Spiral Knights - Grey Havens, you have a MASSIVE issue on the horizon

Grey Havens, you have a MASSIVE issue on the horizon

23 replies [Last post]

Sat, 05/16/2026 - 17:44

Witelite

I have been a long time tracker of supply depot sales in this game. I absolutely think theyre a key part of keeping the game economy balanced, and it works well with featured auctions, providing both cr and e sinks.

NOW ON TO THE ISSUE. We havent had good supply depot listings in months. The Game Masters regularly list items on the auction house for only crowns. This plus the returning players wanting cr to buy costumes and catch up has driven energy prices into the ground. USUALLY this would be countered with depot listings, encouraging players to keep some of their currency in energy. Without significant depot listings though, there is no reason to keep energy, and ALL the reason to convert it to crowns.

Now, it is good to have energy prices low for new players, meaning that the grind is easier, as they can buy orbs and crystals. HOWEVER, it highly discourages players from buying energy in your game for money. This is because theres no reason to keep it in e, so paying users will just convert it to cr, further driving e prices to the floor. Just to give you an idea of how its trending:

In january, energy was 4700cr for 100e. It is now 3300cr for 100e. That means $100 worth of e (45000e) would give you about 2mcr buying power. With current energy prices, that same $100 instead gives you only 1.4mcr buying power. Now, this price is crashing, having dropped about 400cr in about a day or two.

If prices keep trending down, there is literally no reason for people to buy energy for money in your game. It lowers buying power, and instead puts the weight on holding cr.

IT CAN BE SAVED!!!

All the devs/gms need to do is list things in the depot. This could be old boxes from 2017-2022 that returning players might have missed! This could be individual items from those boxes! We need reasons to spend and hold energy other than the odd shadow key/silver key. PLEASE!! This year so far we have had 80% fewer depot listings compared to 2025. That is abysmal. Why?!?!

Grey havens you literally have people begging to spend money on your game. Begging to buy old cosmetics. Theres no reason the supply depot specials tab should be empty for 2 weeks in a row aside from the 5% discounted regular items.

A few cool things you could depot that would have the community in tears of happiness

Silver keys (Its been YEARS since this was depoted at a lower price)
Obsidian prize boxes - Its apocrea... why arent these depoted
Basic colored items - Side blades, etc.
Prismatic items - these are highly desired, and even if depoted at high prices, people will still buy
Rose items - these are also highly desired, and were last reran in 2020... its been 6 years

Community, feel free to add desired depot items below. Grey Havens: Im very curious on why the depot is so under-used. Is it desired to keep e prices extremely low? Why are listings down 80% compared to last year? Is it just neglected?

Sat, 05/16/2026 - 18:05

Ainogommon

Flash sale wish list thread

https://wiki.spiralknights.com/Rage_Prize_Box
This one.

Sat, 05/16/2026 - 23:09

Spark-Of-Kill

Volcanic Brigandine and Rage boxes pretty please

yeah I thought it was kinda odd for GH to change Cyber Monday to be a year-round thing and then just... stop listing items regularly

Sun, 05/17/2026 - 10:28

Promethiean

Yup, you know I agree with you on this lol

GH has so many items in the game to make a rotation in the supply depot. It's a bad look not to put anything in it.

Sun, 05/17/2026 - 21:34

Blastcephalon

In defense of market staleness

I think it's really good for new player retention for the market to be at a low right now. It makes it far far easier to get 4*/5* orbs and crystals compared to when energy was almost 16k CR per 100.

Considering there's almost 1000 active players at the moment, quadrupling the "price" of leveling materials by exploding the market with high value depot items might not be the best idea for the player retention we're so desperate to maintain.

Mon, 05/18/2026 - 04:21

Witelite

Im not down for quadrupling

Never said I want e prices quadrupled. Even holding steady at 4.5kcr per 100e would be fine for me.

This post is a warning mostly to GH about how the market is trending and the negative effects itll have on their monetization and the market. Obviously low e prices are great for returning players, but as a company, GH wants player retention and allowing players to breeze to 5* in 1 week doesnt encourage players to keep returning and playing.

As a concept, every game should have a sink for each type of in game currency. Without it, that currency loses value compared to the others. There is no energy sink in the game now. But there are tons of cr sinks. Punch, slime casinos, constant featured auctions, returning players listing their expensive stuff...

