The Ongoing Tale of NoDestroyWithTurret - Part 5

[NoDestroyWithTurret 69]

Part 4: All about Mammoth

"TEN THOUSAND YEARS WILL GIVE SOU SUCH A CRICK IN THE NECK!"

And 4 weeks will give you a crick in your turret's rotation carriage.

Welcome back, one and all (you, especially) to my humble abode! I just took a few weeks off of playing to deal with some other stuff in my life (I know, I know, crazy right?), and oh boy, have I got a few things to share with you now that I'm back.

When I left you, I had given you an introduction to my non-turret-killing account, talked about my equipment selection, shared how I used Wasp's overdrive and Mammoth. I initially planned on doing a grab bag article today, but plans changed! I write what comes to mind, and today, containers were on my mind. Don't worry, I'll give you a "week-in-the-life" article soon that'll contain all of those fun tidbits.

 

Let's get started.

They're fun. They're unpredictable. They're very profitable for Tanki Online you, the opener.

There are currently 7* types of containers that appear somewhat regularly in the game, 3* of which are easily obtainable. Let's take a deep dive into how to get the most out of them.

*Supply boxes are only available on mobile.

 

A Very Brief History

First dropping in place of regular Gold Boxes during the 2017 Black Friday sales, Containers immediately became some of the most sought-after items in the game. They dropped again around New Years 2018, and since then, they've been available in the shop, part of weekly mission rewards, and occasionally dropping in battle. Over the years, they've gotten packed with more paints, skins, paints, augments, paints and did I mention that they contain lots of paints? They're quite valuable for any tanker, especially one who likes to look good.

Alright, you can wake up now. It's time to talk about stuff that matters today.

 

Regarding Probabilities

Don't worry about it! Seriously. The Devs haven't told us, and knowing the probabilities won't change what you get, so there's not much point beyond pure curiosity. If you do want to know, here are some resources, but beware: they are not officially endorsed, and are plagued by:

• Small sample size
  • With some items being so rare, its very difficult to accurately approximate probabilities, even if hundreds or even thousands of containers are opened
• Inconsistent or biased reporting
  • Why would a YouTuber publish a container video if nothing cool dropped?
  • What's most likely to make tankers go "ooh look at this" or "can you believe how useless these are"?
• Changing contents of containers
  • What are good results now become less useful as more augments, paints, etc. are added to containers
• Poor data-management
  • Specifically relating to the community-led container project, ultra containers (which may have significantly different overall probabilities, and certainly have some items not shared with regular containers) were allowed to mix with the results of regular containers.
  • This has probably rendered the results less valid. Sorry to call out the people running this project, because it's pretty cool otherwise, but that's what the logic says.

Now that the disclaimer is out of the way, here are some links if you're still curious:

• Containers:
  • Community-led container project (contribute here) (info)
  • Shibe123's insights/guess on container rarity patterns
• Ultra Containers:
  • Taspens opens Ultra Containers
• Coinboxes:
  • Jay Tanki opens Coinboxes
• Pit Stop Boxes:
  • AV Gamers opens Pit Stop Boxes

 

Tips and Tricks

Now we're to the really good stuff. If my luck is as good here as it has been with containers recently, then you'll really love this part of the article.

Container Tip #1^TM: Thin out the "Rare" selection pool by buying the Football Frenzy paints.

What do I mean by this? Lets take a look at what can appear in a container that opens up in the third (blue) rarity tier:

• 25,000 crystals
• 150 Batteries
• 250 of all Supplies
• 10 days of Premium
• 10 Gold Boxes

 

• One of the many "Rare" paints (the ones in the garage)
• One of the current football paints from the Football Frenzy event (36 total)
• One Augments "Cold or Heat Resistance" for a Hull (14 total)
• One of the 14 Rare Augments for a Turret

You may have noticed that I broke the contents up into two categories. Those categories are of infinite supply and finite supply. A container can always drop something in the first category. What's more, those drops are pretty sweet, and you want to have them happen as often as you can.

"But NoDestroyWithTurret," you ask, "how is that supposed to help us? We can't control what a container might drop!"

"WRONG!" I say, and promptly direct your attention to the finite supply category. Everything in that category is either in your possession or not. If it's in your possession already, it cannot be dropped from a container. Therefore, by buying up the rewards in this category, you can maximize your chances of getting something else.

