The problem with Gold Farming

beyonder8421beyonder8421 Member Posts: 881 ★★★
Doing Heroic + Master on the monthly quest gives you 200,000 gold. Have this in mind.

We all know that the best known way of getting gold is by doing arenas. We now have 5 of these options available in the game (not counting catalyst arenas, as they are not a good way of getting gold).
But is arena grinding worthy of our time? Let's go by the numbers:

In the best case scenario, when you open an uncollected arena crystal, you get around 50k gold. After opening a lot of these, I noticed that 15k gold is the most common reward. So let's go by that number. 1 UA Crystal = 15,000 gold. (These can also reward units or refills, so we will focus on the least amount of gold we can get).

Each arena has a different cost to fight:

2* arena costs 0 gold and rewards 190 gold and 330 battlechips. Net profit is 190 gold.
3* arena costs 100 gold and rewards 250 gold and 345 battlechips. Net profit is 150 gold.
4* basic arena costs 400 gold and rewards 400 gold and 375 battlechips. Net profit is 0. Could be -150 if you fight 3 stars.
4* featured arena costs 400 gold and rewards 400 gold and 390 battlechips. Net profit is 0. Could be more if you fight 5 stars, but it depends on the AI mostly.
5* featured arena costs 500 gold and rewards 550 gold and 420 battlechips. Net profit is 50 gold. Could be more if you fight 6 stars, but also less if you fight 4 stars.

We will ignore those exceptions and assume we fight 4 stars in 4* basic, 4 stars in 4* featured and 5 stars in 5* arena.

To form one Uncollected Arena Crystal you need 10,000 battlechips. 4* and 5* arenas will reward more or less battlechips depending on who you face, but we will keep the same pessimistic assumptions.

The fastest arena to form one of these crystals is the 5* featured arena with 24 series. 24 series are 72 fights and will reward at least 15,000 gold.
The slowest way to get one of these crystals is by doing the 2* star arena with 31 series. 31 series are 93 fights and will rewards at least 15,000 gold.

So it seems like you can optimize your grinding time by doing just the 5* featured, right? Well, not really.

If you compare the amount of gold you can accumulate by doing arenas and then opening these crystals, one of the less efficient ways of getting gold is the 5* arena.
Opening one crystal after doing the 5* arena will give you approx 16,190 gold.
Opening one crystal after dong the 2* arena will give you approx 20,757 gold.

In comparison, opening one crystal after doing the 4* basic arena will give you approx 15,000 gold (no gain), and it could even give you less gold if you fight 3 stars. 27 series in total.
Opening one crystal after doing the 4* featured arena will give you an advantage over the basic, with at least 15,000 gold, but could be more if you are lucky and face more 5 stars. 26 series in total.

Just for giggles, opening one crystal after doing the 3* arena will give you approx 19,347 gold. 29 series in total. Not that much difference with the 2* arena, it is probably more entertaining than fighting with 2*. Rewards aren't that different but you could go for an affordable rank reward.

So, in order to match the amount of gold you get by just doing heroic+master, you would need around 7 uncollected arena crystals, that equal 212 series in the 2* arena, or 168 series in the 5* star arena. Disclaimer: you might face a 1* in the 2* arena, this is rare, but it happens.
Doing Heroic and Master will give you potions, units, catalysts and crystals. Each fight in chapters 2 and 3 of these quests give you around 500 gold. You will get the same amount of gold from a crystal in just 3 fights.

If you cannot afford the energy or you champs are in AW, you can also do duels against 6 stars. One duel against a 6 star rewards 200 gold and 200 battlechips. You can do 5 fights every 12 hours (without using duel credits) gathering a total of 1000 gold and 1000 battlechips. Which is not much and is approximately 5 series in the 2* star arena. You cannot rely on this method, but it's a little extra.

When you need to level up 6 stars and rank up 5 stars, there is not enough time to grind for them unless your work involves youtube, in my opinion.

Taking things to the extreme. To rank 5 a 5* you need around 30 crystals, these are 1212 series in the 2* arena and 1159 series in the 3* arena.
If you do 4 or 5 star arena, you will need around 40 crystals, these are 1080 series in the 4 star arenas and probably around 840 series in the 5 star arena.

