So I tracked 2,000 drops

"Maegor;890716" wrote:

"Acrofales;890700" wrote:

"Maegor;890591" wrote:
Something interesting to note is that for the price of cuffs, you can buy 3,360 energy and the probability that you wouldn't get 50 cuff salvage before spending 3,360 energy is 0.64%.

For the purple gear that costs 1,274 crystals (the stun gun component), the probability that you wouldn't get 50 salvage before spending 3,058 energy is 4.45%.

So really what you are saving by buying is time, not value, which I think we all knew.

Actually, I think the chances are even smaller.

Nope, did it on excel just to make sure (and because calculating a binomial distribution with trials between 50 and 400 is excruciatingly tedious).

"Acrofales;890700" wrote:

"Maegor;890608" wrote:
What really changes the value is when you start buying 100 cost energy refreshes. If you were to buy two 50 crystal refreshes and just one 100 crystal refresh, the 1,400 crystal cost for cuffs is right in line since you would farm the 50 salvage required 55% of the time with the 1,400 crystals.

By the same measure, the 1,274 crystal cost of a stun gun component is a value purchase since you would farm the 50 salvage only 27.8% of the time.

Edit: Obviously buying more than one 100-crystal energy refresh is not what you want to do in a strict gear farm sense.

If you're counting 100 crystal refreshes, you should probably count the free energy too, which drops the price far lower for farming. You get 375 free energy per day. Even Just using 1 refresh worth of that towards gear farming drops the crystals spent on farm by 1/3.

I think the point of OP including his information about expected cost is to get a crystal to crystal comparison, which is why I did the same.