Hey friends,

First and foremost - this is absolutely a WIP. These numbers are ball-parked because we don't have accurate data for them as far as I know. I will attempt to explain to the best of my ability where I got the numbers in an extensive, 'you-can-skip-if-you-don't-care' section at the bottom. Please provide your insights if something looks inaccurate and/or you have a better method for guesstimating these.

I've been involved in several conversations recently about free crystals/energy and whatnot that we get each month, as well as a few conversations concerning "mostly f2p" and what that means. People think that spending $30 means you can't really call yourself f2p anymore, but after the first week...you kind of can. The numbers here are both cool as well as depressing for those of you (us) that spend on the game.

As always, the values I've used are based on the values I calculated in my original post months ago here.

Lab has not been counted at all, since it's way too new and we have no idea what rates are like, etc.

TL;DR - What's the Quick-and-Dirty Value of our Monthly Freebies?

In other words, the total value of freebies (giving ballpark estimates on drop rates, etc.) comes to about 22,000 crystals, per fucking month, if you're getting S rank on WB and guild stuff, and roughly 20,000 crystals (again, per fucking month) if you're getting A rank on stuff. This means 3 world boss battles at S rank (average), getting an S chest for siege, C3/G1 guild war, etc. etc. I counted completing PvE content such as TOAH for both cases, as I'm currently completing TOAH and still only at A rank with one team on WB and B rank on the other...so if you're averaging A rank on 3 teams, you should be completing TOAH each month.

The less stuff you're completing, obviously the smaller this gets, but as you can see the WB and guild content is a relatively small piece of the total pie anyway. Even removing them entirely, you're looking at over 16,000 crystals for "other stuff" that is directly available to everyone after a few months of play.

This comes to a value of nearly $300 in freebies if we look at the average "good value" of packs like the Legendary monthly deals of 75 crystals per dollar, or a whopping ~$725 if you instead look at the direct value of purchasing 3,000 crystals for $100 (30 crystals / dollar). This insanely high value only applies to whales, who are running out of the limited packs to purchase and are instead throwing cash into even more crystal summons.

Detailed List of Rewards

I hope this all fits, some of you may not be able to see the far right columns, apologies. Note also that some values are rounded because it'd be stupid not to, so the "total" and the individuals might not add up cleanly in this table, but the total is accurate to my calculated values in my excel spreadsheet. :)

As I mentioned up above, I'll explain the methodology for the values further below in a separate section that most of you won't even read. I didn't want to clutter it up because, well, most of you won't read it anyway. Here's a shorter break down of a few relevant points:

• Since Events, Calendar stuff, Wishes, and ToA are all obtainable by everyone after ~ 5 months of play (where this data would matter to you), they aren't tied to S or A rank stuff, but WB, Arena and Guild stuff is a constantly-improving process.

  • I chose not to include SSS rank, etc. for brevity's sake. I feel like despite the stuff we see in the sub and the more active members here, the majority of the population is between A and S in quality. WB in particular - you might have an SS team, but your other two teams will be lower, "averaging" it out. If you're one of these upper-tier players, just expand your totals by ~1k to 2k crystals.

• The "Total Cryst S/A" rows takes the quantity of the reward and multiplies it by the crystal value given in my original p2w post.

  • I estimated 5* rune values at 6 crystals for rare and 25 for hero. Likely not accurate but honestly it has almost no effect on the total anyway.
  • Devils were given a flat value of 1,000 crystals. As always devil values are personal so this total value goes up or down based on your personal value of devilmon.

• A final note - A large chunk of total value comes from the value of 212.5 per Summoning Stone summon (50 stones). A lot of you hate that value, but I still stick by it. Being able to pinpoint your summons is huge, and a large reason that most of you hate that value is that we just don't have enough of them readily available/given to really see a huge difference.

Breaking Down "Similar" Rewards

So just shoving everything into a generic crystal value gives a good overall view, but doesn't give the full picture. So here is how I would break it down:

• Crystals, Mana, and Energy - Largely used for farming and upgrading runes:

  • 8,500 - 9,400 in crystal value, depending on your personal progress and the ranks you're obtaining in content like WB, etc.
  • Approximately 42.5% of the total value of freebies comes through these three mediums.

• Devilmon, Rainbowmon, XP boosts, and Summons - Largely used for expanding your pool of usable monsters:

  • 11,800 - 12,400 in crystal value, depending on your progress.
  • Roughly 57.3% of total value. The remaining like 0.2% are the arena wings from wishes, which don't really have a 'group' to go under.
  • As mentioned above, a good chunk of this total value is from the 8-900 SS you obtain throughout the month.

While not 'cleanly' 50/50, it's pretty close. The reason I broke them apart is that most people that spend money spend it on summons, not crystals for more energy refreshes. You're getting roughly 6,500 - 7,200 crystals-worth of free energy, which equates to a total of about 21,000 energy over the month. The reason this break-up is relevant will make sense in the next section.

