Rainbow Apple Pillars Yay/Nay?

Never use quartz for ap. Especially if you're free to play.

I can't conceive of any skill-up mats that are worth burning SQ for, but you do you.

We just got 30 apples within the last two weeks. Even if you went full ham on the Christmas lotto, you should at least still have a small stockpile to use on the raids you care the most about.

I'd say no.

Simply put, you can get materials from events quite easily, and with Barbatos dead the most lucrative materials by far are gone. The others tend to have one in-demand material across the node - compare to Hearts, the toughest material to get and is needed by Merlin, and Pages, which are also needed by Merlin, both being in the same node.

Look at the listed drops per node on the guide on this site, and look at what the servants whose skills you want to upgrade need, and simply farm that with natural AP regen until you're satisfied or the node's dead. Make a priority list of what you'll fight in order, and stick to that. There's plenty of time.

I would suggest you use all your apples on this raid and farm whatever you can for whoever you need. If you have servants that need gallstones, then boy you better farm the shit out of Sabnock because that is a very rare material (up there with hearts).

This raid is also great for QP/Bond/Exp farming. I literally levelled from 126-128 in 1 day doing this because I used apples. The raid is also great for giving lower rarity material in bulk (like 3 fangs at a time or 3 seeds at a time). You also can stock up on gems if you didn't farm winter boxes a lot.

Ultimately the decision is up to you. It's just my opinion that one spends their apples here because it is very rewarding.

Since Barbatos is dead, you can afford to use natural AP gen. The other demon pillars are going down at a much reduced rate. But it's up to you. I myself am prioritising as necessary for the servants I have, and I am using rainbow apples if I feel I need to - I used all my gold apples on Barbatos already. But I am not a f2p.

No. Never worth it.