When you scroll through the various plants and fixtures that you can buy, Striiv shows you the price and the payoff. The price is a one-time cost, and the payoff is anywhere from several times an hour to two days.
If you are buying the plants that are the prettiest, or that give you a cool animal, then you don't need to worry about payoff. However, if you want to yield the most gold then you should look at it as a business investment.
In the business world, the
break-even analysis is a process that determines the volume of goods that must be sold to cover both fixed and variable costs. In the Striiv world, we can use break-even analysis to determine how many days of generating gold does the plant or fixture pay for itself.
Let's run through an example. Suppose you are debating between the Cyclops' Revenge and the Lemur Tree House. The tree house is certainly more visually appealing so maybe you are leaning that way. The payoffs are pretty close: Cyclops pays 4,500 every 9 hours, and Lemur Tree House pays 4,000 every 10 hours. However, the cost differences are staggering. The Cyclops costs 16,000 gold, so it will "break even" in less than 2 days. The Lemur Tree House costs 175,000! This means it will take almost 22 days to generate enough gold to overtake its cost.
What's the worst plant in terms of break-even? The Fairy Forest, which takes 1,754 days, or 4.8 YEARS to cover its 50 million price tag. If you buy a gold mystery box and get half-price, then it will only take 2.4 years.
What is the best plant in terms of pure break-even? Well if you click the Myland scroll and spin for the right challenge, the Celestial Observatory is the best buy in terms of break-even. The "build 3 observatories" challenge pays a 50,000 bonus. However, each Observatory only costs 10,000. When you build 3 with the challenge you break even (better actually) the moment it is built. So why not build all observatories? Well because you also have to look long-term. The payout of the Observatory is only 750 every 2hrs 40 minutes, and it takes up 4 lots.
So what is the best plant in terms of break-even and long-term payoff? For me it's the Bougainvillea. It costs 3,000 gold, but with a challenge you can get 1,500 back. If you have a Plant Sale mystery box you can get the cost down to almost nothing. And it pays 2,000 gold every ten hours, and only takes up 1 lot.