If e prices tank to 2kcr per 100 e, obviously thats great for new players, but it absolutely destroys the trading market. Not to mention players' $ buying power tanks.

The main effect this will have is making it so buying gear through the depot will be cheaper than actually crafting it.

For example, a combuster costs 3500e. At its current prices of ~3500cr per 100e, that only costs a player a little over 120kcr. If e prices drop to 2kcr per 100e, thatll be 70kcr for a 5* weapon without having to craft, heat or anything. Thats not great for player retention.

Mon, 05/18/2026 - 05:36

Clown-Fox

New player's perspective

Hi, new player here.
I actually would prefer energy prices go much lower. I have no stake in the end game economy, I just care about getting my orbs of alchemy snd if they're cheaper to get that's great for me.
If they were feasibly available somewhere in the game other than the energy store, do whatever you want with the energy prices, I no longer have a horse in that race

Mon, 05/18/2026 - 06:00

Aaty

depot drought

+1 we need tons of cool stuff flowing through the depot ideally every week to keep things interesting.

the potential the depot has is limitless and isn't being used to its full capacity at the moment.

Mon, 05/18/2026 - 06:57

Witelite

Low orb prices

Clown, totally valid. For new players, getting orbs suck, and the low e prices mean that you can straight up buy them faster than earn them. I do think that orb drops need a rework.

This being the only reason why you want E prices low speaks to how the e-economy needs fixing.

Another point to re-highlight is that currently, players are able to start the game and hit 5* in a week of playing. This isnt great for keeping players returning to the game, as once many hit 5*, realize the endgame grind, theyre more likely to drop the game as they havent put much time into leveling.

Again, I know that low e prices are really good for orb buying, but that being the only reason why new players want e prices low speaks to how much the orb progression system needs work.

Mon, 05/18/2026 - 13:37

Vyre-Acidlashed

Returning Player

I'm with Witelite on this. As a matter of fact, I think I agree with *all* of you here; I also remember the "bad old days" where the market was around 18kCR:100CE.

I came back to this game after years of not playing - I left for two reasons.
1) Heating gear to progress ranking felt bad because it could fail, representing a waste of real money at worst, or, 2) representing days of grinding the same clockwork stages over and over to pay truly staggering market prices at best.

Now that forge changes are in and the market is low, those two reasons are gone, and I'm back, and having a blast. Genuinely, I'm having more fun with Spiral Knights as a returning player than I ever did as a new player.

I'm trying to build a bunch of different 5* items without spending anything right now because the market is good, but to be clear, I'm not opposed to spending money on the game. The issue is I'd prefer to spend on things like slots or cosmetics rather than progression. I don't know if I am a representative player, but I like knowing that if I get good at hitting the clockworks, I can earn my way to 5* gear just by playing and collecting crowns from Generous Gremlin Donors in the clockworks.

Right now, the only thing the depot offers is a way to pay to skip playing the game. That is... an interesting choice, to say the least, when progressing is the heart of the game, and forming parties to do even riskier clockworks runs is the soul.

Without that progression you're left with running prestige missions - so, clockworks again - running missions you've already done - clockworks again - and beating the diesel out of ol' Vanaduke. While he has it coming, it's all he's had coming for the last few years, and I'm beginning to wonder if he would rather just go kart racing for a change.

...Well, no, okay, there's the Coliseum, I suppose, but even then, the REAL fun is winning the Fashion Show half of the round, right? I'll get back to cosmetics in a bit.

I have the suspicion that there's more than just the energy sink issue looming over this discussion - one thing that comes to mind is stagnation of best-in-slot equipment because of the less-than-stellar defense mechanics. It's not really encouraging players experiment with gear (which would drive play retention by encouraging more gear progression), and this subsequently reduces the number of excuses to decorate their knights as much in even more outfits (which SHOULD drive depot activity, if only there were items in it to buy). There's perhaps a more holistic issue related to gameplay and mission variety that needs tackling, but I digress.

I know for a fact that I'd consider quitting again if the trade cost of energy went back up to as little as 8kCr:100CE, just because it would make progression and active-slot earning tedious all over again, but exactly as witelite says, this ONLY proves that the alchemy system is doing more harm than good for overall game econ sustainability. It would almost be preferable to remove orbs completely, but I don't know what this would do to the economy at large.

