Originally Posted by Unregistered

There's no reason to waste manyus and gold on something you're eventually going to merge anyways as your event golds pile up. 3 stars are completely fine in the transition from early to midgame, you don't even need to invest much in them. I only leveled 4 of mine past 30, only 1 to 40, the rest were kept in mid-high 20's and managed to hold out until I got more silvers. Unless you have some god-awful luck, 4 11 pulls should give you enough silvers to flesh out a solid team, and then you choose a few 3 stars to level past 30 and fill until you get some more pulls.

This may be true now, but it wasn't the case in the first month. Essentially, unless you were a whale and/or the god/goddess of luck and fortune, you didn't have much choice but to grind up your 3★ girls alongside your freebie 4★, and maybe that one 5★ you claimed to be your waifu when it was the only 5★ anyway.

The dynamic of progression has changed now that the game has been out for a while, and new events are being released with regularity. However, some of the basic tents shouldn't be ignored, especially if you're really unlucky with pulls.