RIP Chests - 2025 Q1 Update
Details of the new Clash Royale update of March 2025.
Less features, simpler experience!
Table of Contents
- Is this a big update?
- RIP Chests
- Daily Battle Rewards
- Daily Battle Rewards Details
- RIP Season Shop
- RIP Banner Box
- Pass Royale Changes
- Lucky Box Probabilities
- Resource Changes in detail
- Pathfinding 2.0
- Discarding Old Resources
- Small & QoL Changes
- Game Credits
- Additional Screenshots from Pass Royale
- Feedback
Is this a big update?
The first update of the year brings some relevant changes, but no shiny new features. These changes aim to improve the daily experience of most players by simplifying their daily routine and removing less popular features.
We’ll go over the changes in more detail later, but this is a quick list of the features that are being removed:
- Chest cycle, chest slots and chest timers
- Chest Keys (Magic Item)
- Chest Speed Up boosts (Arena rewards)
- Daily Tasks
- Banner Boxes
- Season Shop and Season Tokens
Most of the rewards that would be obtained through these features will be relocated into:
- Daily Battle Rewards
- Free Pass Royale
- Live Events (Milestone Events, Community Events...)
In short, these features were adding a lot of unnecessary friction and complexity. By removing them, Supercell hopes that players have a more flexible and rewarding experience.
RIP Chests
Chests are an iconic feature for Clash Royale, but they aren’t perfect.
One of their main issues is that they interrupt the rewarding experience of winning a battle. The chest timers add a delay that doesn’t allow players to enjoy their success in the moment; chest loot isn’t well connected to the won battle.
They also force players to log in to the game several times a day, just to keep their chest queue active. This is potentially fine for very active players, but more harmful for busy or casual-leaning players. Removing this requirement gives players more flexibility.
This doesn’t mean that being regularly active isn’t valued, as we’ll see later, there will be new incentives to play daily.
Another issue with chests is that their rewards aren’t very exciting and unpredictable. After you have unlocked most cards, opening chests can become a dull experience due to the lack of surprises. Lucky Drops provide an improvement in this regard, although you could argue that this is mainly due to the strong value inconsistencies in each of the star tiers. For example, a 4-star Lucky Drop can be great (Wild Shard) or underwhelming (Gold).
Lastly, the 4-slot UI creates a very static limit for player rewards. Unless you spend Gems or Chest Keys, winning battles after your chest slots are filled can feel unrewarding.
This problem becomes worse due to how it pairs with chest timers. When players log in to play, they usually have 1 single slot available to fill, which is the chest they opened after logging in. After playing 1 battle, their slots are filled again. Without this main incentive to play, playing session length is reduced.
By removing the chest queue, battle rewards can be given more often and with less restrictions.
Although the cycle chests are being removed, there are still a few in other features with chests that will remain as they are (for now). E.g.: Pass Royale, Level Up, Clan War, Shop, Challenges...
Daily Battle Rewards
Chests are going away, but there are new rewards for winning battles!
Every day, players will be able to earn rewards with each win:
- Wins 1-3: Lucky Drop + Bonus Reward + Crowns
- Wins 4-10: Bonus Reward + Crowns
- Wins 11+: Crowns
This distribution of rewards is provisional and player dependent, as some initial A/B tests are performed. But most players should have this variation.
As with the current chests, these rewards can be earned by playing in Trophy Road, Path of Legends, Party Mode...
Daily Battle Rewards Details
From the 3 Lucky Drops available daily:
- 1st starts as 2-star
- 2nd and 3rd start as 1-star
The Bonus Rewards can be either Gold or Common/Rare/Epic cards. The are several quantities for each of these categories, but the ranges are:
- From 800 to 6,500 Gold (~35%)
- From 10 to 120 Common Cards (~30%)
- From 4 to 30 Rare Cards (~30%)
- From 4 to 6 Epic Cards (~5%)
As usual with rewards, quantities are mainly defined by the arena you are in. To obtain the highest rewards available, you should reach 8,500 trophies in Trophy Road.
It’s worth noting the 2 main differences between old chests and Bonus Rewards:
- No chance to get Legendary or Champion cards
- No chance to unlock new cards
After the update, Lucky Drops will become the main source for these.
RIP Season Shop
After 2 years, Season Shop, the main feature of the “Update For Losers,” is being removed.
According to Supercell, this feature wasn’t being used as much as they’d like. It had the potential to provide significant progression, specially with evolutions. But aside from the most engaged players, many simply weren’t using it.
Magic Books, Evolution Shards and other Season Shop rewards aren’t going away. These rewards are planned to be distributed through other features every season, making it more likely for more players to collect them. For example:
- Evolution Shards in Live Events
- Magic Book in Live Events
- Wild Shard in Free Pass Royale
In summary, the aim is to relocate these rewards, but not change them in a significant way. The Live Events are expected to last 1-2 weeks each, so players should still have flexibility to obtain what matters to them.
