New Gate Rewards

Gates now grant knights with a special world core rarity, one for each tier that can only be attained once per gate. This world core comes in many flavors, like fire+fiend, slime+gremlin, pure fire, pure undead, things like that. Here is how it works:

If neither stratum is a boss, dual typed core
If one stratum is a boss, single typed core of the non-boss type

So lets say we have the following jelly king gate:

Stratum 1: Slime
Stratum 2: Fire
Reward for clearing all tier 1 levels in this gate: Slime + fire world core

Stratum 3: Construct
Stratum 4: Jelly King = boss
Reward for clearing all tier 2 levels in this gate: Construct world core

Stratum 5: Undead
Stratum 6: Fiend
Reward for clearing all tier 3 levels in this gate: Undead + Fiend world core

So in all you can get 3x world cores from this gate.

Changes to item crafting

Fire crystals become food for battle sprites. Feeding them to sprites makes the sprite happy and love you. Also it raises the level, since we all know that battle sprites are really soul-less machines, like that new snipe accessory.

World cores replace fire crystals in terms of actual item costs, with each item requiring specific world core(s).
3* = 1 specific world core
4* = 3 specific world cores
5* = 2 of one specific world core, 3 specific and different world cores = 5 total

Example: Combuster
3* = pure fire world core
4* = pure fire, fire + construct, fire + gremlin
5* = 2x pure fire, fire + construct, fire + gremlin, construct + gremlin

Look Ma,
"Combining the principles of the Skylark's engines with the technology powering the Blast Furnace produced this brutal blade."

There are 55 possible world cores, and 4 gates for a total of 12 possible to farm at any point in time, if that. World cores can therefore be smashed and combined for a fee, to produce new world cores.

Smashing: 10k crowns + 2 overlapping orbs

Example:
Orb 1: Construct + undead orb
Orb 2: Construct + ice orb
Result: Construct Orb

Combining: 10K crowns + 2 different pure orbs

Example:
Orb 1: Pure Ice Orb
Orb 2: Pure Fire Orb
Result: Ice+Fire Orb

Ergo if you aren't finding the orb that you need to finish your weapon and really really need it you can get around that and aren't just stuck forever.

Materials and Orbs

Orb costs are increased with orbs being made more common. Material costs are raised overall.

Approximate number of runs needed to get the materials + orbs for an upgrade:
2* = 1 run
3* = 3 runs
4* = 4 runs
5* = 7 runs

So if I get 10 flame souls on average per run farming flame souls per 2 stratum runs, combuster would require 70 flame souls. If I get 3 orbs per run on average, then combuster would require 21 eternal orbs to craft. Note that orbs would in fact drop more frequently under this system (but be required in larger numbers) making them less RNG dependent and more akin to materials that happen to come from boxes.

Prestige and Dailies

Daily mission would grant 5K crowns as rewards.

Danger mission would have a chance to grant something special- one of single UV tickets, forge prize box, prize box (bound, bound rewards), extremely extremely rarely pizza that can be fed to sprites (does nothing) and mist tanks that no longer have any function.

Always runs give-up-materials and give-up-minerals for prestige missions, allowing knights to play multiple times. Nerf the rewards on this.

All reskins, unique items, etc. and then some (see hallow node slime walls, NPC items, shields that look like lockdown things, costume pieces) added to the clockworks as item drops. Prestige increases your chances of getting one of these by tiny non-linear amounts the more you have. There is no topping out on this. All rare item drops are bound from this point onwards.

How the curve would look:
5/3 ( last increase needed ) = next increase in prestige needed to add 1 to the multiplier
10K = starting increase

So-
0 prestige = 1x odds of getting an item drop = same as base
10K prestige = 2x odds
26.6K Prestige = 3x odds
54.37K Prestige = 4x odds

So you'd get up to about 5x at 100K and then stuck until 200K for 6x and so on, but you always want more so that you can become immortal.