Good information.
I’ll add a few things. I got interested in the efficiency of it after a discussion with Alewín Looking to make gold - #14 by Gráinne-earthen-ring so I looked into it a bit.
I found that checking back 3 times a day was better than 2, which surprised me because I didn’t realise missions refilled that quickly, but 4 didn’t seem to add any more. I didn’t keep up checking 3 times because it’s just not worth it to me, but it did seem to get me an extra couple/three of missions when I tried it.
I don’t send anything but Gold missions anymore. I could do mats missions and rune missions, and no doubt make a bit more, but both mats and rune prices have cratered, and it takes me on average ~2min to log in, check an alt, send, log out again.
Covenant Mission Helper addon is great, even though out of date now, but I found TL;DR addon counterproductive in the long run.[*] It is not careful enough in its matching of missions and placing of troops, leaving followers pretty much permanently atlow health and unready for the important missions. It is great for turning in the missions quickly, and might be ideal for someone who just wants to keep their followers churning to level them, but I stopped using TL;DR for sending.
If you have a new alt, there is a trick you can use to get it up to full speed instantly.
- Make it Night Fae (because NF is the only Covenant worth doing Missions on)
- Swap around between ALL Covenants and use your Renown 60 boost on each. Each Covenant gives you a Wisps of Memory. With this, a new alt will have a total of 6 Wisps of Memory.
- IMPORTANT: IMMEDIATELY after you get your first Soulbind, Niya, go to your Table and boost follower Niya to 60. This will happen with the 6 Wisps, or 5 Wisps + 2 of the 10K boosts and one of the 3K boosts if you have them.
- If you boost your FIRST follower, Niya, to 60, before accepting any other followers, all your troops will instantly become 60 as well, and they don’t de-level! And Night Fae Troops are effective. 4 Trappers, or maybe 3 and a Grovetender, will tank any Mission with just one Follower added.
- Now you can recruit more followers, but you will be able to destroy any mission easily.
I make it that Callings give an average of ~1.8K of junk. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but 2.5-3K is just not in my experience. Maybe it’s possible to get 2.5K sometimes, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen it. However, on average, you will get one Bonus Paragon box worth ~3.5K for every 7 Callings, so rolling that in, you could say that each Calling is worth ~2.3K.
[*] After I wrote this, I checked in on TLDR and found it has had significant updates since May, which look like they might have the effect of addressing some of my earlier gripes. I haven’t tried the latest, so consier my comments in that context.