What do I buy from shops?

Packs

• 99% of packs are trash! "Good Value" packs are listed in the Whaling page.

Diamond

• Do Not Buy Anything. Buying diamonds with cash is terrible value.

Secret Shop

The Secret Shop is where you get most of your tickets. In addition to refreshing every hour, you can pay 3 gems to refresh the offers. The daily refresh limit increases with VIP level.

From the regular shop, tickets are sold at the price of 10 pulls (50 tix) per 1000 gems. This is equivalent to 1 pull per 100 gems.

The secret shop, on average, offers 1 pull (5 tix) per 26.5 rolls. This is equivalent to 1 pull per 79.5 gems.

Add in the potential for Mystery tix, Ampleons and gear, and it's evident that rolling the Secret Shop is ALWAYS profit. It is not like gambling because the odds are known to favor the player & there is no reason for the game to "cheat" the money out of you, unlike casinos.

Therefore, unless you ran out of gold, you should MAX your refresh limit every day.

From the secret shop, you can find:

• Astrogen Powder: Do not buy

• Common growth potion: Do not buy

• Ampleons: Buy if you need them, especially earlygame

• Recruit Tickets (green, yellow): Buy all of them

• ALL Gear pieces BELOW LEVEL 85: Do not buy

• Level 85 Rare, Epic gear pieces: Do not buy

• Level 85 Legendary gear pieces: Buy if they're good

Upgrading your Secret Shop level increases the level and quality of gear offered. It does not affect the drop odds of anything else (including tickets). Level 85 gear will not be offered below Shop level 11 (Account level 60).

In general, you should stop rolling the shop if you drop below 1.5 million gold. This rule can be broken if you urgently need tickets.

If you've been unlucky with the secret shop, paradoxically your best bet is to roll MORE. The Law of Large Numbers dictates that a larger sample size will approach the known (true) probability. Since we know that the odds are 1 per 26.5, the more you roll the Shop, the closer your average will approach that, and sooner you're going to start profiting.

The exact drop odds for the shop is listed in the Miraheze wiki page. 

Desire Shop

Desire Tokens

Desire Tokens are a paid resource that is only obtained by buying the Monthly Pack 3. You can get up to 400 Desire Tokens per month by buying the pack and then logging in every day.

• You can Limit Break any 5-star RGB unit one stage with the RGB Shared Potential (3 months equivalent price).

• You can Limit Break any 5-star ML unit one stage with the ML Shared Potential (4 months equivalent price).

• You can Limit Break any 5-star bond one stage with the Shared Bond Potential (2.5 months equivalent price).

You can VERY slowly Potential Break your hard-to-get Limited units, bonds, and ML5s with this. The current consensus is that this is not worth it aside from very specific circumstances.

• You can get a random 5-star RGB unit with the Member Ticket.  (2.25 months equivalent price).

This is equivalent to 10 Rainbow Astrogen after you sell the unit. Considering that you can already get 10 Rainbows per month from Battle Pass 2, this doesn't seem worth it.

• You can buy 10 Energy Batteries (0.25 months equivalent price).

As it currently stands, simply buying 40 Batteries a month for the extra energy seems to be the best use of Desire Tokens.
However, it is unclear whether this is worth buying Monthly Pack 3 for, as the Monthly Pack 2 is better for getting extra energy and gold.

Bond Fragment

• In general, save your bond fragments to buy good bonds from the shop.

• The shop rotation is listed in the Miraheze wiki page.

• Buy bond amps if you need them in a pinch - try not to buy them often, though.

Medal of Honor

Medal of Honor (Gold medals)

• Every week, buy the two Skillmods. If you hit Arena often (you should be!), also buy the 3x Energy every day.

• If you have a lot of surplus medals, buy Ampleons as you need them.

Conquest Mark (Silver medals)

• Save these for the pink gear in the shop.

• Buy the HP set first, prioritizing right side over left (neck ring boots > weapon helmet armor).

• If you need a specific piece, buy that one first.

• After that, buy the ATK set. Buy the boots last, as they're the least useful.

Event Shop

Always Buy

• Always buy Event Recruit tickets, Exclusive event gear (lv 78), Skillmods, and Bond Ampleon.

• Some events don't offer an exclusive gear for purchase.

• If you want, buy the event background.

• After the event is over and you have bought anything worth buying, turn the rest of the tokens into Astrocash.

If you can farm Hard stage only (early and midgame)

• If you're new and short on upgrade materials, buy all the ampleons first.

• Hard stages are less energy-efficient than Elite stages, but they give you a ton of Astrogen powder.

• Farm Hard stages to buy all catalysts (5 legendary, 20 rare) if you need catalysts or star-up crystals.

• Only farm enough to get "Always Buy" items if you don't need catalysts or star-up crystals.

If you can farm Elite stage (lategame)

• Buy the gear ampleons if you need them, skip them if you don't.

• Elite stage is the most efficient way to farm catalysts.

• Farm Elite stages to buy all catalysts (5 legendary, 20 rare) if you need catalysts or star-up crystals.

• Only farm enough to get "Always Buy" items if you don't need catalysts or star-up crystals.

• It's a good idea to stockpile catalysts and slowly convert them to ones for future units.

Do not buy

• Do NOT buy 4★ Bond Tickets, Advanced star-up (yellow crystals), or Growth potions.

• Advanced Discipline elements can be bought, but Intermediate and Common ones are bad value.

• Lv. 70 equipment chests should NEVER be bought.

• Converting tokens into Astrocash (gold) should only be done at the end of the event after you've bought everything else. Do not farm Event stages just for gold.