Epic Seven’s gacha has one feature that sets it apart from almost every other anime-style gacha on the market: there is no 50/50 coin flip. The short answer for anyone deciding whether to chase a specific hero is this — Smilegate sets the base rate for a 5-star hero at 1.5% per pull on a Covenant pickup banner, and backs that up with a hard, deterministic guarantee at 121 pulls that hands you the exact featured hero, not a random 5-star from the wider pool. Priced out in real money, that guarantee runs roughly $302 to $318 depending on how you buy your Skystones, based on Epic Seven’s own currency shop and current App Store pricing.
That’s the headline. The rest of this piece walks through where those numbers come from, what a pull-by-pull probability curve looks like under the published 1.5% base rate, a step-by-step expected-value calculation, a worked pity-cost table priced in both Skystones and dollars, and five spending scenarios so you can judge whether saving up for one hero is worth it before you open your wallet.
How Epic Seven’s Summon System Works
Epic Seven runs its gacha through “Covenant Summons,” which pull from a shared pool of heroes and artifacts. A single summon costs 5 Covenant Bookmarks, and Bookmarks are bought with Skystones, the game’s premium currency, according to BlueStacks’ Epic Seven beginner’s guide. The in-game shop sells 5 Bookmarks for 100 Skystones at the standard rate, or 50 Bookmarks for 950 Skystones as a bulk option, which works out to 95 Skystones per summon instead of 100, per Epic7DB’s currency guide.
The banner that matters most for anyone chasing a specific hero is the Covenant “Drop Rate Up” banner, sometimes called a pickup banner, which rotates roughly every one to two weeks and features a single highlighted 5-star hero. As of early September 2026, that rotation included heroes like Uncharted Pioneer Politis on a Drop Rate Up banner starting September 3, and Lisette on a Mystic pull banner from late August, according to the Epic Seven Wiki’s heroes hub, confirming the game is still actively live-serviced with fresh banners rather than winding down.
The Base 5-Star Rate: What 1.5% Really Means
Every Covenant pickup summon draws from a rarity table where the top tier, 5-star heroes, sits at a flat base rate of roughly 1.5% before any pity boost kicks in, according to a September 2026 update to the Epic Seven Wiki’s summons and pity guide. That rate has crept upward over the game’s history. Older third-party breakdowns from 2019 and 2020 cited figures closer to 1.25% to 1.4% for a 5-star hero, so the current 1.5% figure reflects a modest rate increase Smilegate has made to the base odds over time, not a number that’s stayed frozen since launch.
What makes that 1.5% figure different from base rates in most other gacha games is what happens after it hits. In games like Genshin Impact or Honkai: Star Rail, a 5-star pull is often followed by a second roll of the dice over which specific unit you actually receive. Epic Seven skips that step entirely on pickup banners, which is the single biggest reason its pity math is simpler to calculate than almost anything else in the genre.
Epic Seven’s Biggest Difference: No 50/50 Coin Flip
Most modern gacha systems layer a 50/50 mechanic on top of their pity count: hit the top rarity, and there’s roughly a coin-flip chance it’s the character the banner is actually selling rather than a generic unit from the standard pool. Epic Seven doesn’t do that on its Covenant pickup banners. The Epic Seven Wiki states it plainly: “Covenant pickup pity is 121 pulls and there is no 50/50,” and that if the banner has a featured hero up, “the 121st yellow is that hero.”
That single design choice changes the entire cost calculation compared to a game like Genshin Impact’s 50/50 pity system, where losing the coin flip can force a second full pity cycle before you’re guaranteed the unit you actually wanted. In Epic Seven, once you’ve committed to a pickup banner, every pull that doesn’t land a 5-star still counts toward the same 121-pull counter, and there’s no branch where you land the top rarity and still walk away without the hero you were saving for.
The 121-Pull Hard Pity, Explained
Epic Seven layers a soft pity ramp on top of the flat base rate starting around pull 100, and that ramp climbs until it reaches a deterministic guarantee at pull 121, per the Epic Seven Wiki’s summons documentation. Put simply: if you haven’t landed the featured hero by your 120th pull on a given pickup banner, your 121st summon is that hero, full stop, no roll involved.
