I've recently gotten to the point in SK where I have a bit of CE at my disposal.
I'm wondering, if I use CE (not mist) to power the elevators for a JK/Vana run, will I come out with enough crowns to make up the cost?
I know that with the new missions system it's possible to skip directly to the JK himself, so I'd like to take that into account.
Advice would be appreciated.
I know for sure I come out ahead on any Vana run where I join at the terminal. For a week I played it a lot, using CE more often than mist, and used most of my crowns that I earned to buy more CE. And at the end of the week, I had earned around 2k doing that. This was when average price was 6k, not the 6.7 it is now. But I still think you'd come out ahead.
To my recollection the Royal Jelly mission pays out about 2500cr, and the Rise or Fall mission pays around 3000, both of which are 3 floors. That puts them at 83cr/ce and 100cr/ce respectively, not counting mats and tokens.
Last time I did vana I think I pulled in about 8000cr, which puts it at 160cr/ce, but as of yet there's no mission that drops you directly into FSC, so you need to have friends invite you at basil or try your luck on the elevator. (I feel like that was an abnormally high cr gain for that run, but even at a more conservative 7000cr it works out to 140cr/ce)
CE prices right now are around 65cr/ce.
Of course, it all goes out the window if you need to CE rev.
Short version, yes, as long as you're not using ce to revive a bunch on the run. You can test this for yourself quite easily now, given that cr has been added to the results screen at the end of a run. As long as you're taking in more cr than the equivalent amount of ce you're spending, you're making up the cost + whatever extra (and let's not forget the value of mats/drops/tokens picked up along the way).