The Math Behind Fusing (or, Why Not a Single Person Will Get the Captain Marvel Uniform)

Using the data mined from the game and organized into spreadsheets by mr_munkii and scorpio0920, I took a look at the math behind fusing and covers and came to the stark realization that it wasn't just the RNG that was making it hard to get the pieces we want, but that Netmarble had it planned that way all along.

 

I apologize in advance for the lack of formatting on this—I originally wrote it for the Mobirum boards and decided to post it here as well since I suspect it might be deleted from there.

 

Common, Uncommon, and FV (Establishing Terminology)

First, let's establish a few things. There are two tiers of non-premium covers. Let's call ones that provide biometrics when completed "uncommon" and those that give other bonuses type "common". Given the drop rates of their individual parts, that's actually a better descriptor than exists in-game.

 

Each piece of in the game has a built-in fuse value—an invisible number that's used to determine the overall rarity of the covers being combined. For non-premium covers, there are three possible fuse values (let's call it FV for simplicity): 1, 2, and 4. For common covers, parts with an even number have FV1 and odd pieces have FV2. Uncommon covers are divided vertically into three columns, each with pieces of the same FV. The first column (pieces 1, 4, and 7) are each FV1; the middle column (pieces 2, 5, and 8) are FV2; the right column (pieces 3, 6, 9) are FV4.

 

Premium pieces use the same FV distribution as Uncommon pieces, but they have FV8, FV16, and FV32, respectively.

 

How Combining Works

When you combine cover pieces, the game totals up the number of FV being fused, and uses that value to determine which of four random result tables it uses to generate your new cover piece.

 

The lowest of these random result tables is used for all FVs of 20 or less. It has a 70% chance of giving you a common or uncommon piece numbered 1/4/7; a 28% chance of giving you a common or uncommon piece numbered 2/5/8; and a 2% chance of giving you a common or uncommon piece numbered 3/6/9. If your total FV being fused is 20 or less, you have a 0% chance of obtaining a premium piece. Your chances of getting the rarest pieces are the same if you fuse 2 or 10 covers as long as your total FV doesn't hit 21.

 

When the fused FV equals 21–80, you have instead a 28% chance of getting a common or uncommon piece numbered 2/5/8; a 70% chance of getting a common or uncommon piece numbered 3/6/9; and a 2% chance of getting a premium piece numbered 1/4/7. To get to 21 points, you need to fuse at least 1 FV4+ cover, which will be hard for many people until they're close to finished piecing together their common and uncommon covers. I've done it a few times with 9xFV2 and 1xFV4 and received a #9 piece once and a #1 piece once. That's way better than I've ever gotten with under 20 FV.

 

Now, the next tier of results requires between 81–160 FV. That means you need to be fusing quite a few duplicate premium pieces in order to even break the threshold. So you'll need to do a lot of 21-FV fuses to build up a supply of duplicate FV8 premium covers. There's no other way to even get close to 80FV in a single fuse. But here's the kicker: You can't get 81 without having at least one FV16 cover in there too. To get that, you need to use duplicates gained from opening chests. The chance of getting a premium 2/5/8 piece is 1%, meaning you need to open 100 chests to get a duplicate and only then if you're lucky and get the same one twice. If you do somehow manage to get a FV16 cover you can fuse away, your probabilities for this tier are as follows: premium pieces 1/4/7 at 28%; premium pieces 2/5/8 at 70%; premium pieces 3/6 at 2%. You cannot get a #9 premium piece unless you break the highest threshold 161 FV.

 

To get here, you're fusing 9x FV16 pieces and 1x FV32 piece most likely, so again, you need to already have some of the premium 3/6/9 pieces to give this one a real shot. The chances of getting a premium pieces numbering 3 or 6 in a chest is .004% (or 1 in 25,000 chests); the chances of getting piece number 9 in a chest is .002% (or 1 in 50,000 chests). Once you've got between FV161 and FV320, however, you have a 70% chance of getting premium pieces 2/5/8; a 29% chance of getting premium pieces 3 and 6, and 1% chance of getting a piece #9. Getting a specific #9 piece is a .25% chance.

 

Conclusions

So what this tells us is that unless they change these numbers, no one—LITERALLY ZERO PEOPLE—are going to stand a chance of getting the Captain Marvel cover. The entire month-long event is a scam to get people to buy cover pieces and waste all their energy on dimension rifts. If anyone gets even one of the premium covers, I'll be surprised, but the chances of that are incredibly slim, even if someone is buying hundreds and thousands of cover chests.

 

Since I saw the probabilities of this and realized that it is literally impossible to complete even a single premium cover by fusing existing pieces without also buying a sizable number of chest rolls, my enthusiasm about cover collecting has crashed hardcore. I feel like every time I refilled my energy to go after that stage 5 dimension rift boss and every chest I paid to open was a complete rip off, because Netmarble knows that none of us have a chance at getting that cover under the current system. And they're ok with that. That's why there is quite literally no documentation either in-game or on this site about how these things work.

 

Unless Netmarble adjusts the drop rates of these pieces and gives people a means of opening chests without spending crystals (like maybe by spending dimension fragments, which we're all getting tons of now that we're running rifts chasing covers) even the top 1% who spend thousands of dollars on the game are getting fleeced.