Smilegate hasn’t published the exact per-pull rate curve for the 21 pulls between where soft pity starts and where hard pity locks in, so this article doesn’t estimate specific percentages for that stretch. What’s confirmed is the start point (around pull 100), the endpoint (pull 121, guaranteed), and that the climb in between only raises your odds, never lowers them. That’s enough to build a conservative, fully sourced cost model without guessing at numbers nobody has published.
Pull-by-Pull Probability Table
Using the flat 1.5% base rate that applies through pull 99 (before soft pity begins), the cumulative chance of landing the featured hero at least once follows the standard formula for repeated independent draws: 1 minus (0.985 raised to the power of the pull count). Here’s how that curve looks at common milestones.
| Pulls Completed | Cumulative Chance of Featured Hero | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| 10 | ~14.0% | Flat base rate zone |
| 20 | ~26.1% | Flat base rate zone |
| 30 | ~36.5% | Flat base rate zone |
| 50 | ~53.0% | Flat base rate zone |
| 67 | ~63.7% | Roughly the statistical expected value (see below) |
| 80 | ~70.2% | Flat base rate zone |
| 99 | ~77.6% | Last pull before soft pity begins climbing |
| 100–120 | Rising, unpublished curve | Soft pity zone; exact per-pull rate not published by Smilegate |
| 121 | 100% | Deterministic hard pity, guarantees the featured hero |
Read that table as a floor, not a ceiling. Every percentage above pull 99 is understated, because it doesn’t credit the rising soft-pity odds that a real player benefits from between pulls 100 and 120. The only number in that range you can bank on with certainty is the last one: 121 pulls always closes the gap.
What It Costs: Skystones, Bookmarks, and the Math Between Them
Translating pulls into dollars takes two conversions: Skystones to Bookmarks, and Skystones to USD. The first part is fixed by the shop. Buying Bookmarks 5 at a time costs 100 Skystones per summon; buying them 50 at a time (the bundle tied to a 10-pull) costs 950 Skystones, or 95 Skystones per summon, a roughly 5% discount for buying in bulk, according to Epic Seven’s Skystone farming guide.
The second conversion, Skystones to real money, comes from Epic Seven’s own storefront. Player-reported regional pricing and third-party top-up listings both point to the same top-tier denomination: 3,800 Skystones for $99.99, the largest single Skystone-only package currently sold, based on pricing mirrored on Epic Seven’s official top-up denominations listed via LootBar and cross-checked against Epic Seven’s own Apple App Store listing, which shows a $99.99 top tier among its in-app purchases. That works out to roughly 2.63 cents per Skystone at the top denomination, the cheapest per-unit rate in the shop.
| Skystone Package | USD Price | Skystones per $1 |
|---|---|---|
| 60 Skystones | $1.99 | 30.2 |
| 155 Skystones | $4.99 | 31.1 |
| 320 Skystones | $9.99 | 32.0 |
| 990 Skystones | $29.99 | 33.0 |
| 1,800 Skystones | $49.99 | 36.0 |
| 3,800 Skystones | $99.99 | 38.0 |
The pattern is consistent with nearly every mobile gacha shop: bigger packages give a better rate. Someone buying only the smallest packages pays roughly 26% more per Skystone than someone buying the top tier, so the dollar figures later in this article use the top-tier 3,800-Skystone rate as the baseline, since that’s the most cost-efficient way to actually save for a pity guarantee.
The Pity-Cost Table: Currency and Real Cash at Every Milestone
Combining the 95-Skystones-per-summon bulk rate with the $99.99-for-3,800-Skystones top-tier package gives a full pity-cost table, from a light 10-pull sample all the way to the guaranteed 121-pull hard pity.
| Pulls | Skystones Needed (Bulk Rate) | Skystones Needed (Single-Pack Rate) | Approx. USD Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 | 950 | 1,000 | ~$25–$26 |
| 50 | 4,750 | 5,000 | ~$125–$132 |
| 67 (expected value) | 6,337 | 6,700 | ~$167–$176 |
| 99 (end of flat rate) | 9,405 | 9,900 | ~$247–$260 |
| 121 (hard pity guarantee) | 11,495 | 12,100 | ~$302–$318 |
That $302-to-$318 range is the number that matters most for anyone deciding whether to budget for a specific hero. It isn’t a probabilistic estimate. Because Epic Seven’s hard pity hands you the exact featured unit with no 50/50 layered on top, that figure is a true guarantee, not a “likely” outcome. Spend it, and you get the hero, every time.
