Ok, ok, right off the top let's get one thing clear: this price ($46 here in the U.S.) is outlandish and a middle finger to the player base from Gumi and you shouldn't buy it.

But, purely from a statistical perspective... should you?

Let's say, for the sake of argument:

• You're a dolphin (or bigger)...
• ...who has been known to drop money for the Vault of Lapis on occasion...
• ...so that you can do 10 1 pulls on occasion to try for 5* banner units.

I'd liken this kind of player to someone who plays the lottery, and is mainly interested in their odds of winning the lottery with that shiny banner unit they want.

If there are other units in the pool that you would value equally to your shiny banner unit, we can run some numbers and determine if the latest Gumi cash-grab makes any sort of sense for you. Basically, the more units in the pool you consider to be lottery winners, the better the value of the cash-grab.

Yesterday I posted a spreadsheet that let you personally calculate your odds of pulling the 5* unit you want randomly out of the pool.

Here's an updated version of the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1g9VM_FRiFZ0yBvlWS_UJLSHGbVP6zOamhVBBFUaQtZg/edit?usp=sharing

This version will take the units you rate as being lottery winners and value the odds of getting one of those units in the 5* cash-grab against the odds you essentially "buy" yourself by purchasing lapis directly, via the Vault of Lapis.

What this does is take the odds of pulling an on-banner unit, and combine them with the odds of getting one of your lottery picks should you happen to pull an off-banner rainbow instead. (That's 2% chance for each of the 10 pulls, and 1.25% for the 1 pull.)

It then converts that into a dollar efficiency: percentage odds you get per dollar you spend. The highest dollar efficiency wins, and is your best bet to get what you consider to be a "lottery winning unit" for your money.

(Note that this doesn't account for the pool of 5* units growing bigger with each banner. Nothing's perfect here. But generally newer 5* units are more likely to be considered lottery-winners than older 5* units to most players.)

If you're curious, in USD, the tipping point where this cash summon becomes worthwhile is at least 11 lottery-level units in the pool versus a 10 1 on a non-split 5* banner. If the banner is split (and you only consider one of the two units a lottery win) then it's a win for the cash-grab at 6.

So... I would still say, don't pay for this banner. But if you're considering it, be informed when doing so.

UPDATE: Fixed some numbers, recalculated the tipping points at 11 and 6 respectively.

Update with some editorial analysis

I want to make sure that people understand what's going on here. At USD prices, it takes 6 lottery-winning units in the pool for you to have a better shot at winning than spending on a split-5* banner. It takes 11 to have a better shot than spending on an un-split 5* banner (like we're getting with Yun on Friday, if he's the kind of unit you'd go all-in for).

Does that mean you should spend on this, if you have enough lottery-valued units in the pool? Not necessarily.

• This comparison uses the Vault of Lapis, and we get other bundles over time to consider over this.
• Even things like Amazon coins back can tip this one way or the other.
• Eventually we will get step-up banners in one form or another, which will likely demolish the value of this.
• Lapis give you more freedom to choose when you want to pull and what you want to direct your odds towards. If you sincerely value all lottery-winning units the same this may not matter to you, but the freedom is a factor to many people.

At best, for most people, this may be just a marginally okay value for a bundle. That doesn't mean it's worth buying. Especially since we had and lost the Fountain of Lapis, I think as a community we want to show Gumi that we expect more value for our bundles than what we've been getting, and that is something we have the opportunity to do here.