How much should I spend?- HotM cost, and odds, analysis

Everyone wants to have that new awesome hero of the month. But how much should you spend to get it? This post will give you the plain, perhaps discouraging numbers. With this I hope to give you a clear understanding of the odds in this game, to raise awareness about unsustainable spending habits and to enable you to really choose how much you want to spend on this game.

Summoning gate (Small Giant’s slot machine) - what are my odds?
The summons gate is the place to be for your new heroes. Throw in diamonds, spin the wheel, pray to the random number generator and hope for the best. The chance of getting the legendary hero of the month (HOTM) bonus draw is 1,3%. So there is a 98,7% chance you won’t get the hero of the month bonus draw on a pull. To put this in context, below is a table in which you can see the chance of not getting the HOTM after a series of pulls.

IMG_20190101_185626

In this table you can see there is no such thing as getting the HOTM for sure. Even after 250 pulls there is still a 3,8% chance you won’t pull the HOTM. So if 1000 players each do 250 pulls there would, on average, be 38 players that would not get the HOTM.

But surely on the next pull I’ll get him!
So after a 100 pulls you still didn’t get that perfect hero … your chances will be better next
time right? Wrong! Your next pull still gives you only a 1,3% chance of the HOTM. This chance won’t increase after not pulling the HOTM.

How much do other players spend?
There are players that don’t spend money at all, and there are those that spend $700 a month. I won’t judge either of them. If you are a millionaire and want to spend $10,000 dollars on pulls, that seems reasonable. For me spending $50 a month would be too much. I have asked a few players about their spending habits and their roster. See below

So how much should you spend?
How much you spend on this game is entirely up to you, but remember: The summons portal is a slot machine. There is no such thing as getting the hero you want for sure. You may even never get him. Also, think of what you could otherwise do with the money you’re spending. Would spending it on your wife, kids, car, home project make you more happy?

In the end the best thing you can do is set a monthly budget and stick to it. Cherish the
heroes you get and have fun!

Error4T - Seven days Ascending

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This is an excellent and clear post. I think presenting the pull odds in summation and with dollar figures is a helpful visual that will make the typical discussions about gacha more visually digestible.

One thing well worth noting is that the 1.3% odds on HOTM aren’t even close to the lowest odds for pulling a particular hero.

Event summons and season 2 summons often have multiple heroes and lower odds.

The Christmas seasonal pull, for example, has 0.6% odds of a legendary seasonal hero. For someone after Mother North in particular, the odds are a mere 0.3%.

For Season 2 featured heroes, the appearance rate is 1.3% across the 4 featured heroes — just 0.325% chance for a particular hero.

Non-featured Season 2 heroes are even worse, with 0.2% appearance rate across them. With 3 non-featured heroes in the pool that brings the rate for a particular one of those heroes all the way down to 0.067%.

And this isn’t just limited to 5* heroes either — chasing a particular 4* hero like Wilbur, Proteus, or Buddy can sometimes have odds nearly on par with pulling a HOTM, once the number of heroes in the pool is considered.

I don’t think it’s necessary to make tables of every summons like you have for the example above — but I do think it’s worth nothing that the HOTM odds aren’t even the worst when chasing a particular hero.

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This is a really great post @ERROR4. Thanks for taking your time for this.

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Very well put @ERROR4.

Based on some anecdotal evidence, f2p can have even greater success than your table suggests - I’ve matched that result in 9 months :relaxed:

I’m aware that these are outliers, but here are some great f2p rosters:

https://forum.smallgiantgames.com/t/who-has-the-best-f2p-roster-in-the-world/68800/2

Just to inspire those without the budget.

But ‘thank you’ to those that do :relaxed:

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If only su had read this…

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I’ve started thinking about Hero chasing as titan hunting. Some alliances will pass on a titan simply because it is too difficult or because it isn’t worth spending the flasks and battle items.

Pulls have value and some Heroes aren’t worth the money spent on pulls. The worst case for an alliance is when you don’t realize that a titan is out of reach from the beginning and your members have already "invested’ a lot in taking it down. Then you feel compelled to “invest” even more. Maybe you have enough to take down the titan or maybe you don’t.

The same can be said about hero pulls. You just don’t know how much it will cost to get the hero you’re after. At least now you know the odds of getting the hero within a certain budget range. Thanks for the breakdown @ERROR4.

