I got a silver pretty recently, actually, and sold it on the AH in the last couple of days - I'd have to check to find exactly when. They are still dropping naturally in the wheel but I imagine the rates have been adjusted slightly because of how suddenly the economy was saturated with them.

ive gotten one box since the patch, yeah

previously drop rates were increased under certain circumstances, so some accounts would rarely get boxes while others would consistently get several; i figure that the drop rate is now consistently low for everyone rather than consistently high for everyone

Ive been testing the lockbox drop changes ever since they updated the logic for dropping.

Before the changes it was as follows:
For every 2 lockboxes you opened, you basically got a guaranteed one. This was on top of a very tiny chance of getting one each level completion. This was a known mechanic that stayed that way for years.

Immediately after the update, it was a flat 2ish % chance, 2.23% to be exact, for a normal metal lockbox, and something like 5% of that to roll a mirrored. HOWEVER: people abused the fuck out of this. There were multiple people banned for using a cheat that automatically moved thier character to complete Beyond the Axes of Evil for insanely fast level completions. GH then promptly changed the lockbox rates to what they are now. And heres my testing.

Over the course of the last month, ive completed something like 2000 levels. Ive also opened around 20-30 silver lockboxes, and about 10 steel lockboxes. One would assume ive gotten quite a few lockboxes from the level completions but no.

I got a single lockbox. Across 2000 prize wheel rolls, I got a single box. Thats nowhere close to the advertised 2.23% chance, and MANY standard deviations away from the mean.

So yeah, somethings up. Some people have emailed GH, and they let slip there is a new mechanic for determining lockbox drops that maybe the community hasnt figured out yet, but ive tried everything to possibly increase chances. In classic GH fashion, they wont reply to this thread, they wont address this issue, and a lockbox mechanic that literally is for even OBTAINING a lockbox to then again GAMBLE will go silent.

I've been thinking about this thread a little bit, and decided to start looking at community data - especially Mergu-Md's forge box data, but also taking the time to go through my old discord messages to note when I've mentioned getting box drops.

I haven't been recordkeeping thoroughly, but the rates definitely feel down from where they were. I am still occasionally *getting* boxes, but not as frequently. I definitely got the most immediately after the change.

Witelite is completely correct with their numbers, too. At those rates you would expect that little over 50% of players who run 31 floors would earn at least one lockbox. After 2000 floors, the numbers work out such that 99% of players who do that could expect around 30 lockboxes. Matter of fact, the probability of getting at least 10 boxes is so high that the calculator I am using to double check this outputs p=1, indicating that this "Almost Always" happens (mathematical sense, at least).

Even forge boxes feel around 10x less frequent for the same time investment. Without a much larger dataset this sort of ends up being speculative anyway, but from where I'm sitting, it's pretty good speculation.

(Shoutouts to Mergu-Md for sharing his forge box data with me yet again, btw, that's been very valuable. Thanks, chief.)

It's nice that you report your story, so that we know that such things are possible.

But for the purposes of building an actual data set, you need to decide, before running the 68 floors, that you will report your number of lock boxes, no matter how many. Did you? If you instead decide after the fact, because you got a nice number of lockboxes, then you are biasing the data set toward positive results.

Maybe you weren't going for anything so serious, but I thought I'd raise this issue, in case any readers out there really are collecting data.

If it's a reversion, then have you opened any lockboxes recently? Before the recent reforms, people who opened lockboxes were dramatically more likely to get new lockboxes, than were people like me, who never open them. Just curious.

(I keep pretty careful records. I have received 8 lockboxes in 15 years of playing nearly daily. Maybe I've missed a couple, but even then my rate is waaaay under 1% of prize wheel rolls.)

Yes, I understand your point about other runs. Thanks for sharing. :)