Apples

Not for me, no. Especially since a string of bad luck can lead to no drops even after using a few apples. I only use apples during lottery events or when I need more runs to grab what I want from the shops but that's it.

Just the drops? If I remember right the AP/Drop is very comparable (not a huge amount worse/better I believe) so if you are just going for drops I would say using apples isn't really worth it (unless you REALLY REALLY want to).

I believe the best use of apples is almost always going to be lottery events (Nero Fest/Christmas Event), so I would say save up for them.

I can give you some maths to help you if you want. I have spent around 10 gold apples to date which would give me total of 1380 AP. I farm around 7 days of gears node (give or take) and times that by 288 AP daily, and that will be roughly total of 3396 AP spent to date

I farmed 37 gears from this node and that excl the 20 from the shop, so that's about 91AP per gear. arguably there are better nodes to farm, say Windy City which suggest 51AP per gear.

I know its RNG, but I had far more worst farming runs in those nodes, which occasionally spent 200AP with no gear. It's up to you at the end of the day, the result for me is good in this event, but you might able to match the suggested ratio in Windy City, so you might want to farm there.

As amazingchili stated, if you take a look at the estimated drop rates listed on the guide, this event doesn't really have any mats that super exceed the drop rate on a normal game node. Really, there are only a few standouts; gallstones and feathers and maybe hearts. Hearts are good now but right after this event we're getting the Shinjuku remnant chapter which has the best node in the game (for now) to actually farm hearts and it's better than what this event offers. Feathers are probably the biggest APD reduction with Gallstones following close behind.

So if you're after either of those, then *maybe*. But also consider your own apple supply and the fact that we're working up to some long and lucrative events for materials (CCC and Summer 1&2) not to mention lotteries at the end of the year.

I used a bunch of apples farming the Sweet cavalry node. My Merlin is now 10/10/10 (started at 6/5/6) and I have an extra 11 pages. No regrets!

You can't really use too many apples since this event is not extremely easy to farm. The next apple-hungry event is not for sometime soon, but I found this one to be very fruitful.