Just did a Key 8 - highest one I've done. I got 777 ped hof. As the cost isn't listed on the thread, my rough estimate is that I lost around 200 peds on this. Pretty crappy - I don't think I'll try that anytime soon - or ever again... *fart*
Really? Did you get anything interesting in the HoF to make up the gap? That you got a HoF at all should be some consolation....I haven't seen those swirlies in a very long time....
I got eye oil which I was able to get 6 ped in mark up from and then about 210TT in arkoins. There was a MF chip that was TT food. I've been on Calypso and have been seeing people hof all the time from Keys 7,8,9 all the time. Yea I recognize it could have been worse, but it seems like if you do not loot an item that has markup, running keys is an auto-matic big loss. Thanks for the reply.
Just make sure those chips aren't UL before you TT them... When I do the keys now, I kill the minimum number of mobs required... I get higher TT returns that way, and more stable.
I haven't done a ton of keys and not many at all over 5's but I noticed mainly you get ammo usage back on avg. Cost of key and decays are all loss every run. I make the keys I run myself so that cost isn't as bad as buying them but still hurts taking it in the rear to make them and then again to run them. Balance over all took another hit about 3 months ago with all the events all the time. Its summer the in game population is down so sell off some stuff by deeds to sit on and come back near Halloween usually by then the collective MA head starts to slip from the collective MA ass and things wake back up again.
You can't complain about a loss on 1 key. Do 100 keys and see what you get. Remember the game.is designed for an overall loss of 10% TT value. Use market value wisely when selling. That 10% pays the wages at MindArk. You may be lucky and loot some nice armour.
Keys have noticeably lower average return than open world activities (hunting, mining, crafting). That's an old issue and was never solved. Might be intentional - there is also significantly higher chance to loot UL items with very high MU.
Aakas Keys, Hell Keys and Beacons all have capped TT return. You will get 70-80% TT return on all of them, save for very rare boosted keys (in the order of one boosted key per several hundred to a few thousand run). I and many others have run hundreds of keys and have very accurate data. This is not a case of oh you just didn't run enough. Average TT return on key style instances is purposely put at around 75% TT return. These instances are a different style of balancing. You are trading a lower TT return for a higher chance at unL/high MU items. I am very much against this style of balancing because it is not sustainable. Just because someone loses a bunch of ped looting something does not give it value. The sale price of looted items/MU components will very quickly drop to below the cost to loot and then the instanced areas will die off. Just as we are seeing with Aakas/Golden/Hell keys. MA has decided to go this direction with them and I doubt they will change their minds
The point of doing keys is doing more than one.... and more than two. Run 6-7 keys and your chances of looting something nice are high. The higher the cost the higher the bankroll required, that's a golden rule of this game.
Thanks for the great responses to the thread - with Svena in particular. Yea I mean I have no expectation that I will run one key and just bank off it - if that were so then everyone would be running them 24/7. I was just pointing out my experience with the highest level key I had run. If you say run it 6-7 times to increase odds to look a high mu item, then it starts to not be even worth it. Lose 200+ peds 7 times and maybe you get an item worth 10k. Not really worth it - it's still cool to try. I've gotten some golden parts in the past that paid for the run easily. If Arkoins had higher demand that would help too. I'm not complain I'm just sayin lol!
Look in the la6 forum and look at the raw data thread. I summarized my observations and the returns of all key runs I did on my journey to an la.
Ive lost loads on keys but the way I see it is to think of it like a mob that you kill for the cost of the key + ammo. (key 10 say 1k+) You get loss a lot because its such a high cost to kill, to average you need to do a lot of them. (think of mul elites on caly) I got dune raider recently and had done a good few keys. it will average out eventually try running them in teams with a good few and if your luck is with you then you get stuff.
This is correct. Killing them all means higher tt of loot.. so u get more of what will already drop.. coins.. oil.. etc. TT return % might be roughly the same (minus decay) but that means the ped loss spread gets worse.
Svena hit the nail on the head. i too have ran literally hundreds of keys in order to get parts to craft the golden key. I have NEVER broke even on tt ( as svena said you need a boosted key which is literally 1/1000). Its all a huge tt loss on the hope that you get something nice and UL . The dune and sandstormer have already tumbled in price, as have most of the golden key parts themselves. on average you might get a part 1 in 15 runs . so for even a key 5 ( about 80 ped loss per run) you are looking at 1k ped to get 1 part. To buy this part is maybe only 200-300 ped but because of this fact already prices have fallen too low. so for those who are dead set on running the golden there is simply not even an option to buy the needed parts as literally no one runs these anymore. totally agree with svena , its a pretty dire situation.
Ive been holding at 40% or more loss for over a year now, not that im complaining, but if game is designed for 10% loss then my version is bugged... I do get hof's but always in team, and when this happens the major chunk of the hof splits out to all the rest. But when solo on big mobs, never see hofs of decent size. Even after big long cycles. As for Keys my return is so much better then if I hunt regular at the same amount of ammo, so imo keys are more then great its alot less loose.
