By "energy fees" I don't mean 100 energy's price on market, I mean the fees incurred with unbinding and buying things from the supply depot, etc.

So look, let's say you're selling soda. You're selling soda for a buck a can. You decide to triple this. Does this mean you get triple the payout? No. You'll probably get less, because less people will buy the product. Not just less than triple, but less than you were originally making. So, let's take a look:

Supply depot offers are unbuyably high. Well, not literally, but they're uncompeditive. Unbinding fees are also higher than they should be but let's just start with radiant fire crystals:

• minimum wage is usually like 8.50 an hour, USD; living wage is considered 15 (not that a videogame needs to offer either, but...)
• the 100$ energy package returns energy at a rate of 450 per dollar, making the prior wages 3825 and 6750 energy per hour
• radiant fire crystals cost 14 energy apiece, making the prior wages ~273 or 482 radiants per hour
• dreams and nightmares awards 21 rads on average plus ~1k crowns which at a 6.9k market price for energy, should let you buy one more rad from the aforementioned supply depo, so that's 22 per run
• each run should only take about 10 to 12 minutes with the right gear, putting you at 110 to 132 rads per hour
• firestorm citadel awards 15 rads on average plus ~8.5k crowns and three almarian seals, which sell back to vendors at a rate of 1k each; at a 6.9k market price for energy, the crowns should grant another 12 rads from the supply depo, so that's 27 per run
• firestorm citadel takes at least 15 minutes if not double D&N's time, so that would only be around 108 rads per hour tops, if not 81 or less

There are a couple of things we can do with these numbers.

First, note that the rad rate with current energy prices, even playing D&N with just 10 minute runs, is at about 48% minimum wage. Am I insulted by this? No. It's a game; if more than half of what you're doing is (strictly) "labor," you just shouldn't be playing. I mean at that point you aren't, basically. Making half a wage is fine, but, keep this 48% number in the back of your head.

Second, note that D&N is the better rad grind over FSC--or more importantly, that despite FSC being the worse rad grind, people play it anyways, even when they need rads. This means that people are multitasking in some way--or rather, that the additional crowns it pays out have been judged to be better off as-crowns than as-rads. I'm sure there are plenty of players you who will say they think D&N is a better grind when they need rads, but what if you ask that group about buying rads from the depo? They will say, "No, never do that," because even they acknowledge that FSC's crowns are more valuable than their weight in supply depo rads. So, let's take the difference to see what a rad's real price is:

• at 20 minutes per run, FSC grants 34500 crowns plus 45 rads per hour, directly
• at 10 minutes per run, D&N grants 6000 crowns plus 126 rads per hour, directly

This is a difference of 81 rads and 28.5k crowns. Players are choosing to sacrifice 81 rads for 28.5k crowns. That's about 352 crowns per rad, or 5 energy, and they chose not to take the rad. The numbers stay the same at 15 and 30 minutes for D&N/FSC. Players are just not willing to spend even 5 energy for a rad. Why, you ask? Because they f*** said so, that's why, and they've said so for too many hours at a time for you to interpret this as a bluff. Players are not willing to spend even 5 energy for a rad, and you are selling them for 14 (or, not).

Look, let's say you're selling soda. You're selling soda for a buck a can. You decide to triple this. Does this mean you get triple the payout? No. You'll probably get less, because less people will buy the product. You will not sell rads at 14 energy each. Rads needs to be selling for 4 e or less for there to even be a point to keeping this option.

But remember the 48% from earlier? You sell rads for only 4 apiece, and the real world minimum wage's conversion into rads per hour will now be 955.5. You can now use D&N's crown payout to buy an extra 3.6 rads per run instead of 1. And with all that in mind, instead of the game awarding rads at 48% minimum wage, it would now be... 16% of the minimum wage's rads per hour.

I heard there was a rad drought earlier this year. Or last year maybe, I don't know. (I got a telegram from the home: "SK deceased. Funeral tomorrow.") But seriously, let me guess: you lowered rad drop rates such that players only earned... about 16% what minimum wage awarded, per hour? Is that right? Did you have a powerpoint presentation for this idea, or was it just an email? Because when instead of rads I look at the current hourly crowns rates over minimum wage, I get... 500/3825, which is 13% minimum wage, which I would expect to be no different from your your target for any other resource (or little beneath it, since FSC has other stuff). You made the same soda-can mistake again by pulling people down to this percentage through droprates, rather than recognizing your 48% was only so high because you had a massively inflated sale price.

You will sink more energy with a lower sale price. The 50 rad pack should only be 200 energy. Yes, compared to the current 700 energy price, you would need to be selling three-and-a-half times more rads to break even. But how much are you selling right now? Zero? Cause I can see loooads of crystals listed on auction for 1.3k, and the number of bids on them all is zero. Sell a single unit, and you'll have sold infinitely more than three-and-a-half times more. Even if you are getting some money off simpletons, I'm positive you'll sell over four times more units this way, no question.

I'm not going to run through this again for the other crystals since really just rads matter, but right now each pack of crystals costs half as much as the next, so 200, 100, 50 and 25 energy should be fine (Vatel sells dim/cracked for crowns). I also don't really like how orbs work, but my complaints are less quantitative there so I'm not going to get into those either.

I will get into the equipment and unbinds though.

