@Coolnessda
Tough one to quantify, as every character is different (location/energy type used to farm, farming node cost, gear requirements, does your play style allow you to catch native bonus energy, etc.).
From a strictly shard farming aspect - you can reasonably expect it to take 840 completions (simmed or played) of a character shard location to go from 3 star to 7 star.
So (Assuming a hard or ship node) if you do the daily max of 5 sims it should take (all estimates +/- normal variance, and assuming the fairly well proven 33% drop rate) 168 days.
1 refresh (25 crystals) to 10 attempts drops it to 112 days.
2 refreshes (75 crystals) for 15 attempts drops it to 56 days. It is also generally accepted that 15 attempts is the maximum (excluding Cantina nodes, as they don’t have a refresh cost) cost effective amount. Once you move into that third 100 crystal node refresh (and beyond), it is approximately the same cost (or cheaper) to just use crystals to buy the shards directly from Shipments in the store, and eliminates the RNG factor.
Cantina nodes are generally assumed to be more cost effective through all 3 of the 100 crystal refreshes, and cheaper through shipments at 200 crystal refreshes and beyond (also worth noting that on double drop days, it is acceptable to do the 100 crystal normal or ship energy refreshes and the 200 Crystal cantina refreshes and stay cost effective).
the other qualifier is the added cost of energy refreshes to actually do the attempts, and that is case by case based on the cost of the node, other shard/gear farming, and wether or not you get all the native ‘free’ energy throughout the day (or wether you have limited access to play and your energy often builds to max and sits against the cap).
Gear is super tough to estimate, as that will greatly depend on your individual place in the game (how many assault battle challenge tiers you clear, Galactic Challenge completion rate, raid placement and frequency, GAC, TB, and TW results...) and the character specific gear requirements (do they need a lot of commonly “gated” gear like carbantis, stun guns/cuffs, Kyrotech, etc.).
Hope that helps a bit, sorry if it wasn’t the ‘full’ answer you were looking for.
