• Extractions are reasonable value very early on when you just need any IDs and can use the best of what you get and becomes less valuable over time as the chance for unique ID and EGO pulls drops.
  • Try to always pull 10 at a time for the guaranteed 2* on the 10th.
    
  • Never do pulls on Standard Extraction, always do one of the banners, since doing so also gives Ideality for that banner which will get converted into extra free Thread when the banner is over.

• Buying the premium season pass is extremely worthwhile and is essential to grind out IDs and EGOs without spending on pulls, and should be the first thing you spend (Paid) Lunacy on unless you're not sure yet whether you're going to enjoy the game or you already know it's way too close to the next season to finish it or get value out of it.
  
  • Each season typically has a single exclusive "commencement" Lunacy pack for 1300 Paid Lunacy that covers the base season pass and has an incredibly favorable Lunacy/$ value. For example, the current "Season 5 Commencement Lunacy" for $11 has the highest Lunacy/$ value for pure Lunacy packs outside of the monthly packs (better than even the base $80 Lunacy Hoard). If you're looking to spend as little as possible and still get the most out of the game, this is what you'd want to buy with one exception: the Lunacy Bouquet with the double first time bonus is a better value for a similar price point ($12) and I would recommend that instead if you still have it available.
    
    • Season 6 paid track rewards provide an extra 5000 minimum Lunacy in resource value (ie this doesn't include Egoshards, EGOs, and cosmetic rewards); if you buy the commencement pack for this it's roughly a $33 in net "profit".
  • Including only levels from daily & weekly pass missions and Normal Mirror Dungeon runs with weekly bonus, it takes between 5 & 6 weeks to complete 120 levels of the season pass. Again, this doesn't include season missions and additional Normal Mirror Dungeon runs which will also speed things up if you want to grind it out.
    
  • Once you're able to clear Hard Mirror Dungeons you can go from getting 13.5 levels per week from bonus clears to 22.5 to 25 levels depending on how many Hard runs you split the bonus over (though most people will find the extra 2.5 levels here to be considerably time-inefficient). This means you could clear the base pass 120 levels in between 3 & 4 weeks instead.
• Daily single extractions for 13 Paid Lunacy work out to be a moderately acceptable Lunacy-to-Shard conversion rate based on the base rarity pull rates.
  
• Spending Lunacy on Enkephalin refreshes is very high value--especially the first refresh for only 26--and increase in value over time since the amount you get matches your Enkephalin cap.
  
  • Basically, anything you spend the extra Enkephalin you get from a refresh on for resources (EXP tickets and Thread from Luxcavations and Shards via Mirror Dungeons) is good value compared to the only other alternative for spending Lunacy (Extractions). Technically, these are an unfavorable value in terms of resources/Lunacy compared to the cash shop, but that requires spending on the cash shop.

• By far the most Lunacy per dollar value are the two monthly Lunacy packs, whose downside is that they're trickled out over a month.
  
• Predictably, Lunacy per dollar scales with the more you spend.
  
• Lunacy is more versatile, but if you're purely buying for Extractions, Extraction Tickets are generally a better value.
  
• If you're considering buying EXP tickets to speed up leveling and have access to EXP Luxcavation #2 or higher, it's actually more efficient in terms of EXP/$ to buy the Weekly Enkephalin Pack and convert the Boxes to Modules to manually grind out the 20-30 Luxcavations, with the drawback to this being the extra time you'll spend running them manually and that you're limited to only one of the packs weekly.

• Using Dispense to get what you want is how you spend time to avoid spending money. The basic scheme here is to collect Nominable Egoshard Crates from the season pass to amass shards to get what you want.
  
  • Progressing through the season pass will get you a ton of these along with lots of other random resources, but upon reaching the end you can grind continually for 3 Nominable Egoshard Crates (with premium) per level.
    
