GBF AP Pot Farming

[Monthly Farming Quota aka How to save AP Pots]

-SOURCES OF AP POTS-

1. Casino - 5 AP pots per day, 100 per month.
2. Sierokarte's Shop - Total of 140 Half Pots per month (7 different materials, 20 pots per type). 2 pots per material per day.
3. Summon Event shops (Cocytus, Vohu Manah, Saggitarius, etc.) - 30 per month (6 summons, 5 per summon, 1 per day from each summon).
4. Moon exchange shop - 30 per 5 Bronze Moons and 30 per 2 Silver Moons. You get 1 Bronze, 1 Silver, and 1 Gold Moon from the renown shop every month.
5. Daily login bonuses - Seems to be 1 per 5 days rotation, for a total of 3 per 15 days.
6. Farming Co-op - Drops from pretty much any stage.
7. Event shops/point rewards - Events generally have Half pots and Full Elixirs buried in the rewards somewhere, or exchangeable for trash mats.
8. App login bonuses - Logging in to Granblue/Rage of Bahamut/Cinderella Girls/Knights gives points for the cross-app promotion, which holds Full Elixirs.


-DISCLAIMER NOTES-

	For the sake of the total count, I'm excluding the moon exchange shop, the daily login bonuses, co-op, non-summon event shops, and app login bonus.
	The moon shop is excluded because generally you have to spend money to get the moons (Moons from rupie gacha aside) and if you don't spend any money you take at least 2 months to get a batch of pots. Better to consider them a bonus.
	Daily login bonuses are minor overall, contributing basically 6 per month.
	Co-op because it's RNG and the efficiency depends entirely on how lucky you are, how regularly people host for you, and how much time you're willing to put in. Technically it's all free, but you're spending time and sanity.
	Event shops, being tied to an event, generally only help to stem the bleeding from farming event weapons/summons. Just pick them up as a matter of course using all the trash mats you'll get farming unknowns.
	App Login Bonus doesn't even give Half pots, but it's still nice to know it's there. A bonus.

-THE GUIDE-

So, leaving those aside, we have a total of 270 Half pots per month. Now, you see that number and go: "That's pretty good, right?" Well, casino items aside, you have to farm the mats, which takes AP in the first place. 5 out of the 7 materials are also inefficient to farm, meaning you get less AP out of the pots than you put in to farm them.

In any case, let's go over the free pots.

-Casino Pots-

Always pick these up. They are entirely free, in the sense they don't take AP to acquire and thus are a direct boost to the AP you can spend somewhere else.

Verdict: Stop being a pussy and bot them. Or win Super Bingo.

-Sierokarte's shop (WIP)-

WIP NOTE: If the material is not listed, it's not been explored personally. JP wiki lists drops for quests, but often doesn't list a number. No standout, however, except two.

There are 140 pots in this shop per month, divided into 7 groups of 20 each. Each group uses one particular material to trade for the pots at a rate of 1 pot/10 materials. That means you need 200 of each material to last you the month.

Out of these 7 materials, only 2 yield free AP (as far as current testing goes). Others are tied to quests that provide materials for other things, such as Guild War Character mats or crafting items, so they help mitigate some of that cost, but they aren't worth it by themselves.

Group 1 - Material: Flying Sprout

Recommended: Story Chapter 1 - R Only Quest: Scattered Cargo

AP Cost: 15 per run. That means you need to get an average of more than 3 sprouts per run to generate extra AP.

Extra Benefit: Satin Feathers, Zephyr Feathers, R weapons (including ones needed for facility expansion). All useful for GW characters.

Data after first 200 sprouts: ~4.35 Sprouts per run over 46 runs, using Mystic with SL6 Septian Burner (Celestial weapon). Final AP in/out was 690 AP for 1000 AP, for a net gain of 310 AP, or 6 pots. Doesn't seem like a lot but if you do this you'll never need to do the feathers for GW ever again, funneling that part of the grind to something else. You also get an alright amount of R skill fodder (I think I got 8 over the course of the runs. I'll try to keep track next time.) This quest is also really easy, so you can farm job exp here if you need it. It's free after all.

Verdict: Do these if you have time. It's still AP generation.


Group 2 - Material: Slimy Shroom

The variance on this drop is HUGE across all available quests. Varies from 0 to 4 across the stages, which brings the average to about 2 or even lower. It might be okay to do story quests for the click stages at 1/2 AP, but you'll still be losing more AP than you gain.

Buddy (the zombie Rare Encounter) will fuck your drops since he generally replaces 2 or even 3 monsters.

Verdict: It's not worth it unless you haven't done the GW grind for Hollow Souls and Lacrimosa yet. Lacrimosa are also used for Dark Tools, if you're into that.


Group 3 - Material: Dydriot Stone

Okay, this was the newly added set, but since it's the latest story place, it's not too farm friendly. There aren't many quests, and the stone drop rate is definitely not enough to mitigate 23 AP on the quests. The Rare Encounter is also a bitch. It's a worm that takes reduced damage and has a 2-turn ougi that hits 4K and poison for 2K, making it annoying to auto.

Verdict: Ignore unless it turns out the other mats from this place are important, which they don't seem to be.


Group 4 - Material: Wheat Stalk

Recommended - Ch. 25 SR Only Quest - Golonzo's Battles of Old

20 AP per pop means 4 Wheat Stalk per run to break even. Funnily enough, according to the JP wiki, you get 4 MINIMUM from this quest. Depending on how the pre-quest cliking battles work out, you can get 15+ per run if you get lucky.

Extra Benefit: Other drops are Iron Clusters and Olea Plants. Olea Plants are basically only useful if you want Mithra summon + staves for whatever reason.Iron Clusters are used in Bullet Casting, so it's actually pretty good to have a source for them. You also run into Sylpheed Bell, the rare encounter that drops the SR summon that increases Rare Encounter rate.

First 200 run data: All right, didn't go to 200, only had 17 pots to trade for. 178 Stalks in 26 runs, average 6.85 per run. 520 AP spent for 850 AP (minus the 3 pots I already traded). Also got 170 Iron Clusters at 6.54 per run and 149 Olea Plants at 5.73 per run.

Verdict: Run this after sprouts. It's AP efficiency is actually better than the sprouts, but it doesn't drop GW mats. If you want to memeslinger though...

-Summon Shops-

You can get 30 pots here per month. 1 per day, 5 per month, 6 summons. Each pot takes 5 of the wood box mats + 5 of the silver non-anima mats. So you need 25 Wood Box and 25 Silver Box mats for each summon to last you the month.

If you run EX, which cost 30 AP, you generally get enough for 1 pot in one run at 5 wood mats and 9 silver box mats. The efficiency is pretty high here. You can also choose to run Maniacs, although they are a significant step up in difficulty. They seem to give 10 Wood Box and 9 Silver Box mats per run, so about 2 AP pots worth.

2 Maniacs + 1 EX run should give you enough for a month's worth of pots, giving you 130 AP for 250 AP. Otherwise, 5 EX runs at 150 AP should be good, at 150 AP for 250 AP. Total of 600-720 Free AP per month, plus you get free Maniac runs for gambling on drops like certs/summons/SSRs/class weapon mats/gold bar.

Verdict: As long as you can run EX, this is good. Maniac is obviously better for potential payout, but it might not be worth the hassle depending on your progression.