Before you call me insane and type -1 hear me out.
The energy costs of orbs is the same as the energy cost for past Alchemy. The way that it still costs the same (in theory) is by using forge crystals to heat your gear up.
Why would I want to decrease orb drop rates? Well, nowadays alot of players no longer have any reason to buy energy outside of danger room and locked treasure rooms. Alot of players will just run through the missions to get the crystals and the orbs. More runs makes the knight bored but rather than just using all the crowns they've accumulated they'll spend it on something else. People constantly complain about the lack of updates made by OOO, but rather than complaining they should be given support. Even if that support is making energy more valuable so that OOO get more money to hire more people. More people working at OOO = faster updates.
Decreasing drop rates of orbs is a good idea because it would make energy more useful, but less valuable. At current, energy is very expensive (valuable in terms of crowns) but it is not very useful (because you can grind to get almost anything you need energy for). Making energy expensive does not make players want to buy it for real $$$, making energy actually useful in the game is what makes people buy it.
When I say make orbs rare, I mean like really rare, so that it becomes not viable to actually grind for them, but when you get one it's like "WOO!". In doing this, they should make orbs from the supply depot purchasable in lots of 1 instead of 3, so that if you find an orb in a dungeon, you can just buy two more rather than buying three and having one useless leftover.
Prices should then probably be as follows:
1*: 4 energy
2*: 35 energy
3*: 70 energy
4*: 135 energy
5*: 270 energy
coolios bye