  • Completing daily missions are a full level every day, completing the weekly missions is 2 levels per week. Completing Normal Mirror Dungeons for each of the three weekly reward bonuses is 13.5 levels weekly. Once you're able to complete Hard Mirror Dungeons you can get 22.5 to 25 levels depending on how many Hard runs you split the bonus over--though again, the extra 2.5 levels here is very time-inefficient and I would recommend doing a single Hard run and taking all three bonuses in one go.
    
    • This translates to 22.5 levels (or 31.5 to 34 levels with Hard Mirror Dungeons) for 66 (93-102) Crates with premium per week or an average of 132 (186-204) Shards of your choice, or a 400-Shard item roughly every 3 (~2) weeks without additional grinding.
  • Completing a full Mirror Dungeon run is a minimum 3 full levels (without weekly bonuses) and can be run continually as long as you have both time IRL and 5 Enkephalin Modules per reward claim. This should generally be done in Normal Mirror Dungeons since the non-weekly-bonus rewards are the same.
    
    • If you'd like to keep up with sharding new banner releases at a rate of roughly one 400-Shard item every week, you would need to run 12 extra Normal Mirror Dungeons per week in addition to completing all daily and weekly tasks and the one weekly Hard run. If you'd like to shoot for one 400-Shard item every two weeks this is only 1-2 extra Normal Mirror Dungeons over those two weeks.
      
      • Quick note: 12 Normal Mirror Dungeons per week isn't as Enkephalin intense as it sounds but would effectively require you to use at least 3 Lunacy Refreshes on 4 days and 2 Lunacy Refreshes on 3 days during that week (with an Enkephalin cap of at least 120). This technically breaks even on Lunacy with the Mirror Dungeon & weekly maintenance rewards and, as noted elsewhere, is still a highly efficient use of Lunacy.
• Provided you have the time to grind Mirror Dungeons, and once you have at least 100 Enkephalin cap so that refreshing gives at least 5 Modules, any amount of Lunacy you spend on Enkephalin refreshes all the way up to the 10th refresh cap is higher value for Lunacy per Shard than you would average for Shards from pulls via duplicate Extractions. Unless you don't want to spend the time Extractions are a strictly lower value use of Lunacy than refreshing for Modules (generally, but especially) for running Mirror Dungeons. Doing Extractions for Shards (granted that'll hardly be the only reason you'd want to do them) is anywhere from 2-10x less efficient in terms of Lunacy per Shard depending on how many Enkephalin refreshes you convert to Mirror Dungeon runs.

(Note: all dollar values are in US Dollars)
The spreadsheet screenshots here are a snapshot of around just before the Season 5 Nocturnal Sweeping event towards the end of the season. The section on EXP Tickets has been updated to reflect changes to the cash shop and the addition of EXP Luxcavation #8 with Season 6.


Some notes cut off: Monthly Lunacy Batch is 130 + 39/day, Monthly Lunacy Supply is 650 + 65/day.

No big surprises here. Every amount you can buy is double the first time and those quantities increase the value of the pack for the first time.



Notes on EXP and Thread are a little further down. The calculated value in Lunacy is a function of which Luxcavations you have access to (and how much/whether you want to skip for double modules/1.5x rewards) but the relative values are stable. For example:



For EXP, it's worth keeping these values in mind (h/t this thread, but also manually confirmed):
Since the average EXP/$ for the pure EXP packs is around 17400 EXP/$, it's around $12 worth of EXP from the cash shop to level a character from 1 to 55.

This means the best value for buying EXP is actually buying the Weekly Enkephalin Pack for $7, which translates to 60 modules, or 20 EXP Luxcavation #8 runs, or 416000 EXP for ~59400 EXP/$, at the cost of the time doing the runs and with the limitation that you can only buy the Weekly Enkephalin Pack once weekly. (This is actually also more efficient at every level of EXP Luxcavation except the very first one.)

The corresponding analysis for Thread is pretty absymal; like EXP, it's pretty inefficient to straight buy Thread. It's a little more than 15 Thread/$, or about $16 for an Uptie 4 not including shard costs. The Weekly Enkephalin Pack only converts to 150 Thread without daily bonuses and skips, which is technically still a better value--this would place the cost of an Uptie 4 at short of $12, but I very much do not think the $4 difference is worth the opportunity costs in time for this one.



