I have been looking into cash shop opponents and seeing if I should pursue unlocking and beating them. Is there any value proposition to doing this, or are they really just for fun? Is there a core list of opponents that there is value in defeating? I am just wondering about how to prioritize which ones I unlock first in order to get a pay back so I can afford the lesser opponents.

Regards,

99% of them are just for fun.

I think these are the only 3 worthwhile in the long run since iirc your pretty close to capping and have a pretty solid endgame set. Meatslab, the Furious - Baal/Cronus Blade Crithbolcan - Aftershock Scroll Forj Matriarch, the Erupting - Gift of the Forj Scroll

Some people might make an argument for Sophie and Tatuvichwa. But I think triple threat scroll is largely outclassed and paintbrush blades are cheaper to just buy. You could also argue that if you only are ever going to have 1 pet that gift of the forj scroll isn't super special either.

A few of the impossible ones are nice when trying to get tokens as well. There are some that require unique strategies to beat with lower tiered pets. Even then, like said, it's more just for fun.

For most people a lot of the impossible opponents are going to be like 3-5 impossible tokens for 50mil. That's a terrible deal. I would leave them all solidly in the just for fun category.

The value of an impossible token is kinda hard to pin down, but it's probably worth somewhere between 200-600K. I'm picking 500K for easy math, but at 100 Tokens you break even on a challenger, with a LOT of work since in my experience the token drop rates are smaller for impossible opponents (I think 1:5 instead of 1:3). Which means to break even on a challenger you need to get 500wins. Probably impossible with 1 pet, and still tedious with 5 pets, and not many people have 5 pets that can farm tokens off impossible opponents.

And then if you factor in the fact that we were trying to figure out if it was financially worthwhile, you probably want a 2x return on a 50mil investment, and you really probably want at least 200 tokens per opponent to be worthwhile financially.

And then the cash out strategy on battle tokens is usually to melt them all down to easy tokens and sell them as HP boosters, and those can take forever to sell, so I would argue that you probably want a 3x-5x return to be worth your time, because it is not going to be close to instant gratification. Or if you end up using the boosters yourself, it depends on how much you value the stats at. If you are going to cap, you should be valuing non-intel boosters at close ~100-200K per stat, because stats on tomes are practically free. You will almost definitely get more stats buying 50mil worth of tomes than a single cash shop challenger.

I think those 3 are probably the definitive list of financially worthwhile opponents. Everything else is just for fun.

Oh I don't suggest it as a means to farm. I just have a few impossible challengers that I battle every once in a while and it helps mean earn tokens easier than just BQ alone. I wouldn't say it's "worth" it, just a perk of the challengers.

Alright I will go for the three and leave it at that for now. I just finished Saggi for the 35th time, and I still have to work through all the other basic and secret opponents for 1P before I move on to paid opponents.