Right now? 4kCr~5kCr:100CE feels right to me because it has close parity with the earnings of one finished tier on Elite difficulty, and 3kCr~7kCr is perfectly tolerable to my reckoning.

I acknowledge Crown Sinks are important because Crowns come from essentially nothing, but there's a balance to strike. I *almost* believe CE shouldn't be this closely tied to progression at all, but nothing else is holding the market where it is. Getting outside this range is damaging in the long-term to player retention EITHER way, whether it makes the process easier OR harder. If CE becomes too cheap, premium players are incentivised to skip play if they spend money at all because there are no other depot options, and if it gets too expensive, free players are incentivised to engage in a monotonous grind with little reward just to cover alch, BOTH driving up player attrition.

If I have anything to contribute to this discussion at all other than how I feel about things that have already been said, it's this: I absolutely want to spend money on this game, but there's nothing in the depot that feels good to buy. If I engage with the depot I am either curtailing the time I can spend with the game, or buying keys in the hope that I will eventually grind enough to even *see* a naturally-earned lockbox, if I don't cave to burning more crowns in the Auction House and (as a result) becoming "part of the problem."

I do not want to buy progression. I want to progress through play - I enjoy this game and the flow of its combat, I like spending time in parties of other knights, and I like enjoying the music while I battle. I like heating gear, I like playing with loadouts, I like trying to do solo-damageless boss fights. (Maybe one day I'll actually succeed at that, too.)

Instead, I want to buy versatility, cosmetics, curios, and a *tiny* bit of randomness reduction. I *absolutely* want to buy more missions.
We've got versatility - boosters, active slots and sparks work fine. The other stuff, though? An extensive rotation of cosmetics which are otherwise no longer available could easily go into rotation - three to five per day, well-randomized.

For people wanting quantity over specificity, buyable boxes - perhaps with sliiightly cheaper keys (or key bundles?). For people who want to get exactly the look they want, the ability to buy accessory tokens or tickets that let players change item color patterns. Maybe even Weapon Trails, Weapon Particle Switches, Weapon Cosmetic Slots, more Alternate Weapon Skins - heck, Knight Emotes, if you want to get completely blue-sky with the ideas. I'd *leap* at the chance to make community emotes - in-game or in-chat ones.

With regards randomness reduction? Maybe variant tickets whose *type* is locked in, but whose *tier* is randomized, or vice versa. (Or perhaps Vise versa.) Maybe Item Drop boosters.

The Depot has the unique ability to do basically whatever it wants at the current state of play. I have my suspicions that GH is waiting on more player concurrency before investing in anything extensive, but if that bright and hopeful future comes to be a reality, I'd be down for more expansions and maybe even something that lets you delve into superdungeons or raid lairs. Maybe call 'em Recon Tickets, hand 'em in to Desna.

Oh, and a permanent Gremlin Disguise cosmetic. No, not the helmet. I love those lil' guys. You could coax me into spending fifty bucks on being able to play as a Gremlin for the rest of my account's life, *easily.* More, if you're gonna do different types. Grey Havens, Clotho, Cronus - if any of you are listening - you have no idea how embarassingly badly I want to play as a gremlin.

Fri, 05/22/2026 - 11:41

#10

Vyre-Acidlashed

You know what?

I've been thinking over what I wrote for a little bit, and I've changed my mind on a couple of things.

I still think gear isn't rewarding enough, but the problem is a little smaller than I might've first thought. Still not great, but not awful - it's fun to experiment, but doing repeated boss-runs still strongly implies a specific loadout. I also think that Orbs still offer a tiny bit too much friction, but I think that could easily be resolved by occasionally discounting them just a little bit in the depot. Naturally to counter this loss of energy value there'd have to be other depot items on sale, but that's kind of implied to be desired by this thread overall.

There's also the matter of desirability and rarity of exclusive cosmetics, which is a complicated enough matter (what with account closure, player attrition and the dark spectre of RMT skulking around it) that I shouldn't really try to speculate on it, but it *might* be in GH's interests to run a brief assessment on how many long-lost cosmetics have left circulation at the very least to stimulate some more depot purchasing by reintroducing them that way. This will be close to impossible to do until they've stopped seeing such meteoric playercount growth because accounts that have been inactive for YEARS are coming back to play the game, and... well, that means any of their cosmetics aren't out of circulation again, doesn't it? For what it's worth, I don't think that RMT is a present and pervasive risk at this time, but disincentivising it is obviously a good thing.

