Interesting. My experience has been that in a pack of 50 gold keys (15,000 gold), I will typically get 1 to 3 gems. And even playing short, one or two minute maps, I will usually average over 1 gem per hunt. So for me, I get a lot more gems from maps.
Iām really looking for something more recorded, and something that incorporated load times into the mix. Per map is also much less important to me for the purposes of data gathering than per minute. Per minute must include the load time of the map and rewards screen for it to be comparable to my tests. The more in a row you can do, the better, because the random nature of treasure hunt rewards makes it much harder to pull out a steady number than with things like PvP and explore.
For example:
Note your start time.
Play x amount of maps, taking screenshots of every reward screen (or, collect tributes, take a screenshot of your total resources, play x maps, then take another screenshot again when you are stop playing)
Note your end time.
Preferably done for an extended period, like an hour, or multiple runs. If you collect tributes in between, make sure to note the amount so you can subtract it from your totals.
Iām interested in what is possible playing slowly/going for high score, trying to optimize resources per time, or just playing casually because it is the mode that you enjoy.
For example, for myself, I have recorded data and therefore can make solid claims to:
PvP - 80k+ gold, ~120-200 glory per hour (not counting revenges), 40+ traitstones (usually of a useless color like yellow)
OR
100k+ gold, ~150 glory per hour (not counting revenges), 60+ traitstones (usually of a useless color like yellow)
Explore - ~40-45k gold, ~80 traitstones (on average, four of a target arcane)
OR
~25-30k gold, ~45-50 traitstones (on average, 2-3 of a target arcane), 10-12k souls
Casual play (like using silly teams in PvP, doing warlord 4 explore, testing teams for other people, or just generally screwing around) will generally net about a half to a quarter of those numbers. Anything slower than a quarter of that is usually just too slow pacing wise for me to keep up, regardless of the rewards.
Note this is coming from an now āendgameā player (just finished 5*ing my last two kingdoms, aside from Blackhawk) with a VIP 7. Actually, why do things like VIP and armor not affect treasure hunt rewards? This still wouldnāt draw me in, but Iām sure it is at least part of the reward imbalance for some of the mid level players.
As for gold keys to gems/glory, over thousands of keys Iāve measured that youāll get about 0.6 glory and 0.015 gems per gold key opened. If you donāt have any gold keys and choose to spend your gold this way, youāll generally only get about 60 glory and 1.5 gems per 30k spent (along with about 18 minor stones, which will likely be 0-3 of the one you actually want, and about 80 raw souls plus whatever you can disenchant). If this is your method for obtaining gems, youād have to spend over 900k gold on average to obtain enough gems to open a single VIP chest - which is basically throwing your money away, especially now since legendary tasks exist. However, that doesnāt make the returns for treasure hunt automatically āgoodā by comparison.
Thanks for the responses, everyone.
Itās interesting that you hear blanket claims like maps are good for glory, or keys, or whatever. I always feel itās just the opposite: there are blanket claims that maps are just not worth doing, and thatās what scare people off. Suffice it to say that I wouldnāt be doing the maps if I truly thought the rewards were pitifully low, but I agree, having some concrete numbers sure would help.
Below is what I came up with from an hourās worth of maps.
First, a few things to bear in mind. I personally would not, under normal circumstances, play maps for a solid hour. I agree with some that they become a bit monotonous after a while. But I think the same is true of any game mode. I donāt think maps are meant as a replacement for anything, but rather as a supplement to whatās already available in the game, and to me at least, they provide a nice break from the endless slog of PvP or Explore battles. I personally am not a huge PvP guy (but I am playing it way more than I normally would because I know the guild update is coming and so I have managed 842 trophies so far this week), but I do love Explore, so suffice it to say that while I am on the map bandwagon, itās by no means the only mode I play.
Second, I am definitely not an expert at maps. My high is 204 moves. Not horrible, but certainly not great. But usually I donāt play maps with the mindset of trying to get as many moves in as possible. Itās usually about quick, decisive moves. I will take 4 or 5 matches if I see them, and I will level up the chests as high as I can (for example, I donāt stop at brown or green chests, though I would consider doing this if glory was my main target). For this hour of play, I would say I moved maybe faster than I typically would (itās usually more of a quick but relaxing thing for me rather than a frantic thing), so the quantity of games was increased but maybe not the quality of rewards. Itās tough to say how representative this isā¦an hourās worth of maps is probably not enough to give a definitive results set given the random nature of the rewards, but this is what I came up with:
Games: 22
Gold: 14,304
Souls: 1,390
Glory: 292
Gem Keys: 0
Glory Keys: 16
Gems: 28
Traitstones: 39 total (including 1 Arcane {not typical} and 3 Runics)
My highest number of moves in a single map was 85, and my lowest was 16. I got 2 vaults during the course of play, one which gave me 6 glory keys and the other which gave me 40 glory. 57 glory was my single highest total, as was 4 gems (in 3 separate games). I didnāt keep track of individual highs for gold or souls. So yeah. Maybe not amazing numbers, but IMO, nothing to scoff at either, particularly in terms of glory, glory keys, and gems.