Note: The precise mechanics of containers are not disclosed by the developers, so there is not way of knowing how used-up finite supply rewards are replaced. Some possibilities include redoing the random draw, replacing with an infinite supply drop, replacing with a lower (or higher, but probably lower) tier drop, or simply removing them from the pool before anything is picked at all. In any case, though, you can reduce the containers wasted on dropping items you don't want by doing the following:

1. Buy all of the football frenzy paints! There are 36 of them, and they are weird, rarely worn, and usually disappointing when they drop from a container. Each one costs 10 tankoins in the garage, and buying them on a 25% or 30% sale (which are not all that infrequent) will reduce the price to 7. To buy the lot of them on a sale, you'll be out 252 tankoins, or 14 weeks of weekly-container (read: free) tankoins. It's totally worth it; you'll never have to be disappointed by one of these paints again. I completed this step just a couple of weeks ago.
2. Earn challenges rewards. Challenges occasionally will reward garage paints in the free tier, and the past couple have also rewarded Rare augments for turrets. After a while, this will shrink your pool of possible augments to get, and make you more likely to get a different reward such as crystals. Also, if you're a really heavy challenge player and complete all 50 tiers, the 100 tankoins are really helpful for buying up those football paints.

I don't advise purchasing garage paints (except perhaps the very cheapest, under 5000 crystals or so) or spending your crystals on augments for the sole purpose of purifying your container drops - it's just not efficient enough, and you'll be spending more crystals than you gain.

This sort of thing is also possible for the Epic, Legendary, and even Exotic tiers. You have a better chance of getting 100,000, 300,000, or 1,000,000 crystals if you already own epic/legendary (animated) paints, epic augments, and skins. That's a lot more expensive though, and requires either very hard work or buying. Whatever floats your boat, though.

 

Container Tip #2^TM: Wait to open your Weekly Containers until after you rank up.

Weekly containers are one of the best sources of crystals, supplies, and batteries out there. The number of crystals and supplies that they reward depends on your rank, but here's the thing: "your rank" is not the rank at which you earn them. It's the rank at which you open them.

Let's say you're me about a month ago: a Warrant Officer 3 who's going to have about 12 weekly containers by the time he gets to Warrant officer 4. If I opened these containers right away, I would have gotten the following for each container.

(Rank, RK, DD, DA, SB, Mine, Battery, Crystals, Tankoins)

But because I waited until Warrant Officer 4 to open them, I got this for each one instead:

The difference doesn't look like much, but when multiplied by the 12 weeklies I earned during that rank, it resulted in me earning...

• 12 more repair kits
• 24 more DD, DA, SB, and Mines
• 12 more batteries
• 1320 more crystals

...than someone who worked just as hard as I did but opened them all up right away. And what did it cost me? Almost nothing. All of these bonus rewards add up, so once you make it through a rank or two of doing this (you might run out for a couple of days, but that's okay), you won't even feel the need to open them. If you can manage to save them until 2 or even more ranks later, you'll earn even more bonus rewards.

Container Tip #3^TM: Manage your expectations.

This applies to pit stop boxes in particular because there are no super-great rewards, just some mundane and mildly useful refills of your consumables. In a broader sense, though, you'll enjoy opening all containers more if you can learn to appreciate the usefulness of all rewards. For example:

• "aw man, I got a paint" can be "ooh, pretty" or "my reward selection pool for future containers won't have this in it any more"
• "125 Double armors? Useless" can be "that'll help me power my Defender (or Trooper) Drone later"
  • Double damage? Fuel for Booster or Blaster.
  • Mines? Fuel for Saboteur or Miner.
  • Repair kits (like you would ever have an excess of these, lol)? Lifeguard.
  • Speed boost? Sprinter
• In fact, disappointment over any supplies at all can be excitement about being able to use Hyperion or Crisis.
• "3500 crystals isn't much" can be "Hey, at least it's not supplies or some dumb paint"

 

Container Tip #4^TM: Complete your challenges.

I hinted at this earlier, but it's important, so take note. If you regularly finish challenges (I don't but if you do, I would recommend premium and battle pass for this; they're a good value for the price), you can get a skin every 2 weeks. Once you get all of them (it'll take a while; there are 32 currently available), your skin container will instead reward 20,000 crystals. Not necessarily game-changing, but a respectable sum nonetheless. What's more, getting all of those skins stops them from crowding out your regular exotic tier, possibly making you more likely to get the coveted 1,000,000 crystals.

