Comic Covers - Complete Strategy

I recently added this part to my updated Cover Collection Thread (Link) and thought it might be worthwhile to post on its own for visibility!

Now, this is basically my own strategy that I'm pursuing and I'm sure some of it is obvious to a lot of people as well as there are other possible strategies and opinions, but I think this gives a good overview for beginners and intermediates.

I'm assuming some relatively good knowledge about Fusion Values (FV) here, so if you're not comfortable with that yet or completely new to Covers, refer to my post linked above and the great posts and users I'm referring to in there.

Recommendation/My own strategy

• for people who will not spend any crystals on Cover chests for now

1.) Finish the three 1-2/Gold reward covers first by...

• a) ... playing all the respective rift stages for direct drops until I have all the pieces (e.g. play stage 3 until I have piece 5, play stage 5 until I have piece 9 etc.)

• b) ... in the meantime, start fusing 2 pieces at a time of all duplicate FV 1 pieces (pieces 1 and 7 of the Gold reward covers might be quicker to obtain from here than from playing the rifts).

• Don't waste any 'FV 2 or 4' pieces for a 2-piece fusion! Also don't fuse more than 2 until you know exactly what the FV 21-80 pool is

2.) After completing the 1-2 covers, only play stage 1 of the 1-2 rifts from now on!
For type 1-4 rifts, I will personally still play all the stages until I have the respective pieces 1,4,7 and 2,5,8, other options are to ...

• a) ... play only stage 1 and hope for the fusion long run by combining as many FV 1 pieces as possible to get FV 2 and 4 pieces from fusion

• b) ... play only stage 3 with realistic hope for the FV 2 piece and dreamy hope for the FV 4 piece from there to use them for fusion then

3.) Combine duplicates of 9x FV 2 piece + 1x FV 4 piece which will get me into the FV 21-80 pool and gives me a good chance to obtain missing standard 3,6,9 pieces or even a premium piece 1,4,7
Then go back to step 2.

4.) No matter how well steps 2 and 3 work, this will never get me into the FV 81 and above pools unless I get some 2,5,7 or 3,6,9 premium pieces from Cover chests, that's why I won't bother with premium covers for now and use any 1,4,7 premium pieces from step 3 to reach the FV 21 pool again and hope for missing standard 3,6,9 pieces