Paying to Win

Most games have some "pay to win" systems these days so let's talk about it!

It is my opinion that for F2P players, the advantage that spending real money gives you is very light for the average player. I say light because we have access to nearly every system the game has to offer without being forced to spend money like many other games force you to do.

You cannot directly buy more character slots, skill bars, bag space, or storage space which is very plentiful already, storage space is crazy high. Pets are just part of the game and the very few BCC only pets don't offer anything unique anyway, just another +60 HP for being unlocked so this is really aimed at whales and collectors. You also don’t pay to “rent” things which is another scummy practice in some games.

You could pay for a little more combat time (up to 180 minutes per day) with BCC but you can just use Mentor Medals to do the same thing for free if you are so inclined to make another account to do so. Most of the best headwear comes from a gacha machine that guarantees a headwear on each pull. Sure it may not be the one you want but there are only six in the pool so it's rather uncommon to get one, but not unfathomable and you get a few free pulls from it every month plus extra's from events.

Even the premium feature, which gives you a significant zeny gain bonus for a month, is purchasable off of the exchange for zeny. This significantly increases your daily zeny gains so you should always invest zeny into buying premium off of the exchange. It may look expensive but once you're one shotting mobs it pays for itself in just a couple days making the rest of the month a massive profit boost.

Anyone can buy zeny directly from the cash shop at no limit. This is extremely expensive so unless your desperate or your daddy is rich you should never, ever buy zeny directly. Good +15 weapons range from 700,000,000 to 2,000,000,000 zeny. This means you would have to spend around $450 USD to buy one on the low end of that price range, for one single piece of gear.

For light spenders your affordable "cheap" options mainly provides you with shortcuts or additional pulls on gacha, luck be damned.

Therefore paying “to win” in this game is exclusively for GvG (PvP).

If you are not a day one player you can’t pay enough to catch up to the established megalodons that run the show anyway because costumes and headwears cycle out, many of which are from collabs which have yet to return and may never do so. Yes you can become extremely powerful quickly if you throw money at this game but we're talking tens of thousands of dollars or more. If you're looking to be "the best" at PvP in an MMORPG you're barking up the wrong tree anyway since class selection is the most important choice and no game with multiple classes has ever truly been "balanced". "Flavor of the Month" OP classes are a staple here, this game is no exception to that.

So what would you buy for a long term advantage over the hardcore F2P player if you're thinking of spending money? Multijob used to be good value but now that it's free to unlock all non-collab jobs once you reach level 150 this is just a waste of money. You could buy additional pulls on the blue or yellow slip headwear gacha machines to try to get the rare headwear to use or deposit.

A great value for those busy with work that don't have the time to farm every day is the offline farm feature that is unlocked for 30 days anytime you purchase premium using BCC. However, if you can run the game just fine on the PC client, an emulator, or your phone throughout the day then you don't really need this.

So what do Whales invest in? Pulls on limited gachapon, lucky boxes, and cards obtained via Auction. At least once a month I see someone drop 22000 BCC (roughly $3000 USD) on a single card at auction, sometimes on ancient relics as well. These rare cards can also be listed on the exchange but you're often bidding against hundreds or thousands of players to win one but at least you don't have to pay to do that.

Here are the most common sources of P2W. Some of these you have light access to use for free as a F2P player:

Yellow Slip (Time Wish) Gachapon

Contains headwear and costumes from all previous blue and pink slip gacha offered in the past
Guaranteed either pity coins, headwear, or a costume every pull
- Chance for pity coins increases as you get more items since the pool of remaining items is small
- This means you cannot pull an item you've already received so if you did pull it you will get pity coins instead
Can spend pity coins to buy any headwear or costume you want from the pool if you accumulate enough of them
Best thing to spend your weekly Assistant Medal of Honor's on for new players to obtain some amazing farming items such as One-Eye captain
30 yellow slips or 30 BCC ($4-$5 USD) per pull

Blue Slip Gachapon

Offers some of the best headwear in the game, which rotate out into the yellow slip gachapon
Every month features a new set of five to six headwear
Guaranteed one headwear out of those on every pull
Rarest headwear always gives 1% att/matk on deposit
30 blue slips or 30 BCC ($4-$5 USD) per pull

