Making Black Lion Chests salvageable.

[TheQuickFox.3826]

This is the LockPicking Lawyer and what I have for you today is a Black Lion chest. These chests are very pupular and can be found all over Tyria. However keys are quite rare and there is where ArenaNet's business model comes in. Additional keys can be bought in the gem store. The locks each all have an unique pinning so the idea is that you need an unique key for each chest. The chests seem to be quite well made and cannot be salvaged by any salvage tools available. At least not in a reasonable time. The core of the lock does not seem to be drill resistant but that is not a problem because the electric drill has yet to be invented. let's see what it takes to get this one open. I'm going to use bottom-of-the-keyway tension with a thick wiper insert and a standard hook in 25 thousands.

 

Nothing on one.

Click on two.

Click on three.

Nothing on four.

And a click out of five.

That should just leave one and four.

Click out of one.

Click out of four and we got this open.

 

With five standard pins we should be able to rake this open as well. Let's give that a try. (Click)

Let's try this again to make sure it's not a fluke. Just a very light rake over the pins and it is open.

 

Okay folks, with half of ArenaNet's revenue relying on these locks, I would have expected better pick resistance. The addition of a few security pins would at least discourage a low-skill attack like raking. But apparently players just keep buying keys anyway.

In any case, that's all I have for today. Have a nice day.

 

😉

[Danikat.8537]

I agree with the people saying Anet probably want the chests to be cheap. The point of black lion chests dropping isn't to be a reward in their own right but to act as an advert and/or incentive for buying keys.

Firstly (as other people have said) they'll want to keep the additional barriers to using keys as low as possible. They charge for the keys of course because that's ultimately the point of the whole system for Anet, but they don't want players to be discouraged by the additional cost of the chests. (Also if it got to the point where it was more profitable to salvage chests than open them a lot of people would stop buying keys all together.)

Secondly as we know from topics about other worthless/useless items a lot of players don't like deleting items even if they don't want or need it and can't sell it. It wouldn't surprise me if chests being too cheap to be worth selling encourages some players to buy keys just so they can do something with the chest rather than delete it or leave it clogging up the bank.

If they ever did make them salvagable it would probably be for very cheap and common materials, not something that's ever going to be in high demand but I'm pretty sure Anet would rather chests be worthless on their own so players delete the excess or buy keys just to be able to do something with them rather than give them any use that doesn't involve buying keys.

[kharmin.7683]

10 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I agree with the people saying Anet probably want the chests to be cheap. The point of black lion chests dropping isn't to be a reward in their own right but to act as an advert and/or incentive for buying keys.

 

Exactly, and they've even adjusted the drop rate on BLC, too.  Previously, they were fetching a much higher price due to lower supply.  I used to hoard stacks of them to make gold, but now it's no longer worth doing.

[Danikat.8537]

I've just looked it up and chests were worth less than 1s until April 2015, then went up to 1-3s until January 2016 when it dropped below 1s again. I'm not sure why that happened but the price really took off in mid-2017 which is when they started doing seasonal themed chests with exclusive items. It peaked around 10s in 2019 and has been dropping slowly since then, but that makes me think if Anet did want to raise the value of chests they're more likely to change how the drops work again rather than giving the chests themselves a secondary value.

[kharmin.7683]

56 minutes ago, Danikat.8537 said:

 It peaked around 10s in 2019 and has been dropping slowly since then, but that makes me think if Anet did want to raise the value of chests they're more likely to change how the drops work again rather than giving the chests themselves a secondary value.

My conspiracy theory is that Anet adjusted the drop rate due to COVID thinking that many more players would be online and hopefully more chest drops would encourage key sales.  I don't think Anet wants the chests to have a high "resale" value; rather, they want to have more chests available so that players would feel more need to purchase keys.  /shrug

[Danikat.8537]

6 minutes ago, kharmin.7683 said:

My conspiracy theory is that Anet adjusted the drop rate due to COVID thinking that many more players would be online and hopefully more chest drops would encourage key sales.  I don't think Anet wants the chests to have a high "resale" value; rather, they want to have more chests available so that players would feel more need to purchase keys.  /shrug

I don't think that works because the price has been dropping since at least September 2019 (the peak was April 2019, but from April - September it was fluctuating rather than consistently dropping). The first known covid case was in December 2019 and as far as I remember western countries didn't start putting restrictions in place until about March 2020.

There was a slightly more rapid drop in price from March - June 2020, but given the price varies from month to month that could be explained by a couple of less popular exclusive items combined with more people spending more time online increasing chest drops.

[Khisanth.2948]

4 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

I'm not sure why that happened but the price really took off in mid-2017 which is when they started doing seasonal themed chests with exclusive items.

End of 2017 not mid. Specifically Dec 12, 2017.

Which coincides with ...

 

Quote

Bank Access Express, Merchant Express, and Trading Post Expresss were offered from the Halloween 2016 in the common "Progression" slot until the 2017 Wintersday release replaced them. Additionally, the Black Lion Booster and Mystic Forge Stones added to replace Tomes of Knowledge and Unidentified Dyes during One Path Ends were also removed due to the Black Lion Chest being reworked again and having the common drops containing more valuable items.

That also seem to be the patch when a BLC weapon set got added to the uncommon category.

September 16, 2019 was when BLC prices started trending down while supply started trending up. The volume traded seem more or less the same so the drop rate was probably increased.

On the other hand personally it feels like I've been getting much fewer BLC drops. I used to have to clear them from my bank stack periodically.