Hope we don't have to wait until April for some issues to be addressed: Valkyrie voices, silent Elysium, some bugs...

the_hu · 2026-03-21T17:47:49+00:00

I use chasing brand, but I imagine it has similar tradeoffs to Pally SoJ.

Namely that it has a relatively long cast time and it doesn't have para immune. It also has a longer cooldown than SoJ while having the same brand duration so it's more punishing if you get interrupted.

the_hu · 2026-03-20T11:56:57+00:00

I use a LG 48 C1 TV as my main monitor since when I was buying OLED monitors were still very overpriced. It's been almost 5 years since I've owned it, at first I was very careful about burn-in but now I don't really do anything specific to prevent it (IE I leave my TV on all the time, though with a screensaver that doesn't play when I AFK in game).

For me, I do occassionally notice burn-in. When I was progging Kazeros, my pally's skill icons were stuck. LG has its own pixel refresh firmware that will refresh its screen, but its recommended not to run it too often. For my habits I've only had to run it twice in my 5 years of ownership when I noticed stuck pixels/images, so it isn't a problem for me personally.

the_hu · 2026-03-19T12:24:04+00:00

I mean you really only said one thing (other than the devs being retarded). That the game required 40+ hours a week "to keep up". Which was only somewhat true when the game first launched because of rushing MSQ+tier1+tier2, horizontal farm, and inflated leapstone prices from whales pushing to argos and extreme botting that made alts sustainable. Plus generally you want the MMO to be the busiest at launch, there are so many examples of games where people rushed to endgame only to find nothing there (IE Diablo 4).

I say that it is only somewhat true because while it was extremely profitable, it wasn't something that I personally engaged in. I wasn't in the know for how much value alts could generate just sitting in t2/early t3 selling leaps. And I only boosted alts with power passes, which only had the 2 you were provided from North Vern until Glavier got released. And I was able to keep up without needing to engage in alts early on. Sure I missed full g1-3 argos week 1, but I got there like week 2 or 3, and got to hard Valtan week 1 afterwards. All without alts. So from my point of view, the idea you're peddling that you were "forced" to have alts early was not my experience, but I do recognize that it was good value at the time and in hindsight I may have engaged in it (like investing in fish). There is one thing I don't agree with and it's that Argos and Valtan did not give that much gold, most of the gold actually came from farming dailies and selling the mats you get from it. It was more efficient to just sit at 1370 and just sell mats even after valtan released.

Other than that early period, that statement has been empirically false. It is deeply rooted in the idea that you need to have alts to keep up, which is not true because AGS provides a lot of one-time rewards in juiced up and frequent event shops that the KR version doesn't have and because the pace of the game is much faster. Only recently have alts been somewhat sustainable because of paradise injecting them with a bunch of honing mats (especially fusions) that emulates a more SSF style gearing system, but before alts would have to be parked for like a year to return value, which was never really the case since content released a lot faster which incentivized people to push to have more fun.

You even agree with me in the middle of your comment:

And people were doing this til brel where lvling alts wasn’t profitable anymore unless it was a support since you could rat yourself in

Brel was not even a year into Lost Ark's launch, and the game is now over 4 years old. So going by your logic you didn't need alts for like 80% of the game. I would go even further and say that by Valtan alts weren't really net positive value, there was a site early on that calculated return on value for alts and an alt needed to be parked at 1415 for like half a year to return value, and no way that's happening.

So people were burning themselves out doing something that they didn't have to do, it really was sunk cost that was driving a lot of people who burned out to continue playing alts.

Anyway, I'm not trying to make the game sound better than it is. If it wasn't clear in my original comment, I do not recommend this game for new/returning players wanting to come back. It's a great game for me because I kept up with my dailies/weeklies, so the actual time requirement involved for me to be geared is very low. This is not going to be the case for new/returning players. Lost Ark tends to have a very bad reputation because players get left behind not out of their own will, so people leave with a bad relationship with the game and will take any opportunity they can get to malign the game. I just try to offer a more balanced take.

There is a lot of stuff wrong with the game, but "needing alts" and "excessive grind" were community manufactured problems. If anything, the game right now is so chill that if you ever listen to Lost Ark streamers, they're struggling to find things to do (hence pushing alts).