As you can see, either arena would probably do, except for the 4 star basic as you may lose gold. You will save time by doing the 5 star arena, but you will not see a difference unless you do a lot of arena fights. And one crystal is just 3 fights in the monthly quest that take around 3 minutes.
So 40 crystals are 1200 fights in the quest, same as the gold in the 2* arena to get to that number. (You could also fight golden symbioids in Act 4)

So i wouldn't rule questing out of the gold farming. It seems to me like the arena crystals are too underwhelming, and the best thing they can offer are units (I am not counting gold crystals as a way of getting gold because they are pretty bad).

To me, doing 840 series in the 5 star arena is a bit too much. The only comforting thing about that is that I do not need to go for the rank rewards to get the gold, and it will not matter if I do those series in different rounds. I am honestly not sure which way is better in the end. Arenas have milestones but you need to go beyond the milestones to get all the gold you need.

Any thoughts?
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Comments

  • BobomanBoboman Member Posts: 716 ★★
    How long did it take to the collect this data?
  • beyonder8421beyonder8421 Member Posts: 881 ★★★
    Not much, just math.
  • BobomanBoboman Member Posts: 716 ★★
    Not much, just math.

    ahh
  • beyonder8421beyonder8421 Member Posts: 881 ★★★
    I did do Heroic and Master though.
  • BobomanBoboman Member Posts: 716 ★★
    I did do Heroic and Master though.

    is to 200000 in total or is it the rough estimate
  • beyonder8421beyonder8421 Member Posts: 881 ★★★
    total i got
  • BobomanBoboman Member Posts: 716 ★★
    shchong2 wrote: »
    Let's bookmark this thread (I just did it). We'll probably need to bring this post out again 1 yr from now. Why? Most likely nothing will change within the next 1 yr. Good data and good job on yourself. Sadly I believe "someone else from some organization" will most likely fail you.

    did the same
  • Jh_DezJh_Dez Member Posts: 1,307 ★★★
    Did heroic and master and I don't think I earned 200k gold
    Fights gave me meager amounts of gold

    (Tough quests should award a high amount of gold. 600-1.5k gold😊) will never happen tho
    Uncollected fights just gave me less than 500
  • The_GrandmasterThe_Grandmaster Member Posts: 205
    If I am understanding this correctly it appears that the deciding factor in your equations as to what is the most efficient is the amount of gold earned per arena crystal earned and opened. Your calculations say nothing of time and I believe that time is a much more valuable standard to base efficiency on. For instance in the same amount of time that it takes to earn a crystal thru the 3 star arena you can earn 1.2 crystals thru the 5star arena. I am willing to bet that the extra 20% you'll earn from the 5star arena will skew your calculations even further in favor of the 5star arena when time is factored in. And to be blunt it is just wrong to try to calculate efficiency without the use of time. After all the definition of efficient is "performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time or effort."
  • beyonder8421beyonder8421 Member Posts: 881 ★★★
    If I am understanding this correctly it appears that the deciding factor in your equations as to what is the most efficient is the amount of gold earned per arena crystal earned and opened. Your calculations say nothing of time and I believe that time is a much more valuable standard to base efficiency on. For instance in the same amount of time that it takes to earn a crystal thru the 3 star arena you can earn 1.2 crystals thru the 5star arena. I am willing to bet that the extra 20% you'll earn from the 5star arena will skew your calculations even further in favor of the 5star arena when time is factored in. And to be blunt it is just wrong to try to calculate efficiency without the use of time. After all the definition of efficient is "performing or functioning in the best possible manner with the least waste of time or effort."

    Reason to not use time is that sometimes it doesn't depend on time, but on roster. I do say that doing the 5 star arena takes less time (less series), but you could end up losing gold doing them. I honestly do not have a "resolution" from my calculations, just stating the data to help me understand the pros and cons of doing certain arenas. Common sense to me, before doing these calculations, was to just do the 4 star basic arena. And now I know that is probably the only one I am not supposed to do.

