As a PS4 player I understand the next update is not too far away (if anyone has a date I’d be appreciative of the intel!) , and in waiting I’ve stockpiled 100 Iron Keys; as from what I understand, after the update each Iron Key will be exchanged for 1 Gold Key and 2 Glory Keys. Which I thought sounds to be very fair!
However, after reading some complaints from PC / Mobile users I’m now unsure whether to use the keys now, before the update hits, or wait until the keys are exchanged. So I thought I’d be humble and ask for advice.
Thanks in advance!
First, its 2 Gold Keys and 1 Glory Key - the rough equivalent of 2 Commons and 1 Rare+.
(A Magic Key is 2 Gold Keys and 1 Gem Key)
Advantages of 1.0.7 Keys:
The ‘Commons’ of Iron Keys can potentially be higher value troops, while Gold Keys can only do Commons and Rares.
If you really really want troops for ascending in 1.0.8, Iron Keys will net you more troops due to Gold/Glory Keys also containing traitstones (30%?) and resources sometimes.
Advantages of 1.0.8 Keys:
Can open them en masse.
Can get traitstones.
Gem Keys supposedly have a higher chance overall of getting high-quality troops than Magic Keys.
It really comes down to whether you want traitstones or whether you want a headstart on ascending troops. My stats from the Steam/Mobile release of 1.0.8 seem to indicate that about 30% of troops are replaced by traitstones of equal value.
If you want more info on the traits and the troops, you should go see the Wiki: Gems of War Wikia | Fandom
Then, as @Shimrra said, it depends if you want to traits or troops.
One way or another, you will be short of cards and traits… I had 3500+ iron keys and 500+ gold ones and 3000 gems, and I’m still far away from maxing all my troops, months after the update.
I think it depends how far along you already are. Current build is better for troops whereas upcoming build is better for traits. If you are missing a lot of legendaries and/or copies of strong troops, then I’d say spend them now. If you’re pretty filled out in terms of troops then definitely wait.
Thanks for the advice guys! I have since learned that the update for XBOX ONE and PS4 won’t hit until early April.
So I’ve decided to open them all now, and try to save up 500 gems for Celestial Armour in the meantime, whilst building up more Iron Keys for said update.
I found out the info here:
The forum page is actually about the December update, but some confusion causes a Pipeworks Community member to talk about the next update.
Do you already have the Dragon Armor? The Dragon Armor is definitely superior to the Celestial Armor, especially with 1.0.8 where gold becomes much more needed.
I open 20-30 keys per day and save the rest. Already 610 iron keys, 160 magic keys, 700+ gems and enough troops to upgrade them all to epic or higher… Don’t wanna wait another 4-6 weeks
Use all your magic keys, but keep all the iron keys. Gold and glory keys that iron keys form can drop things like gold, souls, and glory. It will also get a head start at the thousands of traitstones needed to trait anything. The reason you use all the magic keys is to have more ultra-rare+ troops and because the epic and legend drop rate is better from a magic key then that of 1 gem key + 2 gold keys. A magic key is basically 3 gem keys. The only difference is that a magic key is 3x the chance of an iron whereas a gem key is 4x the chance of a glory. That 4x chance is extremely small considering a magic key has 3 3x chances.
As a counterargument, consider the number of battles you would need to upgrade everything. There’s no cap on gold earned per PVP battle (though there is a limit on gold earned in-match, the amount of gold your opponent offers does not have a limit). There is, however, a hard limit of 40 souls per match, before bonuses. I am close to level 10 on all of my kingdoms, but nowhere near the level cap for the vast majority of my troops. And that is with Valkyrie in my PVP team and Celestial Armor.
@Tacet - your numbers don’t seem quite correct to me.
Magic Keys and Gem Keys have very similar drop rates for Legendary, Epic, and UR troops. Gem keys ARE slightly lower - because they have a 20% chance of dropping a traitstone. But those are guaranteed to be runic or better traitstones… so very much worthwhile!
Glory keys have a very low chance of dropping a Legendary troop. But they have a pretty decent chance of dropping other things.
So if ALL you care about is legendaries, then the magic key is very very slightly better. But in terms of overall return, the 3 keys are MUCH more value. You can’t just look at the highest-rarity thing dropped, you really need to consider the full value of everything you get.
If you used 100 magic keys, you’d probably get about
6 legendaries
25 epics
69 UR characters
200 Rare characters
If you opened 100 gem keys and 200 glory keys, you’d probably get:
5 legendaries
18 epics
101 UR characters
116 rare characters
30 major traitstones
26 runic traitstones
2 arcane / celestial traitstones
I think the extra stuff nicely makes up for the small decrease in legendary & epic characters.
Yes 100 gem keys + 200 glory keys would be better than 100 magic keys. If Playstation/XBox has the same conversion though, each magic key is 1 gem key and 2 gold keys.
There was a whole thread about this a month or so ago where I posed the question. You should go check it out. Dragon Armor is better for a variety of reasons.
Found the thread. The arguments in favor of Dragon over Celestial seemed to boil down to “you’ll get your kingdoms to level 10 faster”, “you don’t really need to get your troops to level 20”, and “you’ll have more gold to contribute toward guild tasks (with an implication that you will earn your guild’s required weekly contribution in fewer PVP matches)”.
My claim – addressing point 2 – is that I do want to get all my troops to level 19: double tribute chance on all twenty kingdoms is a sweet sweet prize. In doing so I will need a heck of a lot more battles’ worth of souls than I will battles’ worth of gold. Once I do get all of my kingdoms to level 10 (and a 122,500-gold buffer for the next kingdom to come out), there’s nothing for me to spend gold on except guild tasks anyway – which affects point 3. So why bother getting Dragon Armor when I know I will need more souls eventually? As for speed, well, I guess I would rather have the 50+ gem keys’ worth of troops than reach the kingdom level max 28.5% faster (which, admittedly, is a much bigger difference than I was expecting it to be when I sat down to do the math).