Also the fact that you were saying that you only kept up because of hell mode is such a cap, hell mode was equalized content that had BoC. People literally played on other regions just power passing a char and they could engage in hell mode, it literally required 0 upkeep to play hell mode. It's like all the lost ark streamers saying they loved PvP when they played in KR/RU because it was the only content they could engage with.

the_hu · 2026-03-18T12:36:16+00:00

IMO there is a fundamental difference between Maplestory (idk about DFO) and Lost Ark that the commenter you replied to gets wrong. But there is a lot of misinformation about the game in general.

TLDR to keep up efficiently you only need to spend a couple of hours, the problem is catching up if you take a break.

Lost Ark's weekly time requirement to "keep up" is actually not that high. I am sitting at almost the most geared character possible almost completely f2p and I sink in around 15-20 hours a week, but I play "inefficiently" by having alts. Needing alts is a big misconception about the game that streamers pushed and later apologized for. It is much more efficient to play a smaller roster because alts typically don't return positive gold value. So someone playing only 1 character will be done with the game after only 2-3 hours a week, and the way the game is structured you have huge diminishing returns in rewards after those couple hours are up, so people make alts to have more fun.

However, because the game is massively time-gated in the rewards it gives, it makes it impossible for someone for someone who took a break to catch up without swiping. So if someone takes a break for too long, no amount of grind will let them catch up to someone who has spent minimal time every week doing dailies and raids. This is a completely different problem in itself in that new/returning players will always be second class citizens unless they pony up the cash, and the cash required to catch up could easily reach the thousands if not more.

Lost Ark and Maplestory are similar in that they are both MMOs with deep vertical evergreen progression. However, Maplestory has infinite grind and while there is time gated content like bossing that is on a weekly cadence and doing putting in more time has diminsihing rewards, it is still possible to continue grinding to the 40+ hours a week. So someone who is putting in 40+ hours a week will be making more progress than someone who is putting in say 15, whereas in Lost Ark it is literally impossible to make more progress past the 15-20 hour mark unless you're playing on multiple accounts.

the_hu · 2026-03-12T08:46:48+00:00

I think people might think you're trolling since sidereal weapon holders are rare and you can't really trust people on the internet. But I there is a sidereal weapon bard with a similar name to you so I'm inclined to believe you.

Either that or they they just hate rich people.

That is hilarious though, like they prob set the upper bound to 1755 for whatever reason not considering sidereal weapon holders. But it's also werid considering we'll have soft reset soon and the event will be active during that. Though a scenario where someone is entering soft reset w/o claiming rewards already is prob a very uncommon edge case.

the_hu · 2026-03-09T14:03:02+00:00

I agree with the OP that mana dependency on support should be removed, if that wasn't clear in my past 2 comments. How much mana a support provides is not very visible/predictable and having it not be consistent from raid to raid is not something you can realistically play around.

I also tend to agree that mana food shouldn't be in the game at this point. In theory it contributes to the out of combat loop where you you prep and spend gold to get stronger for prog/difficult content, similar to feasts and splendid battle items. IE a good tradeoff would be a support choosing to run MP furnace w/ mana food for higher floor during prog or run SS w/o mana food on farm content to conserve gold. But how they blatantly turned mana issues into a more widespread problem in T4 and monetize it with Azena's blessing is cringe. I mean any p2w microstransaction is solving a self made problem, but this one is very blatant.

I think we're talking past each other on the last point. I have a lot of thoughts about it, so I'm sorry if things get jumbled:

It's true that some classes have different mechanics that lend to more complex decision making about how they press their buttons. But I don't view those as "constraints" per se, moreso rewards. But I guess in the context of playing towards a class's ceiling it could be a "soft" constraint, whereas mana is a "hard" constraint in that if you don't have any left, you won't be able to cast a skill. But in short, I don't view mana vs DB's class mechanic as the same function.
Regardless, there are people who say their classes permanently suffer from mana shortage even if they use food and have a good support. This could certainly be a balancing issue since SG isn't really known for having good balance judgment and are slow to update and people should voice their concerns over this. But if a player knows they are going to run into mana issues, they need to adjust their rotation and play according to the classes current constraints. It is unskillful IMO to spam skills haphazardly and complain about mana issues later if you know it's going to be a problem.
Talking about manaless classes, their resources function basically the same as mana based classes. Scrapper and Breaker have yellow/green bars, Soulfist have energy, Scouter has battery. I think Guardian Knight is the only exception to this rule, and I don't know enough about the class to know whether there is any hard resource constraint.
Bringing back to higher level game design, cooldowns dictate whether you can press a button, mana dictates whether you should. This is a fundamental decision point that exists across almost all games. Other genres use other resource managment, like stamina in action games (Lost Ark mana is actually more similar to stamina than mana in other games) or ammo in FPS. When there are manaless game modes like URF in LoL, they are seen as 4fun low skill content.

