"I am sick to death of farming Crystals and heat"?

Don't do it then.

... "FSC" ...

There's a German saying; how you bed yourself, so you lie.

Don't blame the game for your actions. There's a whole world of levels to actually just play the game. Elevators are free, you know. And there's never been any rush.

You actually want the old system "let's do only 2 fsc runz cuz ima run out of mist" ?
Bro...you have free elevator, a free revive and a ridonkulous amount of sparks.
Without forge you just can craft yourself a 5* gear in 1 day.
Buy an heat ampl. problelm solved. It's like 40-50k in ah for 7 days. Cheap as hell.

1) If you are heating one lvl 9 five star item in fsc, it takes no more than 2 runs. You get about 65 radiants per run and it costs like 150 to get a guarantee forge. I don't see how heating is the limiting factor rather than crystals.

2) Why are you in such a hurry to heat up your equipment? By transferring the grinding from crafting to heating, OOO is effectively making gear behave like skill levels in other MMORPGs. Even in Pokemon, your pokes don't gain levels very quickly once they are lvl 90+. It only makes sense that you should heat up higher level gear much more slowly.

3) Under the old system, P2P players get good gear very easily, heat it up quickly and run out of things to do. F2P players must grind for a long time to get good gear and either give up on the game early or run out of things to do thereafter. Heating is like incentive to "train" in Spiral Knights.

4) Under the old system, what would your to-do list look like? "Time to grind for ce to make more gear that I don't need!"

Seerusly? Are you people just too lazy to play the freaking game with out max level gear? Just play a tire 3 arcade run or do a danger mission. I usually get about 15-30 5 star heat crystals out of those so I don't get why you people can't deal with having to actually play the game instead of farming it

1) Bring a item into FSC

2) Heat up it

3) Downgrade the butt tons of radiants you get from it

4) Forge said item.

5) It's FSC! You're always going to get more crowns for downgrading anyway!

6) ???

7) PROFIT!

NO

So, you guys DON'T want to forge things up the fastest way possible (I wouldn't say it's the "fastest" but it is pretty darn quick)? You're always going to get more than enough crowns and radiants anyway. but i can see why.

When I'm making a new 5* thing, I bring its 4* form into a S5 damage-appropriate mission to give it heat, and get shinings from treasure boxes. Then after level 5, then that's when FSC kicks in.

Your choice.

Do it [OPPA] FSC style, or grind a stratum over and over getting very little heat per run (unless arena)

You made 2 little typos on your reply to Batabii. But other than that, glad you agree XD.

From my perspective, it takes no less than one week (maybe a Week and a Half depending on your rate) if you just put your heart, mind and effort into forging up a 4* thing. Heck, i have plenty of eternal orbs anyway.

Potato, so to sum up, you don't want to play just anywhere because heat would come on its own anyway if you did, but you don't want to actually play with what you're heating.

Well, have fun with that. I'll go enjoy having something to heat. Good bye.

Run things on Elite. You'll get metric crap-tons of Fire Crystals. And there's not as much of a penalty for dying anymore, so I don't see why not.

If you get really good, you might eventually run Danger Missions on Elite. You can imagine the huge Fire Crystal potential there. Till then, storm the Clockworks looking for Arenas and Danger Rooms (the latter being well worth the 3 energy payment); clearing those will get you a lot of treasure blocks. Also try your luck on Treasure Vaults; those have a whole lotta treasure blocks and almost zero difficulty.

The Gauntlet's also got a ton of treasure blocks at the end. If you're not actually HEATING anything, but just looking for Fire Crystals, FSC Elite is also good, but not at all mandatory.

The gap between 3 and 4 star was also enormous. Because for both 4 and 5 star upgrades, the amount of CE needed doubles. - CE prices were climbing to an all time high when I really started reap in enough profit to upgrade to 4 star. I'd farmed enough for the 6kcr prices for 100ce. And the ce prices had been jolted up to 9kcr for 100ce. So, I broke and bought the starter pack.

I don't get it, since the Sprite Update I've managed to upgrade more items than before it, and I'm F2P AND lazy ._. what's wrong with you?

@Batabii
I spent months on the 400ce "wall", and weeks on the 800ce one. LD probably(definitely) had something(a lot) to do with the first one, but really the 800CE was a pain, and it felt like it was artificially elongating the gameplay experience just like the forge is now.

@OP: I'm confused. Your problem is the amount of heat you get, and not the crystals, yet the amount of heat you get didn't change?

Also, in your response to my post, you said that instead of heating you want to "explore the clockworks" and "enjoy the game".
Are you implying that those things are not possible while heating? Having a level 1 weapon prevents you from exploring the clockworks and enjoying the game? Is doing 30% more damage against monsters really that essential to your SK experience?

My original point is that the heating process IS the game. While you are playing the game (ie. going through clockworks) your gear will naturally gain heat. They don't degrade, they only upgrade. Seeing your gear improve over time is like a reward for your efforts in the clockworks.

Going back to my Pokemon analogy:
If you hack Pokemon and get all level 100 and all pokemon, there's really nothing left to do in the game. You destroy all the trainers easily and already own all the Pokemon, essentially making the entire world of Pokemon mundane. Training Pokemon and seeing them get better is what makes Pokemon games interesting.

It seems to me that there are a lot of people that cling to 5* items as their carrot on a stick so to speak. Without some sort of motivation or goal to work toward they would otherwise get bored.

I imagine there are a lot of younger players that grind 5* items while unaware that it is their "carrot on a stick" resulting in this fast passed grind fest. Some people need to just take a step back and ask themselves why they are playing this game or what is actually fun to do.

I won't lie. I like to grind out 5* items too but at least I am aware of why I play and I can regulate how I achieve that goal without getting sucked up into nonstop FSC grinding.

More importantly I have other goals like leveling my battle sprite, working on prestige, and farming tokens for my guild halls statue efforts. This keeps me from doing the same thing over and over and keeps my experiences a bit more fresh.

Getting and using new 5* items is fun though.

"But unless you spend $30 then it takes ages of grinding to get them."

Not really. In an 8 hour day you can take an item to 5* doing In Cold Blood and then FSC runs. Course, that assumes you use energy on 2, 3, and 4* orbs, which you might be hesitant to do.

On the weekend, plenty of people.

It is the method of how a person grinds a 5* not simply the grind itself which determines enjoyment.

For example if you had to tap the E key 15,000 times to grind heat crystals or play through arcades which would you consider a more enjoyable process?

I admit this example has been put into extremes in order to show an obvious answer but it is relevant no less.

If you want your shining crystals, do a tad bit of grinding on "In cold blood" on elite difficulty.

I get 20-30 shinings each time i do it, then you can do whatever grindfest you want to gain heat for your 4* weapons.