Container Tip #5: Open containers (and ultra containers) when you will benefit the most from a few days of premium.

Speaking of completing your challenges, it's a lot easier if you're earning double stars with a Premium account. You'll also get bonus XP and crystals from every battle you play, and these bonuses (which improve your crystal to XP ratio, I might add) stack multiplicatively with event bonuses. Since regular and ultra containers can both drop premium (3 days as an Unusual* reward and 10 days as a Rare* reward), you'll maximize the benefit of that premium if you open them at the opportune moment. "When is that moment," you ask? It was Tanki's birthday. You missed it. A time that good for premium won't happen again until the New Year's celebrations. But, if you don't want to wait that long, here are some other good times:

• Any time you'll be able to play a lot in the following few days
• During a challenge, to earn double stars
• At the start of any event that increases your crystal and experience rewards

*The drop rates for days of premium are significantly lower than most other rewards in their respective tiers.

Container Tip #6^TM: If you're on mobile, keep track of the time and watch those ads.

Mobile players can earn up to 8 supply boxes daily by opening 1 every 6 hours for free and a second every six hours for watching an ad. You can get a couple of supply units or a few hundred crystals from these, so definitely open them as frequently as possible. Small rewards stack up.

Container Tip #7^TM: Don't expect to profit from coinboxes.

They're fun to open if you're just trying your luck and don't mind spending your tankoins on the small supply and crystal rewards that they tend to drop. I don't recommend getting these regularly or in bulk, though. Think about it: if Tanki made the average tankoin reward higher than the price of the coinbox, wouldn't we all get as many tankoins as we wanted? The answer is yes, so obviously Tanki cannot do this. Coinboxes are not a way to earn tankoins.

Container Tip #8^TM: Prioritize special missions that reward you with ultra containers.

I can't vouch for the general benefits of opening these - it's unknown if the tier rarities are the same, and you might just get coin boxes, but one thing is for sure: if you want the Crisis drone, Rubberized Rounds, or Electromagnetic Salvo, these containers are the only way. You might as well shoot your shot. I'm not going to, because I don't use Gauss or Vulcan, nor do I earn enough supplies at this rank to justify using the crisis drone often. But you should. If you're into that kind of thing.

Container Tip #9^TM: Open all of your greyed-out "old" containers.

These things are doing you no good just sitting in your garage. Tanki has confirmed that the rewards they drop will remain as they were when they were earned, so you might as well open them up. Unless, of course, you're saving them for a cool future opening video, or if they're old weekly containers that will give you better rewards at a higher rank. Then you should go ahead and save 'em.

 

 

That's all! I think it's a pretty comprehensive guide, and I hope it helps. Questions, comments, and suggestions are welcome. I'll see you at some point in the future with the next installment, which will either be about several interesting experiences with this unique account, the Blaster drone, or whatever I feel like writing about at the time instead.

Until then, this is NoDestroyWithTurret, signing off.

Edited July 18, 2020 by NoDestroyWithTurret
Added a tip regarding premium. Also, shoutout to Disney and Dreamworks for their delightfully memeable characters.

[Sacrifice 2,278]

Article Approved

Fantastic review of the different types of containers in the game. Some of the tips mentioned in the article would prove to be beneficial for many tankers who look forward to receive better rewards from the containers. Also, it was an easy and fun read along with a perfect balance of picture-words ratio. Good job!

Spoiler

• Minor grammatical fixes.
• Please give credits to the YouTuber's whose video's you have linked to the article. Credit as in, it would be convenient if you could write their nicknames next to the video link. 
• Also, please avoid posting too many video's as an example.

Keep up the good efforts!

[Viking4s 10,791]

I don't see the point to give them credit, as their name is on the video. Furthermore he do make free advertising for them and they get the reward from the TO system. They should thank him.

[NoDestroyWithTurret 69]

3 hours ago, Sacrifice said:

Article Approved

Fantastic review of the different types of containers in the game. Some of the tips mentioned in the article would prove to be beneficial for many tankers who look forward to receive better rewards from the containers. Also, it was an easy and fun read along with a perfect balance of picture-words ratio. Good job!

  Hide contents

• Minor grammatical fixes.
• Please give credits to the YouTuber's whose video's you have linked to the article. Credit as in, it would be convenient if you could write their nicknames next to the video link. 
• Also, please avoid posting too many video's as an example.

Keep up the good efforts!

Thanks for the advice and edits. I updated the links to include descriptions and credit. Glad it's helpful!

