Treasure Hunter/Cost analysis

Cost analysis
As stated in Treasure Hunter, there are three ways to advance this title: With keys, with lockpicks and with Golden Eggs. For sake of simplicity and since they drop for a limited amount of time each year, Golden Eggs shall not be taken into account here despite that they are the cheapest way to advance this title. Also not taken into account here is the value of the drop that you get from the chest that you open, as the range of value for these drops is so wide that it would be impossible to say anything meaningful in that regard.

To give an estimate on what the title costs from start to end, let's consider the following basic scenarios; assumed is that we start from 0 on both the Treasure Hunter title, as well as the Lucky Title. We look at three different lockpick prices:
 * each (Merchant)
 * each (player market)
 * this price is dictated solely by players and may change, but has proven itself to be quite stable over a long time and has a large influence on most Treasure Hunters' financial investment in their title
 * each (Faction merchant)


 * Scenario I:	Use the cheapest keys only
 * Scenario II:	Use the most expensive keys only
 * Scenario III:	Use cheapest keys until it's cheaper to use lockpicks. For lockpick prices between and  that break-even point is at a retention rate of 52%. This scenario requires 1,200 keys of  to get to rank 4 of Treasure Hunter, then switch to lockpicks.
 * Scenario IV:	Use lockpicks only on the cheapest "high-end" chests as defined above (base retention rate of 40%).
 * Scenario V:	Use lockpicks only on HM locked chests (base retention rate of 10%).


 * 1To break even for lockpicks a retention rate of 60% or higher is required. It would require one to first reach rank 7 (highest rank) on the Treasure Hunter title, defeating the purpose of scenario III.

Least cost method
In order to achieve the Treasure Hunter title with as small of a cost as possible, there are a couple things to consider: which chests to open and lockpicks versus keys.

The matter of choosing chests is fairly simple. The chest must be a high enough price to obtain points towards the title ( or more), and the chest must have a retention rate as high as possible to reduce cost. Thus, from here on it is assumed that only chests are opened.

Now to the question of lockpicks versus keys. First, it is assumed the lockpicks are bought at the current market value of. At this cost, using lockpicks from the start has been shown to be more effective than using keys due to increasing the Lucky title track. Scenario IV in the table above shows this. Thus, from here on it is assumed that only lockpicks are used.

The following table shows the average rate of progression for the treasure hunter title track (using scenario IV).


 * 1The number of lockpicks retained is rounded down for simplicity; however, this is well within possible variance.
 * 2Rank is shown in parenthesis.
 * 3If using lockpicks, the total cost is 4516.8.

It should be noted that opening 3,841 chests of the lowest cost after the treasure hunter title is maxed will max the Lucky title track for an extra 96.25. It should also be noted that if the remainder Lucky title is to be maxed using the Nine Rings method, it is better to do this as early as possible, as this will reduce the break rate of lockpicks even further.