MATH TIME (feel free to skip) - If we take a face value of 7 energy per run of Cairos, that's 3,000 runs of Cairos per month, or about 100 runs per day of Cairos. This isn't including energy gained through time or the 90 energy you have upon waking up. All told you're looking at roughly another 40-50 runs of Cairos just from energy gained during the day and upon waking. If you need more crystals than this just to run Cairos then you're an absolute monster, as that's about 4-5 hours daily of pure rune farming (assuming ~2 minutes per run, which includes down time between runs).

Tying it to Paying for This Game, and My Personal Experience

This break-down is long, and has turned into a sort of "why you probably shouldn't be spending on this game" section, as well as reflecting on my own personal experiences. TL;DR included here for brevity:

Roughly $160 in free "increase your monster pool" rewards are received each month, meaning you'd have to spend at least that much on things like devilmon packs and legendary packages to simply double your f2p 'monster pool' rewards. Legendary scrolls are a high-impact, low value item, don't be fooled by them in packs. My own personal experience is that I've basically received nothing hugely impactful from paying for this game, almost everything has come from f2p stuff, and I've spent quite a bit.

I also go over transmogs in more detail than I intended, if that sounds interesting to you, I would just read about it below.

Establishing that most who spend money do so for more summons, we can see that we receive ~12,000 crystals per month in rewards that increase our monster pool. This is roughly $160.00 in "good packs" value, or $400.00 if we buy the $100 crystal packs and use them exclusively for summons.

• This means that in order to just double your value in free monster pool rewards (not total rewards), you'd have to spend $160 a month, or nearly $2,000 a year.

• And again that's only for rewards like summons and devilmon (and the rainbows that often accompany them in packs).

Why do we care? Well, for two reasons:

• This shows why this game is so successful. There are a lot of rewards given out to help summoners get those shiny nat5s when compared to other games. I played FFBE, spent a quite a bit on it over 5 or so months (maybe $3-400), and only got two nat5s there, despite the summon rate being better than SW. Food for thought.

• Unless you're prepared to spend thousands a year, spending doesn't get you very far. You could make an argument for impactful, non-RNG purchases such as the devilmon pack, but LD/Legendary scroll packs are a huge waste of money, after looking at the data, unless you're prepared to offset RNG by opening your wallet.

  • What this means is that if you want to spend, I'd limit your purchases to $50 a month on the devil pack (or something similar) unless you're prepared to spend over $200 a month. Or just don't spend. You'll get fewer nat5s, which means fewer devils needed. :thinkingemoji:
  • Another option, if you need summons, would be the two daily packs, as they just have high dollar-to-crystals value when compared to most other packs.

• "Mostly F2P" is a title that a lot of people feel they need to use, and people give them flak for it. But if you've spent $30 on this game, you are effectively F2P in terms of how much that did for you. Maybe a small boost in your leveling process to get a nice nat5 or something. Hell, if you spend $30 a month, you're still effectively F2P. Stop spend-shaming people - but also, stop spending that paltry amount, just don't spend if that's your budget!

  • I guess a case can be made for transmogs, but keep in mind that $30 gets you this or this or this or a few others in League of Legends, whereas between $3-$10 gets you something like this (~$3) or this (~$7) which is much more in line with the quality of a summoners war transmog. People ask me why I bash on the transmog price and this is why, the quality is just not there to justify the insane cost of $30 (and no, "recolors" don't count, LoL offers that on many skins and it's not even close to $30 for all 8 or more, including the skin's base price unless it's Legendary quality, which comes with new voice-overs and special interactions, and by the way I don't need to 'luckily' obtain 5 different version of the champion in LoL either). When you pay $30 for a transmog, you're paying about $5 for the extras, $5 for the skin, and $20 for the artificial scarcity C2U has created by limiting availability. "But shiny transmog!", so most of you won't listen to this anyway. ;)

• Packs often target spending behavior by including 'high impact' items such as the legendary scroll, but over the course of a month you get that same 'impact' and more spread out through different events and content, as well as the occasional lucky drop from things like the world boss and siege rewards. Don't be fooled by these high impact items, they still suck. Purchasing the Legendary pack every month, even with the extra Leg scroll it gives now, will equate to (on average):

  • $1200 spent.
  • 1.56 nat5s from the Leg scrolls, 1.44 LD nat4s, a moderate amount of crystals to use as you please. Likely for more summons, increasing your nat5 chances. If all crystals go into premium packs this is 352 total extra summons. Another 1.75 nat5s, roughly.
  • Again, this is $1200 for like maybe 3 nat5s and an LD nat4 or two. Maybe you'll be the lucky one in fifty that lands an LD nat5, but is it worth gambling **twelve hundred dollars* on 1-to-50 (or so) odds?