Iām really impressed with your numbers, Mithran! I donāt feel like I make anywhere close to that much gold in PvP. Iām a level 1,000 player and itās extremely rare that I come across somebody that has a base worth of 1,000+ gold, so even wearing Dragon Armor and factoring in bonus gold for 4 or 5 matches I probably average 1,800 per 3-trophy match, so 80,000+ per hour seems way out of my league!
Thanks again for the feedback. Again, it was just a curiosity thing. No right or wrong answers.
My experience is that short map runs yield zero gems, pretty much without fail. The only way to reliably get gems is to extend the game, which in turn eats up time that I could be playing PVP. Iām an endgame player and Iād say my average hard match nets about 2200 gold. The difference is that I can literally fly through them anymore.
First off, thank you for taking the time to actually record some data. Iāve heard a lot of claims on both sides of the fence on this, and while it is not definitive, its still a step.
As it stands, while you have the old task system, Iām pretty sure it is more effective reward wise to farm gold and just do the normal gems/keys/token task cycle. Youād only need a third of your guildās roster farming half as fast as I do (40k gold per person per hour, or 26k extra gold per person per hour, or 260k total more per hour) to churn out more glory keys and gems per hour (30 gems, 36 keys) for your entire guild than if the entire guild did treasure hunt for themselves at this pace. Of course, I still urge everyone to play what they find fun rather than just maxing out their reward ratio, but the reward ratio is pretty objectively bad past a certain point.
Under the new task system, things are a bit harder to gauge. The relative āpriceā of glory keys has overall gone up about 300%, and the amount available has plummeted. However, glory keys are still generally pretty useless to a long term established player. Iāve expounded on the uselessness of glory keys multiple times over, especially at end game, so Iāll spare the entire spiel here, except to say that 16 is about a tenth of the minimum amount likely to make any sort of āprogressā with if you are after legendaries, and about a hundredth of the amount you need if you are just looking for extra copies for the small portion of your collection that you still need to ascend. And despite treasure hunt being pretty much the only game in town for gems, theres not a whole lot you could do with those, either. The glory (both from this and PvP battles) is nice at midgame, but by endgame dwarfed by the amounts obtained from other sources, like collecting tributes. The souls and gold numbers are the really low ones, but since you go for high value chests, this is not surprising. If armor and VIP affected gold/souls, though, these total numbers would seem to be a bit more in line with what is available in other areas, at least. If I got similar to these numbers, Iād be robbing my guild out of hundreds of thousands of gold regardless of which other mode I was playing by the time I earned enough gems or keys to get anything significant.
As far as multi-maps go, the amount of maps I need to spend to activate it is actually largely irrelevant but the reward modifier would have to be huge to get me to play something I donāt particularly enjoy in the first place. Especially looking at these numbers. Also, it couldnāt hurt for the rewards to be a bit more consistent, especially for the higher value chests.
All that being said, Iād still love to earn 28 gems and 16 glory keys an hourā¦ playing any mode where I can use my own troops and skill bonuses. And also assuming that I get at least comparable gold to explore.
My gold bonus is 2.5x due to VIP and armor. My minimum gold opponent offered is always worth 789+ gold base. Max opponent is usually between 800 gold, and 1300 gold. Average game time is ~90 seconds on a āhardā battle, and ~65 seconds for the āeasyā battle, counting load and reward screens. Play is a lot faster in general on PC, both because things happen faster and because mouse is much faster to swap gems than the controller. Like I said, I generally donāt play at this pace, but I have maintained it for an hour at a time on multiple occasions. If I use stuff like my Black Beast team, Iām more likely to take about 2-3 minutes (or occasionally 5, if I try to use it while facing gorgotha) or use a challenge team with the weekly troops I might take around 5-7 minutes (but usually I wont keep it up too long if it does).