I find the secret garden rate is about the same between 12-5 and 12-3. 12-3 takes less stamina and is better if you're only interested in manyus but 12-5 gives a lot more gold and seeds, and a higher level raid boss.

As for farming 12-5, I've found one really strong squad will go a lot further than several fairly strong squads. If the squad doesn't reach a certain level of power it will just be destroyed or crippled by the threestepper nodes. On the other hand one 100k+ team with Edelweiss and Lavender for sustainability and a slice type or 2 can clear the map on its own.

In the beginning, while I was still short on AP I wanted to play the heck out of this game yet could not, since just two 50 AP mission pretty much made me stop playing for half the day.

Now I have almost 280 Stamina and units strong enough to clear the event and farming mission so taking it easy is how its best done.
After all - what else can you do with a game that limits your playtime ?
Get in, play till you exhaust all your stamina, and then go do something else for the day. Log in later and mash out rest of the daily. Done
Once you "absorb the fact" (not just understand, you actually have to get in the pace of it) that the "progress" in this game (since there is no real story to progress) is paced around the events, and thus its rather slow (they change every 2 weeks after all), the nervous "hustle" compeling you to "do something" in the game, you feel at the moment will gradually fall off, and you´ll be able to enjoy if for what it is.
At least thats how it feels for my when I play games of this (browser) type.

@Myrdin yeah the game is really designed to be easy going, so being super active is not going to get you better girls than others.

Originally Posted by MiqDoloran

@Myrdin yeah the game is really designed to be easy going, so being super active is not going to get you better girls than others.

There are only a few things that you have to do on a schedule (and you don't even really HAVE to do them, it just makes you efficient).

1. Try to use up as many of your gatherings as you can. Most people sleep for more than 6 hours at a time, so there's going to be a little bit of lost opportunity here, but that's OK unless you're obsessed. For the rest of the time, it's a crap shoot based on your non-FKG obligations such as work or school, but if playing PPS taught me anything, it's the importance of setting timers.
2. Stop going on gatherings by 6 hours prior to the daily reset (or whatever combination you want so long as when the reset happens you have full gathering points) so that you can get started on completing your daily missions right after reset.
3. Likewise, start tapering off your stamina use prior to the reset. You'll want full or nearly full stamina at reset to get a good portion of your daily missions done without resorting to running the lower maps, or worse, forgoing any secret gardens you may spawn. Of course you could just wait and complete them throughout the day, but I don't like leaving them undone for so long.

Speaking of stamina (and more to the original point of this thread), there comes a point where the stamina afforded by your level (I think for me it was in the early 70s) allows you to get enough maps done to feel like you're doing enough in FKG. Part of it is certainly what Myrdin said. The rest is just that if you average completing a level per day and get full stamina refills, the slow recharge rate doesn't seem quite so bad.

I've found other efficiencies. My favorite is not just blowing through a level up when you get close, but choosing what map to run based on the correct balance between stamina used and XP gained. Ideally, you want to burn through your last stamina points with a huge overage of XP gained. I try to run 12-5 at exactly 40 stamina left and less than 10 XP before leveling. Whatever I do right before that is basically free chests so it doesn't matter if it's 1-3 or 2-5 or a daily map as long as I save that run of 12-5 to push my XP over the top.