Talk:Merging/@comment-5950732-20140403185955/@comment-556400-20140403193304

This line here should help: The Phantom of Gold leveled up using 2 lvl 1 Tirawa-Atius and 1 lvl 1 Homunculus. In other words, feeding 2 UCs and 1 C to a UC, then feeding that UC to a R resulted in about 20% loss in XP... but it also costs a lot less.
 * Feeding a lvl 6 The Phantom of Gold to a lvl 16 Adaptive Camouflage resulted in 137% gain.
 * Feeding 2 lvl 1 The Phantom of Gold + 1 lvl 1 Golden Jet to a lvl 17 Adaptive Camouflage resulted in 166% gain.

Feeding the UC costs 300 SP, since it's level 1. For that lvl 16 R, it costs 250 SP per spirit to merge. If you merge the 2 UC and C directly, that costs 750 SP. If you merge them into the UC first, then merge the UC, it costs 300+250=550 SP. So, you lose 20% of the XP, but the cost is 26% less as well. The "savings" only increases the higher level your R/SR is.