Mudd’s Kelvin Timeline Bundle, Part 2: Valuation

Hello, all, and welcome back to Joe and STO! This is Part 2 of the Mudd “Into Darkness and Beyond” Choice Pack mini-series, the first of which simply showed off the ships and did some preliminary pricing on the non-ship items.

Today, I look at the financial value of the Choice Pack and, now, the “MEGA Bundle.” As a refresher:

• CHOICE PACK:
  • Pick 3 options out of 6-8 different options.
  • Normal Price: 29,500 Zen
    • Fully Cash Equivalent (before Tax): $270 ($200 = 23,000; $50 = 5,300; $20 = 2,000)
  • 50% Off Price: 14,750 Zen
    • Fully Cash Equivalent (before Tax): $140 ($100 = 11,000; $20 = 2,000; $20 = 2,000)
  • 75% Off Price: 7,375 Zen
    • Fully Cash Equivalent (before Tax): $80 ($50 = 5,300; $20 = 2,000; $10 = 1,000)
    • NOTE: This has only happened once so far, around Christmas/New Year’s Day 2020. This is not guaranteed to happen again.
• MEGA BUNDLE:
  • This is a new offering starting with the “Into Darkness and Beyond” Bundle. When purchased, the player gets 1 of everything the Choice Pack has to offer. If you buy the Choice Pack first, though, this will no longer show up as buyable.
  • Normal Price: 60,000 Zen
    • Fully Cash Equivalent (before Tax): $530
  • 50% Off Price: 30,000 Zen
    • Fully Cash Equivalent (before Tax): $270

As you can see, in no scenario is this an extremely cheap deal. If you’re going to spend all that cash and/or built-up Zen for this, you need to be certain you’re getting your money’s worth.

With 4 ship options from previous Lockbox/Lobi/Promo offerings and only being able to choose 3, we need to make sure we choose well. Getting the wrong combination on value, especially if you ended up paying full price (I highly advise you not to, but it’s your money and nobody’s stopping you), is a feel-bad situation I’d wish on no one.

I’ll break down the financial analysis into five parts, with the Kelvin Packs broken up into the individual ships:

• Kelvin Pack 1
  • Kelvin Timeline Heavy Command Cruiser
  • Kelvin Timeline D4x Pilot Bird-of-Prey
  • Kelvin Timeline T’Laru Intel Carrier
• Kelvin Pack 2
  • Kelvin Timeline Einstein-class Heavy Destroyer
  • Kelvin Timeline D7 Heavy Destroyer
• Vengeance
• Jellyfish
• Other Items
  • 9x Experimental Ship Upgrades
  • 2x 100% Off T6 Coupons
  • 1x Epic Phoenix Token
  • 50x Master Keys

PRICING METHODOLOGY

Price checks on the Exchange were done twice: Once on June 4th provided by @mycroft1701 and again June 9th by me (to double-check if prices rose or held steady). Instead of giving the absolute lowest price, I’ll give the lowest price as of June 4th and the lowest as of June 9th, then show what it would have taken in Master Keys or Promo Boxes to get the ship on those days, then show the best and worst outcomes based on the real cash value of the Zen you’d need for those Keys or Promo Boxes.

Best case and worst case scenarios basically assume the following:

• BEST CASE: You sell Promo Packs you picked up at 30% Off for the going EC price of 27,700,000 EC each (as of June 9th), OR
• WORST CASE: You sell Master Keys you picked up at full price for the going EC price of 9,300,000 EC each (as of June 9th).

Without further ado, let’s look at the value of the Choice Pack options!

VALUE ANALYSIS: THE SHIPS

STAND-IN: Special Requisition Pack – Kelvin Divergence Lockbox Ship Pack

I’ll go ahead and say that some ships in this Choice Pack were not available separately on June 4th and that only a small number were available June 9th. The D7 Heavy Destroyer was the only one not available on both days. For that case, or if you can’t find separate listings for the individual ships after reading this, I’ll default to the Kelvin Divergence Lockbox Ship Pack price. That pack is a catch-all for players to get a single Kelvin Timeline ship, including the original 3 (Kelvin Constitution, D4x, T’laru) along with the two Heavy Destroyers (Einstein-class, D7).

In the absolute best case, a single ship could run you $50.

