THe event is similar to past ones we had that were more focused on PVP. This time around its focused on PVE.
Now, while past events were "cheaper" overall, lets not forget we havea huge inflation of gold which naturally drove the gold prices for the box up (previously it was 10g, now its 100g)
However ignoring that fact you need to keep in mind, you do not need to buy everything possible for the currency the box gives.
Objectively speaking after opening quite a bit of chests:
- you get a very decent amount of shimmering scales, I was actually very surprised by it. Its perfect if you want to avoid farming.
- You also get quite a "fair" share of starcross crystals from just opening the boxes.
Now for the pricing of the items:
- Portrait chests....you can easily skip, they do not give you any significant increase to stats, plus, you need to get rng lucky to even get enough copies to register so as far as I am concerned they are a waste unless you do not need anything else.
- Etching stones: same situation. If you need them use soulboost, since you can use it on 15 characters, you can easily get enough from there, also a waste to get
- Psyches - "negligible". I See Psyches as a "nice to have" or "a little extra". While they all together will provide some small boost to dmg output, its not that significant. You can skip these or leave them for last.
What IS worth getting:
- Sacred Vials - Since NC essentially butchered and killed completely any decent way to get them. However, Considring the failure rate abovcve +11/+12 is quite horrendous, they may not be the best choice at that point.
- Sterling Crystals - same as sacred vials, but are needed for heart upgrades, so I would first focus on these tbh.
- Pet PAcks - Definetely get them if you still have upgrades on Pet and Talisman. In combination with the good number of shimmering scales you get from the boxes themselves this pairs well with them for upgrades.
- Stigma crystals - I would leave them for last since you can only really use them at the last talisman stage.
- Starcross crystal bundles - good if you wanna push your accessories to get that +11 minimum
In general, while it is always nice to get everything, you also need to sometimes prioritise what to upgrade and kinda look in the long run. Gewtting something you know you wont need for another month or two would kinda be pointless to focus on at first, since surely there will be other events on the way.
Now assuming people boosted more than 1 character on the account, lets count at least 3 alts + main that would be 4 characters.
With dalies alone the bare minimum is 8k gold per day minimum, which is 80 boxes. So it is not that bad of a event imo, you will jsut need to hold off hoarding some gold for a while.
Now, what personally I dislike about the event?
The useless portrait chests or the other low-key items could have easily been replaced by for example premium transformation stones, soulstones and other raw materials. While even with limits it would still provide a decent flow of them into the market and potentially drive prices down. Since NC seems to be outright going out of their way to not give us any decent sources for them outside the wintrading and dead PVP.