Collecting the full set of cards in Pokemon Trading Card Game Pocket's limited-time Deluxe Pack EX is a monumental challenge that could easily require players to open up more than 2,000 booster packs apiece, according to one player's scientific estimation. The Deluxe Pack EX contains the largest assortment of cards for any booster set in Pokemon TCG Pocket so far, and some other factors are making the collection task even harder.
The Deluxe Pack EX in Pokemon TCG Pocket was officially announced about a week ago, and it first became available at the end of September. Featuring the return of several cards from across the game's first year, including some special art variants, the Deluxe Pack EX is also the first limited-time expansion booster for the game, and it will only be available for 30 days from its launch.
Pokemon TCG Pocket's Deluxe Pack Ex Booster Is a Controversy Waiting to Happen
Pokemon TCG Pocket has a new booster pack on the way, and it has all the ingredients to make some players happy and leave some very unsatisfied.
Collecting Every Deluxe Pack EX Card Is Very Expensive
While the limited-time pack allows players the chance to pick up 353 basic cards they may have missed in their first go-around, along with 26 special card variants, collecting them all will require a massive amount of Pack Hourglasses. One player has conducted an experiment involving 10,000 trial simulations, posting their findings to Reddit, and found that collecting every card of one to four-diamond rarity would require a player to open, on mean average, 1,536 packs, with a 99 percent probability that the last needed card would be obtained between the 1,437th to 1,640th pack opened. Cards pulled from the Deluxe EX Pack only apply to that specific Dex and not from the sets in which they originated, but the reverse is also true, and players do not receive credit in the new Dex for cards they have picked up in the first 11 sets.
Things only get more complicated when factoring in the 26 cards of one-star rarity or higher. In order to fill out every entry on the Deluxe Pack EX card list, the mean average number of pack openings jumps all the way up to 2,197 packs, with a 99 percent degree of confidence placing the number somewhere between 2,078 and 2,321 packs. All of these figures are affected by one negative effect of the Deluxe Pack EX, which only provides four cards per pull instead of the game's standard five.
Since free-to-play players only get the ability to open two packs every 24 hours, for a maximum of 60 pulls during the pack's availability, getting every card in the set will require heavy use of Pokemon TCG Pocket's Pack Hourglasses, which each speed up the pack-opening cooldown clock by one hour. When also factoring in Wonder Picks, the study's creator found the odds of collecting every card in the set dropped dramatically to around 400 packs required, though the value of the hourglasses required to pull off this task would still set a player back around $260.
- Released
- October 30, 2024
- Developer(s)
- DeNA, Creatures Inc.
- Publisher(s)
- The Pokemon Company
- Multiplayer
- Online Multiplayer
- Cross-Platform Play
- Yes
WHERE TO PLAY
- Genre(s)
- Digital Card Game