However, look at the price difference between June 4th and June 9th. The pack jumped over 300 million EC in price! That changes the Best Case to $60. But we’ll be hopeful that it was a short-term price hike and it would revert back to its June 4th price.

• BEST CASE: $50

• WORST CASE: $130

As a special-ish update, I checked the Exchange on June 14th (the evening I’m finishing up this post). The lowest I see is 925,000,000 EC, and only 2 listings are below 1,000,000,000 EC. Because of that, I’m readjusting my Best Case and Worst Case numbers for this catch-all pack:

• BEST CASE: $60
• WORST CASE: $110

Although quantities are limited, let’s assume you could get 5 of these packs (one per ship) and only wanted 1 of each.

• BEST CASE: $60 x 5 = $300
• WORST CASE: $110 x 5 = $550

Part 1: Kelvin Timeline Starships [T6] (AKA “Kelvin Pack 1”)

1) Kelvin Timeline Heavy Command Cruiser (AKA “USS Enterprise NCC-1701″ from the three Kelvin Timeline-based Star Trek films)

A couple caveats before we start here:

• This is the original, non-Legendary version of the ship. If you don’t already have the 10th Anniversary Bundle, you can’t use the Refit skin just by having this ship.
• If you already have the 10th Anniversary Bundle, this version can use the Refit skin, but also consider that part of the reason for getting that Bundle may have been because you wanted a Kelvin Timeline-era Constitution-class ship and didn’t want to gamble for the original (this one). This is a different ship platform, but it comes with everything which the Legendary version already has equipped by default and would be account-wide unlocked like your 10th Anniversary version is.

Interestingly, the price went down slightly in the 5 days after mycroft checked for me, but only by ~10%, so the high and low are pretty close anyway, enough that grinding Dil for the extra Zen most likely won’t be a problem to keep these numbers the same.

• BEST CASE: $60
• WORST CASE: $120

Also of note is that only 1 was available on June 9th, so I’d imagine any relist would probably start at 1,500,000,000 EC and drop down from there as it either doesn’t sell or new listings go up for a lower amount.

2) Kelvin Timeline D4x Pilot Bird-of-Prey

Ignore the values in the June 4th column. Rather than erasing everything, I kept formulas in so I could copy-and-paste this basic setup for the next Choice Pack (come on, after a year and a half of Choice Packs, I think we’d be fooling ourselves to think there won’t be at least one more before the end of 2021).

None were available when mycroft checked June 4th. On June 9th, only 2 were available. Because it seems the Kelvin Divergence Lockbox Ship reward choice pack is cheaper, I’ll value this at its Best Case and Worst Case pricing.

• BEST CASE: $60
• WORST CASE: $110

3) Kelvin Timeline T’laru Intel Carrier Warbird

The T’laru shows to not be as popular as the D4x. I’d bet it’s more for the looks than anything (as neither this nor the D4x were part of meta builds at the time, best I can recall).

• BEST CASE: $60
• WORST CASE: $110

4) Overall Value

Since this is a 3-ship pack, and all 3 ships are different, I don’t feel it’s wrong to analyze this as a combined total rather than “best of the options and the others are filler bonus ships.”

If we take all the Best Case and Worst Case numbers and add them together:

• TOTAL BEST CASE: $180
• TOTAL WORST CASE: $340

While not a steal, Kelvin Pack 1 does give more value than the $140 you’ll spend on this Choice Pack while it’s at 50% off…and you have 2 more picks to go! Anything you pick beyond this is purely extra, value-wise.

Let’s say you don’t count the Kelvin Heavy Command Cruiser if you have the 10th Anniversary Bundle already. We adjust those numbers to a Total Best Case of $120 and a Total Worst Case of $220. I conclude that even if you have the 10th Anniversary Bundle, you still come out ahead on value on the whole Choice Pack just by choosing Kelvin Pack 1 while this pack is 50% off.

PART 2: Kelvin Heavy Destroyer Ship Pack [T6] (AKA “Kelvin Pack 2”)

Although I’ll separate this into both the Eintsein-class Heavy Destroyer and the D7 Heavy Destroyer, they are effectively the same ship. The only difference I can tell is the D7 has a Battle Cloak while the Einstein-class version does not. As such, I’ll give the Best Case and Worst Case at the end as the value for both the D7 on its own (strictly superior to the Einstein-class version because of the Battle Cloak) and as a combination (in case you were wanting both for theme [Einstein for Federation characters, D7 for Klingon characters]).