RIP Banner Box
The 3rd and last feature removal of this update is the Banner Box. This feature has been in the game since 2022, and is arguably less relevant than the others.
Banner Tokens will be converted into Gold when the update is released (1 Token = 20 Gold). In the future, Frames and Decorations will be available in challenges and other features.
The removal of Banner Tokens also means that the rewards in Masteries will be replaced with Gold:
- 100 Tokens ➜ 6K Gold
- 125 Tokens ➜ 8K Gold
- 150 Tokens ➜ 10K Gold
Pass Royale Changes
Due to all the resource shuffling from chests and Season Shop, there are a lot of small changes to the rewards, but let’s first look into the highlights:
- (Free Pass) Wild Shards: 1 ➜ 2
- (Free Pass) Royal Wild Chest: 1 ➜ 0
- (Free Pass) Legendary Wild Card: 1 ➜ 0
- (Diamond Pass) Gems: 1,525 ➜ 225
- (Diamond Pass) Royal Wild Chest: 1 ➜ 0
Lucky Box Probabilities
There are some small changes to Lucky Drop upgrade probabilities. These changes don’t have much relevance for progression strategies, but we'll share the details anyways.
As a simple reminder, this is how Lucky Drops work:
- The Lucky Drop has a start tier. E.g.: 2-Star
- The Lucky Drop has a certain number of "spins", usually 4.
- When each spin is used, there's a chance to upgrade the tier of the Lucky Drop. This chance is dependent on the start tier and the current tier. After all the spins are used, the final tier defines the pool of results available, and one of them is chosen randomly.
This update is introducing some changes to those upgrade chances:
Start | To 2-Star | To 3-Star | To 4-Star | To 5-Star |
---|---|---|---|---|
1-Star (Old) | 25.00% | 23.00% | 23.00% | 23.00% |
1-Star (New) | 25.00% | 23.00% | 23.00% | 23.00% |
2-Star (Old) | 23.00% | 17.00% | 17.00% | |
2-Star (New) | 24.00% | 20.00% | 6.00% | |
3-Star (Old) | 17.00% | 17.00% | ||
3-Star (New) | 20.00% | 2.00% | ||
4-Star (Old) | 0.00% | |||
4-Star (New) | 4.00% |
These upgrade probabilities are used for each spin, which can be hard to digest in this format. By looking at the outcome probabilities the stats are easier to understand:
Start | 1-Star | 2-Star | 3-Star | 4-Star | 5-Star |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
1-Star (Old) | 31.64% | 43.91% | 20.10% | 4.05% | 0.30% |
1-Star (New) | 31.64% | 43.91% | 20.10% | 4.05% | 0.30% |
2-Star (Old) | 35.15% | 47.17% | 15.40% | 2.28% | |
2-Star (New) | 33.36% | 45.59% | 20.04% | 1.01% | |
3-Star (Old) | 47.46% | 38.88% | 13.66% | ||
3-Star (New) | 40.96% | 56.97% | 2.07% | ||
4-Star (Old) | 100.00% | 0.00% | |||
4-Star (New) | 96.00% | 4.00% | |||
5-Star (Old) | 100.00% | ||||
5-Star (New) | 100.00% |
If this is still too much, here’s a summary:
- Nothing changes for 1-star
- 3-star and 5-star outcomes become less likely
- 4-star outcomes become more likely
- 4-star (start) now has a small chance to become 5-star
Additionally, there are 2 more changes related to the removal of the chest cycle:
- Tower Troops are more likely as rewards
- Higher chance to unlock new cards
Resource Changes in detail
This update moves around a lot of resources, which makes it difficult to get a good sense of the overall changes. Additionally, we are told to expect a new category of rewards as "Live Events", but we don’t have the details for them yet. Will those include all the removed rewards? We can’t say yet, so we’ll have to wait and see.
This summary makes some assumptions and generalizations to reduce complexity. The main ones are:
- We look into all the available rewards; less active players won’t receive everything.
- We look at rewards for Arena 23 players (9,000 trophies).
- We use average rewards from Lucky Drops and chests.
- We assume optimal conversion for Magic Books into cards, but keep rarities separate.
- We mix together cards and Wild Cards, but keep rarities separate.
Which sources are changing?
- Removed: Chest Cycle, Daily Tasks and Season Shop
- Changed: Free Pass and Paid Pass
- Added: Daily Rewards and Live Events (?)
