Dota 2's New Loot Box Shows You The Odds Of Getting Rare Items

Valve's taken a lot of heat the past few months for the way it handles its loot boxes in Dota 2. The Netherlands classified its loot boxes as gambling, and when Valve tried a workaround, most people saw it for what it was: a thinly veiled attempt to comply with the law that didn't really address the core issue.

Yesterday, Valve introduced a new kind of loot box, the Treasure of the Carmine Cascade, to Dota 2, and this one comes with a twist. Now you can see the odds of obtaining a rare, very rare, or extremely rare drop from the crates, which feature escalating -- i.e., better -- odds the more you open.

We've embedded a box opening video from YouTuber DotaCinema below showing the interface for the Carmine Cascade boxes; he describes the new system starting at about 3:30. The odds for each of the three higher quality of rares start at 1:2000, 1:10000, and 1:20000, and improve dramatically for each box opened. You can see the full charts in the video.

Overall, DotaCinema's odds of getting the good stuff still aren't that great. For the seven boxes he opens, his cumulative chance of getting a rare drop is about 11.8%. For a very rare, it's 5.7%, and for an extremely rare, it's just over 2.0%. The animation for opening each box, with its elimination of items one by one -- but always leaving a rarer item until the end to make you think you "just missed" -- also seems the tiniest bit manipulative. Still, it's nice to see Valve being honest with its customers and at least providing the kind of information casinos and lotteries have had to do for a while.