How to get the most out of your Aether in AR

I think it's best to use it as soon as you can. The aether cost for starting a fight is based on your current lift. So for example if this fight costs 80 aether and the next one will cost 81, it's better to pay 80 and get the next one free than to wait for the next day and get the 80 free and then pay 81.

I've played around with this and calculated a bit. My impression is that it's usually advantageous to delay matches until the last day or two, but I'm not confident in this.

The combination of defense losses and delaying a match keeps your lift lower during the week, which saves about 2-3 aether a day which does get paid back near the end because a match at the end of a season costs about 10-16 more aether than at the beginning of the season.

The reason I'm so unsure is because I've done calculations that show that spending maximum aether on day 1 of a season supports one less match, but one season I calculated again on day 6 and found that I needed to play three matches that day followed by two on day 7 because I wouldn't have enough aether if I tried to do it the other way (two on day 6, three on day 7). And I finished that season with 0 aether.

At T20+ I think the aether structures dictate it to us. If you don't use as much aether as you can as soon as you have it, 70 regeneration + 20-23 on breaking aether pots will overfill the amphorae, resulting in lost aether which can matter at the end of a season.