Value Series: “Mudd is in Command!”…Unless We Know Better

Good weekend, Joe and STOers! Today is the part of my series you’ve probably been waiting for!

…

Or maybe not. Who am I to know what you really want?

This blog entry will look at the cost of obtaining the ships and other extras in the “Mudd is in Command!” Choice Pack. Before we start, I need to cover a few warnings, biases, and data collection & analysis decisions:

• This post is not to determine whether a ship or other item is worth X price but rather to put X price onto a ship or other item. Only you can determine if that would be worth the going price to you.
• Prices I’m using are generally from November 20th, 2021.
  • Keys are priced at 10,600,000 EC each. (They are lower at present due to Black Friday sales, but so far it’s not enough to materially alter my dollar figures.)
  • Promo Boxes are priced at 22,500,000 EC. (They are higher at present, but they still don’t beat Keys overall.)
• I use the lowest available price of a ship or item from November 20th, 2021.
  • I double-checked two ships on November 24th: The Son’a Command Science Vessel and the Voth Rampart Command Dreadnought Cruiser. Their prices changed a bit, so I’m showing both the earlier and later pricings for those ships.
• The Section 31 Command Heavy Battlecruiser was reported to me by two players, one privately and one on Twitter. I took the lower of the two quotes, which was only a 50 million EC difference (Well…”only” compared to 1.7 BILLION, amounting to a roughly 3% difference).
• The Elachi Sheshar had no known information from Twitter or other sources who saw me asking about prices, so I’m using the Exchange cap of 1.5 billion EC as a starting point. I doubt it’d sell that high as it’s an out-of-date ship that usually would only be claimed by players going for the Elachi theme.
• All prices are subject to change due to level of availability of items on the Exchange and sales being applied in the C-Store versus normal pricing.
• All cash-equivalent pricing is done using normal prices for Zen charges; they don’t take into account this week’s Black Friday Zen Charge Bonus on PC.

I should also note one very big difference between this update and most others: Master Keys have overtaken “Promotion!” Boxes as the best Zen-to-EC conversion vehicle. How’d that happen? Let’s look at the EC-per-Zen numbers during last week at normal pricing for most everything (except maybe Promo Boxes, but there wasn’t an active Promo Box sale when I checked prices):

• KEYS: 10,600,000 EC / 125 Zen per Key = 84,800 EC per 1 Zen spent on Keys.
• PROMO BOXES: 22,250,000 EC / 300 Zen per Box = 75,000 EC per 1 Zen spent on Promo Boxes.

As you can see, Keys return almost 10,000 EC more per 1 Zen spent on them. It didn’t use to be like that, but Keys have risen in price, now to the point where Keys are the mathematically desirable way to turn Zen into the EC you need to buy items on the Exchange or in private chat channels.

Because of this shift where Keys will always be better than Promo Boxes (at least, as of the time I checked those prices, though Keys are still relatively better than Boxes as of this posting), all price comparisons and cash-equivalent calculations will be based on Keys instead of the better option between Promo Boxes and Master Keys. I’ll still show pricing with Promo Boxes, though, as added transparency (and perhaps I missed something. It happens!)

With those notes out of the way, let’s look at our ships!

THE SHIPS

Voth Rampart Command Flight Deck Carrier

I checked this price twice, so there’s some variation in overall pricing. The difference amounts 10 Keys or 5 Promo Boxes. Also, although the 2nd price check was lower, there was only 1 Rampart available for that price.

As we see here, the best case for the Rampart, when checked on November 24th, was about $100 USD even, and that’s if you could buy Master Keys at 30% off from the C-Store and sell them later at 10.6 million EC each.

The worst case is $140. That’s if you get Keys at the normal price and sell them quickly for 10.6 million EC to buy the Rampart at 1.399 billion EC.

Son’a Command Science Vessel

I was able to check the price on the Son’a Command Science Vessel a 2nd time, as well. While the lowest ship was cheaper, the average was roughly 150 million EC under the lowest price when I checked on the 20th.

In terms of outright cash, we see a slightly better potential picture for the Son’a ship if you were wanting one before this Choice Pack was announced. The best-case scenario would be $70 in Zen, while the worst-case still hits over $100 individually. Interesting to note, if you had to buy at the average price of 998,500,000 EC and could get Keys at 30% off for later resale, you’d need about 3 more Keys, adding another $10 Zen charge to hit $80 on the low end.