1) Kelvin Timeline Einstein Heavy Destroyer (AKA “USS Kelvin” from Star Trek (2009))

With a Best Case and Worst Case both higher than the Choice Pack itself, we’ll use the reward choice box for our value…again.

• BEST CASE: $60
• WORST CASE: $110

2) Kelvin Timeline D7 Heavy Destroyer

None were available on either June 4th or June 9th, so I had to default to the Kelvin Divergence Lockbox Ship choice pack.

• BEST CASE: $60
• WORST CASE: $110

3) Overall Value

To keep things consistent, let’s look at this as a combination of the two ships first.

• TOTAL BEST CASE: $120
• TOTAL WORST CASE: $220

Now, because the D7 is basically just the strictly superior version of the Einstein, we could consider this as just one ship: The D7. We treat the Einstein class as a throw-in just to give Fed players a version of the D7 to fly with on-theme. (Note that, at the time, Cross-Faction Flying was not a thing, so these were essentially two separate ships then, with the D7 getting a Battle Cloak because it’s a Klingon ship).

• D7-ONLY BEST CASE: $60
• D7-ONLY WORST CASE: $110

PART 3: Kelvin Timeline Intel Dreadnought Cruiser [T6] (AKA “USS Vengeance” from Star Trek: Into Darkness)

This is the Lobi ship offering for Kelvin Pack 1 and completes its 4-piece console set bonus. Because it’s the Lobi offering, its cash price will be quite low compared to the others ships in this Choice Pack.

The Vengeance also unlocks a skin that at least the Kelvin Timeline Federation ships can use to closely mimic the Section 31 Vanity Shield.

• BEST CASE: $20
• WORST CASE: $40

In essence, I’d say pick the Vengeance mostly if you want to complete the 4-piece set on the entire account. While it is a good ship in its own right (though a bit dated, but I still see many of these probably due to how relatively cheap it is for its performance), it’s also the cheapest to grab and, because it’s in an in-game shop with a set price (900 Lobi, subject to Lobi Store sales), will most likely perpetually be available on the Exchange for around this price range.

PART 4: Vulcan Experimental Science Vessel [T6] (AKA “The Jellyfish”, AKA Spock’s ship from Star Trek (2009))

This will be the most expensive ship due to it being a Promo-level ship.

• BEST CASE: $110
• WORST CASE: $170

We see the Jellyfish alone makes up the majority of the 14,750 price in the best case, basically being cheaper on sale account-wide than buying a single-character copy on the Exchange. That’s pretty good if you were in the market for one and were willing to pay all cash for it.

One unintended good consequence of this becoming an account-wide unlock is it basically gives you a reclaimable Red Matter Capacitor battery device, slotted automatically in one of the Jellyfish’s Device slots. While seemingly no longer a staple in meta builds, if you’re on a fresh character it’s a nice activatable sudden across-the-board jump to your Power Levels while you’re still leveling and assigning skill points toward your desired Power Levels. Plus, the free Exocomp/Reman Duty Officer from the Junior Officer Appreciation event that runs every so often helps boost those power levels a bit more. The only other account-bound way to have a Red Matter Capacitor was from a boxed copy of the Star Trek Online Collector’s Edition physical copy sold at GameStop in 2010 (or at the time, Steam or Atari’s website).

PART 5: THE OTHER ITEMS

While I did give valuations in Part 1 for the other items, let’s take a quick look in this section. “Best Case” will be with a 30% discount (as that’s the highest discount we’re likely to see) and “Worst Case” with no discount. Both cases assume you’re paying straight cash and take into account any normal Zen bonuses on $50+ Bundles. (Keep in mind you’re most likely to fall between these two cases as most of the regular sales are 20%.)

1) Experimental Ship Upgrades (x9) (AKA “T6-X Upgrades”)

• BEST CASE: $50 (4,200 Zen price)
• WORST CASE: $60 (6,000 Zen price)

2) 100% Off C-Store T6 Ship Coupon (x2)

• BEST CASE: $50 (4,200 Zen price = 2,100 Zen each)
• WORST CASE: $60 (6,000 Zen price = 3,000 Zen each)

3) Epic Phoenix Token (x1)

Considering this isn’t a guarantee, there’s no definitive price point. I’ll continue to use my 1% pull rate and 0.5% pull rate estimates from Part 1.

