Unlocking everything from an Overwatch event could take hundreds of hours (update)

There are just eight days left in Overwatch’s current event, “Uprising,” but anyone who’s still hoping to get 100 percent of the event’s new skins and items shouldn’t get their hopes up. It could take more than 1,500 hours to unlock everything, according to some disheartening data gathered by players.

Reddit user mynameismunka did the math on how many loot boxes players would have to theoretically open to collect every possible item. Between the Uprising event items and the standard loot box items, players might need to open anywhere from 1,800 to 5,000 different loot boxes. When excluding icons, which players can’t purchase with credits, that average drops to 1,570 loot boxes.

Since Blizzard doesn’t expose Overwatch loot box drop rates, there’s room for error in these calculations, on which mynameismunka went in-depth.

“I don't know for sure the drop rate but I know papa Jeff will release these numbers soon because of some law in china,” mynameismunka wrote. “I also don't know what kind of ‘pity’ rules they have. Like if you open 20 loot boxes with no legendary there might be a 100% chance of the next one being a legendary to help you out.”

Not taking these unknowns into account, however, players could be looking to spend at least $1,740 over the course of more than 1,500 hours to open enough loot boxes.

One poster puts it another way: “Even if you played 24/7 it’s impossible to get even the half of the Uprising items.”

That’s the nature of randomly generated loot boxes, after all; players shouldn’t go in expecting to be able to unlock all of the hundred-plus event items. There’s a 30 percent chance of any loot box bearing one of those event items, anyway, according to mynameismunka.

Overwatch fans hoping for that sweet Widowmaker spray shouldn’t be discouraged by the nature of probability. They still have until May 2 to try to get as many Uprising items as possible.

Update: We’ve updated the post above with some new numbers that mynameismunka got after redoing his calculations. He also solved for how many loot boxes it would likely talk to only get the items from the Uprising event; that number, per his math, is 200.