Everything in italics are limited or temporarily available, but should give you an idea of what the general values look like.

The highlighted boxes are some of the more notable values, basically we're noting here that Extraction Tickets tend to be a good deal if you're trying to spend on pulls.



Here I was trying to figure out if, given

• I was already using a single cheap Enkephalin refresh per day to stockpile Modules
  
• I was already out of weekly Mirror Dungeon bonus rewards
  
• I was at the end of the season pass

was it worth additional refreshes to have spare Modules to run Mirror Dungeons purely to get shards? What I discovered is that the answer to this question is basically always yes. Given the spare time, popping a refresh (any number of times but it might be insane to do this more than once or twice a day) and running a Mirror Dungeon was a more efficient use of Lunacy than popping a 10-pull. In order to break even with using the second, 52-Lunacy refresh to obtain an average of 18 shards, a 1300 Lunacy 10 Extractions would need to give me at least 9 3* duplicates, or otherwise provide 450 shards.

This is also where I worked out that the daily cheap 13 Paid Lunacy single pulls are worthwhile purely for the shards aside from the tiny daily gacha fix. When weighted for pull rarity chances from the standard banner, they work out to be better value in Lunacy-per-shard compared to a refresh-for-Mirror-Dungeon-run starting from the second refresh.

This is just thinking out loud if you want an idea of what to do with your Enkephalin every day. This does not apply if you're trying to make story progress as well, in which case my basic recommendation is to manually run your 1x EXP and 3x Thread Luxcavations daily, leave time and Modules for at least one weekly Mirror Dungoeon (but try to do all 3 during the week) and don't be afraid to hit that first Enkephalin refresh per day since you're getting 40 Lunacy for each node you're clearing anyways.

• Base 12 Modules + 6 Modules per refresh
  
  • Daily minimum:
    
    • 3: 1x EXP Luxcavation
      
    • 6/10/12: 3x Thread Luxcavation (6 if all manual, 12 if all skips, 10 if requiring a first clear)
  • @15, 1st refresh to cover the deficit
    
    • 3 leftover, choice of: 1x EXP Lux, 1x manual Thread Lux, or 1x skip Thread Lux w/ 1 deficit
  • 2nd refresh if Mirror Dungeon today (or on 3 days per week to cover for a Hard Mirror Dungeon run)
    
    • If Normal Mirror Dungeon: 1 leftover, save or pair with extra Thread Lux skip

I don't know yet if there's strictly any real reason to, but I'm also hanging on to around 20 Modules.

• Lunacy spending
  
  • Passive income
    
    • 39 + 65 = 104 per day from monthly packs
      
    • 750 per week = ~107 per day from weekly Mirror Dungeon rewards
      
    • 300 per week = ~43 per day from maintenance rewards
  • Outflow
    
    • 13 to 39 per day on cheap single pulls (note: these must be Paid Lunacy)
      
    • 26 to 78+ per day for refreshes
      
    • total: 13 to 117+; 65 per day with 2 banners+standard and 1 refresh
  • Net +189, +152 w/ 2nd refresh for Mirror Dungeons
    
    • 1300 Lunacy every ~6-9 days

Normal Mirror Dungeons are locked to a single weekly bonus charge used per run, but Hard runs can use any number of the weekly bonus charges to increase rewards and also give more rewards per charge than Normal for a modest extra cost of 1 Enkephalin Module per charge used (ie 6 Modules per reward claim instead of 5). Season pass level rewards per weekly bonus charge used follow this scheme:
Additional runs increase the scaling of season XP if you use fewer bonuses, but you basically only gain 2.5 levels for 2 whole additional Hard Mirror Dungeons worth of time.

The general recommendation here is, once you have a team capable of finishing Hard Mirror Dungeons you should do a single weekly run that uses all three bonuses and then, if desired, do additional grinding in Normal Mirror Dungeons.

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