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Thx for taking your time to make this exellent work @ERROR4

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I think why the big spenders get so angry is because they feel it shouldn’t be like a casino where the odds are low. From what I’ve read they want SG to increase the odds of getting those HOTM or even to guarantee that after spending X number of dollars or bad pulls they will get one.

Unfortunately that’s not how the game works and I’ve always accepted that it’s an entertaining casino game and if I’m paying, I’m taking my CHANCES.

That’s why I’m thrilled at small offers of gems and ascension items. I’m actually getting something useful. Gems I can use for other purposes as well, 75 when I need to complete a quest, for example.

For me, it just wouldn’t be fun to chase the HOTM but that’s a decision we each have to make for ourselves.

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This is a great visualization! I understand it can be hard to see people pull the HotM on the forum and wishing for that luck but a good roster only comes with time, not frustration pulls.

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Error, fantastic post.

It looks like there are some assumptions here you should point out - namely that you are doing single pulls at 300 gems per pull AND paying the best NORMAL GEM SHOP rate of $0.01 USD per gem (i.e. 100 gems for $1USD). Almost anyone doing a larger number of pulls isn’t paying 300 gems per pull - an epic or event 10x is 2600, so 260 gems per pull OR an atlantis pull, which will vary depending if 10x or 30 (for example the 8400 gem 30x is 280 gem per pull)

Also, most players spending gems will load up on the deals, paying less than $1 USD for 100 gems.

I’d just mention that in your original post so it’s clear where the USD numbers come from.

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Those assumptions are noted in the image itself:

So what I think you’re (very reasonably) suggesting is that the post text itself that @ERROR4 wrote note the same assumptions.

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I didn’t even see the asterisk or the note. I’d make it bigger and explain it more.

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Great job to pin it @JonahTheBard. This is a post that everyone must read before push their luck with unlogical spending.
Its not the amount of $$$ u spend, since everyone have different economic conditions, but its all about budget and keep it so its not uncontrolled.

Great post and thanks for share it to us! @ERROR4

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I spent 500$ trying to pull Athena and I didn’t get one 5* card. With that being said I won’t be spending again. I’m a new player and thought I could get lucky by pulling some good cards so I can compete. It’s hard for new players to catch up with players that have been playing for a long time. Spending is not the best way to catch up I’m afraid unless you spend thousands or very lucky. I might as well go to the casino the odds are better to win real money.

Thank you guys for all the work you did here in explaining the odds. I am aware that this games are addicting and designed to take advantage of addicts. The odds to get the better summons are a slap in the face.

It’s really disrespectful that the odds are so low. Companies need to learn that greed does nothing but push people away. You have a few that spend big money but I feel more will spend less for better odds.

Thanks again guys for putting things into perspective. Oh yeah we are recruiting active hard hitters in Sumo Summon.

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Thx for the positive response everyone!

As pointed out by @zephyr1 and @Dante2377:

  • It’s indeed true that odds for specific seasonal and event heroes are different and might be even lower.
  • The same thing applies to cost. There a regional differences. I believe Europe is on average about 10% more expensive than US. And if you only buy the deals you might cut your gem cost by two.

I didn’t want to overload everyone with numbers though and chose what I think is a much strived goal (HOTM) reasonable assumption for cost.

The key insight here are your chances for the HotM given a series of pulls. This enables players to determine upfront how much they want to invest in increasing their chances.

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i am new player (2 months) , what i did if you interested

  • only purchase epic offer
  • dont do any pull , if you want Knight Avalon or Guardian pull then keep your free tokens and spend with it
  • only spend on Atlantis 30x pull to get free mats chests

i spent $550 and got Kage , Evelyn , Joon , Khagan , Magni , Leonidas , Arthur , Elk as *5 and left 12k gem unused , well i stop to spend now maybe at least next 2-3 months to complete my *5 , i got all needed asc mats already

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One question: Shouldn’ t the odds to get HOTM be always the same?? As far as I understood the odds to get HOTM does not stack but is same for every single pull…

Same for every pull, but the more pulls you make, the more likely it is that at least one is successful.

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Still not sure if this is applicable as we are talking about an percentage which stays the same for every single pull. You try to calculate the odd of the odd?