Yes! Potions do work: My results with the Brilliant Alchemy Potion

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(Edited)

Yesterday, I finished 500 charges of the Brilliant Alchemy Potions. And the results are in. Yes, the potions do work. At least the Brilliant Alchemy Potions worked, for me... kind of.


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Introduction

When potions were introduced in the game, the big question on everyone's mind was whether they were worth the expense. After all, they are pricey. The Brilliant Alchemy Potions cost 25,000 DECs or about 58.25 STEEM (with 1 DEC = STEEMP 0.00233), while the Brilliant Legendary Potions cost 20,000 DECs or about 46.60 STEEM. And with so many other cool items to spend your DECs on like orbs, Beta Packs (via Steem-Engine.com), and even high-value @steemmonsters upvotes, players can't just play fast and loose with their hard-earned DECs.

So, in an effort to give other players a picture of what 500 Charges of these potions could look like, here's my case results for using the 100% Brilliant Alchemy Potions.


Brilliant Alchemy Potions or Brilliant Legendary Potions?

Since I didn't have enough DECs to purchase both the Brilliant Legendary and Brilliant Alchemy Potions I had to choose one. In this case, I settled on getting the Alchemy Potion to give myself a 100% increase in my chances of getting a gold card. This is because based on the current drop rates and the prices of Gold Foil vs. Regular Foil cards, the Alchemy Potion can potentially yield better returns.

Better Drop Rates. The drop rates for a Legendary card is 0.8%. Doubled with a Brilliant Legendary Potion, that will just give me, at most, a 1.6% chance of a Legendary Drop. On the other hand, every card opened has a 2% chance of turning into a Gold Foil. This means that with a Brilliant Alchemy Potion, my chances of getting a Gold Foil goes up to 4%. Though small, this means the Alchemy Potions have a bigger impact on drop rates than the Legendary Potions.

Higher Card Values. Based purely on their DEC Values, Gold Foil Cards, with the exception of the Common Gold Foils are always worth more than the Regular Foil Legendary Cards. So, based on their DEC values, assuming both potions can yield the same amount of drops, the Gold Foil Cards will be worth more, on average, than Regular Foil Legendary Cards, even if we don't consider the value of the Gold Legendaries.

Screen Shot 20190618 at 9.29.21 PM.png

With that said, and because I can only afford one potion, I decided to go with the Alchemy Potion over the Legendary Potion.


500 Cards Opened

Now for the results. The 500 Charges of the Brilliant Alchemy Potion lasted me about an entire season. Here, I managed to open a total of 500. Of the 500 cards, 74.8% were Rewards Cards, 22.2% were Promo Cards from Prbs, and 3% were Beta Cards.

Here's a more specific breakdown:

  • 4 Rewards Cards from 4 Days of Mystery Prizes
  • 15 Beta Cards from 3 Beta Packs
  • 170 Rewards Cards from 13 Daily Quests
  • 111 Promo Cards from 22.2 Orbs
  • 200 Rewards Cards from 2 Battle Seasons

Surprisingly, the potions were applied to the daily Mystery Prize reveal whenever the Daily Mystery Prize is a Reward Card. Also, it is worth mentioning that the last charge from the potion was used on part of an Orb opening, which is why there were 111 Promo Cards opened from 22.2 Orbs.


25 Gold Foil Drops

Out of the 500 Charges / 500 Cards opened, I got a total of 25 Gold Foil Cards in all four rarities. That means 5.0% of all cards opened resulted in a Gold Foil. This is within the ballpark of my expectations since the Brilliant Alchemy Potion was supposed to double the drop rate of Gold Foils from 2% to 4%.

Here are the notable cards from the Gold Foil Drops:

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flameimpgf.JPGmushroomseergf.JPGnagawizardgf.JPGundeadarchergf.JPG

From the 25 Gold Foils, I got 16 Common Cards, 6, Rare Cards, 1 Epic Card, and 2 Legendary Cards. Calculating their DEC Values, the 25 Gold Foils were worth 207,000 DECs.

That's 182,000 DECs worth of profit from the 25,000 DEC Tokens spent!

Here's the breakdown of the 25 gold foil cards and their DEC values:

Screen Shot 20190619 at 12.02.56 AM.png


'Profits' qualified

Calculating my profits based solely on the DEC values of the Gold Foil drops may not be painting a complete picture. In fact, after an exchange with @mastergerund, it could be a little misleading. And that's definitely not my goal with this post.

One of the things that he pointed out was that I cannot really give credit to the potion for all my Gold Foil drops. After all, it just doubled my chances of getting those cards. Some of those cards would have dropped even without the potion. He wrote,

If the potions double your chances, you would arguable have got half of that anyway. So 207k / 2 = 103.5 - 25k = 78.5k profit!

So, I'm qualifying my calculations above: Using the Brilliant Alchemy Potions gave me 78,500 DECs of profit. Still an amazing result, right?


Coincidence or boosted results?

I can't deny the fact that the last 500 cards I opened while using the potions have yielded the best results I've had opening cards since I started playing. After all, I've only opened 3 Gold Legendaries, so far. And that first one was months ago.

However, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the drops. So, it makes you wonder how much of an effect the potions really do have.

