Merry Christmas, Joe and STOers! With your newly acquired money or prepaid cards in hand, you may be tempted to try your luck on some Master Keys or Promo Boxes. There’s currently a 20% off sale on each until December 28th at 1:00 PM Eastern, with the Promo boxes sticking around (maybe or maybe not at full price) until January 2nd at 1:00 PM Eastern.
You may be of two minds:
- Master Keys are cheaper and open a wider variety of boxes, and those rewards could be a starship (T5 or T6 if it’s the Infinity Lockbox) but it’ll be more than Lobi even if it’s not a ship.
- Promo Boxes may be more expensive but they give a guaranteed 10 Lobi, maybe with a starship instead.
- NOTE: For the DOFF promo boxes, it’s more than just Delta DOFFs. During the promotion, any C-Store Duty Officer pack gives an “Infinity Promotion!” version of that DOFF pack.
There’s merit to each side there, but let’s say you don’t plan on gambling.
- You want the Lobi and that’s it. Anything else is bonus.
- You plan on selling the “Infinity Promotion!” boxes for Energy Credits to buy the item(s) or ship(s) you want.
What’s the better deal? Would you prefer to spend the least amount of Zen per Lobi? Do you want to see which method gives the best EC per Zen spent?
If you’re curious, let’s look at some math below!
BEST ZEN PER LOBI RATIO
Let’s say you want to see how much Zen it’ll take to get a single Lobi crystal. This will let you estimate how much money it’d take to get some of the character-bound items off the Lobi Store. Here’s the spreadsheet, with the information about what’s what below it:
The above spreadsheet compiles the minimum Lobi you get per Key or Promo box, the average you get (reported on the Keys and a set 10 Lobi for Promo) and divided the Zen price (from normal to 30% off) by the amount of Lobi you’d get from a single Key, 10-pack of Keys, single Promo Box, and a set of 4 Promo Boxes. The green highlight is the current sale, but refer to the column that best fits whatever sale (if any) is currently ongoing.
Under normal circumstances, buying a bunch of single Master Keys will make each Lobi you get cost 31.25 Zen. Under this current sale, doing the same thing would make each Lobi crystal cost 25 Zen. If we put that into actual cash values (USD), we’re talking going from $.3125 per Lobi down to a single quarter ($.25) with the current sale.
That’s not the most efficient currently, though.
Although Promo Boxes are larger single purchases (300 Zen per Promo box vs. 125 Zen per Master Key, normally), they give bigger Lobi rewards. Each promo box has a constant 10 Lobi if you don’t get the grand prize of a Tier 6 Promotional Ship Choice Pack. Considering that’s extremely rare, we’ll assume the Promo boxes only have 10 Lobi in addition to the R&D or DOFF pack that’s also given.
Using Promo boxes, we see Lobi crystals becoming cheaper. Without a sale and only buying single Promo boxes (doesn’t matter if it’s R&D or DOFF), we see a single Lobi now costs 30 Zen ($.30) on the nose. That’s a Zen savings of 1.25 Zen ($.0125) per Lobi. The rate gets better: Buy a 4-pack and we’re down to the 25 Zen ($.25) per Lobi rate that a single Master Key at 20% off would cost.
But…we’re not under normal circumstances here. We have a 20% off sale! What’s the best route?
If money or built-up Zen is no object, your best bet is the 4-pack of either type of Promo Box. It has a Zen-per-Lobi rate of 20 Zen ($.20) per Lobi crystal. The next best is a 10-pack of Master Keys at 22.5 Zen ($.225) per Lobi.
BUT WAIT! THERE’S ANOTHER CONSIDERATION!
Although you’re awarded a minimum 4 Lobi per Lockbox opened, I’ve heard the average over a long run of opening boxes is closer to 5 Lobi per Lockbox. IF that holds for you, that changes the math a bit.
In that case, your best Zen-per-Lobi rate is actually a pack of 10 Master Keys, no matter the sales discount. For the 20% sale, you’ll save 2 Zen per Lobi crystal going with Keys instead of the Promo packs.
MY SUGGESTION: I go for the guarantees, so I’d go for the Promo boxes when they’re available and in sets of 4 where possible. You save anywhere from 2.2 – 3.125 Zen ($.022 – $.03125) per Lobi Crystal. If you’re needing, say, 900 of these (why, I don’t know), that saves you 1,980 – 2,813 Zen ($19.80 – $28.13) for the whole batch.
ENERGY CREDITS PER ZEN
Okay, so let’s go with the most likely reason you’d want to buy Master Keys and Promo Boxes: You want to buy something off the Exchange, meaning you need EC. And guess what? These Keys/Boxes are sellable!
So what kind of metrics can we grab to help you make the best decision?
NOTE: All prices are from the PC server, and prices are taken from between 5:30 PM and 6:00 PM Eastern on December 25th, 2020. Prices may fluctuate, changing the math presented.
EC PER ZEN
Do you want to know how many Energy Credits you can get for a single Zen ($.01)? Let’s find out!
Again in green we have this weekend’s 20% off sale highlighted, but this can be good for normal price, 25% off, or 30% off (assuming prices stay roughly the same).
How do we read this? Let’s take a single Master Key as an example. At normal price (125 Zen) and at the current 8,000,000 EC Exchange price (give or take), you’d be looking at netting 64,000 EC for every 1 Zen ($.01) spent. If you needed 640,000,000 EC, then, this method would cost you 10,000 Zen ($100).
However, we have a 20% off sale on Promo boxes. Even a single Promo Box (240 Zen) will net a higher yield of 87,500 EC. If you needed 640,000,000 EC, this would cost you about 7,315 Zen ($73.15), a savings of ~$26.95 without considering Zen Bonuses.