I have this funny feeling we'll get something good but we're still in that place right now where patience is the golden rule; the economy will be a little unpredictable for the time before, during, and a little after any changes they want to make to the game.

Fri, 05/22/2026 - 15:58

#11

Witelite

We tried market fixing... it didnt work

So update: A few big merchers tried resetting E prices back to 4k by placing thousands of buy/sell bids around that price.

This fixed e prices for a single day. Their attempt didnt change the main underlying issue to all this. There are NO significant e sinks in the game.

Grey Havens, you NEED to make depot sales to balance this out. If you dont, we will see energy prices fall to basically worthless. If left unchecked, this could result in the following scenario:

If E prices fall to 850cr/100 e, players will be able to generate infinite crowns. Buying 5* items from the depot for 3500e and selling them to a vendor will allow us to make a net profit. Now, we arent that low, but this market fixing attempt showed that regardless of what the players try, energy prices will continue to tank.

PLEASE PLEASE: Can we get some decent depot sales. SOMETHING significant. This is just sad now.

Thu, 05/28/2026 - 09:05

#12

Zosu

This post is ironic

The other day there was a group of players in front of AH complaining how GH would obviously manipulate the prices, because it's their way to ensure their income.
Older players mentioned the E price had been very low years ago and also had been very high. So they don't believe such bad behaviour was the case. Everyone agreed it would be bad.

... and now ITT ppl basically beg GH to influence the economy 😄

Thu, 05/28/2026 - 09:44

#13

Zosu

Also, I remembered ...

Some players claimed they could easily manipulate crown price and have it whatever they want. I told them the E market, is an uncontrollable behemoth and I have seen tens of thousands of offers melt away in in seconds. Trying to manipulate it with offers may seem to work sometimes, but at the end of the day the price goes wherever it wants. I see, you have come to a similar conlusion.

However, I loved the depot sales, like bloom halo and the obelisks and more frequent sales would be nice. How about the Angelic Helmet (was only once in featured, never in depot) or an actually red Long Feather (doesn't exist in the game for some reason). I'm not a fan of boxes (gambling, because some items are lower chance than others) tho. (Sometimes I wonder, if all possible items are even unboxed. Maybe the dev team makes a really nice thing and it never even sees the light of day, because it was in a rare slot and nobody got it.)

Fri, 05/29/2026 - 17:28

#14

Refraizen

I still can't believe it's not happened yet

@Zosu it was more possible to manipulate E prices with an amassed wealth when there was a more steady balance between the supply of cr/E, but right now it's just simply not possible because of the core issue of energy not being nearly as needed - crowns are not being generated enough, energy is being generated too much currently, with no real way of deleting energy from the game effectively without GH intervention. The continuously low or falling E prices have also spooked many players and merchants to start only working in crowns for fear of their currency value because it "remains stable" (which is honestly, not true), which just also increases the need for crowns rather than energy.

It's been discussed many times in many SK discord servers but all it takes is a single omegapog depot to raise energy prices back to healthy levels. A type of depot that would fuel the average player to buy repeatedly, rather than items that merches who are already sitting on more than enough energy would buy (because they'd buy more than enough without every having to convert crowns).

And what kind of item would that be?
Old boxes due for a rerun. It would also reduce their list of needed reruns since we're all already complaining that there's not enough old boxes available.

Not nearly as effective, but things like Silver PC, Prismatic Halo, Prismatic Seraph Wings, Arcane Halo, Storm/Rage costumes would also raise energy levels to be at least better than what it currently is, while also resupplying said items back into the economy.

Wed, 06/03/2026 - 18:19

#15

Witelite

Hey So

Hey Grey Havens, so...
Energy is now at 2.8kcr / 100 e. And you just posted more FA listings. which cause people to want to spend cr. which makes people convert e to cr. which crashes the market even more...

Why list 11 items on the auction house and NONE in the depot? Its been nearly a week and a half since you last depoted something. It will hit a hard floor at 1.6kcr, but by that point, $100 will be less than 1mcr and there will be no incentive for players to purchase E.

