As part of an ongoing effort to upgrade League of Legends‘ loot system, Riot Games has finally released details on the new Masterwork Milestones system. While the last patch overhauled Prestige Points and Gemstones by replacing them with Mythic Essence and the Mythic Shop, Phase Two of the plan adds what is essentially a battle pass track specifically for Masterwork Chests. As you open chests, you are now rewarded with Mythic Essence every five chests along with some bonus skin shards at certain points.
In this guide, we explain how this new Masterwork Milestones system works, the odds behind each chest, and how Riot has “worsened” the chests as a result.
What Are Masterwork Chests?
Before we talk about anything, there’s one important thing to keep in mind: Hextech Chests (which you earn from getting an S-Rank while playing) are not Masterwork Chests. This new system is specifically for the latter, which are typically purchased or — in rare circumstances — earned via battle passes and missions. The easiest way of obtaining these is by purchasing them. You can get 11 Masterwork Chests for 2250 RP, or roughly $15.
The current odds for Masterwork Chests are:
- 70% chance of a random skin shard or Ultimate skin permanent.
- 10% chance for a ward skin shard and orange essence.
- 10% chance for a random emote permanent.
- 10% chance for 525 orange essence.
There is also a small chance of earning a bonus reward:
10% of a bonus Masterwork Chest and Hextech Key.- 3.5% chance of 5 Mythic Essence.
- 0.04% chance of a Mythic skin permanent.
Masterwork Chest Changes
One of the areas that will likely be controversial is the changes to the bonus rewards. As part of this, Riot was going to decrease the odds of the additional Mythic Essence drop from 4.2% to 3.6% after buffing it in the last patch. Instead, they were to halve the number of Essence you get from ten down to five, which isn’t enough for a single random skin shard. But according to the displayed odds, Riot has indeed done both, with there being a 3.5% chance of getting five Mythic Essence. Even with this, thanks to the new guaranteed Mythic Essence drops on the track, there were still concerns about giving too much Mythic Essence since it’s supposed to be the rarest currency in the game. Rather than let you have slightly too much Essence, however, the team has compensated elsewhere by entirely removing the ten percent chance of getting a bonus Masterwork Chest and key.
It makes sense when compared to the reward track though. Rather than hoping to get one free chest for every ten you open and sometimes getting lucky with more, you essentially get the guaranteed skin shards instead.
None of that is likely to make players feel any better about the changes. Even with the reward track, it never feels good to lose out entirely on the additional chest reward, the Mythic Essence reward being halved, and Riot saying the silver lining is it didn’t have to revert the 0.6% increased chance for a Mythic Essence drop. That’s doubly true when they do end up reverting the buff once the feature goes live.
Masterwork Milestone Rewards
With all of that context out of the way, everything is remarkably simple. There is now an infinitely repeatable reward track for opening 25 Masterwork Chests. A full rotation awards a total of 25 Mythic Essence and three skin shards of varying worth.
- 5 Masterwork Chests: 5 Mythic Essence and one skin shard of any tier
- 10 Masterwork Chests: 5 Mythic Essence
- 15 Masterwork Chests: 5 Mythic Essence and one 975 RP+ tier skin shard
- 20 Masterwork Chests: 5 Mythic Essence
- 25 Masterwork Chests: 10 Mythic Essence and one 1350+ RP (Epic) tier skin shard
While you might think Phase Three is next, it is not. The next patch will include part two of Phase Two’s upgrades, including Showcase Milestones, a similar system that instead tracks event capsules such as those from Battle Academia or the PROJECT event.
[Disclaimer: Both Riot Games and Fanbyte are owned by the same parent company, Tencent.]
