Which should I spend my pearls on?

Looking ahead, I've largely saved up my pearls (I'm f2p for now at least). My question is whether I should spend 3k pearls on an epic of my choice, or 4k on the epic chest box deal. My inclination value wise, would obviously be for the latter, since I think I also get 10 rares? It would obviously be more useful in the short term. I don't know though, if it is worthwhile picking specific items up for the longer term.

I suppose it is a bit of a complication that I like pretty much every ship and don't have a main, which further nudges me into the value department, but I want to see what you guys think. Especially you later game folks who might be able to tell me whether I am being a bit premature with my forward thinking.

@P0rthos (sry, you are the only higher tier player I can remember over-the-top of my head. This question isn't for anyone in particular though)

 

I would recommend to save for the epic chest value package only when you have your main items leveled waiting for evolve since it is all random and you wouldn't know what you will get.
Spending 3k pearl on an epic item of your choice also don't make sense to me as you will not be able to get another for evolve through pearl purchase.
Regardless of your choice, as a F2P player, our progress for item upgrade will be much slower compared to the hardcore wallet warriors. Don't think too much into it.
If you are relatively new to the game I would actually recommend you to spend your pearls rushing for crew training, at lease this give you a fix buff to have a more stable progression.
It will also allows you to get a higher tier ship faster which should gives you an advantage at your infamy level.
Although you like to play around with all the ships, I would recommend you to choose 2 of them to be your main choice and start planning for the gears suitable for them even if you switch between them.
As you progress higher you will have serious shortage of gold between shop purchase, evolve gears and ship upgrading.

In my case I have been playing for around 7 months now, most of my main gears were maxed out waiting for crew training or duplicate items to evolve to higher tier.
So I'm saving my pearls for the 3.9k package just hopping to get lucky, which I estimate gonna take me at least another 2 months.

 

I agree with @RESQMI. If you plan to stay f2p, it would probably be a good idea to spend it on regular pearl chests, or shave off a few hours on Crew training. They will help out more in the short term and make your progression more stable and, more importantly, fun. Without spending money, you simply won't be gaining pearls that fast, even if you bothered to grab your <3 box every 6 hours. By the time you get the platinum chest, you could have been much further along, and you're at the mercy of RNG either way. Save the saving for late-game, when everything is suddenly super expensive and the epics become more important.

 

T I save mine for the trainers so that I could get my captain level up and upgrade my ships. For whatever reason I'm pretty lucky I getting rare and epic weapons

 

If you havent yet, I suggest expanding your storage space. If you are looking at end game, you will need lots of slots to hoard rare items to evolve to T2 and finally scrap to get epic power cells. I suggest expanding till you hit the 600+ pearl cost.

Now for your question, Always go for the 3,900 pearl chest. You get 1 guaranteed epic item, 10 epic parts, 10 rares, various materials that you need for fusing, plus a small chance to maybe pull 1 or 2 extra epic items.

 

how many item slots does that end up being, ultimately? Atm I think I have about 30ish item slots, not including the spots on my unused ships that I shuffle items to and from

 

I think inventory slots start costing 600+ pearly around 55 or 60 slots total. Absolutely worthwhile if you don't like scrapping any rares, but not absolutely necessary as ftp if you focus on just a few item types.

Personally, I would wait for the 3900 pearl chest, as a low spender (about $20), rare items are your bread and butter, and everything is a numbers game. Open more crates and combine more items for the rares that sustain you while you slowly grind out your epic items. You're always better with a tier 3 rare than a tier 1 epic, so maximize your intake of both and help yourself out short and* long term.

 

@Kraitok has the right idea. If you are spending pearls on anything other than the epic chests and inventory slots then you my friend are wasting your pearls. Lets do some basic math... rare chest costs 400 pearls and epic chest costs 3900 pearls for x10 chests. Epic chest saves you 100 pearls right off the bat and you get a guaranteed epic item and legendary part. What did we learn? Never buy rare chest.

A wise man once told me never use pearls when you can simply wait for it. So never use pearls to speed up crew training! All you gotta do is wait. The value of pearl to training time is so bad as well so its never worth it unless you plan to spend in the 5k USD range and you don't care about the effectiveness of your dollar. Ive spent 150 so far and never waste my pearls on crew training.

The only way to get more inventory slots is with pearls. The more you level up and the longer you wait has no effect on inventory size, and it is actually important. Inventory size lets you store weapons so you can upgrade them to different tiers. You need 5 of each item you want to use to upgrade them to tier 5.

