Since achieving Defender status, which is what you get currently if you finish all the rank missions up to 6-2, I have noticed that the crown & heat yields for the various levels follow the pattern of depths in a normal clockwork gate.

As most of us know, in clockworks, levels before the terminal yield lower crowns/heats, but after terminal, the farm is great. For example, in tier 2, depths 9 - 12 have hideous farm compared to depths 14 - 17. The idea is that the reward for completely the first stratum is the ability to buy and sell recipes for a profit (though this has been removed considerably, save boss token items, but this is entirely a different discussion.)

Now, for the missions, the defender ranked prestige missions take place in depths 19 - 20. This would fall into the pre-terminal levels of tier 3 clockworks. The crown & heat gained is considerably less than the Elite Knight prestige missions which take place in what would be post-terminal levels of tier 2 clockworks. For instance, today in the "Assault of The Machine Shop 13", I gained a paltry 769 crowns for 20 mist. If I had ran this as an elite knight, it would be at least double the crowns, and easier monsters to boot.

My suggestion: For missions, scale the drops to increase linearly according to depth, and not follow the rise and flow that occurs in clockworks.

OR

Lower the depths of the Defender ranked prestige missions to 24-25 ensure that a rank outperforms the next. This could be a short term fix in the interim before Rank 7-1 and later get released as this issue will be less frustrating on the playerbase if they were able to gain a rank that put them to the equivalent of stratum 6.

TL;DR: Why do Defender ranked prestige missions have horrendous farm compared to elite knight ranked ones? Please fix.

Thanks,
-- Sypsy