First of all, I am getting very much needed dopamine from playing this game with my boyfriend. Having a great time, big blast of nostalgia for me and my boyfriend who never played it is enjoying it too. But we've been talking about our experience, and we generally agree on a few problems we've been seeing as we've been progressing through the rank missions.

1. Orbs of Alchemy are such an unnecessary tax. If they dropped in the clockworks in any real quantity such that you just sorta Had a stockpile or could run Arcade a time or two to get what you need to craft anything, I would feel differently. But the fact that you need multiple thousands of crowns JUST for the energy for the Alchemy Orbs any time you want to craft feels AWFUL.

2. Green and blue minerals. Veteran players have told me they do nothing. I remember they USED to be used to change the clockworks but for now they're just a distraction for new players who don't know better?

3. Crown rewards don't feel higher the deeper you get in the clockworks. Actually, I feel the opposite. I got hard carried to the core way early and my honest observation was that each of the three tiers paid out about the same amount of crowns, but they took longer each time.

4. Extra weapon slots and trinket slots. Why the heck are these rentals??? Feels scummy and bad and awful and I hate it and actually this shouldn't be an energy transaction in the first place.

5. So much Legacy Unobtainable Content. I've been wiki diving to see what endgame gear I might wanna angle at, and a nonzero amount of the stuff I've been interested in is... Just not obtainable any more because it's from an event that ran once years ago. Cosmetics are equally hard to get my hands on, and yeah, maybe I'm early in the game to be worrying about the fashion endgame, but some of the prices for things I see on the auction house seem completely unobtainable.

6 (honorable mention). People have mentioned and I absolutely see the world where story missions outpace the arcade for farming in an unfun way. I happen to really like the arcade! It's a really cool gameplay loop! But if the story missions can fast travel you right to a particular rigged floor yeah I can see where that's High Efficiency Farming if there's one that's really lucrative. This hasn't negatively impacted MY play experience, and in fact, farming the Slime Sovereign mission has been only good for me, but my third eye is open to the endgame where everyone plays one mission forever.