That’s basically my question and I’d appreciate any views.
In Atlantis I can use ~7 flasks a day. With my base 72 energy and that filling up twice a day that’s 648 energy or 216 runs. That returns less than 100 coins. So even in a best case rounder situation that’s at least six energy per coin.
Let’s assume VF is similar but let’s also know you may not get coins from a special monster.
So I said it took 648 energy to maybe get one pull.
It takes 300 (or higher gems) for one pull. So if you get 0.5 gems per energy it’s roughly even. The collect gems quest is closer to one gem per energy.
I say collect gems is a clear winner unless you like the other loot that comes with stages.
Love the question. I’ve never explicitly thought about it. I just started typing and wanted to see where it would take me.
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Super love the answer.
@Ruskin505, you so regularly go above and beyond, a true forum superstar.
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what wholesome appreciation! very nice to see, made my day @Gerg
and @Ruskin505 is indeed a superstar: thorough, analytical, and kind! and, when explaining something, still makes other people feel smart!
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Lots of thanks being thrown here and things what I thought of for y’all
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Just to add some tangential thoughts to @Ruskin505’s excellent analysis:
Gem quests result in a fixed number of gems; farming events in S2-S5 result in a variable number of rewards (and, especially outside Atlantis, variable reward types, i.e. not just coins for summoning).
My personal proclivity is toward some measure of a “sure thing,” so I’ll tend to always do gem quests first. If yours is as well, advantage: gem quests. (Plus, of course, it’s almost never the case that the two are mutually exclusive: there are almost never so many gem quests that it’s matter of farming only one.)
A second factor is how much you value non-coins rewards – if you are hungry for extra crafting items like orichalcum nuggets, or if you enjoy chasing down avatar rewards, then those are, of course, arguments in favor of taking advantage of season-farming events.
A third factor is how much you value gems for reasons other than for saving up for summoning pulls. Obviously, you can spend gems on a great number of things in the game, but two that are salient to me are (1) occasional emblems-for-gems sales in the game store and (2) expanding roster space (when I’ve hung onto probably too many 4* heroes again, hah). If non-summoning uses for gems appeal more or less, this would also make chasing gem quests worth more or less.
Finally, there’s the question of spending. If you’re F2P, then you may be trying to optimize the number of all resources you can earn (within reason) if you’re not spending to supplement resources; if you are spending at all, then whether you favor farming gems vs coins may depend on how well you can afford and/or land good deals on gems vs those on coins (through some combination of in-game or webstore offers).
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Great thanks also Bob, 
My current plan for nuggets is via Alchemy Lab 7b and 9a, I use 6b for boots (for HA 3* troop production). &b takes half the time of 8b and iron seems to overflow late game.
It’s useful to compare gems to coins. As FtP I’ve got a fairly strong preference for gems for the love of costumes. But nuggets are good.
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Costume Chamber seems to have been kinder to me than most portals for some time, plus it at least has the consolation prize of Toon upgrades for 3* and 4* heroes, so I definitely hear that.
(Philosophically, I could rant on Toon…art…and ridonkulous passives, but I’ll take my stat upgrades where I can get’em, y’know? It’s not like getting non-S1 costumes is generally very feasible for me.)
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Interesting thread! Makes me rethink a few things 
Here is how I used to think:
I always use WE bottles (and loot tickets) in AR for the overall best farming rewards in the game. I always hunt down all seahorses for sure and then some. So the coins are just another bonus.
Then the only question really is how many gems are WE bottles worth to me?
I don´t have the exact numbers here right now, let´s trust @Ruskin505 and go with 1 gem per energy. My current max energy is 61, so the question is: is a WE bottle worth 61gems to me? Would I buy one for that price if offered? The answer for me is: no, so I skip gem quests during AR (or any such event that I use WE bottles on for whatever reason).
However reading his argumentation I might rethink my focus on farming and instead consider pulls worth more than farming… I will think on it.
I farm a lot during Atlantis rising, mainly for Backpacks and Orichalcum nuggets.
But I use only 2-3 WE flasks in that event.
The Coins are only a nice add on - Why?
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All Atlantis 5* including Oceanus, Thetis and all costumes are outdated.
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HotM in most cases are 2nd or 3rd tier heroes too
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even the heroes you can get from FS (after 100 fruitless pulls) or SE are no longer top tier.