Looking at my own spending habits, I have decided to make a change, as:

• I've traced back my own spending on 'deals', and I've received two high-impact nat5 summons from these packs - Beth from the elemental scroll deal (wind/fire/water LD extra mysticals), and Tiana from the trans scroll beginner deal.

  • I've since summoned another Beth through a random f2p scroll, and two more Tianas - one from a random event scroll and another from SS aiming for a nat4 I didn't get.
  • So, effectively, I have received close to zero impact on summons specifically from spending.
  • I have received a huge boon from devils I've paid for. Whether they were worth the price is up for debate.

• Meanwhile, from f2p rewards, I've received:

  • Charlotte in my first week of play, I had only purchased the beginner pack at this point, and she wasn't obtained from that.
  • Ganymede from my first TOAN clear.
  • Chow from a challenge reward scroll.
  • Josephine, I'm not sure where I got her as she was either my 2nd or 3rd nat5. She may have been from a leveling pack. Regardless I still haven't used her, she's awakened and 35 with zero runes ever put on her.
  • Eladriel from a premium pack that I had saved up for, all 750 crystals were f2p obtained.
  • Mo Long from a random Mystical.
  • Rica from a fire scroll from an event.
  • The two aforementioned dupe Tianas and the dupe Beth.
  • Ophilia from a random scroll the other day.
  • A slew of nat4s. Many of these through p2w means, but many more through f2p scrolls. Shaina, for instance, was obtained on the free nat4 event they held a few months ago. Galleon likewise was one of my first SS summons. First Lushen was SS, second was random mystical. And so on.

• My buddy is playing using two accounts - one fully f2p and the other having spent less than $50. His completely f2p has 11 nat5s to my 14, and his $50 one has 8. Just for more than my own anecdotal data. He's been really lucky, and for everyone like him there's gonna be that guy that has like 3 nat5 after four years, but still, basically f2p and barely behind my p2w ass. His progress is likewise similar. He just beat me to "S" on an elemental rift boss this week.

So, yeah, I'm probably done spending. For those of you looking for a reason to stop, I hope the data above helps you make that decision to hold off when you see those shiny, deceitful high-impact items show up. I may spend on something that looks really good, like a christmas trans scroll or something, but for now I'm probably done for a long time, if not forever.

Methodologies Used to Obtain the Values in the Table Above

Please, please let me know if I've miscalculated or missed something, or if you can think of a better way to guesstimate rewards:

• ToA - Very straight-forward. The only thing I didn't include was the mana obtained, it equates to 'meh' overall. Especially if you offset it by calculating energy spent.

• Events - Completely and totally bullshitted. In a month we usually have 3 events - 1 mini event like the championship event this month, one devilmon event, and one LD event. Some give crystals per day, some give energy per day, most give mana per day, and almost all have at least one 1-300 crystal one-time reward, and one in the month will usually have Summoning Stones. If you have more accurate numbers, please send them my way and I'll update.

• Guild Boxes - S rank calculated 75 crystals per siege (2 per week, 4 weeks in a month = 600), and 100 SS at the end of the week added with random summoning stones in chests, then the rest of the rewards were calculated using Swarfarm's averages for the world boss, since the drops are extremely similar if not exactly the same. A-rank was downgraded to 60 crystals per siege and 80 SS at the end of the week from guild war. These rewards are intentionally low-balled, they are likely higher assuming active participation.

• World Boss - See Guild Box, these are all averaged based on Swarfarm's data, as well as giving out the S/A rank reward when the WB is "defeated".

• Calendar - Extremely straight-forward. 12-hr vs. 24-hr XP boost was taken into account in the total value.

• Arena - Approximately 500 crystals from rivals over the month was calculated (semi-complicated/subjective way of low-averaging out how many times you'd fight them. For instance even though a few have 16-18 hr timers, you're realistically only fighting them once a day because sleep is a thing that people do), then C2 (200) and F3 (100) ranks were used to determine end-of-week crystal rewards.

• Wish - Averages from Swarfarm multiplied by 30. I didn't include rune data because it's not easily available to separate quality, and fuck that anyway, it's like 1-2 crystals if that. The "monster summon" tile was calculated as 3/5 of a MS and 2/5 of an LD scroll every 200 wishes, e.g. every 7 months or so you'll land on this, and every 3 years you'll get 2 LDs and 3 elemental summons. Lol.

I then converted them into crystal values using my previous posts as outlined at the beginning. All of which is somewhat subjective, so obviously nothing here is or every will be perfect, but it still gives, I think, a pretty accurate view of the value of rewards you get for free versus how much these same rewards cost if you were to purchase "extras". ToA is essentially nearly $100 in "free stuff" by itself, if you look at ToA rewards vs. the monthly Legendary package.

Comments, questions, concerns, or further discussion? Post below! :)

I hope this was entertaining and informative, despite the length, and I honestly hope I am able to reach some of you who are spending when you probably shouldn't be - not because your bank account can't handle it necessarily, but because you just aren't getting what you think you're getting.

Best of luck either way!