Depot a box, a prismatic item, SOMETHING that is highly desired by the playerbase. The conversion rates are already having catastrophic effects on the player trading market. Nobody is trading energy anymore as its so volatile, and likely to never recover.

How can you not see this happening?

Thu, 06/04/2026 - 07:36

#16

Promethiean

Can we get a mod response please. The market is ridiculous rn

Thu, 06/04/2026 - 09:15

#17

Fallen-Feces

Counterargument: I want to

Counterargument: I want to see if there's a hardcoded floor for E prices. Only one way to find out!

Thu, 06/04/2026 - 09:51

#18

Gonnamad

unga-boonga

Price good Market good

Knight need crowns knight run levels

Knight need energy knight buy

Knight make shootas and chopas good with shiny rocks

Feel no worry Life good

Thu, 06/04/2026 - 16:22

#19

Fallen-Feces

fr tho I like it cheap

I was joking earlier but in all seriousness I'd honestly prefer being able to keep energy prices low. As someone who very rarely dabbles in merchanting behavior, I only get happier the lower I see those energy prices go. It just makes basic materials like orbs or weapon/trinket slot upgrades easier to maintain. Danger rooms and even just energy gated treasure boxes become more lucrative.

I think this all stems from energy and crown exchange being based off a player market. It's an annoying system that only causes a greater schism between F2P players and merchants. Whenever one side is gaining from this system, the other is being harmed. If it was just a static rate on both ends with no "supply and demand" involved we'd probably be better off.

The 2020 energy market was horrible. Remember how it cost a whopping 10k crs for 100e? I even saw it reach 12kcrs at one point. I'd lose my mind if it ever reached that price again. Imagine spending over an hour running arcade or 30-40 minutes in a casual vana run (emphasis on casual; don't come to me with "I can do vana in 15 mins!") only to come out with barely enough crowns to get 100e. Replace player market energy with static rates, maintain healthy rates with featured AH listings and good depot sales, I don't really care what you do. Just don't let the price skyrocket again. No one wants to put up with that grind.

I do agree that supply depot sale droughts are bad but only because having them makes rarer items easier to get. I don't like having to play tug-of war with exchange rates.

Fri, 06/05/2026 - 00:07

#20

Pdtopgun

Works for me

Yeah, I know this is probably a significant issue to a big chunk of the player population, but as someone who doesn't spend real money on energy and has zero interest in trading for super-rare stuff, this has been fantastic. A few weeks ago I was able to pick up a Shadow Key on a whim when a friend mentioned they were discounted on the depot, and a couple of days ago I realized I could pretty easily pick up a Maskeraith pod and complete my sprite set with how cheap things are now, and so I did. If I decide I want to craft a new weapon right now it'd be trivial to just buy the orbs for it. I do agree that it'd probably be healthier overall to have static conversion rates and some reasonable value.

Fri, 06/05/2026 - 10:12

#21

Ainogommon

Prayer answered

They depot rage box

I am less mad now. Thank you, GH.

Sun, 06/07/2026 - 21:25

#22

Zosu

Boxes are unlikely to have a strong effect

The problem with depoted boxes is, that the gambling nature of them causes ppl to pull all sorts of stuff they don't actually want and then they put them on AH and it becomes a crown sink (+AH fees) that counters the energy sink it was intended to be. This effect is delayed tho, because ppl first spend E and not everyone immediately puts everything in AH and some items will be kept, so it works to a degree.

My opinion is still, it would be better to depot non-box items directly.
I understand this is more work, because prices have to be entered etc. Perhaps, this can be done automatically? The game could select randomly one costume item and one accessory every 3 days and randomize a price between 1k and 10k E. The deals will not always be good, but nobody would have to manually add them. Randomly a super good deal would appear and pull the E price up high.

Tue, 06/09/2026 - 09:04

#23

Zosu

Today, raging sealed pauldrons were depoted for one day

They are very expensive, have been in Depot not long ago (in April, I believe) and the period is short, but I think this still has a relatively strong effect, for the short time it lasts. There are still many items from the boxes in AH for the coming 2 days tho.

I hope there will be more things in depot after that. This is good stuff.

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Grey Havens, you have a MASSIVE issue on the horizon