Chest Optimizer
A slow clear can waste a whole box cooldown cycle. Rank every stage by boxes per hour from your real clear times and stop losing loot to timing. Optimize now.
108 Task Bar Hero stages drop boxes, and nearly all of them drop two at once - a stage-boss box and a monster box, each on its own separate cooldown. A box can only be looted on a run boundary, so how many you actually collect per hour depends on whether your clear time lines up with those cooldowns.
A box's listed drop rate does not gate how often it arrives; the cooldown alone does. That was verified against 887 logged box events, where a box with a nominal 8% rate arrived at 9 per hour rather than the 0.8 per hour a rate-weighted model predicts.
At the measured reference clear times the highest box count is 1-3 Normal at 58.9 boxes per hour. This ranks box COUNT, not box value: early Normal stages win on raw throughput because their cooldowns are short, while the boxes themselves hold far weaker loot. Enter your own clear times on the page to rank stages at your real speed.
Most boxes per hour
| # | Stage | Lv | Clear time | Boss box/hr | Monster box/hr | Total/hr |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1-3 Normal | 3 | 0:22 | 29.4 | 29.4 | 58.9 |
| 2 | 1-1 Normal | 1 | 0:17 | 26.4 | 26.4 | 52.9 |
| 3 | 1-2 Normal | 2 | 0:21 | 25.6 | 25.6 | 51.2 |
| 4 | 1-6 Normal | 7 | 0:30 | 18.5 | 27.7 | 46.2 |
| 5 | 1-4 Normal | 5 | 0:25 | 18.7 | 26.2 | 45.0 |
| 6 | 1-9 Normal | 11 | 0:38 | 14.8 | 29.7 | 44.5 |
| 7 | 1-7 Normal | 8 | 0:32 | 17.4 | 26.1 | 43.5 |
| 8 | 2-1 Normal | 13 | 0:41 | 13.8 | 27.6 | 41.4 |
| 9 | 2-2 Normal | 14 | 0:41 | 13.8 | 27.6 | 41.4 |
| 10 | 1-5 Normal | 6 | 0:28 | 17.2 | 24.0 | 41.2 |
| 11 | 1-8 Normal | 10 | 0:35 | 13.7 | 24.0 | 37.8 |
| 12 | 3-4 Normal | 26 | 0:58 | 9.9 | 14.9 | 24.8 |
| 13 | 3-6 Normal | 28 | 0:58 | 9.9 | 14.9 | 24.8 |
| 14 | 1-1 Hell | 53 | 2:00 | 9.8 | 14.7 | 24.5 |
| 15 | 1-2 Hell | 54 | 2:01 | 9.7 | 14.6 | 24.3 |
Frequently asked questions
Which stage should I farm for boxes in Task Bar Hero?
It depends on your clear time, not just the box's cooldown - enter your real clear times and this page ranks stages by boxes per hour. 108 of the 120 pre-Plaguelands stages drop a boss box and a monster box at once, each on its own cooldown, so the best stage is rarely the obvious one; the Ver 1.2.0 Plaguelands stages are rate-gated instead and flagged separately.
Why does my clear time waste a Task Bar Hero box cooldown?
A box's cooldown only lets you loot on a run boundary, so if the cooldown expires just after a run starts you wait out the entire next clear. That makes clear times slightly above a divisor of the cooldown badly wasteful - shaving a few seconds off can add a whole box per hour.
Does the Chest Optimizer show a countdown timer?
No, and that is deliberate. A controlled 43-run test disproved the assumption that a box becomes lootable exactly one cooldown after its last drop, so a countdown would confidently display a wrong 'Ready'. This page plans around boxes per hour instead, which the measured data does support.