(TL;DR: What JK said
)
First, let's talk Shipments. Imagine a magical world of two-headed unicorns where your first-ever 1x Chromium pull hits the jackpot and lands you a brand new 3* Sun Fac, making it an essentially-free toon. Now getting him up to 7* by buying shipment shards at 80 crystals a pop (320 purplies for 4 shards) will cost you 22,400 crystals, or roughly USD150. Yes folks, that's one hundred fifty American dollars. For *one* toon. So, yeah... not cheap
Now let's talk 8x Chromiums.
Out of sheer frustration and impatience (and with 10 beers in me) one night three weeks ago I blew $200 worth of crystals on Chromium Mega-Packs. Predictably enough, I walked away a brand-new 2* CUP, a 4* Cody that (as it turns out) is completely useless, and a bunch of other Chromium-only 1* and 2* toons that I'll never level up unless I drop another two grand into more packs. And then I felt violated and sad (and hung over), pining for that carefree, exhilarating period of my life when I still had $200 in my pocket.
And when you try to console yourself by looking at all those new toons you now own, you realize that leveling, promoting and modding even a few of them enough to make them marginally useful will either take a year of F2P grinding or cost another $200 -- because in-game credits *do* grow on trees, but that doesn't help you at all because this game HAS NO TREES IN IT.
And then, just when I was at my lowest, just when I thought there was no future for me in this game, He came to me and He saved my life.
RNGesus.
Yes, RNGesus is a cruel vindictive asshole who delights in the pain of others, but He showed me that I *can* succeed without having to rent out my basement to hippies for extra cash.
Cantina (and LS/DS) farming may not be as much fun as getting a root canal, and it certainly *seems* like it's an excruciatingly s l o w way of making progress, but as JK said above you're getting so much more for your time and effort than just shards. The Abi mats, gear pieces and yes, even the credits that you incidentally receive while collecting those shards are an essential part of building up the very toon you're trying to star up. And yes, I said credits. Farming Ewok Scout on LS 1-A may only yield a sadness-inducing 330 credits, but a full Cantina refresh on Stage 7 nodes nets you a respectable 84K.
Plus, you get the shards *you* want as opposed to those highly sought-after Lobot and CUP shards.
Sure, there are those times where you buy a full Cantina refresh and get zero shards in return -- that's the part where RNGesus literally has milk coming out of his nose for lolling so hard. And that hurts you, and it makes you sad. Which makes RNGesus lol even harder. That sucks, and it makes you want to buy Chromiums to fill the void in your heart where the promise of all those sweet Dooku shards used to be.
But then, this one time, at band camp, I did this thing: While farming for Dooku's 5th and 6th stars I started keeping rigorous track of my shard drop rate over a longer period than just the current energy refresh (which is how most ppl, including me up until then, usually evaluate drop rates). And you know what? Taken over a hundred pulls instead of just ten you really *do* get 30+ shards for your troubles DESPITE the phone-throwing times when all you get from a full refresh is a sore bum. And then you realize that RNGesus, praise be to Him, may be a dick but he's not a *fucking* dick. And EA -- well, they ARE fucking dicks but at least they're not lying about those drop rates.
So still basking in the warm glow of His unbridled generosity, I did the unthinkable and picked up a calculator. Here's what I found:
Suppose you wanna farm Dooku from 0 to 7* from Cantina 6-D (and forget for a moment the bonus factoid that some LS/DS battles also pay out Dooku shards, helping to get you to your goal that much faster and cheaper). You get 120 energy from natural refresh every day, and let's say we buy the 100- and 200-crystal refreshes because we're willing to spend a bit to get there faster. At 12 energy per pull, that's a total 30 pulls every day, costing you 300 crystals daily (averaging out daily to 10 crystals per pull).
You need 330 shards to 7* a toon from scratch, regardless of its unlock cost. At 33% drop rate, this means you roughly need 1000 pulls. At 10 crystals/pull, it'll cost you 10,000 crystals, give or take RNGesus' statistical cut.
10,000 crystals. Compare that with the 22,400 price tag of your Sun Fac, which actually excludes that initial cost of unlocking him (unlocking him from shipment shards would set you back another 3000 crystals).
And then, the kicker: From your 1000 Cantina pulls you also got MORE than enough Abi Mats to max Dooku, a whopping 5 *million* credits guaranteed, and a shitload of training droids to level him up with. But that's not all! Because you ordered now, you also receive 21,000 Cantina credits, with which you can buy enough shards in the Cantina Store to unlock *another* toon and get it to SIX STARS.
All for the comparatively low price of 10,000 crystals, and all in about 30 days of grinding (maybe 2 months if all you spend is crystals from Arena rank proceeds). Still not cheap, but aside from GW this is THE best and fastest deal in the game.
So, yeah. What JK said
[Full disclosure: I *did* get a sexy, sexy Sun Fac out of my drunken spending spree, but like any other Chromium-exclusive, at 3* and with no way for me to get him to 4* (let alone 7*) he's just as useless to me now as when I didn't have him at all. Except now he's taunting me daily from the bottom of my roster.]
Chromiums are definitely the best deal around IFF one intends to spend *literally* several thousands of dollars on them (and abi mat and credit packs). Spending any less will leave your stable permanently stranded at 2-3*, which means you should have bought beer with that money instead. The non-mega-whales among us are much better off farming just those toons that we'll use daily when raiding and that will save our ass in GW node 12 since they're already nice and buff.
-- TS
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