• BEST CASE: $10 (to buy at least 400,000 Dilithium at a 490:1 Dil-to-Zen rate)
• WORST CASE: $20 (to buy at least 800,000 Dilithium at a 490:1 Dil-to-Zen rate)

4) Master Key (x50)

• BEST CASE: $40 (~3,938 Zen price)
• WORST CASE: $60 (5,625 Zen price)

“IS THIS FINANCIALLY WORTH MY CASH/ZEN?”

Welllll…..that’s kinda entirely up to you?

I mean, I could pick out each individual item on your wish list and tell you exactly what the Zen price would have been compared to what you’re looking to spend. But also consider these are account-unlocked ships. That Vengeance that’s only worth $20 in the best case? If every character uses it, among perhaps 3 characters that’s $60 you would have spent on Promo Boxes to get 1 Vengeance per character.

However, some players are on the opposite side of the spectrum. They either only have the one character, or they’ll only use a ship on a single character.

For the ease of calculations (and sanity!), I’ll assume you’d have only wanted each ship one time (and we’ll treat the account-unlock benefit as a nice side effect of buying via Mudd’s Market) and that you could get these at their best possible prices otherwise (maybe $10 less due to bonus Zen on $50+ Zen bundles).

At 14,750 Zen (50% Off)

This is both the current sale and the most likely sale amount we’ll have (short of a December surprise like last year at 75% off).

I think there are only 2 losing scenarios since some item combinations won’t hit $140:

• BAD SELECTION 1: Vengeance + 9 T6-X Upgrades + 50 Master Keys
  • BEST CASE: $20 + $50 + $40 = $110
• BAD SELECTION 2: Master Keys x50 selected all three times
  • BEST CASE: $40 + $40 + $40 = $120

If you’re spending $140 on either of those specific selections of items, you may as well get the combined Zen values and save yourself $10-$30.

Let’s say you wanted just a Kelvin Constitution, the Vengeance, and the Experimental Ship Upgrades (“T6-X Upgrades”). How well do you do?

• Kelvin Constitution Best Case: $60
• Vengeance Best Case: $20
• 9 T6-X Upgrades: $50
• TOTAL: $130

“But that’s a losing proposition!,” I hear you screaming at your monitor. (Remember, I can’t year you, so you can scream all you want and it’ll do nothing.) And I’d reply (if I could), “Yes, that would be a losing proposition…if you weren’t getting 2 more ships alongside the Kelvin Constitution.”

Let’s re-value this as Kelvin Pack 1, Vengeance, and the Experimental Ship Upgrades.

• Kelvin Pack 1 combined Best Case: $180
• Vengeance Best Case: $20
• 9 T6-X Upgrades: $50
• TOTAL: $250

“$180’s way too high!,” I hear you screaming again (Really, people, find something else to be angry about…). Okay, okay, I’ll treat it like it’s an old-time 3-ship bundle at basically “Buy 2, Get 1 Free,” pricing ($60 for 3 ships). You’re only $10 short of “making back” the $140 for the whole Choice Pack selection, so I’d be more inclined to just consider the D4x and T’laru as $5 each and call it a good deal relative to what you would have paid under the best of circumstances for a single Kelvin Constitution, a single Vengeance, and those 9 T6-X Upgrades.

At 29,000 Zen (Full Price)

Now we have to make up $270 in value. That’ll be a bit difficult. We’d need an average of $90 per choice. If we can get a good bit higher than $90 on one choice, we can come down on the value of the other 2 options.

For example:

• Kelvin Pack 2, if you wanted both the Einstein and the D7, could be valued at $120. That leaves $150, or an average of $75 per choice, for the remaining two options.
• If we have to be at a $75 minimum, we could go with the Jellyfish or Kelvin Pack 1. The lower of those is the Jellyfish, adding another $110 to leave $30 in value.
• This lets you now pick anything else except the Vengeance as its one-time ship claim best case cheapest price is $20. That’s $120 + $110 + $20 = $250.
  • I personally value an Epic Phoenix Prize Token at more than $20 due to the lack of guarantee of a token even after 200+ Phoenix Prize Boxes.