It's also interesting because I got a few Regular Foil Legendaries in the same card reveal that contained the Gold Foil Legendaries, even though I didn't have a Legendary Potion. So, was my luck really just off the roof that day?


Some musings

  • Should the potions have an on/off switch. Some card groups are more valuable than others. Orbs, for example, are worth double the DECs and have a higher market value. So, it would be nice to have some control over that, especially if you're trying to save on potions.
  • Could opening more cards at a time yield better results? This seems to be the case for me, so far. The Legendary and Epic Gold Drops all happened while I was opening about 100 cards at a time.
  • I don't want to open cards without potions now. Even though I'm not sure if my results were just coincidence or the potion doing its work, I'll be saving up on potions from now on.

Conclusion

With the Brilliant Alchemy Potion costing me 25,000 DECs, the resulting 78,500 DECs in profits made them, at least to me and in this instance, well worth the cost.

However, since this is just a single case of 500 Charges, I'm gonna need a few more rounds of potions to be able to make a definitive case, either way. Nonetheless, until I can prove otherwise, I'll be relying on these potions moving forward. In fact, I just doubled down buying both Brilliant Alchemy and Brilliant Legendary potions.

Will more potions lead to better results? We'll see by the end of the current battle season. For now, here's to more Gold Legendaries for potions users!


Bounty

Now for the bounty. I want to know what your experience has been using the potions. Do you think they're worth the cost? And if you haven't used them, why not? Will you consider buying them in the future?


Update: The post was edited to add the 'Profits' qualified and Bounty sections.


Image Credits. The cover image and all Splinterlands cards images are screen captures from steemmonsters.com.


This post also appears in Palnet.io, a nitrous instance in the Steem blockchain for the Minnow Support Project community; and in SplinterTalk.io, another nitrous instance for content all about the Splinterlands. (That's my affiliate link, if you're wondering.)

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15 comments
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(Edited)

Great insights, thank you for sharing! Can I just comment on a couple of points...?

That's 182,000 DECs worth of profit from the 25,000 DEC Tokens spent!

If the potions double your chances, you would arguable have got half of that anyway. So 207k / 2 = 103.5 - 25k = 78.5k profit! Still really amazing, btw!

However, there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason for the drops.

That's expected variance for what is still a relatively small sample.

How many Legendaries did you open? Your results imply that 0.4% of your drops were gold legendaries, so statistically you could have 2 more (although the sample size is tiny). If you got gold on half of your legendaries (with only 4% chance on each) that's incredibly lucky!

... and explains most of the profitability. Would your outcome have been profitable still if you didn't get any gold Legendaries?

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Hi there! Thanks for pointing out those nuances about the 50% increased rewards. I forgot to factor that in when calculating for profit. I might edit the post later for that. Lol!

I actually opened a total of 7 Legendary cards. Out of the seven, 2 turned out gold and 5 were just regular Legendaries. So, 1.4% were Legendary, of which 28% turned gold.

I'm not sure what conclusions to draw from that, to be honest. Although I find it interesting to get those Legendary Cards even without the potion. This is actually why it makes me wonder if I just happened to be especially lucky that day and the potion being active had nothing to do with it. Or which gold cards turned out gold because of the potion, and which ones would have been gold regardless. I mean when it comes to actions like revealing cards or flipping something in games there's always an element of luck.

As for the profitability, since I only spent 25,000 DECs on potions in total, then I have a wide margin. The Epic Gold Card from the Orb should cover my expenses with at least 5,000 DECs as profit. So, while the Gold Legendaries really increased my profits by a mile, it's not entirely dependent on it.

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Congratulations to the following winner(s) of the bounty!

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I've been hodling my DEC but this makes me want to go buy some potions! It shouldn't matter what league I'm in right because they are good for 500 uses? I'd hate to waste it on bronze/silver.

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Yes, it's good for 500 uses.

One thing I've noticed though is that the potions seem to work better when opening multiple cards at a time. For example, I got the 2 Gold Legendaries when I opened 120 Season Rewards, while the Gold Epic was when I opened 20 Orbs (100 Cards) at the same time. So, that's something to think about.

Also, keep in mind that there is no guarantee that you'll get what you spent on potions back. It's still a gamble, after all. And like any other gamble, it's better to just spend whatever amount you're willing to lose.

If you're HODLing DECs, another thing you could consider is to HODL until you get enough to buy 100 orbs and both potions, and then to use all 500 potion charges on the orbs. That's a lot of HODLing, since you'll need 290k DECs for that. But I just learned that this could be a really efficient use of DECs and potions because the cards you get from orbs are worth much more than the reward cards and even beta cards.

Thanks for stopping by!

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Thanks for the tip! lol I think they’ll be out of orbs by the time I get that much...

Posted using Partiko iOS

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You can always start buying a few every now and then. The only downside is you won't get the bonus orbs from buying in bulk.

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I couldn't fully understand the drop rate analysis but I guess I need not worry :)

Congratulations!

Posted using Partiko Android

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Lol! That's ok. And thanks for stopping by. 😁

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those are some real sweet returns. I only recently started using the potions and i started with the daily quest one. My attention is still very much on the orb cards for now and once ive collected them all Ill focus on the reward cards again

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