Section 31 Command Heavy Battlecruiser

Here’s where we get into the heavier hitters. We’ve looked at two Lockbox ships, and we’ve seen an average best-case scenario of $90 and an average worst-case of $130.

Promo ships tend to be more desirable as they’re rarer (the chance boxes from which they can pop out cost more than Master Keys do) and generally perform better at the high end of DPS than most Lockbox and Lobi ships. Sometimes a trait outperforms the ship and forces the price up, as well.

Because of that higher rarity, the price tends to overrun the Exchange’s maximum of 1.5 billion EC per listing.

What we see with the Section 31 Command Heavy Battlecruiser is exactly what you’d expect: A ship over $100 and approaching $150 worth of Keys on its own to buy one for a single character.

No matter how you slice it, the Section 31 Command Heavy Battlecruiser will run you over $100 to get enough Keys to sell for the EC you’d need, and that’s assuming you get Keys at the cheapest price Cryptic’s ever listed them.

I tend to go with worst-case scenarios and build up from there. That means with the worst conditions possible, you’re looking at about $170 to get your Section 31 Command Heavy Battlecruiser.

Elachi Sheshar Command Dreadnought

We come to the final ship of the Choice Pack, and unfortunately the most outdated ship. Because of that, there is no known information on the Sheshar’s demand or pricing, so I went with the Exchange cap of 1.5 billion EC (as promo ships rarely stay on the exchange below 1.5 billion EC).

The lowest you’d expect to pay for an Elachi Sheshar is $110. The highest would be $150. But this is based on a base price that may or may not be the correct actual price should there be both a ship for sale and a buyer for it.

THE OTHER ITEMS

WARNING! WARNING! In the past, items in this section have been Bound to Account. Do not expect these items to be sellable on the Exchange or be tradeable to other players unless stated and proven otherwise upon release.

Elite Captain Training Tokens (x6)

This isn’t too difficult to value since we have a direct C-Store listing. A set of 3 tokens costs 2,000 Zen, so 6 tokens is 4,000 Zen.

However, if we use the Exchange, let’s see how they fare:

Potentially, they’re 300 Zen cheaper per token if you could buy Keys at 30% off and resell at 10.6 million EC each. At 700 Zen each, we have a theoretical low of 4,200 Zen (you get no discount for buying in threes on the Exchange), meaning we’ll keep going with the 4,000 Zen C-Store price. With normal Zen cash prices, this is $40 in value.

100% Off T6 C-Store Coupons (x2)

In the past, Cryptic had sold sets of 3x T6 Ship Coupons for 6,000 Zen (essentially, Buy-2-get-1-Free), averaging to 2,000 Zen per Coupon.

Unbound T6 Coupons, usually only unbound when they’re offered as their own separate purchase, tend to sell for around 300 million EC. In Keys and Promo Boxes, that puts Zen prices at the following:

We see that the best case puts T6 C-Store coupons at 2,275 Zen each, or 4,500 Zen for a set of two. That will take $50 in Zen, but the price can vary with both Key prices and the price of the coupons themselves. I’ll value these coupons at between $50 and $60.

300 Lobi

Lobi can be either extremely easy or extremely difficult to pinpoint on value.

• Keys provide a minimum 4 Lobi per Lock Box.
• Keys tend to provide an average of 5 Lobi per Lock Box (unofficially).
• Promo Boxes provide 10 Lobi practically guaranteed (short of winning a T6 Promotional Ship Choice Pack, but that would truly be the bigger win!)

The number of Keys or boxes you’d need, then, are:

• Keys, worst case: 75
• Keys, best case: 60
• Promo Boxes (not counting winning a ship): 30

In Zen pricing, that all amounts to:

As I tend to plan on the worst-case scenarios and hope to buy at the best prices, we’ll value the 300 Lobi at ~5,320 Zen. That would take $60 to acquire 30 Promo Boxes.

Ultimate Tech Upgrades (x10)

Ultimate Tech Upgrades are…well, the ultimate upgrade type in the game. They set your selected gear to Mk XV Epic (AKA “Gold”), the highest upgrade level for any piece of gear.

We get some each year from Galactic Red Alert events that run for 2 weeks, and every so often we get an extra T6 ship event will come with a few specialized Ultimate Tech Upgrades for weapons.