I’ll be honest…when you’re within $20 on nearly $300, you should probably consider the quality of life you’ll have that you can re-use the ships you chose. So you don’t like how the Jellyfish flies, but you love that Quad Micro-Photon Torpedo Launcher and its console? Instead of the intended character, perhaps another could use that gear. Have an alt that needs a stout ship for the early grind of Levels 5-50 (usually tutorials end around Levels 3-5)? The Vengeance may be the perfect ship for its great durability and AoE-based console and ability.

To open up the most potential value, you’ll want Kelvin Pack 1 as that’s $180 of ships on a buyer’s good day. Out of a $270 price tag, that leaves $90 in value, which any two other items combined can do…except for maybe Vengeance and an Epic Phoenix Prize Token, but if you value the Epic token higher than $20 to guarantee you’ll get it, you can get to $270 in a more subjective valuation.

THE “MEGA BUNDLE”

New to Mudd’s Choice Pack offerings is the “MEGA Bundle.” For 60,000 Zen, you get all the contents of the Choice Pack once. It’s also on sale for 50% off until June 24th, making the price 30,000 Zen.

The cash values for those Zen amounts are as follows (again with no Dil-to-Zen conversion):

• 60,000 Zen = $530 ($200 = 23,000; $200 = 23,000; $100 = 11,000; $20 = 2,000; $10 = 1,000).
• 30,000 Zen = $270 ($200 = 23,000; $50 = 5,300; $20 = 2,000)

Sheesh! So now we have to look at $270 and $530!?

…

Well, this is actually much simpler. We’ll just add it all up! (Note that Kelvin Pack 2 is priced as just 1 ship.)

Uh…dang. I did not expect that.

Remember that, for everything below the Jellyfish, I’m assuming a 30% sale (like some year-end sales). We get a buyer’s Best Case total of $520.

At 30,000 Zen ($270)

Uh…if you’ve got the cash and can use everything, do it. It’s a 48% discount on buying everything separately.

I’m not saying this is cheap! I’m saying the value’s there if you wanted to buy the MEGA Bundle but weren’t sure if the sale price was worth what Cryptic’s asking.

At 60,000 Zen ($530)

That’s not as good a deal, but let’s think about this. You’re paying $10 more than the 30% off and best case Exchange prices. That’s a ~2% difference in price. It’s not worth arguing the difference.

Also consider, you’re paying $530 (and more with tax if you’re charged sales tax on your Zen purchases). If you have the cash and it’s gotta go somewhere and your bills and necessities are all paid for, I’m not saying don’t get it. But if you’re living on Credit Cards and loans or don’t have a stable-enough job to guarantee this much for a hobby, don’t go for it.

INTO THE CONCLUSION AND BEYOND!

So what’s the overall verdict on this Choice Pack?

1. As long as you go for Kelvin Pack 1 or the Jellyfish, you just about can’t lose your value in this Choice Pack at 50% off or more.
2. At full price (which I advise against), you about have to have Kelvin Pack 1 or the Jellyfish to come close on value.

How about the MEGA Bundle?

1. At the 50% sale price, it’s a no-brainer. The total amount is about 50% higher than the sale price.
2. At full price, and assuming no tax charged, it’s only just barely above my Best Case numbers by about 2%. I’d say that’s worth it, but…$530…ouch…

What would I suggest?

• If you’ve got $270 lying around waiting to be used on a hobby, pick up the MEGA Bundle while it’s 50% off.
• If you’ve “only” got about half that, very few options won’t be worth your money, and I feel I went through the 2 cases that wouldn’t get your $140 back in at least equivalent value.
• Don’t spend $530 on the MEGA Bundle. I could probably point you to better uses of that same cash in-game if you’re wanting to spend over $500 in one go.
• If you’d have to put this on a credit card and hope to pay it off later, or if you don’t have the money in the budget to get this, don’t! It’s a game, and a 50% off sale on this will most likely happen at least one more time. Wait until you have the money or you know you can pay it off.

That’s where I’ll leave this analysis. Don’t overspend. It’s a game, not life. If you have the extra cash, go for it! If you don’t, plan on a future sale and get your money built up in the meantime. Don’t go broke playing a game.

I don’t know when the next post will be, but I think I can safely say at latest it’ll be whenever the next Choice Pack is. Math-based posts are the easiest to do for me.

Until next time, enjoy your time in Star Trek Online!