Crates

A crate is an item like any other and it sits in your inventory next to everything else you own until you decide to open it, at which point you find out what you got. Opening consumes it.

Where they come from#

Live events are the main road, where event missions roll them and event objectives hand them out. Campaigns built after the previous event can also hand them out. Outside an event they still move around, because crates are tradeable like most items. You can pick one up off the market or straight out of a trade with another player. The occasional one goes out as a reward for reporting a bug.

The Random Active Crate is not really a crate at all. It is a placeholder that resolves the moment somebody hands it to you. What you get is whatever crate is in season that day.

The odds#

Every reward inside a crate carries a weight. Those weights decide how often each one comes out.

Every crate sets its own numbers. Read the table above as one crate and not as a rule. What holds across all of them is the shape, where common rewards make up most of what comes out and the top of the table is rare.

Modifiers roll separately#

The reward is one roll and the modifiers are another. They do not compete with each other. Each modifier a crate carries gets its own independent chance. A single open can attach two of them or none at all. Rolling Strange never costs you a shot at Holographic.

Seasonal modifiers are worth knowing about, because they ignore which crate you are holding. Around Halloween, Haunted rolls on every crate you open, including ones that have nothing to do with that event. Christmas does the same thing with Jolly.

Unusual is the one modifier that pulls a second thing behind it. Rolling it picks a particle effect from the list that crate carries. Each crate ships its own set of effects.

Seasonal crates#

Seasonal crates run on a cycle with two halves that happen months apart. When an event ends, the next crate becomes visible and obtainable and the Random Active Crate starts pointing at it, while its contents stay sealed. That gap is deliberate, giving campaign authors and everybody else time to build things around a crate before anyone knows what is inside it.

Then its own event starts, the contents get revealed and everyone opens their crates. When that event ends the crate stops being handed out and the next one takes over the rotation.

A crate leaving rotation only means it stops arriving as a new reward. The one already sitting in your inventory is untouched and opens whenever you feel like opening it. Permanent crates that do not depend on a season or an event are planned. The cycle above will not be the only way this works forever.