    For some people, the 5 star arena is a more expensive arena to do than the 4 star featured, depending if they have 5 or 6 stars. But it's the only one where they could fight 6 stars, and those fights reward more.

    Also another reason not to use time, is that it depends on the device. It used to take me 2 hours to do 30 series, and now I can do them probably in half the time. So time is a factor, but is variable for every player.

    In the end, is up to you guys to recommend me what to do, because what I do know after doing this calculations, is that it doesn't matter much which arena I do, it still takes more time than it should to get 15,000 gold.
  • beyonder8421beyonder8421 Member Posts: 881 ★★★
    Jh_Dez wrote: »
    Did heroic and master and I don't think I earned 200k gold
    Fights gave me meager amounts of gold

    (Tough quests should award a high amount of gold. 600-1.5k gold😊) will never happen tho
    Uncollected fights just gave me less than 500

    I know because i was almost at 0 gold when I started and ended with more than 200k gold. But tbh I am not sure how the game calculates the gold rewards. I can say that 2.2, 3.1 and 3.2 were over 500 gold in most fights. Could it depend on the champs you use?
  • DoctorJDoctorJ Member Posts: 842 ★★★
    Youre missing a big gold income though. Iso.

    Getting shards from arena provides lots of 4* dupes, and if you have more iso coming in then you can use, you can sell it for a lare gold income.
  • beyonder8421beyonder8421 Member Posts: 881 ★★★
    DoctorJ wrote: »
    Youre missing a big gold income though. Iso.

    Getting shards from arena provides lots of 4* dupes, and if you have more iso coming in then you can use, you can sell it for a lare gold income.

    Would be interested in seeing numbers for that.

    As I discussed, the 4* basic arena costs more gold than you can get, so the only other viable option is the 4*/5* featured arena, and those have a high cutoff even for the 1%. If I were able to get 1% every 3 days, I would probably not have a gold problem. As it would mean I have enough time to play arenas all day. And it is also not healthy (for me). It is also not an option for some people as it depends on their roster.

    I am looking for a more constant and reliable way of getting a useful amount of gold regularly. I sold ISO for gold before, but that is no longer an option as leveling up to 4/55, 5/65 and even a 6 star to level 25 takes a lot of ISO and gold. So selling ISO puts you at a risk of running out of one of the two resources you need (and you need a lot of it).
  • beyonder8421beyonder8421 Member Posts: 881 ★★★
    And one crystal is just 3 fights in the monthly quest that take around 3 minutes.

    There was a problem in this part, it's meant to be 30 fights in around 30 minutes.
  • BabysinBabysin Member Posts: 7
    edited March 2018
    Great post and it had been broken down and you bring ever aspect of trying to make gold in this game to light. For some ppl arena isn't much of an option cuz they can't spend hours a day at it. I've seen you tube videos on how to make gold, but I'm sure it has to be a consistent win streak which some can't accomplish and I'm sure those videos revolve around ppl who are in higher rated guild, but for the average player we struggle to make gold and I just wish Kabam would offer us something to help make some gold with out spending hours on end grinding out arenas.
  • beyonder8421beyonder8421 Member Posts: 881 ★★★
    Babysin wrote: »
    Great post and it had been broken down and you bring ever aspect of trying to make gold in this game to light. For some ppl arena isn't much of an option cuz they can't spend hours a day at it. I've seen you tube videos on how to make gold, but I'm sure it has to be a consistent win streak which some can't accomplish and I'm sure those videos revolve around ppl who are in higher rated guild, but for the average player we struggle to make gold and I just wish Kabam would offer us something to help make some gold with out spending hours on end grinding out arenas.

    I would add though, that for people like me, leveling 6 and 5 stars, rosters and streaks are not a problem. But arena still takes a lot of time for little gold, for everyone.
  • Blax4everBlax4ever Member Posts: 683 ★★★
    This is the thing, yes it takes time to build gold with Battle chips, you need a massive amount of them.

    Only doing the milestones in the arena will get you 1.5M Battle Chips in 1 month which is about 3M in gold. (New Arena not included) That’s enough to rank up two 5* to 4/55.