• It costs 3500 energy to buy a 5* off the depo.
• It costs 4000 energy to unbind one, 500 more.

So unless I have a unique variant that's worth 500 energy, it's impossible for a player to unbind their 5* item and break even, because noone will buy it from them when they could get a clean one from the depo (assuming it's one which the depo actually has). On the one hand, yeah, that's not even two ticket's worth of price difference. But on the other hand, 5* items on the auction house don't even sell for the 4000 to unbind, even with medium or high UVs. Let's just calculate the actual price of making a 5* item though, starting with materials:

• Brinks trades 5* trinkets for 100 tokens, which can be sold to merchants for 10,000 crowns, a rate of 100 per token
• For these same tokens, he sells most 5, 4, 3, and 2* materials for 20, 10, 5, and 2 tokens (and then 1 then 1/2 token, continuing the pattern to 0*)
• Ergo, these won't be sold above 2000, 1000, 500, or 200 crowns (or 100, or 50), respectively (unless the buyers lack tokens, which they won't)

These are pretty massive overestimates still, so I'm going to shave two-fifths off each one and then divide them all by the number of stratums they're present in: this gets us to a still high but much more believable 1200, 300, 100, 30, 12, 5. This is still an overestimate on the low end, but the smaller mats are less a factor, and on the high end I can see 5* pet food going for 1700 crowns bid on auction which makes sense with a general 1200 price for a 5* material plus a 500 crown fee to craft. So with that in mind:

• 0* items sell from NPCs at 150 crowns
• 1* items cost 39 in mats, plus a 200 crown fee, and then 10 energy in orbs
• 2* items cost 109 in mats, plus a 400 crown fee, and then 50 energy in orbs
• 3* items cost 246 in mats, plus a 1000 crown fee, and then 200 energy in orbs
• 4* items cost 713 in mats, plus a 2500 crown fee, and then 400 energy in orbs
• 5* items cost 2380 in mats, plus a 5000 crown fee, and then 800 energy in orbs

This means at a 6.9k energy price, 5* items with crafting items with 1, 2, and 3* crafting origins will cost 1354, 1572, or 1629 energy to craft, minus 800 if you're like me or any other endgame player and have infinite eternal orbs laying around. For simplicity's sake, I'm going to say crafting a 5* item costs 1600 in general, or 800 without orbs.

Let's look at the seller side. With the unbind fee, that's 5600 or 4800 energy, or 386.4 to 331.2k crowns. And since your alternative of just trashing the item at Vatel rewards 30k crowns, that's another 30k on each of those for sale price. Then, to still make this much money after the 10% auction house fee, you have to divide by 0.9, which means you're listing at 463 to 401k crowns minimum price just for your sale to not count as a donation. But I can just tell you, even a shadow lair item I would not buy for over 300k without UVs.

Let's look at the buyer side. Crafting costs 1600 if you don't have the orbs, but then another 40k crowns in recipes if you're starting from 2*, which equals another 580 in energy or so. This means if that if you can buy a 5* item for under 2180 energy, or about 150k crowns, you might have saved some money, but going higher wouldn't be worth it unless the recipes were expensive, etc. So, despite beating the unbind fee, the supply depo's 3500 price tag is still totally uncompeditive, and with the unbind fee, sellers lose a net 251k crowns by selling for 150 going just off the aforementioned 401k min price--which doesn't include orbs.

The supply depo needs to have its price for 5* items dropped to no more than 2200 energy. Lower level items should also be dropped accordingly. Then, given that sellers are struggling to even sell medium UVs above 250k total on auction right now (a medium ASI Acheron just ended at 237k bid and there's a medium CTR going for less) with minimally 55k crowns to craft, a 3000 energy unbind fee for 5* items should be reasonable. This could serve as a fine general price, as the 4* item itself makes up the majority of that 55k crafting price (due to said price omitting the 5* orbs which we have a surplus of; unlike eternal orbs, we do not have a surplus of elites etc).

Last, as a final note on shadow keys: what the hell? Do I really have to pay four times the price just to solo? And even at just a quarter key's price on a team, you're losing 30k some crowns just for 20k base payout for dark FSC. Even if we assume you can sell the unique mat for 30k (nope), that's still worse than regular FSC when you consider it takes double the time. At the very least, let me solo this for a quarter the price. I'm sure you think making it a team-thing will get people to make their friends play the game, but lairs are so far into the endgame that this just isn't the case. Pre-corona you only had an average of 200 steam players online at any given point in time, and with quarntine you've only spiked up to about 370. Maybe those aren't even half of what you have, maybe not even a tenth, but either way, the game's dead. Three Rings is defunct. Let me solo.

SUMMARY:

These suggestions are all reductions to prices. But, they bring the prices closer to economic equilibrium, at which point more profit (net energy sinkage) occurs. You only need to sell radiants at 4 energy apiece. You only need to sell 5* items for 2200. You only need unbinding to cost 3k, and you can afford to make it just 3k flat for all items. And since all of these reductions will increase the rate at which energy is sunk, they'll either increase the amount of buyers or raise the market price of energy, which would mean the one I used and in turn all my suggested reductions are still underestimates of just how far you can go, while still raising profits and simultaneously increasing the accessibility of these services for players.

And change shadow keys! I shouldn't have to pay quad price to solo.