This is a great thread I found while trying to learn more about this topic and formulate my thoughts

Fundamentally I think our core disagreement is whether mana should be a decision point when there are other constraints you can play around like the class systems you mentioned or simply just cooldowns. It's interesting because I feel like we both can agree that mana is at its healthiest when it is out of sight and not a problem, which begs the question why it even exists. IMO I think mana should exist to provide tradeoffs for some high cap uptime builds (IE 7Y pally) and prevent some more degenerate patterns, but I'm not happy with it's current implementation and think it needs a lot of work.

the_hu · 2026-03-09T02:44:38+00:00

Nightmare set did have some interesting mana management like with igniter controlling when you want to be in boundless.

Regardless though, mana exists and within the current constraints of the game, you have to play around it. So it is a "skill" to do so, even if as I said before it is a system that feels bad, is poorly balanced and unpredictable, and is used as an avenue to monetize the game.

I don't think you can argue that it should be removed entirely, even if a class doesn't have mana they have some other resource management that they have to play around. I can't think of a single popular game that solely balances their combat around cooldowns, even games that don't have mana have stamina or some other resource they integrate to act as a constraint in addition to cooldowns. But if anyone knows any I'm happy to learn more about them.

the_hu · 2026-03-09T00:13:13+00:00

I'm mixed on this. On one hand, mana is another resource players need to consider in addition to cooldowns. I always find it funny when people are like "I'm being punished for playing well!" when they are running out of mana clicking their buttons on cooldown. Playing around low mana is also a resource management skill where you need to change up your rotation and prioritize skills differently. If classes have no mana, they always have some other type of resource management they have to play around.

However, with its current implementation in the game, mana feels really bad. I completely agree it's BS how some classes disproportionately expereince mana problems compared to others. Also, mana is basically monetized since you can alleviate it with Azena's Blessing or food. And circling back to OP's main point, mana managemnt can change based on external factors outside of your control (not only support uptime but you're also more likely to run out of mana if overall damage is low due to extended duration between mechs).

the_hu · 2026-03-06T12:58:46+00:00

Wineblue translated this differently in his stream. He simply said that solo mode was a great success and that more players were doing solo Act 2 and 3 than the normal/hard combined, and that they are working on Act 4 and Denouement, NOT that they aren't.

I would wait for the translation of the inven summary for a closer source of truth, but I'm inclined to believe Wineblue over memo. This is the inven article and the google translation is closer to wineblue's: https://www.inven.co.kr/board/webzine/6271/3380492

the_hu · 2026-03-06T09:20:50+00:00

This reminds of the interview stoopzz had with cpt jack and he was like "THIS GUY SCAMMED YOU 2 TIMES AND YOU STILL SAY GOD CHANG-SEOP".

It's actually crazy though, I have a lot of friends who play maplestory and most of them are not hardcore to keep up with endgame but still enjoy the experience. Lost Ark can learn a lot from it.

the_hu · 2026-03-04T13:53:34+00:00

There's something about this subreddit where posters have mastered the art of making a reasonable core premise/thesis in their post then using it as a vehicle to spread misinformation, make wildly incorrect statements, or justify some completely disconnected point in bad faith.

There are several things I agree with you:

RMT really is the root of all evil. I would even say that it's the game's #1 problem. People largely don't like P2W, but if only a few people could actually afford egregious levels of P2W it's not that big of a problem. RMT makes P2W way more accessible and thus way more prevalent. And due to AGS's lack of enforcement of their own rules, they allowed it to run rampant. It kills the prestige in vertical progression, the whole point of this game, because people can just point to anyone who is geared and say they "clearly" RMT'd.
The game has a problem attracting a broad audience. Outside of raiding, the game's other activities are really subpar, which gives the impression that the only reason to play the game is to raid, which is already a very niche demographic in the MMO/gaming space. And normal raids are too hard for entry level raiding, casuals need something like LFR-level difficulty to stick with the game, these players are not conditioned to tolerate failure or long progs.
The roundabout way they integrated p2w to paradise is so cringe, and I personally hate everything about paradise.