    I’d like to see the daily gold realm return for 1 week each quarter. 500k gold a day

    I don’t see Kabam replacing griding the arenas for gold anytime soon but I would be nice if they would supplement the players who can’t hit all of the milestones in the arenas.

    At least give players a chance to schedule their rank up progression or to bank their alliance donations.
  • beyonder8421beyonder8421 Member Posts: 881 ★★★
    1.5m bc = 2.25m Gold
    You will need more than 1 million to rank and level up to 55 or 65. If I remember correctly.

    Gold Realm was better than Halls of fortune. With Gold Realms we were getting 200k gold every 8 hours or so. So in the end, we had millions of gold after its original run. (It was annoying though, as the starting time was moving all the time, it was costing 4 energy per tile and the difficulty was really hard if you had your champs at war). Halls of Fortune was never at the same level in returns, but mostly because it was a 24 hour event. They do not like giving us gold as rewards, clearly. But it is frustrating to have all the rank up material about to expire.
  • beyonder8421beyonder8421 Member Posts: 881 ★★★
    Gamer wrote: »
    If you want gold don't open the Uncollected arena crystal, the basic arena crystal gives more gold. The only time to open the Uncollected Arena crystal is if you want to get units
    Thah NOT trues basice giv more unit. And uncollete giv more gold.

    I have seen videos where they are compared and the amount is pretty much the same. I opened 5 regular arena crystals (same amount needed for one uncollected arena crystal) and I got 16k gold and 25 units. So I am not exactly sure if this is true or not. It gave me more gold and some units, which is more than I could get from opening just one crystal. I guess the real difference relies on opening many crystals.
  • 420sam420sam Member Posts: 526 ★★★
    1.5m bc = 2.25m Gold
    You will need more than 1 million to rank and level up to 55 or 65. If I remember correctly.

    Gold Realm was better than Halls of fortune. With Gold Realms we were getting 200k gold every 8 hours or so. So in the end, we had millions of gold after its original run. (It was annoying though, as the starting time was moving all the time, it was costing 4 energy per tile and the difficulty was really hard if you had your champs at war). Halls of Fortune was never at the same level in returns, but mostly because it was a 24 hour event. They do not like giving us gold as rewards, clearly. But it is frustrating to have all the rank up material about to expire.

    I spent a lot of units buying energy refills for those gold realms. Wish they'd bring them back for a week or two again. I would probably blow my stash of units again on refills just for it again.
  • TheHoodedDormammuTheHoodedDormammu Member Posts: 1,448 ★★★
    420sam wrote: »
    1.5m bc = 2.25m Gold
    You will need more than 1 million to rank and level up to 55 or 65. If I remember correctly.

    Gold Realm was better than Halls of fortune. With Gold Realms we were getting 200k gold every 8 hours or so. So in the end, we had millions of gold after its original run. (It was annoying though, as the starting time was moving all the time, it was costing 4 energy per tile and the difficulty was really hard if you had your champs at war). Halls of Fortune was never at the same level in returns, but mostly because it was a 24 hour event. They do not like giving us gold as rewards, clearly. But it is frustrating to have all the rank up material about to expire.

    I spent a lot of units buying energy refills for those gold realms. Wish they'd bring them back for a week or two again. I would probably blow my stash of units again on refills just for it again.

    They should have the gold realm every sunday. or at least every few sundays
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  • klobberintymeklobberintyme Member Posts: 1,579 ★★★★
    Here's some other math: 740,000 gold minimum for the low low price of $200 - my hourly billable rate is that, but I eat some overhead so realistically its 90 minutes work - or grind for days, whatever works for you all, it's all good
  • beyonder8421beyonder8421 Member Posts: 881 ★★★
    Here's some other math: 740,000 gold minimum for the low low price of $200 - my hourly billable rate is that, but I eat some overhead so realistically its 90 minutes work - or grind for days, whatever works for you all, it's all good

    Can you elaborate more please? It sounds like you are breaking the TOS.
  • NIOBBBNIOBBB Member Posts: 138
    do u need to fully complete the monthly heroic+masters event quest to get 200,000 gold or can you just finish it normally?
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