Regional price differences are the basic way of obtaining cheap honor of kings top up. Players in Turkey took advantage of the 44% depreciation of the lira in 2023 to top up 100 US dollars’ worth of diamonds through local payment channels. The actual cost was only 56 US dollars, with the unit price as low as 0.009 US dollars per diamond (the global average price is 0.014 US dollars). However, after the optimization of Tencent’s geofencing system (IP location error ≤50 meters, device time zone recognition), The precision of this type of cross-regional recharge is 94%, and the ban rate of the account is 88% (Tencent’s 2023 Security White Paper). Southeast Asia’s Codashop platform reduced the transaction fee from 6% to 1.5% through local payment gateways such as Thailand’s TrueMoney. By adding 1,000 Thai baht (approximately 29 US dollars), one can provide an additional 12% of diamonds as a gift, reduce the actual cost by 10.7%, and drive a 41% increase in the region’s transaction volume in Q4 2023.
Black and gray production channels use “low prices” as bait but come with extremely high risks. The “DiamondFarm” case in Vietnam in 2022 revealed that the criminal gang used hacked credit cards for reselling diamonds at 60% of market value (with a unit price of 0.0084 US dollars), resulting in the closure of 18,000 accounts and an average loss of 35 US dollars per gamer (Vietnam Cyber Security Agency statistics). The Philippines “TopUpGuru” site contends that “1 US dollar can be exchanged for 7 diamonds” (official exchange rate is 1:5.7), yet the actual arrival rate is only 32%, and 68% of the order capital cannot be recovered (as investigated by the Philippine Consumers’ Association). The repayment rate of funds through these channels is less than 5%, while the resolution rate of official cooperative platforms’ complaints is as high as 96%.
Operator cooperation activities have excellent short-term cost-effectiveness. In 2023, AIS Telecom in Thailand promoted an activity of “Recharge 599 Thai Baht (approximately 17 US dollars) and get 300 diamonds and a limited skin”, which increased the overall return rate by 18%. However, due to the quota limit (for the first 30,000 users), the quota was attained within 23 minutes of the start of the event. Brazilian players used the Pix instant payment system for topping up, with a handling fee of just 0.8%. The arrival time was cut from 3 minutes for credit cards to 8 seconds, driving a 37% increase in quarterly transaction volume in the region (Payment Report of the Central Bank of Brazil). However, watch out for scams – an Indonesia live-streaming platform host advertised “40% off diamonds internally”, but it was a phishing link that cheated users out of 850,000 yuan in a single day (as reported by Indonesian cyber police).
Official limited-time events are the best way to safely obtain low prices. On May 5th Friends Festival of Honor of Kings in 2024, the players who recharged 500 yuan or more were able to unlock the limited skin “Shanhezhi Lingxiao” and 150 yuan worth of diamonds. The overall return rate increased by 23%, and the peak revenue of the event on the first day was 230 million yuan, with a year-on-year increase of 41% (Tencent’s financial report). In wechat Pay’s “First Recharge Double” promotion, users who recharged 60 yuan for the first time received 120 diamonds as a reward, prompting 41% of new players to convert. However, most of the promotion of the identical ads on unofficial channels are fraudulent. In 2023, Kuaishou streamers in the nation created fake pages, which resulted in the theft of 14,000 accounts (Jiangsu Cyber Police statistics).
Technical arbitrage must balance risk and efficiency. Argentine players had used a regional price difference (0.009 US dollars per diamond) to supplement, but Tencent’s geofencing system upgraded the recognition precision rate to 96% in 2023 and banned 84,000 accounts. Russian players used QIWI Wallet due to sanctions. Despite a 7% transaction fee and a 180-second arrival time, its use rate still increased by 29% in 2023 (Russian Payment Association). Although blockchain payments (e.g., Polygon chain) have reduced the arrival time from 72 hours to 22 seconds, due to compliance constraints in certain nations, the user uptake rate in the TrueMoney experiment in Thailand was only 14%.
Final suggestion: In compliant channels, local authorized platforms (e.g., Codashop) offer a discount of 7-12%, and official events (e.g., anniversary celebrations) have a return rate of 15-23%. But bidding for prices above 30% has an 85% risk of account suspension. Tencent statistics show that obedient users’ LTV is 2.1 times higher than unruly ones’ as they can continue to play skin-unlocking activities (such as getting “Phoenix Seeking Phoenix” by achieving an 888 yuan or more recharge accumulation), while the short-term saving through black industry channels cannot make up for the account depreciation in the long run.