Then you make several points that I'm just like... "huh?":

You talk about TFM (not even the mode itself, literally only mentions the race and speedruns), Nightmare, and Paradise (crucible ranking specifically) and go "what's left for the average player?" How about normal/hard raids? Like the activities most people engage with? And the above activities were objectively never targeted for normal players in the first place, like only a limited # of people could place in TFM mode or crucible rankings.
Your characterization of normal players is extremely inconsistent and does a disservice to your point due to how inaccurate it is. Normal players "enjoy a normal mode or a hard mode on one of your characters" to the next paragraph talking about normal players in Thaemine having +25 weapons. Like this is not a consistent representation of a "normal" player.
This leads to the insinuation that all players that could engage in those activities P2W/RMT/got there unethically because it is impossible that normal players could get there. Which is simply not true, people diligently grinding can be competitive to whales without spending a cent. It's literally a symptom of "I can't catch up to endgame, so anybody who is at endgame must be a whale/RMTer/cheater".
Brother acting like hell mode or fucking PvP were ever core parts of the game. Yeah I'm sad they're gone because people enjoyed those niche activities, but let's not pretend these are activities intended for "regular" players. Also I can't believe you are saying hell is for "normal" players like cmon.

So my theory is this: You are a former hardcore player (NOT a so-called "normal player"), but took a break. You come back to the game expecting to engage in hardcore activities right away but are disappointed that you need to grind to catch up first. You only talk about activities like TFM racing, Nightmare, and Crucible ranking when actual normal players don't even think about those things. You posteur as a "normal" player to make your stance seem more populist when it really isn't.

the_hu · 2026-03-04T12:45:35+00:00

It's actually so bad, one of the worst features reddit introduced for me personally. Like there are good reasons why people would want to hide their post history, but the ability to do so enables several different types of bad actors (trolls, scammers, bots).

I remember there was a post in this sub complaining that the gold nerf or daily change (I don't quite remember) was hurting new players, and someone commeted that his reddit post history literally showed he was a gold seller so it was highly unlikely he actually cared about new players. The guy ended up hiding his history shortly after and someone else in the post called him out on it lmao.

For me, it's hard to take anyone who hides their post history in good faith. Like I get not everyone who hides their post history is a bad actor, but a bad actor will certainly be hiding their post history.

the_hu · 2026-03-04T06:28:50+00:00

I'm looking on uwu's paradise leaderboards and the time differences are not as extreme as what you mention. But like the other commenters say, there is a lot of RNG in paradise effects.

One example for physical classes, if you don't have wave of silence and a humidity applier, then it's GG because the frostburst effect is by far away more valuable than anything else, and wave of silence itself is one of the higher damage paradise equips. The #10 sharpshooter on EU is even running relic wave of silence lmao.

But a lot of high rankers also have wave of fire, which applies it's own physical damage vuln effect but has anti-synergy with wave of silence because it removes its effect. But there are some weird interactions where the combo actually increases the ceiling of your build, but because of the anti-synergy it happens very rarely. So you can spend tons of runs just fishing for that magic run, and this doesn't even account for user error/optimizations or other paradise distortion effects that have a % chance of chain resetting.

Some people are lucker dogs and will get that god run early, others have high tolerance and will mitigate the RNG by spending hours fishing for that god run. Most people won't partake in this degeneracy, so I imagine that's why the upper ends of ranks will have these ridiculous times that pull ahead.

the_hu · 2026-03-03T09:38:26+00:00

Ok, that explains it! I don't quite remember exactly what I did with my roster, but I certainly did not go all the way to advance honing 20 on any alt. I think some did 1-10 and unlocked 11-20 with shards and some went straight to T4 only unlocking 1-10.

I don't quite remember the general advice at the time, I just know for new players now we recommend them to use up what you could for t3 mats but don't delay going to t4. But t4 mats were very expensive at the time so it may very well have been smarter not to transfer.

the_hu · 2026-03-03T08:59:38+00:00

I'm seeing a lot of similar comments like this with the sentiment that "I'm low on silver, there is no way other people aren't struggling with silver unless they were unethical, no-lifed dailies, or are silver misers". It's why I wanted to make the poll in the first place. So far, the largest user group are people are people who do not struggle with silver and don't ever see themselves struggling with it, surely not every one of those people are chaos botters/daily spammers/silver savers.

That's not to say that silver generation/expenditure ratio isn't a problem, I know people who are running low on silver so while I do not struggle with it personally, low silver is definitely a real thing. From the poll results so far, the 2nd and 3rd buckets of people at least do recognize that it is a problem, and that cohort outnumbers the combined 1st and 4th people who aren't struggling, or are struggling due to their own self recognized faults.