To get multiples easily (though not cheaply), you’ll need to wait until a Key Ring Bundle is offered for sale. While the exact price may vary due to whether it has a discount on it or not, you can safely assume around 2,000 Zen per Key Ring Bundle. As well, the Mudd’s Market past event items (that aren’t Ships) come with 1 Ultimate Tech Upgrade, and at the preferred 75% discount that comes to 2,000 Zen per Ultimate Tech Upgrade. Therefore, I value these at 2,000 Zen since you can’t separate the Upgrade from the items you get.

However, I also included the Galactic Red Alert Buyout for when the 2-week version of the event runs. You can only grab 1 Upgrade per run of the Event, though, so you’d be looking at 3-5 years to get 10 Ultimate Tech Upgrades that way.

At normal Zen Charge Bonuses, this can range from $100 to $190 to get that many Ultimate Tech Upgrades.

How Do We Con the Con for 14,750 Zen in Value?

To make buying this Choice Pack worth the cash you’re spending, we need to get to 14,750 Zen in value at least. With the current Black Friday pricing, that’ll take $120 (with 650 Zen left). With normal pricing, that’s $140 (with 250 Zen left).

You know…we can do this quite easily.

Let’s review how each option has done, starting with the lowest Zen-equivalent pricing among best-case scenarios and work our way up:

One thing we see immediately is that, under the best cases, no single pick will make up 14,750 Zen of value, but the Section 31 Command Heavy Battlecruiser makes up the full cash cost!

Bearing that in mind, let’s say you only look at the best-case scenarios and make your valuations from there, and let’s get the two lowest-valued items. Those would be the Elite Captain Training Tokens and T6 C-Store Coupons. Combined, that’s 8,500 Zen of value ($90 now, $100 at normal Zen pricing). You’d need to make up 6,250 Zen or $30-$40 of value to at least match the 50% off price of this Choice Pack. That means the Lobi (x300) is out. You cannot make 14,750 with any 3 separate choices or with just the bottom two options done in multiples.

Realistically, you’re going for ships, probably 1 but usually 2 or 3. As far as ships are concerned, there are no bad value choices and you’ll get your 14,750 Zen worth easily.

I won’t bother you with more details based on the best-case scenarios. At the prices I used, including potential 30% discounts, and assuming current Exchange market prices don’t fluctuate too much, any 3 separate choices at best-case pricing will technically be worth 14,750 Zen.

Considering you can choose one option multiple times, triplets of the Elite Captain Training Tokens and the T6 C-Store Coupons would not be worth the Zen price, but they would equal out the cash price. So really, at $120 cash value, any three options even chosen multiple times would make back the cash you’re spending.

Under the worst-case scenarios, it’s the same picture, any 3 options will make back 14,750 Zen. But what we see is that we do have options that pay back the bundle as-is. From the Voth Rampart Command Flight Deck Carrier on down, any one option under the worst pricing makes back the cost of the Choice Pack in Zen. That list expands out to the Son’a ship if we look at cash-equivalent pricing during the Black Friday sale. With multiple choices on the non-ship items, any 3 choices will work on both a Zen-based and cash-based analysis.

How Do We Con the Con for 29,500 Zen in Value?

That’s the next trick, isn’t it? Let’s say you can’t get this on the 50% sale but you still don’t mind spending 29,500 Zen. Under normal Zen pricing, that’s $270 (with 800 Zen remaining).

Let’s start at the highest best-case scenario and work our way down. The Section 31 Command Heavy Battlecruiser is valued at 12,600 Zen, while the Elachi Sheshar is 11,200 Zen.

Those two options leave 5,700 Zen in value we’d need to at least break even. You can’t do that with the Captain Training Tokens, T6 Coupons, or 300 Lobi.

As long as your last option is the Son’a Command Science Vessel, Voth Rampart, or Ultimate Tech Upgrades, you’d technically make back the 29,500 Zen. Your best-case choices then need to be the Section 31 Command Heavy Battlecruiser, the Elachi Sheshar, and one of the Son’a ship, Voth ship, or the Ultimate Tech Upgrades.

On a cash basis, you’ll need ships to help make up the $270. Picking the Son’a ship will require choosing two more ships to make back your value. If you pick the Section 31 and Elachi ships, any third option makes back the $270 at least.