Step-by-Step Expected Value Calculation
The statistical expected value of a flat-rate gacha pull is calculated with a simple formula: 1 divided by the probability of success. At Epic Seven’s published 1.5% base rate, that’s 1 ÷ 0.015, or approximately 66.7 pulls on average to land a 5-star hero, assuming the rate never changed. Since Epic Seven has no 50/50, that 5-star is the featured hero, not a coin flip away from it.
This is a conservative estimate that treats every pull as independent at the flat rate and ignores the boost from soft pity entirely, since Smilegate hasn’t published the shape of that boost. In practice, real average outcomes should land at or slightly below 66.7 pulls, because the small share of players who haven’t hit by pull 100 get better odds on every pull after that, up through the guarantee at 121. Since 66.7 pulls sits comfortably before soft pity even engages, the flat-rate math is a reasonable, defensible stand-in for the typical outcome, not an inflated worst case.
Turning 66.7 pulls into money: at the bulk summon rate of 95 Skystones per pull, that’s roughly 6,337 Skystones, or about $167 using the top-tier package rate. Compare that to the guaranteed $302 to $318 hard-pity cost, and the gap between “statistically typical” and “worst-case guaranteed” is roughly $135 to $151, which is the real price of insuring against bad luck in this specific game.
Five Worked Examples: What Different Budgets Actually Buy
Example 1: The curious spender. Ten pulls costs about 950 Skystones, roughly $25 to $26 at the best available rate. That buys a 14.0% cumulative shot at the featured hero, using the flat 1.5% base rate. Most players in this bracket walk away empty-handed, but the cost of finding out is low.
Example 2: The mid-tier spender. Fifty pulls runs about $125 to $132 and crosses the 53.0% cumulative mark, meaning a slim majority of players hit the featured hero by this point, though nearly half still haven’t.
Example 3: The statistically average spender. At 67 pulls, the mathematical expected value, the running cost is around $167 to $176. This is the number that best represents “what the average player actually pays” if you trust the flat-rate math, since it’s the pull count where the expected-value formula lands.
Example 4: The unlucky-but-still-flat-rate spender. Ninety-nine pulls, the last pull before soft pity begins boosting the odds, costs roughly $247 to $260 and sits at a 77.6% cumulative chance under the flat-rate model. Real odds by this point are somewhat better once the unpublished soft-pity ramp is considered, since it starts around pull 100.
Example 5: The guaranteed spender. A hard 121-pull budget, at $302 to $318, buys certainty. There’s no probability language attached to this scenario because Epic Seven’s no-50/50 pity system makes it a purchase, not a gamble, once you’ve saved that much in Skystones.
How Epic Seven Compares to Other Gacha Pity Systems
Placed next to other major gacha titles covered on this site, Epic Seven’s $302-to-$318 hard-pity cost lands roughly in the middle of the pack, more expensive than Dokkan Battle’s roughly $175 Festival Coin guarantee, but cheaper than the guarantee cost reported for Umamusume Pretty Derby or Arknights: Endfield.
| Game | Approx. Hard-Pity Guarantee Cost |
|---|---|
| Dokkan Battle | ~$166–$175 |
| Genshin Impact | ~$179 (plus 50/50 risk) |
| Reverse 1999 | ~$195 |
| Wuthering Waves | ~$195 |
| Blue Archive | ~$236 |
| Arknights: Endfield | ~$240 |
| Punishing: Gray Raven | ~$250 |
| Epic Seven | ~$302–$318 (no 50/50) |
| Umamusume Pretty Derby | ~$420 |
The dollar figure alone doesn’t tell the whole story, though. Games with a 50/50 mechanic can, in a worst-case scenario, cost roughly double their listed guarantee price if a player loses the coin flip and has to save for a second cycle. Epic Seven’s price tag is fixed. There’s no scenario where a player who saves $318 in Skystones and pulls to hard pity still doesn’t get the specific hero they were after, a structural difference worth more than a straight dollar comparison suggests. For more on how these guarantee systems are built, the mechanics behind soft pity versus hard pity are broken down in detail.
