Today, my friend psyched me up for a trip to the D20 Aurora Isles, specifically Jelly Farm II.
She said that these levels were supposed to have a very good number of crown drops; that seemed logical due to the amount of jelly spawns there were, but I was somewhat skeptical due to the recent "level balance" update, thinking that may be case with the Isles. We were met with about 3/10 jellies actually dropping anything at all. This was distressing. The level, overall, felt extremely unsatisfying, with the drops that actually occured being in the 3-10 crown range, and I was counting (on voice chat) the number of jellies in a row that just fizzled and gave nothing.

The ultimate payout was 613 crowns, which I would say is around the average amount of crowns that a depth 20 level would give you, and even then we were lucky enough to get a gold (50) crown from one of the... "Copious"... Grass tiles, which gave us a good 30-50% of our drops!

The reason I think this is silly is that the Aurora Isles are rare, and I would think they never occur more than once in a gate, let alone in a stratum or -heaven forbid- in a row. Sure, checking out the design of a level I'd never been in before felt nice, but in general it just felt like a punishment for trying to make some honest money. Why make something that has maybe one tenth of the chance of occuring in a stratum as opposed to an (extremely high paying) Arena give such a tiny amount of drops in comparison? Difficulty might be a factor here, but the rareness alone seems to offset that.

I don't want this to seem like a whiny rant, and sure, I'll just go delve elsewhere and take note that the Aurora Isles are quite average; I think, however, that they have been overnerfed and have lost a lot of their appeal (before the update I heard stories of getting 2k crowns or more. Wow.).

On an interesting note, this is the only level I've played featuring the little activatable turrets; I had fun wasting 5 energy in the name of curiosity. :P