You nailed it with one specific point: “Testing”. It just doesn’t happen because the devs clearly think that they are exemplary coders despite an ever growing catalogue of player identified bugs, errors and inaccuracies that prove this not to be the case. The lackadaisical approach to QA and testing despite the never ending cock ups is nothing short of embarrassing. It shows a complete ambivalence and disregard for company reputation and integrity. A solid testing regime needs to be implemented before releasing more content because right now gems of war is becoming a standing joke.
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Epic Vault Keys definitely do not have a 10% chance of dropping in place of a regular vault key. If that was the case, we would see TONS of epic vault keys across all the playerbase, given that 10% is really not that low. I would say the chance is actually closer to 1%, if not lower, and that is only when a vault key drops from a gnome, not from vault keys from events or rewards mailed.
In the 86 vault runs I did post epic vaults, I received 1 epic vault key and 0 normal vault keys. Out of 930 gnomes killed pre-epic vaults (that’s 310 vault runs) I received a whopping 5 vault keys. That’s 0.54% for a gnome to drop a vault key.
Comparatively, in my drastically smaller number of runs post-epic vaults, I’ve gotten 1 epic vault key out of 258 gnomes killed – that’s 0.39%. Together however, that’s 1188 gnomes killed, with 5 regular vault keys and 1 epic vault key. BUT! I can’t do the statistics like that, because I have no way of knowing how many of those 5 vault keys would have been epic vault keys.
What I can say is that 6 / 1188 = 0.51%. So, I’d say the drop rate of vault keys has not changed. However, I would need a vastly higher sample size of runs done post-patch to see the ratio of vault keys to epic vault keys. For instance, seeing 1 epic vault out of 86 runs is fantastic, but I would expect over hundreds of more runs to see maybe no other epic vault keys and 2 or 3 more normal vault keys.
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Impossible to be sure…maybe its not a lie, maybe it is…
We have here a company working on the highest unethical video game concept that could exist: a free to play game with lootbox involving real money. So with that in mind, I wouldnt be so sure that its not a lie.
About these 10%, its clear it was more like 1% last Vault event. (this one dont look better apparently with what I heard and read so far) If I remember well, my guild averaged about 400 VK last Vault event and 2 members found an Epic VK.
A simple binomial probability calculator will indicate that the odds are
0,00000000000000001% for that to happen (yeah 16 numbers after the comma). On the other hand, with a probability of 1% to receive a EPV in place of a VK, there is 14% chance to receive 2 EPK out of 400 VKs. Thats much more in line with what we saw last Vault event.
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Day 1: 1500 trophies (739 battles). 65 gnomes. 5 vault keys. 0 epic keys.
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Friday 11th September 2020 (Battles: 1640)
Pitty Vault Keys: 7
Found Vault Keys: 15
Epic Vault Keys: 0
Treasure Gnome: 74
Soul Gnome: 25
Jewel Gnome: 17
Mecha Gnome: 16
Glory Gnome: 20
Daemon Gnome: 10
Total Gnomes: 162
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22 keys from Loot Gnomes.
0 Epic 
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Day 1:
Gnomes: 236
Found Vault Keys: 21
Pity Vault Keys: 9
Epic Vault Keys: 0
Between last Vault Event and day 1, guess my mood.
112 Treasure gnomes - 10 VK
41 Soul gnomes - 6 VK
25 Mech gnomes - 1 VK
23 Glory gnomes - 1 VK
21 Jewel gnomes - 2 VK
12 Daemon gnomes - 1 VK
2 I was looking away from the screen and didn’t pay attention to drops
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EDIT: Cumulative totals are posted later in this thread. If you’re here gathering data, ignore this post and use the later one instead.
Day 1:
Gnomes: 164
Key drops: 11
Epic key drops: 0
An additional 90 treasure gnomes from vaults not counted above
+over 300 gnomes last event that obviously don’t count here
This is around the time when people are deciding whether or not to buy the campaign pass. These vault weekends are utterly demoralizing; the rational and healthy thing to do is give up on the game and wait for it to be patched. People who nope out of the game aren’t going to buy that campaign pass.
Just mail everyone one epic vault key as compensation and we’ll call it even.
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100% correct
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They’ve managed to make me hate Vault Keys. When I see them, I just get mad that’s its not an Epic Vault Key.
You know what? I don’t even want an Epic Vault Key under most circumstances. EVK’s extra loot means absolutely nothing to me; there’s nothing exclusive inside, yet.
If they would kindly stop putting stupid RNG-based Achievements like using an Epic Vault Key, that would be greatly appreciated. No amount of skill is going to help me find this stupid EVK any faster.
I wouldn’t even have to be in this topic otherwise.
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I wonder how many vault events we have to keep data for before they finally admit something is wrong. Feel like I’m just wasting my time. I used to get excited when a vault key dropped but now it just makes me mad. Nice one devs. 10% my hairy ass.
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The problem is that achievements don’t carry over between mobile and steam. For example, I just found an epic vault key playing on mobile. Next time I log onto steam, it won’t show up.
Here are my stats for now:
655 games (only explore)
64 gnomes
5 vault keys
0 epic vault keys
So a gnome appears every ~10 games and drops a vault key once every ~13 times (~130 games). In my case, playing ~3 games/minute that means a vault key every ~44 minutes.
The best way to approach this is to just ignore the existence of epic keys. I’ve never been lucky with normal vault key drops and my luck with medals is worse still. I totally get that you feel that committed effort deserves the spoils of war but if you maintain that mindset you will just become more and more discouraged and more and more frustrated. Apart from the achievement, does anyone actually care about epic keys? Probably not; So why stress? My own view of gnome weekends is that the rewards are worth zero effort except for pet gnomes. So I take 3 days off apart from my dailies and do something more enjoyable. Keys, medals and other RNG determined rewards? I am past caring
Can a pet gnome actually drop a key? Don’t think so but if not, don’t forget to exclude them from the gnome counter when calculating key drop rates. Not that it’ll matter a lot but just saying.
On the same note, when you mention the number of games, exclude the non-gnome ones like events, dungeons, delves and pet rescues for example.
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All Loot Gnomes can drop keys.
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Are you sure? Where did you get the info? I never had a pet gnome dropping a key. Did you?
Not saying I don’t believe you but just wonder where you got the idea.
I’ve got vault keys from Pet Gnomes many times 
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You’ve had a looooooooooot of pet gnomes in your career then xD Anyone else here ever saw that happening?
Yes, I’ve had Vault keys drop from Pet Gnomes a few times during Vault weekends.
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