Myths vs. Facts About Epic Seven’s Gacha
Myth: Epic Seven has a 50/50 system like most modern gachas. Fact: it doesn’t, on Covenant pickup banners. The 121-pull hard pity guarantees the exact featured hero directly, with no separate coin flip over which unit you receive.
Myth: The 1.5% base rate is your odds all the way to pity. Fact: soft pity begins raising your odds around pull 100, well before the deterministic guarantee locks in at pull 121. The flat 1.5% rate only describes pulls 1 through roughly 99.
Myth: Buying summons one at a time or in bulk costs the same. Fact: bulk Bookmark purchases (50 for 950 Skystones) run about 5% cheaper per summon than buying 5 at a time for 100 Skystones.
Myth: Smaller currency packages are a better way to budget. Fact: the smallest Skystone package costs roughly 26% more per unit of currency than the largest one, based on official pricing tiers, so piecemeal purchases quietly inflate the real cost of a pity guarantee.
Myth: A no-50/50 system automatically makes Epic Seven the cheapest gacha to play. Fact: its guarantee cost sits above several other major titles’ published figures. What the no-50/50 structure buys isn’t a lower price, it’s price certainty: you know exactly what a guaranteed hero costs before you start pulling.
Is Chasing a Specific Hero in Epic Seven Worth It?
The honest answer depends entirely on what a player is optimizing for. If the goal is simply “get a 5-star hero,” the math favors casual spending. A $25 to $30 budget already buys a 14% shot, and by the statistical expected value of 67 pulls (around $167 to $176), most players who keep pulling will have hit something. If the goal is a specific, named hero for a competitive team comp, the calculation changes entirely, because Epic Seven doesn’t offer any partial guarantee before pull 121.
What tips the scale in Epic Seven’s favor compared to 50/50 systems is the certainty itself. A player who budgets $302 to $318 and commits to it knows, going in, that the money guarantees the outcome. There’s no scenario, short of Smilegate changing banner rules mid-cycle, where that spend fails to deliver the specific hero. That’s a meaningfully different proposition than budgeting for a guarantee in a game where the pity system only promises “your next 5-star will probably be the right one,” which is how most competing gacha economies are actually built.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is Epic Seven’s base rate for a 5-star hero?
Roughly 1.5% per pull on a Covenant pickup banner before soft pity begins, according to the Epic Seven Wiki’s September 2026 summons documentation. That rate applies flat through approximately pull 99.
Does Epic Seven have a 50/50 system?
No. Unlike most modern gacha games, Epic Seven’s Covenant pickup pity guarantees the exact featured hero directly at pull 121, with no coin flip over which 5-star you actually receive.
How many pulls does it take to guarantee a featured hero?
121 pulls on a Covenant pickup banner. Soft pity starts raising the odds around pull 100, and the guarantee is deterministic at 121, regardless of the outcome of any individual roll.
How much does it cost to guarantee a hero in Epic Seven?
Roughly $302 to $318, depending on whether you buy Covenant Bookmarks in bulk (95 Skystones per summon) or individually (100 Skystones per summon), converted using the top-tier 3,800-Skystones-for-$99.99 package.
Is it cheaper to buy Skystones in bulk?
Yes. The largest Skystone package (3,800 Skystones for $99.99) delivers about 38 Skystones per dollar, versus roughly 30 Skystones per dollar on the smallest package, a difference of about 26%.
When does soft pity start in Epic Seven?
Around pull 100, according to the Epic Seven Wiki. Smilegate hasn’t published the exact per-pull rate curve between pull 100 and the guaranteed pull 121, so this article doesn’t estimate specific percentages for that range.
Is Epic Seven’s rate disclosure considered reliable?
Epic Seven’s summon probability screens are shown in-game before every pull, consistent with Apple and Google’s storefront requirement that randomized-purchase odds be disclosed before checkout. The figures used throughout this article are drawn from community documentation that mirrors those in-game disclosures rather than estimates.
Should I save Skystones for a specific banner, or spend as I go?
Because Epic Seven’s pity count applies per pickup banner rather than carrying forward indefinitely across unrelated future banners, saving toward a specific hero you actually want tends to be more efficient than spreading small amounts across every rotation, especially given the 5% bulk discount on Covenant Bookmark purchases.