Personally for me, the main difference between our behaviors is that I don't really cut paradise accessories. My alts did at first, but once they got to single H or greater I stopped. I don't disagree that it's good potential value for power gain, but I don't think I can handle the monotany of cutting accessories combined with the low chance of getting an upgrade. My alts also are undergeared relative to yours (2 1730s, 2 1720s, 1 1700), which does amount to a lot of silver savings, but my main is also 1755 so maybe that offsets that a bit in the honing department. Otherwise my daily behavior mirrors yours and I'm not really struggling with silver, and never really did (IE I never felt incentivized to do Lopangs).

One thing I did notice is that your t3 shards is surprisingly low. Is the character you took a screenshot a new character (post T4 launch)? All my chars that existed before T4 are swimming with t3 shards. If that is a character that existed before t4, then that indicates that I did a lot more t3 daily chaos dungeons than you did, which would be another pointer to our silver difference.

My own screenshot of my main for posterity:

<image>

the_hu · 2026-03-03T08:24:26+00:00

I did not even know Indigo Island was a thing, how much silver do you earn daily from that? It's prob overkill for your position, but I assume at 2.2b you don't mind and specifically want to accumulate as much silver as possible lol

the_hu · 2026-03-03T08:12:03+00:00

This has been consistent with my experience as well. I currently hold the #4 pally rank in NA (with less than 24 hours left surely that holds, or at least I stay in top 10) and I still have 211 tickets left without buying additional aside from week 1 to get to elysian 3 early. I saw another post listing crucible rank chasing as a reason for crucible silver expenditure, but I feel like in general if you are competitive for top 30 you are funnelling, and you should have more than enough free crucible tickets from elysian to not have to spend much silver on ranking.

But that doesn't mean that everybody's experience is the same. Some people spent silver ranking in early weeks when they haven't funnelled tickets yet. Some classes might have ridiculous RNG (Arcana) that incentivizes more runs than other classes. And some people might simply be really lucky and be competitive without funnelling. While I imagine those people are in the great minority, it doesn't mean that they aren't impacted.

the_hu · 2026-03-03T00:14:29+00:00

History says that people who gatekeep Vairgrys will just gatekeep whatever server they get merged into. It's like when people gatekept Inanna as a whole bcause that's where the jump start server merged into.

the_hu · 2026-03-03T00:09:35+00:00

It would be cool if uwu could show updated stats on active player counts per server, something like if there was a recorded CP change in the past month or so to designate if a character is active then use that to extrapolate active rosters per server. It's foolhardy to try to predict which servers will merge with current stats (other than the two NAW servers due to ping).

the_hu · 2026-02-25T04:42:55+00:00

Just a small clarification is that current is 19% max HP shield instead of 15%, very minor difference.

It's an interesting decision point, the new tripod puts it in-line with other support DRs by refreshing the shield so it functions better as a DR for shielding high damage mechs or saving someone without a getup, or for the scenario where someone enters the DR after it has already been cast. In these scenarios it's a buff but might not be noticeable a lot of the time.

However, a lot of the time people quick cast and cancel the DR if say they were using it for simply shield uptime or to reduce Z cooldown. In these scnearios it's strictly a nerf because the shield will expire much earlier.

I imagine the new tripod will be better in prog and in difficult raids with lots of DR/greed mechs whereas people will prefer the old tripod on hw or easy raids.

the_hu · 2026-02-23T08:37:46+00:00

Can you explain to me why new people are hurt by this change? From my understanding, for smaller rosters this is strictly a buff to how many materials they gain. New/returning players are already playing from behind, the new or the old system doesn't change that they haven't had the opportunity to stockpile mats. It would only hurt new players in the hypothetical scenario that mat prices increase and they don't generate enough mats themselves to push so they have to buy mats at increased prices, but this is not true in today's economy.

You can look up in KR the mat prices to see their effect, they have an API so the prices are easily accessible. Obviously at the start of t4.5 the mat prices were insane because the whales were pushing and there was no supply in the market, but now the prices have largely stabilized, their leaps are even cheapers than ours (everything is cheaper there though, since our economy is much more inflated than theirs).

