The problem with Gold Farming
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?
