I've gone down the hair loss rabbit hole and now that I understand that any remaining follicle, no matter how small, as long as it isn't truly dead, can be saved and brought back to life, you have to question why anyone wouldn't run dutasteride or finasteride if they are undergoing a hair transplant. These compounds will literally allow you to use less donor hairs or place more donor hairs in a more concentrated area for a better result. When I look at the areas of my scalp which have receded, I see many tiny, fine hairs, open pores which to the naked eye have no hair follicle, but aren't dead, all of these can be brought back to life, all of them represent 1 less donor required from the donor areas, all of them represent the possibility of the thickest and fullest head of hair you can achieve given your level of recession.
Also, now I understand the life cycle of a hair follicle, I am literally ROFLing at the broscience anecdotes of 'I ran x compound for 2 weeks and my hair fell out'. Lets make the distinction between transient hair loss and permanent hair loss. Running a compound for 2 weeks is not going to nuke an entire hair follicle and send it to an early grave.
This has now brought to me obvious cycle design choices to the fore and the blindingly obvious need to allow your hair to be in a much less stressed state during your cruises.
Other obvious choices start to become apparent and reveal themselves, such as simple combinations of test and GH along with a 5AR. What a fantastic combo to control hair loss while on PEDs. Any other compounds ought to be used sparingly and cycled. It seems to me that you can certainly run other compounds but they must be the exception, not the rule, and the time off those compounds must be significantly greater than on, so that you allow you hair follicles to recover from the temporary stress they were under. When you decide to 'blast' should also be dictated by the heath of your hairs.
If there are hairs which show signs of miniaturisation, I'd keep to a test/gh cruise and persist with fin or dut treatment. These drugs will bring those hairs back to a healthy state. Once whatever hairs you have are all in a healthy state (and from what I've read, dut/fin can achieve this in 12-18 months) then you can run short cycles with other compounds, but at least your hairs at this point in time are as healthy as they can be and are more likely to weather a short blast.
I've got my order in for finasteride. I'd prefer to run the dutasteride, as from what I've read it is far more efficacious, but I can't source it at a reasonable price, and so I will begin with finasteride until I can get a few years worth of dutasteride.
I think that I could turn my NW V to a NW IV by running either dut/fin with the crown having the most potential for regrowth and thickness, to the extend I'd think it probably wouldn't even require any transplanted hairs. My understanding is beard hair can be used for the crown, which is great, as this means you can use donor scalp follicles purely for the frontal area.
Hair transplants are a NUMBERS GAME and anything you can do to pump those numbers is going to tilt you towards more success and a better result.