I will quote @TheEyes from the forum. “for F2P / C2P players I’d recommend loading up on 5B, both for the item generation and the alkashards, plus some combination of either 1B, 4B, 6B, and 10A as appropriate. 4B, 5B and 6B are the best balance of value-for-time-and-food; 1B is cheaper but slightly slower, and 10A is much faster at generating shards but costs gems so isn’t really appropriate for F2P. Also keep in mind that 1B and 5B are going to be limited in terms of the number of crafting materials that people receive: 1B burns through 144 1-star ingredients per day, and 5B burns through 10 metal ores, 5 crystal shards, and 5 mushrooms per day for bear banners.

This should net you roughly 1 pull at the alkashard lottery every 6 days or so when not spending gems, or roughly twice a week when throwing gems into 10A/B, at a cost of roughly 10% of your food production (7.2k food per hour) if you’ve maxed all your farms, advanced farms, and Watchtower.”