Hello, Joe and STOers! Earlier this week, you saw the visual overview post of the Mudd’s “As Seen in TNG” Choice Pack/MEGA Bundle. While I tried to get this part of the series out soon after, well, you can see the date this posts versus when the Bundle released.
Free time has been fairly fleeting the past 2 weeks, so you’ll see some rehashed screenshots and a lack of external links as I’m trying to break up the monotony of spreadsheets and numbers…which is the real reason you’re here so you can use data to inform your decision.
A few notes about the data below:
- Prices were taken around the day the blog was posted, and I reduced the Key and Promo Box prices a bit more (as getting to be the lowest price will near-guarantee a sale, and I’m not one to fight over thousands of EC when I need millions ASAP). Because of this, the following prices for Keys and Promo Boxes used were:
- Keys: 11,600,000 EC
- Promo Boxes: 37,250,000 EC
- For the other items, I did not use Exchange or going secondary market prices but rather Zen prices (Lobi; T6 Coupons) and the community-found average Zen value needed for the Epic Phoenix Prize Token. The only time this really matters is with the T6 Ship Coupons. They were available last year for 4,500 Zen per 3 coupons, so I assumed the 1,500 Zen-per-Coupon rate.
THE SHIPS
Son’a Collector Science Dreadnought
Being a Promo Box ship, we expect this to be the highest-cost ship in the lineup. With Keys, this costs 13 10-Key Bundles (or 6 “Key Ring Bundles” and a 10-pack, but the cost works out the same) for a worst case total of 14,625 equivalent Zen, which isn’t quite the 14,750 Zen cost of the pack but it’s close!
In the best case scenario, where you can buy Promo Packs at 30% off from the Zen Store and flip them for the then-going rate, we get a 7,000 equivalent Zen valuation. At an average Zen price of ~4,917 Zen per item desired, this would be a discount and be an account-wide unlock.
Liberated Borg Command Juggernaut
Being a Lock Box ship, you’d expect to see this valued at around the price of 100 Keys (~1.1 billion – 1.2 billion EC). However, as Spencer points out in one of his videos (which I’ll link later), this ship comes in a Lock Box that’s still being opened for the Borg “of 47” DOFFs (some go for the price of a ship!). Because of this, the Liberated Borg Command Juggernaut is one of the more common Lock Box ships on the Exchange, thus the lower price (nearly half the cost!).
Assuming a worst-case scenario where you buy Keys at full price, a single Borg Juggernaut could cost you 6,125 Zen, which would beat our 4,917 Zen-per-item average we’d like to have to make our selections worth the 14,750 Zen on-sale asking price.
HOWEVER…however…if you’re a shrewd-enough buyer, you could buy Promo Packs at 30% off (once they come back on sale) and re-sell the boxes at ~37.25 million EC each (once the price rebounds from increased supply) and only be paying 3,010 Zen, which doesn’t hit our desired average per choice. That’s likely fine if the final ship can hit decently above that 4,917 average.
Husnock Warship
The Husnock Warship is a Lobi Store ship. This means it’s among the cheapest Tier 6 premium ships, if not among all non-Event Tier 6 ships. The average for these ships tends to hit $30-$40 worth of Zen, as we see in the worst-case scenarios (judged at both the absolute lowest price and if I went about 5-6 listings down, in case the first few were undercutting each other).
Under the best cases, though, we see you could buy a Husnock Warship for a $15-$20 equivalent price. Even at the worst case of buying and re-selling Promo Boxes, you’d only be out $20-$25 equivalent cash.
So no, we’re not getting anywhere near 4,917 Zen from just the Husnock Warship.
TOTAL JUST FOR THE SHIPS
One of the pulls of these Choice Packs/MEGA Bundles is you’d get 3 previously single-character ships as account-wide unlocked for cheaper than you could get them on the Exchange.
Does Mudd’s “As Seen in TNG” Choice Pack do this?
It kinda depends.
If you value everything at the highest possible equivalent Zen prices, then yes, the Son’a Collector Science Dreadnought and Liberated Borg Command Juggernaut are high enough in equivalent Zen pricing to overcome the Husnock Warship’s relatively lackluster (but average for Lobi ships) Zen pricing. I’ll note I used the scenario where I crossed out the first 5 listings to account for possible undercutting creating a possibly unreasonable low-end price. Under this scenario, you get 24,125 Zen worth of ships for 14,750, saving ~38.86% buying the Choice Pack.