After adding together all of these changes and categorizing all the resources, these are our results for free sources:
Resource | Old (Free) | New (Free) | Change |
---|---|---|---|
Gold | 1,185,000 | 463,000 | -61% |
Elite Wild Cards | 10,910 | 5,650 | -48% |
Common Cards | 20,340 | 10,880 | -47% |
Rare Cards | 5,010 | 2,569 | -49% |
Epic Cards | 582 | 232 | -60% |
Legendary Cards | 41 | 20 | -50% |
Champion Cards | 17 | 9 | -49% |
Total EWC Value | 197,900 | 99,400 | -50% |
And this is what Diamond Pass changes look like:
Resource | Old (Paid) | New (Paid) | Change |
---|---|---|---|
Gold | 498,000 | 153,100 | -29% |
Elite Wild Cards | 5,750 | 2,405 | -31% |
Common Cards | 5,780 | 4,410 | -7% |
Rare Cards | 1,425 | 1,065 | -8% |
Epic Cards | 290 | 456 | +31% |
Legendary Cards | 17 | 14 | -10% |
Champion Cards | 8 | 5 | -23% |
Total EWC Value | 82,900 | 61,500 | -12% |
Overall, these changes add up to significant reductions to monthly progression, although the rewards from Live Events could close this gap.
This reduction to rebalance the economy seems mainly aimed towards cards and Gold. As we mentioned earlier, the amount of Evolution Shards available each season isn’t changing.
Pathfinding 2.0
Pathfinding is how we call the engine that powers troop movements. It’s what directs troops towards the nearest targets other movements in the arena.
This update introduces some changes to these movements, fixing some bugs and strange interactions. The key changes are:
- Less lane prioritization: troops will be more likely to move diagonally, instead of horizontally to reach a lane quickly. This is mostly noticeable after crown towers are destroyed, and with some deployments behind crown towers.
- Troops now recognize buildings: troops will "see" buildings and be able to avoid them more reliably. After this change, troops should get stuck less often.
One of the priorities with this pathfinding update is to preserve interactions as they were. If you don’t notice significant changes, that’s a good sign!
It’s worth noting that mechanics like "sight range" aren’t changing at all, so this shouldn’t affect what targets are chosen by troops. For example, the unexpected direction shifts of Balloon aren’t changing at all.
Discarding Old Resources
When the update is released, there are 3 kinds of resources that will be removed:
- Chests in chest slots
- Chest Keys
- Banner Tokens
Chests will be opened instantly the first time you log in, so players won’t lose the rewards from any special chests they had saved.
Each Chest Key will be converted to 5,000 Gold, with a maximum of 30 Chest Keys that can be converted (150K Gold maximum).
Each Banner Token will be converted to 20 Gold, with a maximum of 2,000 Banner Token that can be converted (40K Gold maximum).
Season Tokens will remain available to spend in the Season Shop until the end of the season (April 7th).
Small & QoL Changes
Small changes and features:
- Daily Win Streak in profiles: getting wins every day will now be displayed in player profiles, but it won’t give bonus rewards.
- Play Again button: after completing a battle, you’ll be able to start a new one directly from the result screen. If you earned rewards, you’ll open them all after you return to the home screen.
- Slight probability changes in some Lucky Drop rarity upgrades.
- New button to customize your cosmetics in the deck selection tab. This button opens a tab to edit your Tower skin, Emote deck and Battle Banner.
- Faster open animation for Lucky Drops.
- Added the option to copy the link to a private tournament.
- In 2v2, friend request pop-ups no longer close if your teammate leaves the chat.
- Hoggy Bank has been moved to the Shop.
Other fixes:
- Latency improvements.
- All troop stats have now been defined with common rarity as the base, solving many level scaling inconsistencies.
Battle engine fixes:
- Rage now increases Executioner and Ram Rider’s Attack Speed.
- All Cards that spawn in groups of 3 or more Troops now correctly mirror their deploy formation depending on the side of the arena they are deployed in.
- Fixed various cases where Hunter Evolution would not net other Troops.
- Fixed Air Troops not getting grounded by Evolved Hunter’s net.
- Fixed various cases of Troops getting visually stuck in the air or on the ground.
- Fixed z-axis issues for ground troops, which were able to cross the river after being knocked up by Evolved Mega Knight.
- Fixed Electro Giant not always being knocked back when hit by Evolved Mega Knight.
- Fixed various issues with Rune Giant’s enchantment.
- Fixed various issues with Monk’s Pensive Protection ability.
- Fixed missing Evolution diamond indicator for various Troop.
- Fixed 2nd-stage Troops not spawning after being buffed by Royal Chef.
- Royal Chef’s Pancake can now hit dashing units and Mighty Miner when underground.
- Rune Giant can no longer enchant Troops while captured by Evolved Goblin Cage.
- Evolved Electro Dragon enchanted by Rune Giant now deals bonus damage every third attack, rather than every third lightning bounce.
Game Credits
With this update, 5 new names are being added to the game credits:
- Juuso Huttunen (Game Programmer)
- Semyon Alexander Markkanen (Community Manager)
- Adam Rademacher (Senior Systems and Gameplay Engineer)
- McCoy Xu (unknown role)
- Ziye Zhao (VFX Artist)
Additional Screenshots from Pass Royale
Feedback
Do you have any questions or feedback about the update? Let us know in the comments.
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