Now to the other option of spending 3000 pearls for 1 epic item of your choice. This might be a thing if you could purchase duplicates of the same item in this manner (ex. You need your 3rd epic sniper rifle for tier 3 so you decide to spend 3k pearls for that much needed sniper rifle). But as soon as you have an item in your inventory you can no longer purchase the same item from the shop and for the remainder of your battle bay career you must find the item via chests. Also 3k pearls is not a good value for an epic item. For 3900 pearls you get at least 1 epic item 10/10 parts for an epic item (costs 90,000 gold to make it an item), 1/10 of a legendary item, and 9 rare items, and epic rare and legendary scraps. 1.7k pearls for a specific epic item that I can only buy once is more reasonable but 3k is a super waste.

Edit: scratch my conclusion from the paragraph above I started to think about this a bit more after I posted. Getting an epic item of yoir choice is EXTREMELY valuable if and only if you will be using that item for the rest of the game. Imagine if we could pay 3k pearls for each epic item we needed even if we had one already in our inventory. AT mk6 we have 8 item slots mulitply it by 5 so we can get tier 5 epics and then multiply by 3k pearls. That is 120k pearls for everything we need in the game for our dream ship. 120k pearls invested in epic chests gets you 3.7 legendaries, about 80 random epics, 300 rares and lots of scrap parts... not enough to get a completely decked out mk6. The key is that you wouldn't waste any pearls purchasing chests that give you stuff you don't need. Also you must know exactly what setup you need for your end game dream build for this to be worth it, because if you change your mind then its a total waste. Furthermore, if rovio nerfs the item so that it wouldn't be in your dream build, it is a total waste. Despite that im going to go buy an epic sniper for 3k pearls.

TLDR: I suggest spending your first 3.9k pearls on the epic chest and prepare to not get your favorite items. Then as the game progresses and you NEED more item slots then buy them with pearls. Repeat.

 

I'm with HappyEvil and Kraltok,
If you plan to play this game a while you need to play the long game and amass as many items of all rarities, pieces, and parts as you can get. This means the epic chest is the best value by far. Yes, you will get random items in the short term you may not use but in the long term your power in terms of pieces and parts for leveling will have the most value. In a couple of months of playing you will have seen all the rares and start getting many dupes. It won't be an issue getting the dupe rare items to evolve and you will be limited by parts and your skill tree to evolve. All the while you are storing the epics you do get and slowly trying to get dupes of and evolve the ones you want.

 

Thanks for the advice guys! Looks like my plan should be to focus on specific ships while accumulating higher tier stuff. Fortunately, I like playing (almost) everything, so I can probably work with anything I get, to a certain point.

 

If you are going for almost everything then you will need to spend some pearls to expend your storage.
For me I had 55 slots for my inventories, at the moments only have 4 slots left to open and scrap items from daily free and star crates.
Setting aside 4 slots each for epic, rare and legendary item pieces and the rest are item that I might want to keep for upgrade.

 

Youll need a lot more than 30. Item pieces alone will take up 12 slots if you include legendaries. I think youll reach at least 50 inventory slots before the 600+ pearl cost. That should give you enough room to collect rares and hopefully even epics.

I got a ton of epics and rares, all 12 item pieces and have about a line of empty space (6 slots I think?). I only use one ship though, so since you seem to use more than one ship maybe you can use that to your advantage.

 

I thought about this carefully before spending my first pearls. I decided to go with 400 boxes. The reason? Fun.

I've played plenty of games with similar systems, and the most expensive option is always the most effective in the long term. The problem is that it takes a long time to get, and all that time you are progressing much slower than you would be if you went for the cheaper option. That's why I would not recommend saving for the 3900 box, unless you already know that you'll play this game for a long time and are fine with using uncommon weapons until you finally get your first box.

Also, if you are an F2P player, keep in mind that the epic item is completely random and may be useless to you (would kinda suck saving pearls for ages just to get that box and then getting something you won't even use).

 

This isn't unique to the 3900 pack, 400 pearl crates are completely random as well. Saving for the 3900 pack is the *best* option in terms of reward / investment.

Side note, using pearls to buy sugar for trainer upgrades where you can't hold enough seems valid in moderation. Just something to consider.

 

The randomness is much less of a problem in rare items, because you get roughly 10 times as many, which creates already somewhat of an averaging effect. You'll always get something useful even if your luck is bad.

 

everyone says spend it on the 3900 epic chest even in global chat thats the advise i got. but i still got the epic repair pulse in the shop because i felt that i will never get an epic repair pulse just by luck from the 3900 epic chest. the epic chest gives you the bang for the buck but if you really want to spend the 3000 pearls on a weapon, go for it. its really up to you if the purchase helps you be better at the game or makes you happy. i tried opening a couple of epic chests and i got a bunch of items i never use and im not interested in, it was the most unsatisfying box opening in any game i ever played.

 

Bahahahaha, it is definitely comparable to some orgasms I've had...