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I'm now level 25, and have accumulated probably more than 60 Tyrannical Lockboxes from enemy drops. However, I've yet to see an appropriate key show up outside the Zen Market.

Is there any way to open these boxes without having to spend real-world currency, or should I just get rid of them and avoid picking one up in the future until I'm actually ready to pay for it?

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  • I do not believe so. I just sell them to the vendor for a mere few coppers. It's just the game's way of tempting you to spend real money, because once you've done it once.. you will keep doing it :P
    – deutschZuid
    Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 21:39
  • @deutschZuid I've seen something about an Astral Diamond/Zen exchange. I'll have to look into that to see if it's worth the trouble. So far, it's the only thing I've heard that seems feasible.
    – Iszi
    Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 22:06
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    it's currently going at about 170 AD to 1 zen coin atm. That's 17000 to every 100 zen coins. You can get AD from doing the dailies (Skirmish/Dungeon/PvP), invocation and leadership tasks. So 20000 AD per day is quite doable if you remember to invoke/finish leadership tasks at regular intervals throughout the day, especially when you start unlocking more profession task slots later on. Take this into account in your decisions :). Also don't forget to refine your rough AD, you can refine up to 28000 AD per day (iirc).
    – deutschZuid
    Commented Apr 13, 2015 at 23:38

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TL;DR: Technically it's possible to acquire everything without paying a cent. It will just take a long time and a lot of work.

The Magic Keys you need to unlock lockboxes don't drop at all; the standard way to obtain them is by paying 125 Zen on the C-store.

Sometimes they're sold on the exchange by people who have money to burn and need the gold, but that's not a guarantee. However, if you're willing to put in a lot of work, you can get as much Zen as you need without ever paying a cent...

As user108818 tried to point out, there is a player-driven exchange market that lets you exchange "astral diamonds" (the refined kind, mind) for Zen (the PWE C-store currency) or vice versa.

The exchange rate is player-driven and fluctuates strongly depending on what people are willing to pay.

You earn "unrefined astral diamonds" through various forms of regular play, and can convert them to "refined astral diamonds" at a set limit per day (which is why there's a buyer's market for astral diamonds as well).

As of the current writing, and assuming the PC and XBOX versions have the same account, the exchange rate seems to be roughly 480-500 astral diamonds for one point of Zen.

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  • Not sure if the markets are different, or if there was a big swing since I last checked, but I thought the exchange rate was closer to 150 AD/Zen? In either case, it is indeed a lot of work since Zen Market items usually cost hundreds or thousands of Zen and you can only reliably get around 10-20k AD/day and there's a refinement cap too.
    – Iszi
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 13:11
  • @Iszi I'm looking directly at the exchange rate mentioned on gateway.playneverwinter.com, which is as current and accurate as I can be until I get home from work.
    – Shadur-don't-feed-the-AI
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 13:13
  • @Iszi And yes, that's kind of the point -- paying for Zen is basically how Perfect World Entertainment is making money off their free-to-play games. It took them quite a while to come up with a balance that they're comfortable with.
    – Shadur-don't-feed-the-AI
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 13:14
  • Enchanted Keys are 125 Zen. Even at a 1:100 Zen:AD exchange rate, that's still 12,500 AD - what's probably a full day's worth of AD farming for casual players. With AD refinement capped at 24,000 any rate above 1:192 Zen:AD makes it nearly impossible to earn an Enchanted Key in one day without spending real cash. It's a shame that it's more practical to sell such a common item (the Lockboxes) for the few coppers you'll get than it is to actually bother obtaining the key to open it.
    – Iszi
    Commented Apr 20, 2015 at 13:21
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    The most efficient way for most players to make AD these days is to have lots of toons running leadership tasks. The drawback is that it takes quite a bit of clicking per day (best done in the gateway) to level up leadership and then keep running the tasks that generate AD. Even though it costs 500 zen to unlock two new character slots, you can generate enough AD to pay for that pretty quickly (especially with the Zen:AD ratio so low on XBox (it has been pegged at 1:500 for the PC version for a long time).
    – Eric J.
    Commented May 20, 2015 at 16:58

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