Box odds investigation

There's no doubt about it, the crates are a gamble. Generally 24 gems are handed over, and in return you receive one of a number of possible floor decorations at random. But of course it's not completely random - there are four prize tiers and naturally your odds of receiving a higher placed prize are not so good.

Over on the Storm8 Forum, the Master Box List reports the following probability breakdown for the prize tiers:

Prize Tier	Probability
1st	1%
2nd	10%
3rd	35%
4th	54%

I decided to put this to the test, and fortunately I was in an advantageous position to do so. First of all, I have always kept a record of my box openings, right from the very start. Having played Restaurant Story since summer 2012, I've tapped my fair share of crates.

But I'm not a serial box opener, and most of my business has been conducted when crates have been on sale. So do I really have enough data to conduct a solid investigation? Well, that's where Bakery Story comes in. Over in the sister game, I was highly fortunate to experience a glitch when the free gem videos were first introduced in summer 2015 which essentially amounted to there being no limit on the number of videos I could watch. Over the course of a weekend I amassed literally hundreds of gems, thus changing my Bakery Story experience forever.

Gem Dispensers at Lucky Cakes

So why am I telling you this? Well, the Gem Dispenser was introduced in Bakery Story shortly after my windfall of gems, and inevitably I invested while it was available at half price. Consequently I have had four Gem Dispensers providing a steady stream of gem production for more than 18 months. That means that I have incredible spending power over there, and have opened many boxes.

And hence, after that long and ponderous tale, I am able to present to you today the output of my box odds investigation. Clearly there are some caveats here, chief among which is the time period over which my box openings occurred - we can't be certain that the probabilities have not altered at any stage over the past five years. Furthermore, we have no way of knowing whether the odds vary depending on whether crates are discounted. And finally, I've obviously assumed that the probabilities are the same in both Restaurant Story and Bakery Story.

Considering that no amendments to the box probabilities I shared from the Storm8 Forum earlier have ever been reported, I think it's acceptable for all those assumptions to be made.

And so here is the probability distribution based on my data:

Prize Tier	Probability
1st	2.3%
2nd	13.3%
3rd	32.0%
4th	52.3%

As you can see, the numbers are fairly close to those provided by Storm8. My data is skewed ever so slightly in favour of second prizes over third prizes, but generally there is a strong correlation to be observed. That 2.3% of first prizes corresponds to seven, only one of which was won in Restaurant Story (I will never forget obtaining the Dino Daycare at the first attempt to help out with the Chemist and Cat's adventure!)

It's also worth noting that the Restaurant Story and Bakery Story breakdowns were sufficiently close to suggest no difference between the two games, although the Restaurant Story data alone was not extensive enough to be considered in isolation.

So there you have it! if you intend to open a box, it is definitely worth contemplating these numbers as they will dictate your chances.

Before I depart, I should tease that I'm planning another box related post next month which it's fair to say is taking a lot of work but will be a significant one. Watch out for that!

Update: The Crate Catalogue is now available! Click here to visit and see all the details on all the boxes.