It's generally agreed on that Nazrin is basically just the best of them. Lily White's great for early-game and you should basically always start with her to accelerate early levelling and generally you want a Shizuha levelling up in the background, but around round 30 having 2 5* Naz is basically as good as income gets.
She just generates too much gold to warrant using anything else. Why settle for a microscopic chance to get a free 4* zombie on each death when you could get a guaranteed 4* nostrums every round in gold?

Nazrin is pretty much the best in making gold.
Daiyousei levels your towers so fast at 4* but she's an SSR and her ability doesn't give everyone the same levels unlike Lily White.
Shou Toramaru is just a worse Nazrin in making money but deals a lot of DMG if you want to spend your gold.
Aki Shizuha is basically your guaranteed 5*.
Aki Minoriko is used to swap a 5* Nazrin for another tower but only if you get her at the first 10 waves or else she isn't worth it imo.
Seiga is too RNG on top of being an SR and requires to be a 5* for the 4* materials she is just used for killing grouped up enemies in the Endless Wave in the Miko deck.
Lily White levels your towers pretty quickly at the start but is slow and falls off at wave 20 or so and requires you to do some micromanagement if you want to get a 5* Nazrin at wave 20-25.

There's probably some that I missed.

Originally posted by erthos:

It's generally agreed on that Nazrin is basically just the best of them. Lily White's great for early-game and you should basically always start with her to accelerate early levelling and generally you want a Shizuha levelling up in the background, but around round 30 having 2 5* Naz is basically as good as income gets.
She just generates too much gold to warrant using anything else. Why settle for a microscopic chance to get a free 4* zombie on each death when you could get a guaranteed 4* nostrums every round in gold?

Originally posted by ajo1k:

Nazrin is pretty much the best in making gold.
Daiyousei levels your towers so fast at 4* but she's an SSR and her ability doesn't give everyone the same levels unlike Lily White.
Shou Toramaru is just a worse Nazrin in making money but deals a lot of DMG if you want to spend your gold.
Aki Shizuha is basically your guaranteed 5*.
Aki Minoriko is used to swap a 5* Nazrin for another tower but only if you get her at the first 10 waves or else she isn't worth it imo.
Seiga is too RNG on top of being an SR and requires to be a 5* for the 4* materials she is just used for killing grouped up enemies in the Endless Wave in the Miko deck.
Lily White levels your towers pretty quickly at the start but is slow and falls off at wave 20 or so and requires you to do some micromanagement if you want to get a 5* Nazrin at wave 20-25.

There's probably some that I missed.

Thank you for the helpful replies; They're brief and very informative on the subject. Would you like to add on about your income cards composition and sharing your general rule of thumb while using them? Feel free to reply when you feel like it.

If there are people who're up to it, Further in-depth analysis on the towers (if they can come up with it) are also welcome.

Again, thank you for your attention and cooperation.

I will add that Nazrin becomes quite a bit more viable for everything if you have Hijiri Byakuren in your deck.
With Hijiri Nazrin can do quite respectable damage in the endless rounds provided you get the nazrins to 5* and can get the Hijiri there as well. Currently I'm running a Hijiri Deck and I just beat hard mode endless with it along with 2x Hakurei, and a couple of Hijiri's other disciples.

Honestly i don't understand why people underestimate Shizuha, if you place her before wave 10 and max feed her before she reach 4 stars, she will give you 3 5* towers during 50 waves and will became free 4* material after that...2 shizuhas = 6 free 5* and 2 4* materials.
Yeah seiga is random, but she provides tons of free low level materials, they saves you money while you farm materials from fairies plus those matreials can be solded. this and huge damage output which Seiga can do with 4 fed yoshikas ten desire crew with fairies of light and Rin(this combo cleans lunatic endless, but sadly don't works on extra T_T) makes Seiga pretty solid choice.

Originally posted by ajo1k:

Nazrin is pretty much the best in making gold.
Daiyousei levels your towers so fast at 4* but she's an SSR and her ability doesn't give everyone the same levels unlike Lily White.
Shou Toramaru is just a worse Nazrin in making money but deals a lot of DMG if you want to spend your gold.
Aki Shizuha is basically your guaranteed 5*.
Aki Minoriko is used to swap a 5* Nazrin for another tower but only if you get her at the first 10 waves or else she isn't worth it imo.
Seiga is too RNG on top of being an SR and requires to be a 5* for the 4* materials she is just used for killing grouped up enemies in the Endless Wave in the Miko deck.
Lily White levels your towers pretty quickly at the start but is slow and falls off at wave 20 or so and requires you to do some micromanagement if you want to get a 5* Nazrin at wave 20-25.

There's probably some that I missed.

I strongly disagree on minoriko, all she needs is 3* then you swap her out, in extra her swap ability refreshes which means you can get all the 5* nazrin transfered to others which makes 3x 5* for your endgame lineup - for just having 3* initially its the best deal ever I think.

@tenax
also I do not discount shizuha ability, but if you swap ur first nazrin at like wave 26 (if you get her early which you should just reset the game for if solo) and second nazrin shortly after, they just outpace her

Originally posted by TenaxCreatura:

Honestly i don't understand why people underestimate Shizuha, if you place her before wave 10 and max feed her before she reach 4 stars, she will give you 3 5* towers during 50 waves and will became free 4* material after that...2 shizuhas = 6 free 5* and 2 4* materials.
Yeah seiga is random, but she provides tons of free low level materials, they saves you money while you farm materials from fairies plus those matreials can be solded. this and huge damage output which Seiga can do with 4 fed yoshikas ten desire crew with fairies of light and Rin(this combo cleans lunatic endless, but sadly don't works on extra T_T) makes Seiga pretty solid choice.