At worst-case pricing, the Section 31 and Elachi ships make back the price with room to spare. At the lowest end, you’d need to get the 300 Lobi, Son’a ship, and any option that’s not Captain Training Tokens or T6 C-Store Coupons. The 300 Lobi is the only option in multiples that would even out your $270 purchase.

How about the MEGA Bundle?

The MEGA Bundle is available at 30,000 Zen during the 50% off sale and 60,000 Zen at full price. Those amount to $270.00 and $530.00, respectively, under normal circumstances. For this week’s Black Friday sale, the math changes to $230.00 for the 30,000 Zen price (usually we don’t have a Zen Charge Bonus promo while the Choice Packs are full price, so there’s no point in calculating 60,000 Zen with a special Zen Charge Bonus).

Can we make up between $230.00 and $530.00 off getting everything once? Here’s the math! (Just summed up the values in the best-case/worst-case breakdown above)

I think that speaks for itself. We have a MEGA Bundle that, at our best pricing, is a $120 discount even while at full Zen price and full cash price with standard Zen Charge Bonuses.

Now, whether you’re willing to spend that or not is totally up to you. I’m just relaying information and analyses. 😉

Two Choice Packs or one MEGA Bundle?

You may be looking at the ships and going, “Well, I want all the ships, but I’d have to buy the Choice Pack twice. What should I do?”

Let’s just do the basic math. While the Zen Charge Bonus for Black Friday is active and the 50% off sale is good for this Choice Pack and MEGA Bundle, here are the Zen and Cash prices of the Bundle:

• 2x Choice Pack selections = 14,750 x 2 = 29,500 Zen = $230 (with 900 Zen remaining)
• 1 MEGA Bundle = 30,000 Zen = $230 (with 400 Zen remaining)

It’s the same cash cost during the Black Friday sale, so that doesn’t help!

Consider this: the MEGA Bundle gives you everything once over, but doing a 2nd Choice Pack lets you choose either 2 unique non-ships items (because once you pick the first 3 ships, they’re off the list, so you’d have to do the remaining ship + 2 non-ship items) OR double-up on a single non-ship item.

The decision then comes down to this:

• Could you use everything from the MEGA Bundle’s other items, or would you rather have two selections of one non-ship item [e.g.: 600x Lobi] and 500 extra Zen?

What About MUDD’S DAY?

For those who don’t know, during one of the last sales of 2020, Cryptic ran a “Muddsday” sale where Mudd’s Market items were 75% off and all 3 Bundles of the time were relisted…at 75% off, as well (“MEGA Bundles” weren’t a thing then, so it was just Choice Packs). You got to grab all the Bundles of the time at 7,375 Zen, or $80, each (with 925 Zen remaining).

I’ll look to do another whole blog post on this before the Black Friday sale is done, but I will warn that this happened only once and, as one content creator proposed (but I can’t find it or else I’d link it), it could have been a mistake they chose to honor through the original 48-hour run. IF a Muddsday sale happens this year, it could very well not be at 75% off Bundles.

My take is that we’ll have Muddsday again, and all Bundles will be relisted, but we’ll see a 50% (standard) or 60% (a bit deeper than normal but not as deep as 75%) discount.

Without going into details (again, separate blog post), I’d say there’s no reason to believe the 75% discount will happen again, and you might only save another 10% waiting another month for this Choice Pack to go on a deeper discount, and that’s if they want to do more than a 50% discount but not as high as 75%.

There are too many “if”s to worry about waiting a month, I feel, but I’ll still give the numbers later for comparison’s sake.

Now, if we get 75% off Bundles again, my advice for the 2022 season will likely change but with the warning that precedence can also change and that nothing is guaranteed except what’s available in the here-and-now.

THE POWER TO CHOOSE…IS YOURS!

So here’s the big takeaway from any of these valuations and ship & item anlyses is that, you’re you. You know what you can afford, you know what you want, you know what you’re able to handle as far as what you can do with these ships in-game. You know if you want certain themes, if you want more meta-based builds, if you find an effective discount choosing certain options over others compared to what you’re normally willing to pay, etc.

All the community can do is offer you an overview of what’s in it and some possible valuations so you can at least feel like you got your money’s worth. Ultimately, though, you have to determine for your own play style and real-world financial situations if what you’re buying will be worth the cost.

I hope this helps you make your choice a bit more easily…which is the entire point of posts like this. 🙂