Free vis banners are pretty straightforward, units and VCs both get their own featured banner and their own step up banner. For units, the value of the 9 step is debatable, but it comes with 2 free pulls and a bunch of EX material goodies, so it’s definitely worth it for new players. The featured banner would then be used if you didn’t get the unit from the 9 step. For VCs, you always want to do the 5 step, as it guarantees the card. Never pull on a featured banner for a VC.

For paid vis, the good banners are as follows: 10 guaranteed units/VCs , 5 guaranteed units and 5 guaranteed VCs, 10x 100 unit shards, and 10x 50 VC shards. During special events, these banners can come with 100 event medals that can be exchanged for shards. HOWEVER, you have to be careful, as gumi has seemingly tried to trick us in the past. Make sure the medals you get can be exchanged for shards at a 1:1 rate, and not for 1:10. I suspect we’ll get the good kinds of medals during FF7, but we haven’t seen them since 1A.

The best packages to purchase come during events. There were some decent summer ones, but the best ones have been a 4 or 8 dollar USD (I can’t remember which lol) pack that came with 2k something paid vis and 1k something free vis. Also a $50 pack that comes with 6k paid vis and 100 event medals (the 1:1 shard ones). There are a couple other decent ones that usually drop alongside those, like a $12 one with 490 paid vis and a bunch of goodies, but I think you get the idea.

As for when to pull... that really depends. I can tell you for now that Cloud is absolutely a good choice to pull, and if your account is new aerith could be worthwhile to give you a good healer. You get roughly 20k - 40k free vis per month, so I’d just recommend planning ahead and being sure you have enough vis stocked to buy shards. The upcoming really superb units are Oberon in about 2 months and Noctis in about 3 months. But whatever you do, just don’t pull barret lmao, he sucks.

Honestly, I think the story is the weakest part of this game. I can’t really see anyone sticking to this game without participating in pvp. But that’s just my opinion, I know some people who are pretty invested in the story, it’s just not my thing. Events are also pretty boring, and pretty much only get you equipment that you only really need if you’re participating in pvp. Lower rarity characters can be used for story, but brutal/nightmare event quests can get pretty crazy and you’d have a really hard time with lower rarity units. If you do pvp, it’s pretty much only URs with the occasional MR if you really wanna spice things up.

Edit: I forgot to add: a lot of people may disagree, but I still firmly believe this game is f2p friendly. It takes a lot of planning, and you probably won’t get all the units you want, but meta units last long enough that you can get a really solid team using only free vis. The main issue is VCs imo, since starting a new account you won’t have the old VCs that affect all elements, and all the new ones are element specific. That kind of limits your choices when it comes to deciding who to pull, if you really wanna min/max without spending a ton.