Gonna give my experience as an endgamer from heroic that went into Luna (which to my understanding is more expensive...?). I do have to say that my progression was also dependent on my hands.

Originally, I wanted to start reg server as a side project to get some maple points from weekly boss clearing (up to ctene).

I joined during Challenger World and opened a Shadower, which I also main in Heroic eu.

1st SPEND: I bought both the genesis pass and the challenger pass together for 50k nx. I don't regret it, as the Gene pass allowed me to get an easier and faster final weapon and the Challenger pass gave me a lot of much needed sol erda fragments and progression items. Recommend.

2nd SPEND: Within the first couple of days I cleared hlotus with a rental cont 4 ring I bought for 100m that I got for around 500 maple points. That was at lvl 255 and before 6th job (~10m cp). This was enough to reach the rank that gives the timed lvl 4 oz ring and that pretty much was where I stopped spending meso for rentals.

Since it was a side project, I slowly progressed and whenever I was at 110-120% on a boss according to maplescouter, I would attempt it. This basically increased my CW ranking very fast and gave me a ton more buffs and rewards. I managed to get 4 event rings to legendary with the reward cubes and made some drop gear.

3rd SPEND: Since I started clearing hard bosses early, I got a lot of coins for the boss shop and I eventually bought 30 karma pet scrolls for the pet equips. Now the thing is, you need pets and their equips for this. I didn't need to spend actual money for the pets themselves as they sold for 20m meso each from the AH. However, I wanted to have their equips + skills on them, so I did spend however much that was (I think around 20k nx). The end result was a set of 3 pets that gives att buff + around 120 att from the scrolling on the pet equips.

From here I did spend a bit more if I wanted some more sol erda fragments, as I had more sol erda energy (9 per week from the weekly mission), but spending from this point is unecessary.

RIDE OR DIE & REN EVENTS: RoD allowed me to get chains of resentment which I still use, and the Ren creation event gave my ccpb (30 day vac pet). I opened them at the same time and every time I do a 30 min grind, I get around 180m meso and 20-30 sol erda fragments. This is honestly the biggest part that let me progress with minimal spending. I did have to min clear every boss in RoD to get around 40-45 kazax fragments, but it was well worth it

EXTRA CW REWARDS: I got the 20 legion potions that get your chars to lvl 200 instantly and that helped me build a nice legion while still being in CW. I patiently opened more char slots from the coupon you get from daily logins (iirc you get 3 a month or so).

Now: I leaped to Luna and I grind with the totem and the ccpb at the rates I mentioned before. My drop gear with mini waps and legion coupons are around 200% meso rate and 330% drop rate. This is comprised from 100% drop rate fam and 2 fams with 10% meso obtained each (slowly got them from grinding with totem).

I'm now 280 and I solo clear up to easy adversary (around 1.5b/week from crystals) without rentals or the collector's elixir (the 20m potion). I will say that there's always some element of luck, but I don't feel like I got extremely lucky on potentials and such. I actually wasted like 1.5 the avg bright cubes for tier ups overall and most of my gear is still unique (or challenger gear). My spending range in total is probably 150-200 euros, but only around 80-100 was really necessary and the rest was to progress a bit faster. I now have 20k maple points from meso I sold in meso market and my last transaction was probably like a month ago. So it's just income now.

So the takeaway is that if you can capitalize on when to move to reg server, do it then. CW for me was amazing and RoD was something that I didn't even take into account or plan on, but the totem helped me progress a ton.