If you value everything at the best-case scenario, however, we get a much different story. The only ship that meets or beats the 4,917 Zen average is the Son’a ship. The Borg ship gets close-ish but isn’t quite there. The Husnock Warship being effectively $15 seals this Choice Pack’s fate. Under the best-case scenarios, you OVERpay for the Choice Pack by 3,340 Zen, or ~29.27%. While I don’t recall all my valuations off-hand, this may be the first Lock Box/Lobi/Promo Choice pack where buying the ships is not the most cost-effective choice.
One thing to remember, though, is you’re getting these ships as account-wide unlocks. You may see more value if you know you’ll use a ship(s) over multiple characters. For example, if you value these ships at the best-case scenario and plan on using the Borg ship on at least 2 characters, add another 3,010 Zen to these numbers (as that would have been a 2nd Borg Juggernaut you’d have needed to buy). That would make a personal valuation of 14,420 Zen, which is still overpaying compared to 14,750 Zen, but now it’s only 330 Zen over instead of over 3,000 Zen of overpayment.
NON-SHIP ITEMS/EXTRAS
I won’t include pictures of the extra items. I’ll just leave you with how I came to both a high-end and low-end valuation for the non-ship items you could pick.
Now, keep in mind the average Zen price per item we needed to make a Choice Pack that’s at least worth 14,750 Zen.
I showed above that, for this particular Bundle and at the base prices I used to calculate all these EC-to-Zen equivalents, you can’t buy all 3 ships and expect a discount on buying them all individually if you assume best-case sale scenarios and current EC pricing. Why? It was because 2 of the ships missed out on this 4,917 Zen per item average. That might be fine if 1 ship were way above that or if 2 ships were decently above, but only the Son’a Collector Science Dreadnought came in above that, and not by much (~2,100 Zen above the average).
In fact, only 3 items overall came out above the 4,917 Zen average, as best I can calculate:
* Son’a Collector Science Dreadnought (7,000 Zen)
* 300 Lobi via Promo Boxes (10 per box = 30 boxes needed) (5,320 Zen per selection…ish)
* Epic Phoenix Token (7,000 Zen; but keep in mind, this is on average and not a guarantee)
If you bought the 3 lowest-priced options that also met or beat the average, you’d have only 3 of the 300 Lobi choices. Even then, the discount’s not great, I feel.
Why doesn’t the total match just buying 90 total Promo Boxes at a 30% discount? Because although 30 boxes separates as 7 4-packs and 2 singles (totaling 15,960 Zen), 90 of them (3 times as many) would be 21 4-packs and 6 singles (3 times as many of each). Well, with 4-for-1,000 bundles, getting 6 singles wastes Zen. So we convert a set of 4 singles into a 4-pack. That brings us to 22 4-packs and 2 singles for a 15,820 Zen total.
So you would save an equivalent of $10.70 buying 900 Lobi this way. However, you’d also miss out on 90 chances at a Promo Ship box and the R&D/DOFF packs you could re-sell for a bit of EC gain. I’d say that’s not worth saving ~$10, but you do what you feel is best.
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EDIT (7/12/2023): Recently, Cryptic lowered the price of R&D packs to 250 Zen per single pack or 8,000 Zen for a 4-pack. Under these numbers, then, during a Promo Pack sales event we have:
* Full price for 900 Lobi: 18,100 Zen
* Price at 25% discount: 13,576 Zen
* Price at 30% discount: 12,670 Zen
So upon further review, the 900 Lobi isn’t even worth the price of this particular Bundle (or any Bundle where “300x Lobi” is an option).
And now, back, to the me from early June. 🙂
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What if we had to get 1 of the 3 ships? Here’s what happens when we replace a 300 Lobi option with the Son’a Collector Science Dreadnought or an Epic Phoenix Token (same values, as I have it calculated, so personal preference here to go with an account-unlocked ship choice).
Again, the total doesn’t quite match the simple addition of all 3. 600 Lobi = 60 Promo Boxes, which is 15 4-packs straight up. That comes to 10,500 Zen at 30% off, so when added to the 7,000 for the Son’a or Epic Phoenix Token gets the 17,500 Zen total.
This discount comes out a bit better. We’re saving 2,750 Zen for a ~15.71% discount.
So what happens if we buy the 3 highest choices? The math is easy there: it’s the Son’a Collector Science Dreadnought and 2x Epic Phoenix Prize Tokens OR just 3x Epic Phoenix Prize Tokens. That would be 7,000 x 3 = 21,000 Zen total, resulting in a 6,250-Zen discount on the estimated Zen pricing, a ~29.76% discount when bought at 14,750 Zen.