The problem with that is you are essentially praying for amazing RNG. Keep in mind that you simply do not have the money to be going for senior rolls at this point in the game, since Shizuha is only amazing if you get her early. You also want to have two of them before ten to get maximum use out of them, and that means there's only 3 (if you started with 5) Shizuhas left in the deck to roll for once you get your first two. Goheis can help, but you still have to at least get a Rare roll when spamming normals.

Nazrin is also just better paced and ends up being better economically. With a proper setup and itemization, one 5* Nazrin can get about 22k+ gold per round. In 6-7 rounds, that's 4 4* nostrums, or (if leveling fairies through killing and using nostrums to increase their stars) ~7 4* fairies. Since the first 5* Nazrin is roughly in the mid 20s, perhaps at the end of wave 26, that's 24 waves for her to farm gold. Ultimately ending up getting you, in my experience, 5 5*s. And you can get her earlier than that. Getting a second Nazrin is also infinitely easier and isn't required to be placed early.

Seiga isn't bad at all, but as an economic she's pretty mediocre. Fairies are inexpensive, only needing a mere two procs from Nazrin to nearly make up the gold spent. She is far too slow to help you move towards your next 5*, and she is heavily RNG reliant. IIRC the chance for a 4* is about 2%? Even if it was 50%, being on average every other round, Nazrin would just give you enough gold to buy a 4* Nostrum or turn a profit by making a 4* Fairy.

Daiyousei isn't bad, she's just a very late pickup due to her nature as an SSR, and she doesn't boost your gold gain in any way, only EXP gains, which has a relatively long cooldown and is single targeted. On the plus side, she is the single best buffer in the game with her magic conversion and +60% bonus damage, combined with her MP spell. Paired with Letty being the best magic debuffer and Patchouli, your magic damage skyrockets, as well as your lockdown potential with Reisen and Kanako.

Obviously Lily White is the best out of the three initial options.

Tora Shou seems to just be a more offensive oriented Nazrin, but is unnecessary when beasts like Luna Child and Hatate exist to get you enough time to get 5* Nazrins and pull a Ran and one of your final damage dealers.

Minoriko, admittedly, I didn't even know could swap herself with the 5* Nazrins, which makes her equivalent to at least 3 5*s without any card feeding. Potentially 4 5*s with early roll + feeding, which is really good. A singular Shizuha seems to just be more consistent, though. May need to test this myself.

My personal lineup for economy is 5 Nazrins, 4 Shizuhas, I believe either 2 or 4 Goheis, and my magic builds have at least 1, maybe 2 Daiyouseis. In every build I try to have at least two Luna Childs or Hatates to ensure I can get through the early game rather painlessly and as well as for having a 4*. I tried keeping Lily White at 3* and not 4*, but the jump in exp given matters so much for 3*s, making them go from 1 to 10, and 4*s, making them go from 1 to roughly 7. With only a 3* Lily, level 3 fairies went from about 1 to 8, and 4*s gained maybe 4 levels at 1. The 4* Lily speeds things up way too much to be kept at 3*, now that I've tested it.

Correction, Seiga's chances are actually even worse, sitting at 4% for 1 1*, 2% for 1 2*, 1% for 1 3*, and 0.5% for 1 4*. These odds are so pitiful that it's more like a minor side benefit that MIGHT happen.

Shinki only creates 1*s. She essentially just pulls cards for you after every round. This wouldn't be too bad, if it weren't for the fact that she pulls ANY card. Even if you made a deck with zero Murasas, you still could get one. You absolutely WILL get Rares that aren't in your deck, like Prismriver sisters, Lily Whites, Chen, Miyako, or Medicine. A plus side is that she isn't required to be a 5* to be economically viable, only 4*. She is still a SSR though, and you likely won't get the cards you want, nor is it worth justifying trading a Nazrin or an Aki. She also only has one other ability, being that any shikigami that 'upgrades' within 2000 units gets her star level bonus power points. I do not know what it means by upgrades, whether leveling up or starring up. 200/250 bonus power points on every shikigami is a lot, but I don't believe that it justifies having less 5*s. Ultimately, only one or two, maybe three of your shikigamis benefit majorly from that PP, being your primary damage dealers. The rest won't put it to very good use.

Originally posted by さくらわきょもさいていたたったひとりきりで:

Daiyousei isn't bad, she's just a very late pickup due to her nature as an SSR, and she doesn't boost your gold gain in any way, only EXP gains, which has a relatively long cooldown and is single targeted.

Actually she can affect multiple units with her exp skill, it just gets weaker if there are more units she needs to level up. so having 2 units for leveling up at a time barely affects it.

Originally posted by さくらわきょもさいていたたったひとりきりで:

I tried keeping Lily White at 3* and not 4*, but the jump in exp given matters so much for 3*s, making them go from 1 to 10, and 4*s, making them go from 1 to roughly 7. With only a 3* Lily, level 3 fairies went from about 1 to 8, and 4*s gained maybe 4 levels at 1. The 4* Lily speeds things up way too much to be kept at 3*, now that I've tested it.

If you're up to it, try doing EndlessDream's early game strat with 4* Lily. Can get a consistent early 5* Nazrin with the strat too.