Paladins OB64 Chest Math (You Need A Lot)

Picture courtesy of Hi-Rez's Paladins OB Patch 64.

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A New Card System

​Hi-Rez Studios has received a lot of backlash over the latest iteration of their game, Paladins. Open Beta 64 (OB64) has introduced a new card loadout system to replace the old one. The new system can be summarized as such:

1. Every champion has all cards (including legendary cards) unlocked by default.
2. Each card comes with a level, and starts out at level 1 base. 
3. Each card can be leveled up to level 10. 
4. The higher a card's level, the better its stats/effect.
5. To level up a card, a player must obtain duplicates of that card. Once enough duplicates are obtained, the card levels up.
6. Duplicates of cards are obtained from chests. (Radiant Chests, and Champion Chests.)

The reason Hi-Rez is getting the EA treatment is because cards are only obtainable through chests, by chance. That means you're not allowed to buy the card you want: you have to purchase chests and hope you get lucky enough to find the card you want. And of course, people with more chests (and more money) will hold an advantage over those with less, since chests = high leveled cards. (This is true fo "Quick Play", not Competitive mode.)

This means that even though we'd like to use a certain loadout (set of cards), because of the levels of our cards, it may be better to use a different set of cards; so our playstyle is defined by whichever cards we have leveled the most, which is all up to chance.

But how many chests does it take to level up all cards to 10, so that we can just play what we want? Let's do some math to find out.

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How Many Chests Does It Take?

Let's assume we're a new player, meaning we have all level 1 cards.

Here is a chart defining the number of duplicates a player needs to level up each card (chart source linked here):

​To level a common card to level 10 requires 50 duplicates.
To level a rare card to level 10 requires 32 duplicates.
To level a epic card to level 10 requires 15 duplicates.
To level a legendary card to level 10 requires 10 duplicates.

Each champion has 8 common cards, 5 rare cards, 3 epic cards, and 4 legendary. 

That means each champion needs (8*50) + (5*32) + (3*15) + (4*10) = 645 duplicates. 

Oh yeah, there are currently 34 champions in the game. So for all 34 champions, we'd need (34*645) = 21,930 duplicates.

That's a lot of duplicates. If we don't use a booster, then we get 4 items per Radiant Chest, meaning in an absolute perfect world, a Free To Play player needs 5483 Radiant Chests to get every card to level 10. 

If we do use a booster, then we get 4 items per Radiant Chest, meaning in a perfect world we need 4386 boosted Radiant Chests to get every card to level 10.

Champion Chests give 5 cards per champion (although legendaries have a much lower drop rate, compared to being able to guarantee one by using a Legendary Keyed Radiant Chest). In a perfect world, we'd need to open 4386 Champion Chests to get all cards to level 10. 

Again, these are ideal conditions where we never get a useless card (AKA, a duplicate after the card reaches level 10), and we don't get skins or anything else that come in chests. ​

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