footage of this happening, or at least none that we’ve found.

There are a few theories as to what’s happening. It’s possible the Overwatch pity timer doesn’t exist, or has been modified from the Hearthstone version to not guarantee one at a certain point, just slowly ramp up the chance. It’s also been suggested that the pity timer could only apply to bought boxes, though that seems a lot of effort to go through by Blizzard for no gain, as well as seeming unlikely due to how loot boxes are presented in game - once they’re bought, they’re no different from earned ones.

It could also be higher than 25 and our testing simply didn’t show it, or those claiming they haven’t received legendaries by 25 are mistaken. Hopefully as more and more boxes are opened, we’ll narrow in on a final answer.

Also if note is that Jeff Kaplan posted on the Overwatch forums that loot crate contents are rolled at time of earning, rather than when they're actually opened. This means buying a batch of 50 results in 50 rolls at once, while earning them over time means one roll every so often.

A reasonable assumption from this would be that it should be earned boxes, not bought ones, that have a pity timer - as they are able to see what came before, while the group of 50 has no obvious knowledge of what is in each at time of creation. However, not only could this information be accessible by the algorithm under the hood, but the system could use a different algorithm for 50 rolls at once.

This supports the data we've seen that only bought boxes, rather than earned ones, come with a pity timer of 25. People are, after all, less likely to be angry about not receiving the highest value from boxes they got 'for free' via playtime than ones they spent cold, hard real-world cash on. Again, no final answer yet, but a bought box pity timer is the logical conclusion so far, by our reckoning.

On average, you will get an Overwatch legendary drop every 10 boxes

Across 500 boxes, we saw 51 legendary drops, meaning on average every 9.8 boxes, rounded to 10. Obviously, there is some amount of random chance involved, so you could equally go 24 boxes before you hit the aforementioned max, then get two legendaries in a row, or even two in the same box - something we did see happen.

For epics, we saw 151 in 500, making an open rate of approximately one per 3.3 boxes. In small numbers that means every 4, but for large openings you’d expect them more often than that - a little less than a third of the boxes you open should contain epics.

There are also about 1.27 rares per box and 2.33 commons, with 634 and 1,164 opened in total respectively. Some raw data on rarities of items opened:

• 1,164 commons - 58.2% of items, or 2.33 per box.
• 634 rares - 31.7% of items, or 1.27 per box.
• 151 epics - 7.55% of items, or 0.30 per box
• 51 legendaries - 2.55% of items, or 0.10 per box
• Our numbers are corroborated by a larger sample size of 1,000 conducted by a Redditor.

You'll need to open 888 boxes to get every item in the game at launch

We're not the only ones who have been doing maths, and a lengthy Reddit post lets us know that to get every item in the base game will take 888 boxes opened. This was worked out via some far more advanced number-crunching than we're capable of fully understanding, but essentially averaged the cost of every item in the game and worked things out from there. It even took into account opening duplicates and credit drops, making 888 a fairly accurate figure.

Here's what that will cost you, in either time or money, based on some of our own workings out further down:

• $888 at a dollar per box, the most expensive price.
• $720 at $40 per 50 boxes, the cheapest price, with 12 'wasted' boxes.
• 976 hours, 48 minutes of playing solo to get everything.
• 858 hours, 24 minutes in a group.

The release of new heroes and skins makes this even higher now, though it won't increase significantly until those counts do.

30% of Overwatch crates contain credits

Across 500 boxes, we saw 150 credit drops from 2000 total items. They broke down like this:

• 11 legendary credit drops from 51 total legendaries, about 21.6%
• 51 epic credit drops from 151 total epics, about 33.8%
• 88 rare credit drops from 634 total rares, about 13.9%
• 0 common credit drops, as they are not in the game

(NB: A legendary credit drop is worth 500 credits, an epic 150, and a rare 50)

So you should expect every fifth legendary (50 boxes), third epic (10 boxes) and seventh rare to be credits instead of a ‘real’ item, on average, while three of every ten boxes should have some amount of credits. It is also impossible for the only non-common drop in a box to be credits - they always come alongside another rare, epic or legendary, likely to avoid the feelbads of not getting a good item in your box.

We also looked at the split between item types for epics, but it seemed to be roughly even, with around 33 of each of the other three types across the remaining hundred.