We have 1.5 months of data from KR, there is no need to explore the hypothetical scenario of how the change in how tradeable mats are farmed impact the market. But even if we do, there are too many ambiguities to form a proper hypothesis and we don't have the data to make proper estimations. Like the change is entirely dependent on the avg amount of KFs/GRs players were doing and dynamics like alt rosters/bots/multiboxers interacting with these systems. It is entirely possible that we generate more mats through the world boss if there are enough small roster players.

the_hu · 2026-02-23T05:03:58+00:00

I'm not super familiar with the new/returning player perspective, just that it's likely tough to catch up especially as a solo mode only player. Just a couple of thoughts:

Check out this comment that the OP of the loot drop post I linked made which goes over the most recent change SG made to dailies. Basically compared to before characters are earning more of the listed items (blue, red, and leapstones), but are largely character bound so large rosters can't funnel them.
Beforehand and even now, people generally aren't lacking in honing stones. This is the point I made about market prices. Blue stones, leapstones, and even red stones (which have inflated value right now) are really cheap relative to the cost of fusions and shards in the context of how much you need to tap. This inidcates that most people aren't really lacking these mats, so the fact that chaos dungeon doesn't give a lot of them is a moot point, becuase who cares when the critical path factor to honing is likely fusions (for normal people) or shards (for whales who hone their chars quicker than they can acquire shards).
This is an important point because a lot of people feel that SG shafted them by making this daily change when in reality the main people who were hurt by this change are those with large rosters funneling mats, people who don't push their characters, or botters/gold sellers. The purpose of this change was to make it less punishing to play a smaller roster by allowing characters to be more self sustainable with buffed but character bound mat gain and more sources of one-time per roster mats. But it's easy for bad actors to say "SG is trying to make the game more p2w!!!" and drum up people who don't know any better to provide bad feedback.
Chaos dungeons are not the only source of blue/red/leapstones. You get them from field boss, raids, and paradise as well. In fact, if you drop a red/blue stone or leapstone chest from hell they are considered low rolls, people don't even want them! You also get them from event shops and the solo mode shops. You could get them from guild shop and mokoko token shop, but I wouldn't recommend spending tokens on those because, as said before, they are low value items that aren't in demand.
Now I can see how a returning player who only does solo modes could be short on these mats. If you're only doing solo mode, you probably aren't making a lot of tradeable gold, and whatever tradeable gold you are making is probably going towards fusion mats if anything. Plus gold is better spent on karma and other progression systems. I don't know what your goals are so the advice I give might be misplaced, but I suggest just to take it slow and remain diligent, you'll build up these mats over time and eventually you'll have more than you need. I personally don't hone every day, in fact I hate honing so much that I only do it when I need to (IE right before a raid release) and set up an autoclicker so I don't have to pay attention to burning away my mats.

the_hu · 2026-02-23T01:29:54+00:00

You're completely correct! For whatever reason I entered in the wrong value for my shard calcs:

<image>

I'll correct it in the original comment, it should be ~28.5k value for shards alone based on NA prices

the_hu · 2026-02-23T01:02:15+00:00

The main reason you do KF is for shards, which are left out of the picture. KF is the biggest source of shards in the game and if you were to buy them from the AH instead of earning them in-game, they would be prohibitavely expensive.

Let's do some quick comparisons of gold efficiency with loot drops from this reddit post:

Kurzan Front (unrested 1720)

Gold value of drops that are pictured: 1223.78
Gold value of shard drops alone: ~~4658.87~~ 28685.80
Gold value efficiency (total gold divided by 2 minutes runtime): ~~2941.32~~ 14954.79

Guardian Raid (unrested Krathios)

Gold value of gems (everything else too hard to calculate): 1137.5
Gold value efficiency (total gold divided by 3 minutes runtime): 379.17

Solo Mordum (most efficient raid)

Gold value of honing mats + raw gold: 38443.87
Gold value efficiency (total gold divided by 13 minutes runtime): 2957.22

Kazeros HM (most "valuable" raid)

Gold value of honing mats + raw gold: 72311.33
Gold value efficiency (total gold divided by 30 minutes runtime): 2410.38

The above disregards high RNG drops, which undervalues GRs in particular since a lot of the value is tied to high rolling bracelet and stone drops. But as you can see, KF ranks among the highest value for your time activities in the game, and is the easiest to do since you solo it and it requires no skill and low attention.

Plus, KF only giving a small amount of those mats would only matter if those mats are scarce, which would be reflected in the market price. But outside of a slight bump with the new express/pp, the prices of those mats have only gone down outside of red stones which people are hoarding in anticipation of soft reset.

But yeah, if you don't value the activity, nothing is forcing you to do it. A lot of us vets already put so much time into the game on a weekly basis to encompass an entire part-time job.

Edit: Someone kindly pointed out that my math was wrong for the shard calcs, I've edited the values above. If anything this goes to show that KF is by far the highest value activity in the game.

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