BUT WAIT! We’re forgetting the most cost-efficient method for the current sale: a 4-pack of Promo boxes. That yields a whopping 105,000 EC per Zen spent. Using that same 640,000,000 EC figure, we’d need ~6,096 Zen ($69.06), a total $30.94 savings versus buying single Master Keys. (NOTE: There’s a Zen Charge Bonus right now. $50 gets you 6,300 Zen, so this route for the weekend would “only” cost $50).
Now, let’s change gears and do one more measure before we look at a more real example: How much Zen it takes to get 1,000,000 EC.
ZEN PER 1,000,000 EC
Let’s be real, most anything we want in this game costs in the millions of EC, so what better way to estimate costs than to see how much Zen it would take to get 1,000,000 EC? Then we can just multiply by the amount of millions we’re looking to get to find how much Zen (roughly) we’d need to spend.
Let’s go back to our old favorite, the single Master Key. It would take 15 Zen ($.15) to get 1,000,000 EC out of a single Key. A 10-pack does better because it’s basically, “Buy 9 and get 1 free,” so it clocks in at around 14.06 Zen ($.1406) per 1,000,000 EC.
We get much better cost effectiveness with the Promo Boxes. A single box, again relatively expensive, costs the least to get 1,000,000 EC at 11.43 Zen ($.1143). The best value doesn’t even cost $.10 per 1,000,000 EC for the 4-pack of Promo Boxes.
What does this mean more realistically? Let’s say you wanted a Deimos Pilot Destroyer, currently 720,000,000 EC. That’s 720 sets of 1,000,000 you’d need. Note that you may not need full Packs or bundles as the Zen amounts get close to 720,000,000 EC, not an even amount of Keys or Boxes that would be needed to reach that amount.
- Single Master Keys would mean the ship would cost you around 11,250 Zen (720 * 15.625 Zen for each 1,000,000 EC you need). Without Zen Charge Bonuses, this is $110 ($100 gets 11,000 Zen; $10 gets 1,000 Zen).
- Master Key 10-packs would come in at needing ~10,125 Zen. This is $100 (11,000) with the normal Zen Charge Bonus or $90 with it ($50 gets 6,300 + $40 gets 4,800).
- Single Promo Packs would cost you a bit over 8,229 Zen (8,229 / Normally this is $80 ($50 gets 5,300 + $20 gets 2,000 + $10 gets 1,000), but this weekend it would cost $70 ($50 gets 6,300, $20 gets 2,400).
- Promo Packs bought in 4-pack bundles would bring the cost down to 6,857 Zen. That would require $70 without the current Zen Charge Bonus or $60 with it (or less if you can turn enough Dilithium into Zen to make up the difference).
WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN!?
So if you wanted a rough guide to how much you’ll need to spend to get a certain amount of Lobi or EC, these charts help you figure the best route for you.
Do you need 200 Lobi for that last piece of Space Gear and can’t wait for a Lobi store sale? Go to the first chart, find the method you’d like to pursue, and multiply that Zen-per-Lobi amount by 200. That will tell you how much Zen you’d need (give or take a Key or Promo Box) to get the Lobi you want. For a quick example, taking this weekend’s sales, here’s what 200 Lobi would cost in Zen:
- Master Key (single): 6,250 Zen
- Master Key (10-pack): 5,625 Zen
- Promo Box (single): 4,800 Zen
- Promo Boxes (4-pack): 4,000 Zen
You may need to make absolutely sure the Zen amount you think you’ll need will cover what you think you’ll get.
- Getting 200 Lobi off a number of 10-pack of Master Keys “needs” 5,625 Zen, meaning you need 5,625 / 1,125 = 5 sets of 10-packs of Keys. You’re good; that’s an even number of 10-packs you’d need to buy to get 200 Lobi.
- Getting 750,000,000 EC off a number of 4-pack of Promo Boxes “needs” 6,857 Zen. That means we’d need 6,857 / 800 = 8.57 sets of 4-packs. We’ll need more than 2 more Promo boxes (dang that .07 over half!), so we might as well buy a 9th set of 4 boxes. That means our actual cost will be 800 * 9 = 7,200 Zen. However, the $70 we expected to spend without this season’s Zen Charge Bonus will still be $70 (5,300 + 2,000 = 7,300), so we’ll have less leftover Zen but more EC to spend on something else. With this season’s Zen Charge Bonus, we’re still looking at a 7,300 Zen total, it’s just $10 cheaper ($50 = 6,300, $10 = 1,000).
DON’T SPEND IT ALL IN ONE PLACE!
A word of warning that, while these prices seem fine to some people, they may be expensive to others. Spend only what you’re willing to spend to get the gear and/or ships you’re wanting. All I’m doing is helping you figure out what it’ll cost so you can budget accordingly.
Maybe spread your purchasing out. Buy only on sales and wait for prices on the Exchange to go back up. How will you know?
Supply is usually highest on the Exchange when a C-Store sale on Keys and Promo Boxes is ongoing. That would be the best time to spend cash to acquire the boxes and/or keys you calculate you’ll need. Let a few weeks go by after a sale (or availability in the case of Promo Boxes) ends and, if no other sales happen, start seeing what the Exchange has as the lowest prices. Beat them out by 100,000 or so EC and you’ll sell your inventory fairly quickly. Be warned that others will be looking, as well, and undercut you more. Set a bottom end where you won’t sell below a certain point (say, 19,500,000 on your Promo Boxes) and stop when competition gets to heated. Wait for prices to come back up to your desired price and start listing again.
I hope some of you reading this will feel a bit easier about figuring how much money it’ll take to get the things you want from either the Lobi Store or the Exchange. Feel free to like this post if it helped you or you like the information in it.
Until next time (maybe next week, maybe into the New Year), have fun and enjoy STO!
Joe and STO 