The conversion rate of Overwatch is 35.1 credits (₡) to the US dollar

Here’s the super interesting part. Based on our opening of 500 boxes, we got 150 credit drops across the various rarities. This included 88 rare credit drops at 50₡ each, 51 epic currencies at 150₡ and 11 legendary currencies at 500₡. In total, we saw 17,550₡ in 500 boxes, or 35.1₡ per box.

Boxes sell for a dollar each at their highest price (a bundle of two boxes for $2), making $1 equal to 35.1₡. If you buy 50 boxes at once, this drops to $0.8 per box, meaning $1 equals 43.88₡. We call this the dollar-credit exchange, or DCX, because we’re cool like that. We’re going to use the 2-box DCX in the majority of our maths because it’s a bit easier, however we’ll give 50-box DCX as well where we can.

Now we know that…

A random Overwatch legendary skin is worth $10, a specific one that you want is $29

We already established that, on average, it takes ten boxes to open a legendary. At a dollar each, that’s $10 for a random legendary. Even if you’re hellishly unlucky, it won’t ever cost more than $25.

However, it costs 1000₡ to craft a legendary you actually want. At a DCX of 35.1₡, that takes 28.49 boxes, or 29 given you can’t buy half a box. Therefore, for as long as there is no store to buy them individually with real money, each of the legendary skins you actually want and will use is worth $29. If you buy in bulk at a DCX of 43.88₡, it’s actually around $8 for a random legendary, $23 for one you want. This makes Origins Edition, which gives you five skins for $20 (plus a large number of extras for other Blizzard games) a pretty good deal.

For epics this is $4 for a random one and $7.12, rounded up to $8, for one you want. At bulk DCX, $3.20 gets you a random epic, while you need to spend $5.70 per one you’re specifically after.

What this doesn’t take into account is opening duplicates that are automatically turned into credits. Unlike in Hearthstone you can’t do this manually, so we can’t just convert all the items opened into their credit equivalent. It would also take an extraordinarily large number of items owned before the credit impact of dupes was significant. However, in truth, the more boxes you’ve opened, you can start decreasing these figures by a small amount.

You make 91 cents an hour playing Overwatch alone, $1.03 in a group

This is a conclusion drawn from experience values, rather than specifically to do with loot boxes. Loot boxes earned one at a time are worth $1. In Overwatch, it takes an increasing amount of XP to level up, maxing out at 22,000 for each level over 23. However, your level rank resets when you reach level 101, dropping the required total back down to the minimum of 1,500 and beginning to climb again. Therefore, the average amount of XP needed to level up is 20,085, based on this chart.

You earn XP in Overwatch four ways - per second playing, earning medals, playing consecutive games and winning. There is also a 20% bonus for playing in a group, and 1,500 XP given for the first match each day - we’re going to ignore that, as most matches won’t be. This means that every 10 minutes in Overwatch, you earn roughly 3,000 XP, 3,600 in a group. This is based on finishing one game per 10 minutes with at least a gold medal, assuming it is a consecutive match and that you win half of the time, plus it’s rounded to a nice even number. This is an estimate as it’s very possible to have a series of short games, therefore giving you more medal and win XP, but that is made up for by loss streaks, games where you do worse and the fact you aren’t always in a game due to matchmaking.

Therefore, you have to play for about 66 minutes to level up solo, around 58 minutes to level up in a group. Levelling up gets you a box, boxes are worth $1, so you earn (in Overwatch cosmetics) $0.91 or $1.03 per hour you play the game.

Here’s how that converts into actual items, getting you enough boxes to either open one randomly on average, or enough credits to make one you want:

• A random legendary takes 11 hours to earn solo, 9h36m in a group.
• A specific legendary takes 31h54m to earn solo, 28h2m in a group.
• A random epic takes 4h24m to earn solo, 3h52m in a group.
• A specific epic takes 8h48m to earn solo, 7h44m in a group.
• You make back the cost of the base game ($39.99) in 46h56m solo, 38h50m in a group.

Before you shout at us: we know that 500 is a relatively small sample size, and the conclusions drawn may be altered somewhat if you worked with ten or 20 times as many box openings. Ok, now shout away…

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