Today’s Easter Flash Offer is 750 Gems and 8 Vault Keys for $15. That’s 50 gems per $1, which is the highest the game ever offers (unless maybe you’re at VIP 20 and they have an additional bonus, then maybe the $100 would be higher, but I can’t verify that).
So already the 50 gems per $1 is a pretty good deal, but you’ll also get the 8 vault keys, which is .53 keys per dollar. The normal offers on Vault weekends are 0.5 keys per dollar (100 gems and a vault key for $2 with 8 in stock, so you’re getting the same deal here except it costs $1 less but you have to buy all 8 at once).
The highest vault key offer they’ve done is 50 gems and 3 vault keys for $2, 5 in stock, which is only 25 gems per $1, but 1.5 vault keys per $1, which is 3x higher than other offers. But what exactly is a vault key worth?
I just so happen to have recorded my own rewards from 276 vault runs. That’s 828 gnomes and 276 Cedrics that I’ve killed. And the first thing I want to make clear is that vault difficulty does not affect rewards from gnomes and cedric at all. Always run it on the easiest. On to the data…
Gold
Out of 828 gnomes killed, gold was a reward 286 times, or 34.5%. The possible amounts you can get are 2.5k, 4k, 6k, 10k, 20k, 30k, and 50k. The most common reward is 2500 48% of the time, then 29% for $4k, and it drops down from there. ~75% of the time when gold drops from a gnome, it will be between 2.5k and 4k. I say 75% even though 48 and 29 are 77% because these numbers are clearly not perfect, I would need thousands more runs to get an accurate number.
Overall though, from a single gnome, your chances of seeing 2500 gold is ~17%, 10% for 4000 gold, 3% for 6k, 2% for 10k, 2% for 20k, 1% for 30k, and 0.5% for 50k.
Cedric can only drop 60k gold. Out of 276 kills, he’s dropped gold 24 times for me. That’s 8.7%. And in a single vault run, your chances of seeing at least one gold reward from any of the gnomes is around 70%.
Gems
Gems come in two tiers from gnomes: 5 and 20, and two from cedric: 100 and 250. Gems dropped from at least one gnome 34% of the time. Overall, your chances of getting a gem reward from any gnome is ~12%. Of that, 90% of the time it’s going to be 5 gems, and the other 10% it will be 20 gems.
From Cedric, gems drop about 5% of the time. 70% of those drops will be 100 gems, and 30% will be 250 gems. Your odds of getting 250 gems from Cedric are around 1.5%, and around 3.5% for 100 gems.
Gem Keys
Gem Keys come in either 1 or 4 amounts from gnomes and 20 from Cedric. You’ll see at least 1 gem key about 12% of runs. Around 5.7% of gnome rewards will be 1 gem key, and 3.7% will be 4 gem keys. From Cedric you’ll get 20 gem keys around 3.3% of the time.
Event Keys
Event Keys come in 1 and 3, and 15 from Cedric, and in a direct flip of gem keys, you’re actually more likely to get 3 event keys (61% of the time when event keys drop from a gnome) than you are 1 event key (39%), vs gem keys (60^ of the time it’s 1 key and 40% 4 keys). Odds of seeing at least one event key reward from any run is about 11%, slightly less than gem keys. From Cedric it’s around 4%.
Vault Keys
Yes, you can get vault keys from the gnomes. It’s pretty rare though. Out of the 828 gnomes I’ve killed, I’ve only gotten 5 vault keys. That’s 0.6% of the rewards. However, your odds of seeing at least 1 vault key is slightly higher (because there are 3 gnomes per vault key), bumping my actual chances of seeing at least one vault key reward to 1.81% of my runs (5 keys divided by 276 runs). Cedric does not drop Vault Keys, FYI.
Diamonds
You’ll see at least one diamond reward 24% of the time. Diamonds drop in amounts of 2 or 5. 70% of the time it will be 2, 30% 5. Cedric also drops Diamonds, around 3.6% chance, and he only drops 50 diamonds at a time.
Other Rewards
You can get Souls, Minor Traitstones, and Celestial Traitstones. You’ll see Souls as a reward about 43% of the time, minor traitstones around 27%, and celestial traitstones around 3%. Also, don’t try to add up those amounts and get 100%, because you won’t get it. These are the odds of seeing at least one gnome drop that reward. There are three gnomes, so the chances of seeing a specific reward at least once and adding them all together won’t give you 100%. So while your chances of getting at minor traitstones as a reward is indeed 27%, the actual overall percentage for minor traitstones is 9.4%. That means in 276 runs, minor traitstones showed up in 74 of them. But there are 828 gnomes across those 276 runs, and the total number of minor traitstone rewards was only 78. Yes, that does mean unfortunately that in some runs, I got double minor traitstones. Bad times.
Celestial traitstones are pretty rare, around 1% of all rewards, but they come in a pack of 3.
Cedric can’t drop Minor or Celestial traitstones, but he can drop Souls. However, it’s pretty rare, around 3% of the time, and it comes in a reward of 2500.
Minor and Major Orbs
These only drop from Cedric. Your chances of getting a Minor Orb from Cedric is around 22%, and around 19% for a Major Orb.
When a minor orb drops, ~39% of the time it will be a Growth orb, ~21% Wisdom, ~31% Clans, and 9% Ascension. Your odds of getting a Minor Orb of Ascension from Cedric is around 1.8%
For Major Orbs, Growth is ~29%, Wisdom 26%, Clans 37%, and Ascension 8%. Odds of getting a Major Orb of Ascension from Cedric is around 1.4%.
Troops
The last thing Cedric can drop is troops. You’ll see a troop about 31% of the time. However, I’m not even going to bother with the odds for each troop, even though I’ve tracked it, because they’ve added troops like Glory Gnome and Mecha Gnome in that were not there when I started this.
My BEST guess though based on my data is that each troop has a 10% chance to drop, except for Cedric Sparklesack himself, which drops about 30% of the time (when a troop drops).
Conclusions
Now that we know all the reward odds, what’s a Vault Key really worth? We know we’re going to see some kind of gold reward with a very high consistency, and 90% of the time, that reward is going to be between 2.5k and 10k. You should also brace yourself for seeing souls as a reward just under half the time. But you should also realize that things like gems and diamonds drop at a fairly high frequency. So when you buy a vault key, keep in mind that you are basically purchasing: the gems that come with the vault key, AND the gems and gold, on average, that come from the vault key itself. So your actual gems per dollar spent will most likely be higher because of rewards from the vault. That makes vault keys a pretty good buy!
Some of my best and worst vault runs
- 250 Gems, 50k and 2.5k gold, and 100 souls
- 250 Gems, 4k and 2.5k gold, and 5 gems
- 250 Gems, 10k and 2.5k gold, 1 gem key
- Major Orb of Ascension, 4k and 2.5k gold, 3 Event Keys
- 50 Diamonds, 20k and 2.5k gold, and 5 gems
And the worst…
- 2 Minor Magic Traitstones, 2 Minor Magic Traitstones, 100 souls, Minor Orb of Growth
- 2 Minor Fire Traitstones, 100 souls, 100 souls, Minor Orb of Growth