MEGA BUNDLE = MEGA SAVINGS?
So we’ve seen what a Choice Pack selection of 3 items could do to get you to 14,750 Zen worth of value. Let’s look at what 30,000 Zen for the MEGA Bundle (1 of each choice) does.
…*someone whispers in his ear*…
What do you mean the Mega Bundle’s cheaper than past versions?
*more whispers*
Oh…okay. So because there are 7 options in this Bundle rather than 8, the price is slightly cheaper. You can get “As Seen in TNG”‘s MEGA Bundle for 50,000 Zen full price or 25,000 Zen at a 50% discount.
Can we get to 25,000 Zen from our best-case scenario pricings?
WELLLLLLLL….
I think we get a, “Yes, but,” from this.
Yes, you do get more than 25,000 Zen worth of stuff by getting the MEGA Bundle while it’s available for 25,00 Zen.
But I don’t think you save enough to make it worth grabbing the MEGA Bundle except if you wanted all 3 account-wide Lock Box/Lobi/Promo ships and the Epic Phoenix Prize Token. 4 choices would take 29,500 Zen to acquire; the MEGA Bundle costs 25,000. Unless you wanted multiples of the Lobi or Epic Phoenix Prize Token, I’d say the MEGA Bundle is your better choice.
The savings are minimal. Once I took a Marketing class, and I remember we were talking about discounts. We were taught the minimum discount people need to see to feel they’re saving anything is 10%. Well…coming in at 7.2% off, we don’t hit that. You’re saving nearly $20, but that 7.2% savings may not even pay the tax for this Zen.
THE WRENCH IN THE MACHINERY: 25% Zen Charge Bonus
So the first weekend this was out, this got paired with a 25% Zen Charge Bonus/Discount sale. This means the cash considerations would change. You see, to me, if a ship can be bought at close to traditional Z-Store pricing, it may be worth picking up as an account-wide unlock.
That’s kinda what we got going to a 25% Bonus/Discount rather than 20%.
Under a Zen Charge Bonus:
Under a Zen Discount:
If this becomes the new norm, it may make some older Mudd Choice Packs/MEGA Bundles much more worth it on a cost-per-ship basis.
ONE MORE PERSPECTIVE. ONE MIGHT SAY, A MORE CASUAL PERSPECTIVE?
Lately, CasualSAB, AKA Spencer, has been doing videos of his own about not just the price perspectives of Mudd Choice Packs/MEGA Bundles, but also on the meta impacts of the ships found in them. I’ll link to his overview of this Bundle, from where I’ve obtained some of the information in this and the previous post:
WHAT SAY THE AVERAGE JOE?
So…one thing I like to do is themed characters. Only 1 character really matches a Borg theme, and we see how cheaply that can be picked up.
I have one of the other Son’a ships account-wide unlocked from the “Secret Intel” Bundle (AKA “The Torpedo Beginner’s Bundle”, IMO), so I cold use the 2-piece bonus off the Son’a ship…but I believe they’re only useable on Son’a ships, and I don’t have the 3rd one account unlocked. That hurts my desire to get the Dreadnought.
If I’d bought the Picard Bundle, I’d give a more serious look at the Husnock Warship. But without account-wide access to the Miradorn Raider’s console, I don’t feel like grabbing the Husnock here on a possibility I’ll buy the Picard Bundle just for the Miradorn Raider.
Combined with secondary market values that don’t total up to 14,750 Zen for the ships, and I’ll give this a pass…for now. We’ve had some great hits: the Pilot-based one; Intel; Command; Into Darkness and Beyond, even! But we get a few low-lights: Faith of the Heart; the Carrier-based Bundle; and add “As Seen in TNG” to that list.
If you have interest in these ships on multiple characters, I don’t see why you don’t get it. You’d be out more Zen getting multiple copies of ships than if you bought this Choice Pack/MEGA Bundle.
But at only one ship use each? I think this is an easy pass. Just get the Keys or Promo Boxes and grab the ships you want.
Maybe…maybe…it’s worth it for the Epic Phoenix Prize Tokens, but that’s then up to you to figure out which 3 ships you want, or perhaps which 3 characters would each get the same ship.
GETTING SIRIUS THIS WEEK
*fingers crossed* that I’ll have the Sirius review done this week. The ship’s built, I just need a good testing methodology, record it, and type it all up. Maybe a week? Then it’s onto the Terran Styx!
Until then, take care, and enjoy Star Trek Online.
Joe and STO 