Pink Slip Gachapon

Every month features a new costume, several headwear, a mount, and sometimes even furniture
Pool also includes junk like pet exp pots, boxes with contacts or food in them.
Rates are abysmally low, often pulling junk.
Costume always gives 1% att/matk and either 12 ATK/MATK or 1% DEF/MDEF
30 pink slips or 30 BCC per pull ($4 to $5 USD)

Purple Slip Gachapon

Each rotation features three rare MVP cards with increased drop rate which is still very low
Guaranteed card every pull, though MINI/MVP cards are still very rare
30 purple slips or a varying BCC cost per pull, starting at 8 BCC that resets back to 8 every day

Event Gachapon items

Rare events feature a new costume, several headwear, a mount, and sometimes furniture
Costumes or headwear received from this are only from the current event
Pool includes junk like pet exp pots and other junk, no guaranteed headwear
Costume always gives 1% att/matk and either 12 atk/matk or 1% def/mdef, primary target for whales
30 event coins or 30 BCC per pull ($4 to $5 USD)
Cannot use pink slips on this, but these events hand out several free tokens for pulls, expect quite a few free pulls from these gachapon if you do these events

BCC Store

Sometimes offers lucky boxes containing exclusive headwear, mounts, or rare MVP cards
- Prices range greatly from 5-30 BCC a box, sometimes more
- Often have a purchase limit, usually 30 or 60 boxes
- Rates are abysmal for lucky boxes, often 0.5% or less for the big prize...
Offers “shortcut” items
- Gold medals, job exp pots, and Praying Pack Cards for 5-20 BCC each
- Glittering runes/star runes for 15-25 BCC each
- Extract light crystals at 5 BCC each
- Many other things
Offers "P2W" dust for Ancient Relics
- This one is extremely P2W since purple ancient relics have an OP bonus that is only unlocked when 80% of all stats are unlocked. Since F2P dust becomes extremely bad at 50% you almost have to pay to get this.
- P2W is real bad here considering how strong these buffs are

Weekly Auction

Live action to “Bid” against others for either MVP/MINI cards or enchanted gear
Can only bid with BCC at a limit of 666,666 BCC, roughly $90,000 USD. Just imagining this makes my stomach turn but this limit has been hit twice… crazy! I can't imagine taking a mortgage out on my home just for one mount or card!
Seller does not receive BCC when the item is sold, it is converted to silver using the awful rates discussed above
If you try to sell something here you're up against thousands of other listings just for a chance to get selected to go on auction which only lists ten items per week are selected, let alone hoping it's something that someone will actually bid BCC on...
The biggest, baddest whales come out here to throw out big numbers and claim the best cards for themselves. Don’t bother competing, you won’t win… they will often increase the bid several times in a row by 1000 just to assert dominance and be done with it if someone attempts to challenge them

Pink slip, event, and BCC gacha headwear are most always functionally worse than crafted or blue slip headwear so getting these items really just pads your adventure handbook deposits and unlocks them for vanity purposes. This is good for F2P because you're not reliant on pulling gear from these low rate gachapon machines. Every other game on the market functions like that so that is honestly a great thing for us here.

Best in slot headwear for most jobs typically comes from either the blue slip machine which rotates into the yellow slip machine, or highly refined headwear you buy right off of the exchange which you can buy or attempt to refine yourself.

Because of this it is my opinion that F2P players should use their assistant medals on either yellow or blue slips. Yellow slips being the most important ones for new players in order to obtain some really broken headwear like the One-Eye captain backpiece.

Recent changes make it possible to exchange your Assistant Medals of Honor for Enchantment Crystals leading to guaranteed fourth enchants on your gear, however if you don't have any of the great headwear it is arguably better to focus on getting good headwear first and amazing gear before you even care about fourth enchants since they only shine with high attack/mattack values which you just won't have for a long time.

The blue slip machine often has great headwear but has no pity and though the rates aren't terrible you're just better off pulling on something with a massive pool of great items that you can choose from over time.

You get enough of these medals to exchange up to 72 slips a month which is enough for two pulls with 16 slips to spare so there is no reason not to do this.

The most tempting purchase for F2P players looking to spend a small amount of money is Multijob but once you reach base level 150 you can unlock each non-collab job for free. As I've mentioned a few times before, this feature will slow you down if you're a new/returning player since these jobs start at job level 1 and need their own gear which will divert spending on strengthening your character so try and hold off until then.

I strongly urge you to focus on leveling one job until you've hit at least 150 and can start getting really good ancient equipment from instances to use on those other jobs, saving you a fortune in zeny.

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