Edited July 17, 2020 by NoDestroyWithTurret

[Viking4s 10,791]

On 7/15/2020 at 11:29 PM, NoDestroyWithTurret said:

Container Tip #1^TM: Thin out the "Rare" selection pool by buying the Football Frenzy paints.

Good tips again regarding the paint, they represent 1/8 of the Rare rewards (Community-led container project). But that's 36 times 10 Tk = 360 Tk (or 180 when at 50%). You still still have the other containers paints though (~50  ). The paints below 25 000  are not in the green containers.

Another tips would be to open containers with premium as rewards the day you start the challenges and in a period of time when you can play all day (or several days in a row) hopefully you will get some free Premium Day and double your stars and complete your challenges faster in order to get the XT containers. 

Adding sub chapter title (e.g the name of the container) would help for reading. It looks like a text wall right now. Especially that the pit box and the Mobile container looks exactly the same. 

No credits for Dreamworks and Disney? 

Good thing I drop that article idea

[Tokamak 1,021]

3 hours ago, At_Shin said:

Thanks for telling me about buying out all the useless football paints. I will do that the next 50% off sales. Hopefully that will increase my chances of getting something good.

No it wont, there is still 50 mormal paints.

[NoDestroyWithTurret 69]

On 7/17/2020 at 4:41 PM, Tokamak said:

No it wont, there is still 50 mormal paints.

Isn't it better to have 50 paints than 86 paints as possible drops? It won't completely remove your chances of getting paints, but it will significantly lower them. @At_Shin

[NoDestroyWithTurret 69]

On 7/17/2020 at 11:29 AM, Viking4s said:

Good tips again regarding the paint, they represent 1/8 of the Rare rewards (Community-led container project). But that's 36 times 10 Tk = 360 Tk (or 180 when at 50%). You still still have the other containers paints though (~50  ). The paints below 25 000  are not in the green containers.

Another tips would be to open containers with premium as rewards the day you start the challenges and in a period of time when you can play all day (or several days in a row) hopefully you will get some free Premium Day and double your stars and complete your challenges faster in order to get the XT containers. 

Adding sub chapter title (e.g the name of the container) would help for reading. It looks like a text wall right now. Especially that the pit box and the Mobile container looks exactly the same. 

No credits for Dreamworks and Disney? 

Good thing I drop that article idea

Oh my, how could I forget about the free premium days? I'll definitely add that. Also thanks for pointing out that buying the cheapest garage paints won't help.

[Viking4s 10,791]

16 hours ago, NoDestroyWithTurret said:

Oh my, how could I forget about the free premium days? I'll definitely add that. Also thanks for pointing out that buying the cheapest garage paints won't help.

It could work if the container system

1/  split the paints into 2 categories
Rare - 25k Crystals
Rare - 150 Batteries
Rare - 250 of all Supplies
Rare - 10 Days Premium
Rare - 10 Gold Boxes
Rare - Foot Frenzie Paint
Rare - Garage Paint
Rare - Turret Augment
Rare - Hull Augment
2/ rethrow the dice in the rare category (or remove the option) if all the Foot Frenzie paints are all taken

I believe that 1/ is not the case and that 2/ actually happen, Many youtuber got more Augment as they already have all the paints.
Any way this is all speculation form me.

[NoDestroyWithTurret 69]

2 hours ago, Viking4s said:

It could work if the container system

1/  split the paints into 2 categories
Rare - 25k Crystals
Rare - 150 Batteries
Rare - 250 of all Supplies
Rare - 10 Days Premium
Rare - 10 Gold Boxes
Rare - Foot Frenzie Paint
Rare - Garage Paint
Rare - Turret Augment
Rare - Hull Augment
2/ rethrow the dice in the rare category (or remove the option) if all the Foot Frenzie paints are all taken

I believe that 1/ is not the case and that 2/ actually happen, Many youtuber got more Augment as they already have all the paints.
Any way this is all speculation form me.

Given that the wiki splits them into two categories as you have highlighted, I thought that they probably have separate probabilities as you theorized in 1. If they don't, it's hard to tell if "paint" is selected from a pool and then a paint is chosen, or if all available paints are added to a single pool. Either way though, 2 seems quite plausible, and the youtube videos seem to support the theory that the Frenzy paints are somehow replaced by other rare-tier items.

[E_polypterus 2,374]

Very interesting article.

[tankicola 111]

Great tips and content, as always!