From the very beginning, I could never understand the exorbitant prices of the Bazaar vendors. I mean, why would the game designers want to create bad feelings with the new players by ripping them off like that?
Let’s use a 2* Brandish sword as an example.
Before the Auction House was introduced into the game, there were three ways you could get this sword: 1) buy one from another player through trade chat, 2) craft one yourself, 3) buy one from the Bazaar vendor.
Option one could be done for about 1,000-2,000 crowns.
Option two required you to buy the recipe (1,000 crowns) and craft one yourself (alchemy – 400 crowns) for 1,400 crowns plus 50 energy (free mist) and the value of some mats.
Option 3 was to buy from Quillion for 7,500 crowns. (Wow! What a rip-off!)
The Auction House added a fourth option that was basically the same as option one.
The Supply Depot offered a fifth option – price = 150 energy or about 12,500 crowns. (Are you kidding me!?!) Even if you used 100 mist, it was still more expensive than options one and two plus, well, you used all your mist.
Removing mist from the game doubled or tripled the player-to-player cost, making crafting your own the cheapest option.
The orbs were introduced into the game. If you had the 3 simple orbs, it was like crafting with free mist. Otherwise you could buy them from the supply depot at a cost of 10 energy or 750 crowns, making the overall crafting cost close to auction house prices with the important difference that you had no chance at getting a great Unique Variant, which is a significant consideration.
A new player not aware of all his/her options might buy a Brandish from the Supply Depot or a vendor thinking, in their newbie naiveté, that they are getting it at a fair price, only to find out later that they were badly ripped off by the game designers.
Result? Spiral Knights gained virtually nothing from the sale, and the new player now has bad feeling toward the game for getting ripped off and has learned not to trust the game designers.
So, really, game designers, why would you ever do something like that?
To encourage players to craft their own stuff or buy it from another player.
To me starting out it was kind of a given that buying things from the vendors is going to be more costly than taking the time to craft one (whether it's yourself or through another player).
It's like how things bought at the gas station are more expensive than they'd typically be elsewhere, opportunity/convenience cost and all that.