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same goes with Valhalla and most S4 heroes, some S5 heroes with their new costumes are top notch, so farming for coins in S5 is for me more worth spending my WE flasks, than Atlantis.
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with gems you can summon in the top portals like Goblins, Astral Elves, Untold Tales, Opera or masked Gods.
There are the top tier heroes. I do every gem quest and will save them for next Astral Elves (was lucky last Goblin event with getting Pepper).
I concede it is very roster dependent, but having more than 70 maxed 5* heroes, I get picky and look twice before I ascend a new one. So two of my latest FS picks, Frigg and Baldur, are sitting for months at 1/1 dreading every Soulexchange. Maybe they get traded in next SE.
Happy gaming
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I’m surprised to hear that you skip gem quests for AR. Because I wouldn’t pay 100 gems just to do AR farming. Said another way, I’d trade most of my flasks away if I could exchange them for 100 gems each.
The real value of a flask for me is probably closer to 10-20 gems.
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I question my use of WE flasks for season reruns.
In general, I only use WE flasks to race through elemental wanted chests with aim to keep on track for two of each chest each day and I may occasionally use a flask to finish a specific quest. I like quickly scrolling through wanted chests for a better chance to get EHTs and (potentially now partly defunct) ETTs. Otherwise, I would have liked to have saved my WE flasks so that I could use them in a future when I’m at a higher level and each WE flask would be of more value. At a later date I’d use them to repeatedly crack through a high and productive level of a later season at a later date or if there was a specific hero I wanted with specific tokens. The main advantage that I can see in using flasks now is to make early advances in level to increase roster space. I’m kind of managing with that but will also think on its level-based expansion.
Counterpoint: the “would I buy” argument’s salience may depend on how many WE flasks you have. If you have a sufficiently large number of flasks that there is little danger of running out, then the greater question might not be replacement value, but the best way to use the stash that exists. (Of course, if WE flasks are more limited in number, then the analysis is indeed different.)
I … uh… on the one hand, I still use my non-costume Ariel (and I would realllllllllly like to somehow land, earn, whatever, her costume).
On the other hand, even if and when cAriel is featured in the Atlantis portal, my chance of landing the costume is, of course, hilariously low (and when she’s not featured, more at a monkeys-randomly-bashing-typewriters-reproducing-Shakespeare level).
And I’ll admit that when the HotM in the Atlantis portal are duplicates of ones I already have (or ones that even I would not be excited about leveling) that it’s an active anti-inducement to pull with what few Atlantis coins I farm up.
Having said that…
the point is well made that garbage odds at some premium portal are better than garbage odds at an old portal.
Point, although, S2 seadragons do drop Atlantis coins, whereas S5 scarabs only might drop dunes coins and can seem rarer… unless of course pay-to-farm.
–Also, personally, though I generally, from a rational point of view, try to avoid ascribing humanlike intention to the RNG behind game events like portals… the S5 portal HATES me. (Or somewhat more accurately, the random output of the S5 portal for me to date is essentially indistinguishable from that of a portal which actually had and could express malevolent disdain toward me 
)
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I do not buy anything here and a monster lure would be the lowest prioritycto buy.
My observations are, if you soend the same amount of WE (flasks) you will get more or less the same amount in coins in every of the events.
Seadragons are guving always coins, but I never had more than 10 from a single Dragon, most times only two or three. Thh other monsters often are giving emblems and crates, any every iron and most food crates and the three emblems are feeling like a slap in the face, but I had never lesd than 5 coins (if there are coins dropped) and up to 25.
If I got coins in a stage I farm this stage heavily, if I get an other monster there it would most likely drop coins too. Maybe some streak effect of the rng.
At the end you get more or less the same amount of coins, and the probability for c.Ariel and c.Hathor are identical. But in S5 the other featured heroes are all extremely usable and no t one year old HotM trash.
Happy farming
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I seem to remember that seadragons used to always give coins- but, these days, I think the coins are harder to come by in their extra loot.
Try your loot tickets one at a time while cross referencing the kill tables, or just make the attacks. There have been many occasions where I’ve thought, where’s my coins.
To break roughly even purely on pulls, 3 WE refills, costing 300 gems, would need to yield 100 Atlantis coins. That’s really unlikely to happen and, even if it did, the gems could have been more efficiently invested in 10+ pulls, and in often better portals than Atlantis.
If you want to buy WE flasks, do it during the Alliance quest. There are offers for 80 gems per WE flask.
Happy gaming
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